r/todayilearned • u/The_Cromulent_Bison • 4d ago
(R.2) Opinion [ Removed by moderator ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film)[removed] — view removed post
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u/LandOfGreyAndPink 4d ago
I watched it when it came out and really enjoyed it. To me, it was obviously tongue-in-cheek - a sci-fi comedy of sorts. Cool monsters in it, too.
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u/Fritzkreig 4d ago
Totally Team Dizzy here!
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u/ac_cossack 4d ago
If you didn't see the shower scene with Dizzy when you were a kid then oh boy you missed out.
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u/Lampmonster 4d ago
Fun Fact: The director asked the cast if they wanted to do that shower scene, and they agreed they'd do it if he directed in the nude. He agreed, so he's behind the camera nude in that scene.
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u/nonpuissant 4d ago
The 90s really were the pinnacle of human society in many ways
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u/sillyslime89 4d ago
Matrix was right all along
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u/ProfSpaceTime 4d ago
Genuinely. Idk go back to 1990 in a heartbeat, and it was seven years before I was born! :,)
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u/Beowulf33232 4d ago
As long as I don't have to go back to school, I'm in.
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u/Cartz1337 4d ago
Yea, fuck 90s high school, that shit was miserable
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u/idrunkenlysignedup 4d ago
I got bullied because my house burned down in a wildfire. The school admin even tried to charge us for destroying my school books until my mom lost her shit on them. Highschool kids sucks
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u/Greenpoint_Blank 4d ago
Not exactly how it happened, but close enough.
Per Dina Meyer:
“Despite what some of you may have heard, Paul and Jost didn’t do the scene naked from behind the camera. What happened was, he was laughing at us that we were so reluctant to take our clothes off in the mixed company that we were in, and he says to me, ‘Come on! I don’t understand what’s wrong with you Americans. What’s the big deal? It’s the body. Take your clothes off.’”
As Meyer recounts, she told the filmmakers to put their money where their mouth was “And I said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re a big shot, because you’re able to wear your clothes behind the camera while everybody else has to walk around naked and do a scene like it’s no big deal that we’re naked.’ And he goes, ‘Well, I don’t understand.’ And I said, ‘Well, if it’s not such a big deal, why don’t you take your clothes off.’”
What happened next shocked everyone on set.
“And [Paul] looks over at Jost Vacano, and Yost goes, ‘Oh, okay.’ And the two of them dropped their pants briefly. They didn’t film the scene like that.”The incident made Casper Van Dien uncomfortable.
“And they said, ‘Okay, are you guys ready to shoot?’ And you’re like, ‘[Covers face] Oh god, no please! For the rest of my life, I have to know…please let’s just pull them up and let’s do it.’”
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u/Firemoth717 4d ago
First boobies I saw in a theater as a young kid. Core memory forever
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u/Olivetax228 4d ago
I literally think that scene triggered puberty for me, and a shower/general nudist fetish as well lmao
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u/Marble_Wraith 4d ago
Not only did i see it as a 9 year old. On my birthday sleep over i re-rented it and made sure all my friends got to see it. Felt i was duty bound as a citizen 🫡😏
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u/stinkingyeti 4d ago
I have this memory of seeing full frontal nudity in that scene as a teen, and I've wondered if there was a cut of that, or if my teen brain just pictured it all.
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u/TelluricThread0 4d ago edited 4d ago
Thank the gods for Dizzy and her tits!
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u/rbartlejr 4d ago
I was in it for Denise Richards, stayed for Diz in the shower (and tent of course).
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u/karlnite 4d ago
I thought it was serious when I first saw it. I also thought it was funny but cheesy, and kinda scary at the end. I was like 10.
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u/ZombieAladdin 4d ago
Yeah, I first interpreted it as going for a campy, B-movie feel (though I was an adult by then). Of course, I was also watching it on SyFy, which is otherwise full of campy B-movies.
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u/ElectronicFloor1898 4d ago
Great cast, too. Honestly, too good of a cast for this kind of movie.
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u/Ruger_Booger 4d ago
It was only missing Denise Richards topless sex scene. If it had that, Oscar. Guaranteed.
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u/Future-self 4d ago
Would you like to know more?
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u/OldeFortran77 4d ago
I call this the "Starship Troopers" paradox. Some of the audience watches and says "fascism is awful" while another part of the audience watches and says "fascism is awesome!"
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u/Returnyhatman 4d ago
That was me and my Dad when we saw it in the cinema. He was horrified by things like the citizenship requirements and I thought all the big bugs were cool and Rico was cool and so on
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u/_dharwin 4d ago
The bugs and Rico are cool.
