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.
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.