I just watched Mike and Jay talk about this movie. They both really like it...

I just watched Mike and Jay talk about this movie. They both really like it, but it certainly doesn't look very subtle to me. It looks like it's too obvious with its message.

Other urls found in this thread:

behance.net/gallery/15118027/Miniatures-Starship-Troopers-ILM
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

it's a fucking gungho movie about low budget space marines killing high-budget bugs

there is no message

Obviously not or the reviews at the time would have been able to spot it? Listen to the commentary track. It's just Verhoeven raging at how stupid reviewers were for missing the obvious satire

They said its more obvious now than it was at the time

Anyone who thinks Starship Troopers is "subtle" needs to be drink my poz cum and die

The book wasn't satirical and people weht into this thinking it was just a Hollywood action adaption that kept the pro war themes.

It's not "subtle," but it doesn't openly declare itself satire either.

It's Poe's Law the movie.

>20 year old movie
>don't watch it
>spend time watching a long review
>spend time discussing it online
JUST WATCH THE FUCKING FILM AND FORM YOUR OWN OPINION
Jesus what's wrong with you people

I think this is why the movie has remained a sort of cult classic that has remained somewhat popular. You can read whatever you want into it. If you want a dumb action movie you got it. If you want a pro-war, pro- fascist movie you got it. If you want a satirical anti-fascist movie you get that too. Its like Robocop in that respect. It works on many levels for different people

I could tell both were trying to project their weird liberal philosophies on the human vs bug conflict. There is no communicating with the bugs, they amass in hordes and slaughter any humans they see. Its great when they brainb bug is scared because humans are chump change to them, the whole movie was about locating it so it can stop commanding the other bugs. Yes its obvious the movie does the corny war propaganda stuff but its satire not some anti-fascism message.

The anti-fascist message is intended by the director and writer. Most of the episode is just retreading things in the commentary for the movie. Verhoeven grew up in nazi occupied Netherlands. You can choose not to see it that way, but that is the intent.

i was 13 when it came out and had no idea it was satire. i dont remember anyone labeling it as such either. rlm is right in saying that most everyone just thought it was a dumb alien movie

Have you considered watching it?

Instead of watching a youtube review and then asking us.

Nice dubs, but I'm as pro-war and pro-fascist as they come but this was a satire through and through.

And nothing wrong with that. It was one helluva enjoyable movie. Soundtrack kicked ass also.

The thing about this movie is that it's so blunt with the satire it ends up flying over most people's head because they take it all at face value.

Well that's what I mean, it can be enjoyed on a lot of levels. You don't need to jive with the movie's message to just enjoy the story and action. That's where most satire fails. Same with Robocop. It can be a critique on American consumerism and corporate culture, but its also just an awesome fucking action film with a really moving emotional core to it.

It is a decidedly anti-fascist film - a bit of a forced one, at that, since it removes details from the book and exaggerates/adds other details to make the regime look more undesirable and tyrannical than Heinlein's. I wouldn't mind if he was extrapolating i.e. "this is what Heinlein's created society would really be like" but Verhoeven didn't even read the book past the first chapter. The meat of the book is less in what it depicts but the rationale given for the workings of the society.

In the film the amputee working at the desk of the recruitment centre is played cynically, since he speaks positively about working in the unit and welcomes Rico optimistically, who then sees his injuries in a moment of dramatic irony. In the book the amputee works at the entry of the recruitment centre to show everyone the realities of war and to try to disincentivise people from signing up - especially if they have false or misguided ideas about what they're getting into. The jingoism that Verhoeven ridicules is also disdained by Heinlein, albeit more maturely (and it shouldn't be very hard to write something more mature than 50s pulp sci-fi) Putting everyone in Nazi uniforms is a boring, tired trick too. Verhoeven used Heinlein's book as a vehicle to react against American society, but the thing is that Heinlein was already doing that.

I do like the movie, it's quite well made and fun, but Verhoeven's """satire""" is boring and childish. The high praise for it reveals very low standards for "intelligent" action movies.

Honestly I don't watch any film made before 2000 sorry if that might make some people mad.

Everyone keeps saying it's a satire, but for the movie to be a satire, it has to understand the source material, which it does not.

...

its a different work aside from the source material

>but for the movie to be a satire, it has to understand the source material, which it does not.
That's not true at all

>satire
of what? No army fights like they do. No army trains like they do. No government is run like theirs. Where is the satire? What parts of the movie specifically are satirical of what in the real world?