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u/BoyCubPiglet2 4d ago
Part of why Starship Troopers is great is that it works as both a social commentary and as an action movie. A lot of my favorite satire falls into that bucket where it can stand on its own as a film but also has something to say if you're paying attention.
As a kid I just thought Starship Troopers was a cool ass movie.
As an adult I see the meaning behind it.
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u/FILTHBOT4000 4d ago
Starship Troopers walks a fine line between very-not obvious satire and a rather serious warning of the romanticization and attraction available to real fascism.
A lot of other movies with messages about fascism fall into the trap of lampooning it, and thus making it look like not a real threat, as it's too silly or overly evil. Fascism takes root, usually, because the lures of belonging, of pride, of mob mentality and righteous violence are very, very seductive. The propaganda in Starship Troopers is that.
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u/NativeMasshole 4d ago
Yeah, I was like 10 when this came out. I was mostly interested in the boobs and giant bugs while not thinking too deeply about the government.
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u/UJustGotRobbed 4d ago
Man when I was 10 years old boobs used to be everything! They still are but used to be too.
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u/ST_Lawson 4d ago
I was a little older, but still pretty clueless about the whole satire stuff. Just thought it was a fun cheesy sci-fi movie.
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u/emaw63 4d ago
10 year olds in general really struggle with satire as a genre. It's generally not introduced in ELA classes until high school for that reason
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u/DrMobius0 4d ago edited 4d ago
I wouldn't expect a 10 year old to have the life experience to understand things like the oligarchy or the military industrial complex, so of course the satire will be lost on them. And that's probably true for most satire they'd consume.
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u/HuanBestBoi 4d ago
And we never questioned how a lava-termite colony managed to aim an asteroid at Buenos Aires…your dad was right
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u/altiuscitiusfortius 4d ago
They used bug plasma. I saw so on FedNet..
Are you suggesting the government nuked it to start a war so they could fuel the military industrial complex? Because that actually makes sense now that i think about it....
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u/sinsaint 4d ago
That's the Helldivers plot.
Bugs are bioengineered and made of oil, propaganda is sent to Super Earth to convince the populace to enlist against the bugs terrorizing them, or every other problem Super Earth makes for itself.
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 4d ago
Another one in that game that's theorized is super Earth is really not in a good state the soldiers sent are for population control because super Earth has limited resources.
It's been awhile but the rebel radios supposedly hint at this and it's why you are told to blow them up.
I haven't played since launch so idk what has been revealed now or changed.
Edit you as a solder never get to see super Earth so you really don't know what it looks like.
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u/Whatisausern 4d ago
Edit you as a solder never get to see super Earth so you really don't know what it looks like.
Except for when we fought on Super Earth
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u/Good_Vibes_18 4d ago
My favorite theory is that Denise Richards character is actually responsible for Buenos Aires as when she is with the pilot earlier in the movie they go off course and strike an asteroid and alter its trajectory
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u/Brief_Caterpillar175 4d ago
When I saw the movie, I’d assumed that was the most obvious conclusion. The asteroid only ended up there because they smacked into it and altered its path.
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u/nonpuissant 4d ago
Yeah same
weren't they around Saturn or something? Even if they only knocked it off course by like a single inch that's gonna add up to a lot after a few hundred million miles.
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u/ExplanationMotor2656 4d ago
Wouldn't it take decades or longer to cover that distance since it was just nudged slightly? It takes our spaceships years to complete similar journeys and that's with rocket scientists crafting trajectories to accelerate them there.
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u/shawndw 4d ago edited 4d ago
But in the end we discovered that they were controlled by one big super smart bug. And 12 year old me was tickled pink at the end of the movie when we discovered that the bugs could experience fear. Wasn't until years later I watched it again and was like WTF is Neil Patrick Harris dress as a Nazi.
It's basically two completely different movies in one depending on when you watched it.
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u/pants_mcgee 4d ago
This is addressed in the movie, they’re a space faring species with the ability to fight in space.
In the book they have missiles and spaceships and all that jazz but just don’t bother while on a planet.
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u/Qyark 4d ago
Well no, they do. The soldier caste use laser rifles as weapons, not teeth and claws.
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u/TheLurkingMenace 4d ago
Not to mention when they would have had to do it. Those rocks had been traveling across space for thousands - maybe millions - of years.
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u/Wak3upHicks 4d ago
Nevermind the fact Kelndathu was shown to be on the other side of the galaxy. So, bug plasma knocked an asteroid 100k light years to hit our planet...somehow
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u/dudwithacamera 4d ago
Arguably the citizenship requirements would create a better world because people would have more of a vested interest in it.
