I really liked Starship Troopers as a kid. Pretty sure I said it was my favorite movie for a time. Last year or so, I had the chance to watch it again with some friends, and I was excited because now I could watch it with my Adult Knowledge that it’s actually a satire of fascism. I was honestly bored out of my mind, and I wanted to turn it off halfway through.
Because it’s not really a typical satire, right? It’s an example of a movie that a fascist society would make. This kind of necessarily means that the movie needs to be trite and shallow. Neither the characters nor plot is compelling. Because of this, the action sequences fall flat to me, too.
I watched robocop the day before, and I actually liked it way more than when I was younger. I can also enjoy other satire of fascism like Warhammer 40k which I think is ridiculous enough to be fun.
I don’t know, it sucks for the people who genuinely uphold it as a fascist piece of art because… Damn, it’s really childish and boring when taken at face value.
Anyone with me on this? I honestly found it disappointing.
Yeah, that tracks. Robocop is a satire of 80s white flight and drug hysteria, but it has a plot, Murphy’s lost humanity, enslavement, and struggle to define who he is gives him some depth and pathos. The badguys are ridiculously ghoulish and over the top, everyone is chewing the scenery, the special effects are fun.
But with starship troopers, fash media is fash media, so once you get the joke, the impact is made and i can see how it’d lose a lot of it’s appeal.
For me, there’s a lot of nostalgia and quotability to it, that’s a lot of what I like, rather than watching it for plot.
fash media is fash media, so once you get the joke, the impact is made and i can see how it’d lose a lot of it’s appeal.
Yeah, I think this is it
Eric Foreman’s, Dad finally losing his shit after accidentally eating one too many of the 70’s Show gang’s pot brownies and goes full “Reefer Madness” is a sight to behold…
No.
Football. Boobs. Card Tricks. Coed Showers. Guns. Spaceships. Busey. Bugs.
bussy? ok i gotta watch this now
Might be better spelt bugussy if Dr_Gabriel_Aby was referring to the same part I’m thinking of
Think Dr_Gabriel_Aby was referring to the character played by Gary Busey’s son.
Oh fuck I never realized but I knew all along
I’d say Starship Troopers is on par with most war movie shlock. The bugs make for interesting setpieces, the love square between Johnny/Diz/Carmen/the other guy is fun to watch play out, there are a lot of memorable and funny moments. Yeah Johnny’s character arc of “becomes a fascist” sucks but it’s not like the average movie hero’s arc of “becomes a cop” is much better. Verhoeven was targeting Hollywood war movie slop and he fukken nailed it to the wall with a throwing knife - they’re almost all really shallow and childish, they just play at being adult oriented by having a lot of gore.
when i was a kid and saw it i thought it was a satire or homage to 1940s era U.S. war propaganda movies.
but like same diff right?
I was old enough to have seen it in cinemas when it came out. I didn’t, because the promo stuff made it look like generic sci fi garbage. All the chuds in my class loved it and I thought; yeah, not for me.
This was in a fairly backwater town in like '97, so the discourse around it didn’t go much further than that and I forgot about it for about 10 years.
Eventually one of the punks I lived with at the time gave me his sketchy bootleg VCD collection to go thru and there was a copy in there. I threw it on to see what all the fuss was about back in the day. I thought it was utter garbage until part way into the second disk and I realised that was on purpose.
So yeah, mission accomplished, Verhoeven.
Time capsule comment
the action sequences fall flat to me, too.
To me it has slasher appeal, where I’m watching all of these intolerable fash kids and waiting for the part where they start dying. Very satisfying when the bugs start eating them.
I fucking love rooting for the demise of the protagonist(s) in any piece of media I hate. Too bad most of these have good endings for them. Some manga protagonists are the worst
Manga is peak for this. I’d imagine reading the average isekai would really bring your hate out.
Yeah Idk why I did that to myself. I guess I was depressed and didn’t have anything better to do.
Chinese novels have the genre of villain as main char and hunt the protagonist.
Any good ones to recommend? That sounds interesting.
Pmed.
That movie is mostly remembered today by people going, “unlike you plebs, I knew it was a satire from the very beginning.” The actual movie is meh. It was cool seeing bugs owning humans in 1997, but in 2024 where I can just watch some SC/W40K/Halo cinematic of the zerg/tyrannids/flood owning the terrans/imperial guard/UNSC, the novelty is completely gone.
It was cool watching the fire bug destroy this dude’s arm when I was a kid, but why sit through mediocre acting when I could just watch Marines vs EVERY ZERG GROUND UNIT at 2x speed?