Ed Nuemeir, the writer of the film, did finish the book. The script for this movie was an older script they worked on about young people finding love and purpose in Nazi Germany. At the end they become happy little nazis ready to face their "bright" futures. They just retrofitted the IP onto that story and those satirical themes.

He did a poor job then, seeing the carnage that the bugs wrought makes everyone want them even more dead and for Rico to do it. Unless the attack on Buenos Aires was an inside job.

Someone do the name >> name >> power gap > name so the thread gets derailed and viral marketing ban

It's not bait, everything from that era is so unrelateable to me and my generation on top of terrible special effects and generally ugly people because of weird trendy styles that don't look good today.

>on top of terrible special effects
>In a Starship Troopers thread
You're gonna have to try harder

Rich>Mike=Jay *small power gap* Jack *decidedly larger power gap* Josh.

you would think so but when the movie came out people were confused

people still get confused by it to this day

Facism isn't a subtle ideology.

>there is no message
What about the news reporter?
What about the mormons?

Do you realize that not all movies use special effects.

Right?

Did the critics not see how on the nose the TV segments were?

>speaks on behalf of an entire generation
Excuse me who the fuck are you again?

i grew up watching the movie, so maybe I'm just stuck with my same childish view point, but I legit think the movie is just a good Sci-fi film about killing bugs

kys

The beauty of this and Robocop is they operate on multiple levels. Sometimes when I watch this I think it's political, sometimes I think it's funny, sometimes I just dig all the bug ass-kicking.

>also Denise Richards tits

I never thought about how the movie starts off like a typical action movie (Wide eye youth is not 100% indoctrinated into society) but ends on the opposite end of the scale of a typical action movie (Wide Eyed Youth buys into the society and continues the cycle) until I watched the re:view of it.

It's a pretty good point there.

Also, how can people watch and review Starship Troopers straight while applauding Robocop for the satire?

I agree with you wholeheartedly

It's pretty fun. But that's all it is. Loud, dumb, fun.

Tons of silly over-acting, with surprisingly good CGI for its time and a few spots of upper-body nudity if I recall.

I remember watching the second movie and being insanely disappointed.

Did anyone watch the Fox Kids animated show? How was it?

The interesting thing about the movie is that while its satire of the military state is obvious, it still has the Michael Ironside character providing a reasonable and non-hypocritical pro-military state argument more in line with the Heinlein novel. That and Verhoeven just generally does a great job making you care unironically about the characters despite the satirical atmosphere.

>muh nazis

try watching some AMERICAN WW2 propaganda they're just as bad

I heard the in book that the Marines use suits that are actually helpful and they aren't fodder like in the movie.

I think the bugs are also more advanced and actually create technology.

>CGI


behance.net/gallery/15118027/Miniatures-Starship-Troopers-ILM

user she never showed her tits in this movie bro

It's amazing.
The perfect blend of hilarity and action you can ask from a 90's film. Randomly put it on a few years ago and couldn't stop laughing.

Not to mention it wasn't afraid to use over the top gore which earns it points.

The cgi really looks great from a 97' movie.

I consider this movie my litmus test for whether or not a person can understand satire.
Anyone who doesn't get it (including half the critics on it's debut) are probably slow in one way or another.

Why did it have to be so big?

Yes to both. A big part of the book is that the humans are hyped as being individualists and fighting the tyranny of the alien hive mind. Mike and Jay miss an important detail which is that Neil Patrick Harris' character is mind controlling Rico. The humans are becoming a psychic hive mind in their attempt to fight the collectivism of the bugs.

Also a major part of the book is how awesome nuclear weapons are. Every suit has Davy Crocket bomb catapults and they perform terrorist raids on "neutral" aliens who may be supporting the bugs. The book is very boring and spends a lot of time describing various ways to wipe out foreign civilization and how humans (USA) are great because they value freedom and killing aliens (southeast Asians).

Heinlein was fucking crazy. He was a big proponent of nuking Vietnam and other SEA countries and was part of a group that was agitating for a coup.

I'm blown away that Mike argues the Bugs could be reasoned with. They're fucking bugs. Their existence is based on expansion, as most lifeforms in fact are. If you retreat from them, they'll keep expanding till they reach Earth, and they'll be billions more of them.

Letting a hostile race get a free pass just because you're worried about being "fascist" is just kicking the bucket down the generations. When it finally does become an existential problem for Humanity, they'll be fucked.