Doing X amount of time as a first responders, teacher, working for a non profit, community service hours, etc. And only getting the right to vote after meeting that criteria would cause people to have to give back to their community in some way, creating vested interest in it.
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u/dew2459 4d ago
That was (more or less) the book’s citizenship requirement. In the movie it was just military service.
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u/Paleone123 4d ago
Yeah, in the book you just had to do federal service. It didn't have to be in the military. In fact there's a long sequence where Rico goes through a large number of options before finally deciding to be part of the Mobile Infantry.
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u/zerogee616 4d ago edited 4d ago
As far as the "Heinlein simped for fascism" crowd goes, if they ever really read the book they'd realize the actual things they claim point towards that, especially concerning the "service equals citizenship" part, really aren't that bad, at all. It's federal, not military service that gets you the right to vote and hold office, said service is equal opportunity and it's open to everyone regardless of capability and in no way, shape or form non-citizens suffering or being oppressed as a group. It's even stated in the book that it's actually a pretty free society as far as personal freedoms and liberty goes.
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u/DoomGoober 4d ago
It's more complex than that. The movie is based on Heinlein's novella which features a militaristic, meritocracy, democracy, where only veterans are enfranchised. Is that fascism? Good question!
But Verhoeven took the novella and converted his film into a parody of fascism by adding a layer of sci-fi fascist seeming media control as a meta-narrative. But, in the end, Verhoeven's now fascistic styled, militaristic, meritocracy society still manages to defeat the aliens through combat with each individual contributing and thus win the day.
Heinlein's story's conclusion and Verhoeven's are the same except Verhoeven adds the media elements which are the main target of his satire.
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u/Long_Legged_Lady 4d ago
where only veterans are enfranchised.
Not quite. In the book you could choose to work a few years in civil service instead of the military and still get full citizenship rights.
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u/GatorzardII 4d ago
And citizenship was more a symbolical thing than a new set of rights. Not being "citizens" did not stop Rico's family from being rich landlords.
Not to mention that in the book the government wasn't jingoistic, and there were maimed veterans whose entire job was to talk young recruits out of signing up if they weren't 100% sure they wanted in.
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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance 4d ago
>And citizenship was more a symbolical thing than a new set of rights.
It gave you the right to vote and hold public office, if I remember correctly?
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u/LongJohnSelenium 4d ago
Correct. Fundamentally what the book called citizen and civilian we would call naturalized citizen and permanent resident.
People view the books lack of birthright citizenship negatively because they dont consider the world was a united earth government with total freedom of movement for all so the normal issues inherent with a lack of birthright citizenship dont really apply.
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u/Dry-Season-522 4d ago
Also in the book it wasn't "Here's a helmet and a gun, go go go" it was "Here's a mech suit that makes you look like a giant ape (thus the 'come on you apes' lines) where they'd go bouncing across the terrain droping nukes and smashing through buildings. A wee bit more investment in the lives of the soldiers.
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u/Uzas_B4TBG 4d ago
The fuckin suits were so cool in the book. Toss a couple tactical nukes, jetpack over to the next landmark, couple more nukes. Building full of alien civilians? Bomb that blares out “I’m a thirty second bomb” in their language.
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u/AllsWellThatsNB 4d ago
In addition, it really still was a right to citizenship. Anyone could earn it, and if neccessary a job commensurate to the abilities of applicant would be created.
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u/gunsforevery1 4d ago
And everyone had an equal opportunity to earn that citizenship. It wasn’t withheld even if you were extremely disabled.
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u/gunsforevery1 4d ago
Heinlein also said the vast majority of citizens are veterans from peace time non combat auxiliary units. He further went on to clarify in interviews that teachers, firefighters, and nurses were also “veterans” of their jobs.
What is said is that MILITARY service leads to the fastest way to earn citizenship because it’s the most brutal way to get it, but again, the majority of citizens were from non combat auxiliaries.
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u/Deirachel 4d ago
Verhoeven did NOT make a movie based on the novel. Famously,he admitted to not actually reading it.
He had a movie written, Bug Attack on Planet P or something like that, and then the studio got the rights to the name. They rewashed the story with the names from the book.
Heinlien's Starship Troopers was VERY different. The government was not fascist; it was a democracy were ANYONE could earn their citizenship. It did not require military service, just federal service for citizenship (which only granted voting rights and that was it). Specifically, military service as LESS than 5% of service. The Arachnids were a highly intelligent, tool using, FTL spaceship using, expansionist species...just like humans. (Buenos Ares was destroyed by a fleet...and was not Rico's home...he was Fillipino)
I'm honestly surprised Heinlien's estate let it happen. But, it explains why there haven't been any further adaptions of his writings (Podkayne of Mars or Friday, for example).