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Everyone getting hung up on themes but the best thing about ST is the look and feel, aided by the blend of practical effects and surprisingly solid early era CGI. The behind the scenes stuff on how they did it is worth checking out, though not as amazing a technical/budgetary achievement as Robocop. Verhoeven is/was a whiz at keeping his spectacles visually coherent.
This was one of the first movies to do the “react and we’ll add the thing you’re reacting to in post” thing to its actors, and the fact that Verhoeven got decent performances out of them despite that is a testament to his understanding of film. Compare to the Star Wars prequels, which have a lot of scenes where the real actors don’t react at all to something digital happening in the same scene.
My favorite part is the General Grievous Lightsaber Helicopter scene where he’s throwing bits of superheated slag in Obi-wans eyes but Ewan McGregor has absolutely no idea and his body does not react in any way, he just stands there blankly
I guarantee it’s spicier than the original Starship Troopers book. Every time I try to remember a scene, I’m actually remembering Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. That said, I do love the Starship Troopers movie so take my opinions with the appropriate salt.
Because it’s not really a typical satire, right? It’s an example of a movie that a fascist society would make.
That was Verhoeven’s idea, but the whole movie is overshadowed by what happened later in history. The US went and lived Starship Troopers. At the time it was made, America somewhat mirrored the pre-Asteroid section of the movie. War with the “bugs” was much like news media regarding Saddam Hussein, and there was the lingering question of military spending in the post-soviet world. Then 9/11 happened and fiction/satire became real. French became “Freedom” and arabs were talked about like bugs from the movie. Hell I’m watching footage from Isn’treal today that would fit happily in Starship Troopers propaganda inserts. However Starship Troopers is locked in that post-9/11 stasis (post-
but before The Surge), so we never see what develops as the conflict plays out. The ending is a propaganda reel featuring the main characters, so the text of the movie would be how somebody would become a character in such a reel. This might leave you thirsty for some more material analysis.In my mind this is where Haldeman’s The Forever War shines; he goes through many of the Starship Troopers beats, but with some time dilation he paints a whole civilization’s arc over the conflict right up to the conflict’s conclusion.
Not to spoil the ending of Forever war, but...
…the end of the war (and the book) comes when the conflict forces Humanity to culturally and technologically develop to the point where (gasp!) they can understand and empathize with the other side and bring the war to a close.
Ridley Scott has supposedly been working on trying to make an adaptation of Forever War for the better part of a decade now and as excited as I was when that news first came out it has transformed to complete and comprehensive dread as the years have gone on given how much he is clearly not up to the task of doing it now (which lets be honest he probably never was). If anyone’s gonna do it it should probably be Denis Villeneuve but it’ll take another 10 years at least with how busy he is on Arrakis. Also: there’s some aspects of the book, particularly with its views on homophobia that probably need some tweaking and updating.
yeah for sure. i’ll rewatch robocop whenever, but i don’t think i’ve bothered rewatching starship troopers more than once
I agree, as a piece of art I think it’s interesting, but as a piece of entertainment it’s easily the weakest of Verhoeven’s action films.
Opinions change. It happens.
yeah I know I’m in the minority on this site for disliking Starship Troopers so I don’t usually bring it up but I guess I’ll vent about it here: If I hadn’t had chapos going on and on constantly about Starship Troopers being a satire for fascism then the satire would have gone completely over my head. I would have just thought it was a dumb pro-imperialist action movie like so many before it and turned it off halfway through. And there really were a couple times I was watching it that I thought how the fuck is this satire, this is just the rhetoric I’m exposed to on a daily basis. To me that’s bad satire. If someone who agrees with your satire doesn’t understand your movie as satire, it seems like surely the satire has failed? Or maybe I’m just a dumbass idk.
But also yeah, sorta boring movie otherwise. But I’m probably biased because I don’t like those sorts of movies anyway. I only watched it because everyone kept saying it was some great satire of fascism so I watched it mostly for the politics, which was disappointing.
And there really were a couple times I was watching it that I thought how the fuck is this satire, this is just the rhetoric I’m exposed to on a daily basis. To me that’s bad satire.
This was untrue until about 4 years after the movie released
I’ve always loathed ironic, satirical movies that are supposed to be bad for intellectual reasons. A bad movie is a bad movie regardless of authorial intention imo.
I enjoy it. The news cutaways are a big part of that, I think they’re quite well done, especially when compared to news cutaways in other movies.