That's why I was confused by Enders Game where the message was humans were evil for retaliating.

Actually I looked it up and the Vietnam War analogy doesn't work as well because it was written earlier than I thought (before US escalation). It does parallel the stance some had to the Korean War which ended the same decade it was published.

>I'm blown away that Mike argues the Bugs could be reasoned with. They're fucking bugs.
You only know this because of the information presented within the movie, which is a propaganda film within the universe.

If you want a highly detailed miniature, you make it not-so-miniature.

I think the movies big mistake was making the bugs seem like dumb animals. If they were a sapient race that tried to communicate with the humans and the humans were still just trying to wipe them out mercilessly I think it'd work much better.

Still, I think it's making its point just fine. At least in the beginning and in the end.

>of what? No army fights like they do. No army trains like they do. No government is run like theirs.

You're completely right but libtards actually do believe that the film is an accurate depiction of all those things. Something can still technically be satire even if it isn't based in reality. Only the deluded fucktard who is writing it has to think it's real.

the propaganda videos and the teacher at the beginning of the movie make it fairly clear that it's satirical. and the level of carnage in the battles makes it clear that the film is not pro-war

the problem is, so much of the movie is either bland action or bland romance, that the movie isn't very good.

Robocop got the mix of violence and satire exactly right. Starship Troopers got it way wrong.

This is objectively wrong. The movie heavily implies it was humanity that initiated the war with the bugs

People didn't see the film because of the book. No one except maybe some vets had even heard of the book. The movie was already half way into production when they decided to use some basic elements from the book like the character names for the movie.

Verhoeven didn't grow up with American propaganda. He grew up in Nazi occupied Netherlands. He doesn't just make parallels to them for no good reason

The funny things is that the bugs are actually more sympathetic in the book and are capable of having alliances with higher lifeforms like the skinnies. Why did Verhoeven dumb them down to literal ants if he was trying to make the space nazis look bad? It's not even good satire when you really examine it.

Dude, their idea of a joke is to repeat something really loud and look at the camera. They're literally mongoloids.

>some space mormons make a small settlement on some barren rock which turns out to be in the bug's territory
>bug's go ape shit and launch a genocidal war of extermination

Sure, the humans did make a mistake but the bug's are still bastards.

>something can still technically be satire even if it isn't based in reality
I don't understand

>fairly clear that it's satirical
of what?

its satire of fascism

its quite possible to satirize an ideal and to show that a society others are pining for and think would be perfect would be quite far from the case

look at something like 1984 or brave new world

>like the book
>hate the movie
Anyone feel the same? I don't even support the political messages of the book, but the character development and growth was amazingly written and the setting interesting. There wasn't even that much action in it if I remember correctly, but the movie was just dull shit that hit you over the head with it's satire constantly.

If that was really Verhoeven's intention I have to wonder what the fuck he was thinking. I feel like he mostly just wanted lots of bug-death and retarded fun violence and vague ideas about how war and bloodthirsty governments are stupid were just kind of half-baked background ideas thrown in for the hell of it. If he really wanted to satirize fascism, like if it was the driving force behind making the movie I'm sure he could have done a better job of it than he did.

If you're satirizing a real idea sincerely held by real people then your satire is based in reality.

I like both. The movie is excellent action and decent comedy while the book is a good coming of age story on top of solid military theory/speculation.

Starship troopers > Top Gun

They might not even be able to understand why thats wrong.

See Enders game which had a very similar insectoid race. The "Buggers" were under the assumption that humans were just mindless drones because thats what the majority of their own race aside from the "queens" was.

Ironic shitposting is still shitposting.
Ironic fascism is still fascism.

Fascists unironically love this movie. Not a fascist myself, but it really looks apealing when watching Starship Troopers. It's great right wing cinema. All the "it's satire" fucks need to fuck off because as satire it uterly failed. It's a fascist comedy.

The lack of action in the book really holds it back imo, Heinlein wrote a lot of better books like Glory Road.

comedy in the Shakespearean definition, yes

You're wrong. Starship Troopers is a straightforward fascist action flick with self referential humor.

>watch RLM review
>why are the scientists only researching how to kill bugs
>why didnt the humans use the brain bug to make peace with the bugs
>why is this society so violent

is this what liberals are like?

>Unless the attack on Buenos Aires was an inside job.
How in the fuck would a bunch of bugs be able to shoot an asteroid across several light years and manage to hit a specific city as opposed to just hitting the ocean? We never see any evidence in the films that they have anywhere near that level of technology, most advanced thing we see are those massive bugs who can shoot down spaceships in orbit. Are they even present on multiple planets?

>Mike "Gas the Kikes" Stoklasa
>Liberal

>Bush invaded a country for no reason and set up a torture program
>Obama had everybody under constant surveillance and locked up huge numbers of journalists
>but somehow it's trump who's the start of fascism
God I hate this meme, it's ~15 years out of date.

>Neil Patrick Harris' character is mind controlling Rico
What?

>Mike "Put the Kikes on Spikes and Nuke Mombasa" Stoklasa

Denise Richards should have had her tits out in this, there's nothing but ugly ass tits in this movie

> locked up huge numbers of journalists

no he didn't

Yes he did, look it up. He locked up more journalists under the espionage act then every other president before him combined.

It was a decent enough RLM review, I liked it, but I feel like they failed to address a major point in their criticism of the fictional fascist society depicted in the film, in that it ACTUALLY WORKS. The people of the Starship Troopers universe are remarkably unified across racial lines, everyone is committed to a common cause, gender roles are comfortably accepted (the majority of infantry are men, plus some women who are capable of meeting the same physically demanding standards, while most of the pilots are female to utilize their lower mass and higher tolerance of G-forces (yes I realize this isn't quite realistic to how capable female pilots are in the real world but it's pretty clear Heinlein was going for a "each to what he can do best" meritocracy society here)), and best of all, those civilians who DON'T WANT to fight are shown to still be able to live comfortable, happy, safe lives thanks to the blood shed by the citizens to protect them. You can argue that the entire film itself is a propaganda vehicle and thus it's subtly implied that we're supposed to reject it, yet there's never a single hint that anyone in their society suffers for anything, save those who died as a direct result of the Buenos Aires bug attack (or false flag). We are given subtle clues that the humans may have provoked the war, but even so, the message ends up being: Yes, humans need a common enemy to unleash violence upon to remain cohesive, but the system actually works.

I guess when you live in a country with western values you don't have to go into depth what the issues with totalitarian governments are and you can focus on the actual movie.

>country with western values
Like Germany? Italy? Hungary? Spain?

It's not used heavily in the movie. It's only suggested that NPH used his powers to direct Rico to where Carmen was being held captive.

This has officially confirmed for me that Mike and Jay will have any opinion that gives them internet brownie point. "subtle" holy shit.

I'm not clear on how ST's government is either fascist or totalitarian, having read the book a few times it seems like they are still a Constitutional Republic, but they've replaced property ownership with military service as a means of ensuring that citizens both value their rights and have invested in protecting them.

Dont forget Obamas drone program.

plenty of people called bush a nazi. there's even a south park episode about it

ITT:
50% of people saying the satire was overly forced and way too obvious
50% of people saying there is no satire and its a pro-fascist movie

really clonkers my bonkers...

More like it's terrible satire because it ends up looking like it's a self conscious bit of comedy in an earnest film.

If you cant tell its satire, it just shows how well-done and close to the bone the satire is imo

Well you need to sign up for the army to be a citizen so liberal democracy is dead. The nation is united by xenophobia fueled by propaganda. Violence is not only considered ok but as a go to method for conflict solving. It sounds pretty fascist to me but I'll admit the definitions of fascism are pretty vague anyway.

I can tell, but it doesn't work.
>le let me tell what people who I don't like believe in a snarky way
Le current year man and all other trashy comedians do this. Their snark doesn't mean what they're trying to ridicule is bad. And sometimes it doesn't work. It didn't work in this movie either. In fact, it was so bad here it ended up looking like fascism self-conscious of the infamous propaganda element, making it even more okay to like.

>The feel when you're the only person who seems to realise that it's possible to grasp the satire of the film, but still think it's a shit film.

If there's a running joke that is funny the first time, and then it's repeated for two hours straight, you can still not like the joke even though you "get" it.

It was a good movie for 40 minutes. Then you get over it. Good for seeing titties when you're 11, tho

...do you really think no one in this thread has actually watched the film?

Can someone explain to me the appeal of watching this movie?

I get that it's satire, but it's still a not good movie on it's own. Not shit enough to be "so shit it's good", and not good enough to be decent.
The satire part is way too subtle so you don't even laugh much while watching.

I just don't see the appeal.
If the prequels were somehow satire I still wouldn't want to watch them

>It looks like it's too obvious with its message.

And yet most people didn't get it.