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u/Tangolarango 4d ago
thank you! Heinlein is so good and it breaks my heart how unfair it is that he is considered a fascist.
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u/Akiasakias 4d ago
"only veterans" NO. Common misconception. In fact military service is lambasted as the worst way to gain citizenship, any service to society qualifies you. You can be a doctor, for example.
They explicitly state in the book that no matter what your skills, they will find something you can do if you want to persue citizenship. The ONLY class of people said to almost never atain it was businessmen, because they peruse only selfish profits.
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u/Sparowl 4d ago
The movie is based on Heinlein's novella
It's really not. It bears loose similarities
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u/Dry-Season-522 4d ago
Indeed. Starship Troopers and World War Z have the same amount of "inspiration from the book"
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u/StatisticianLocal655 4d ago
Movie is a victim of it's own success in that regard, since the satire aspect is great, but it's also really fun to watch as a dumb, gung ho action movie of humans vs space bugs.
Then again, I'm from Buenos Aires, so I might be biased
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u/qubedView 4d ago
The last decade has been a long lesson that the guy who keeps making Nazi jokes at work might not be as sarcastic as he pretends to be.
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u/codexcdm 4d ago
Well... The world's first trillionaire did Nazi salutes last year.... So let that sink in.
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u/bubba-yo 4d ago
I'll also note that what was flagged as fascist in 1997 was very different than today. We're much more sensitive to it in the US today, but it was so far from the sense of possibility in 1997 that it seemed like a stupid thing to satire.
The director Paul Verhoeven is Dutch and born in the 30s. He had a VERY different sensibility of the risk of fascism in 1997 than Americans did.
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u/Darth_Giddeous 4d ago
You mean the same Paul Verhoeven who made a film about how power corrupts people and institutions, sex and violence reveals true underlying human nature, societies celebrate things they should ultimately fear, or how heroes are often confused scared or plain wrong?
Robocop: a satirisation of dehumanisation, corporate greed, capitalism and privatisation.
Showgirls: how the entertainment industry is a machine that corrupts everything it touches
Starship Troopers: using the tools of fascist propaganda to satirise fascism
Hollow Man: exploring male entitlement and shining a light on it
The Paul Verhoeven who is one of my favourite directors?
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u/tallbutshy 4d ago
while another part of the audience watches and says "fascism is awesome!"
"War, it's fantastic!" – Hot Shots! Part Deux
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u/bigmancertified 4d ago
My friends who liked it did not like it because it was a clever critique of blind patriotism. They liked it because, "YEAH! SHOOT GUNS! KILL BUGS!"
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u/Chemical_Signal2753 4d ago
I would argue that a large portion of the satire in Starship Troopers is extremely surface level, and the world it demonstrates is not that dystopian.
- Civilians can not vote but everyone has a route to become a citizen that can vote. Outside of participation in politics, there is no implication that civilians are treated worse than citizens.
- There appears to be equality based on sex and race.
- There appears to be little censorship as people are allowed to openly discuss ideas in school, in the homes, and (in a very limited scene) in the media.
- They're not particularly aggressive, and only become militaristic after being attacked.
- They don't present any significant problems with homelessness, wealth inequality, crime, drug abuse, or (pretty much) any social or socio-economic problem.
The satire essentially depends on the audience having a knee-jerk "fascism bad" reaction, but it actually presents a fascist utopia. You could make the argument that you're witnessing this world through the lens of state propaganda and, while there is some evidence to support that, but that seems more meta than was common for film makers of the day.
As a result of this, depending on how you view the movie both viewpoints are valid. You could see it as being a far more equitable, free, prosperous, and meritocratic society than we currently live in; or you could see it as a brutal dystopian state with significant suppression of the negative side of society, where criticism is carefully controlled into an approved Overton window.
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u/ClosetDouche 4d ago
while there is some evidence to support that
It's been many years since I've seen the film, but my recollection is that there's an overwhelming implication that the vision of society you, the viewer, are being presented with is absolutely being colored by state propaganda. State propaganda is an enormous part of the film, so it makes sense that you, the viewer, would also be subject to it.
But perhaps that's the point you're making. That the film, like all art, is subject to the viewer's interpretation and has no inherent meaning in and of itself.
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u/z3nnysBoi 4d ago
Oh oh oh this has an actual name. It was coined in a flat earth forum, where one contributer pointed out that it's impossible to discern whether someone genuinely holds a belief and is an idiot or is slyly making fun of something via sarcastic enthusiasm. I can't for the life of me remember the name.
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u/Accipiter1138 4d ago
The problem with doing something ironically is that eventually, someone else will come along and start doing it earnestly and believe that they've found their people.
You can also pair this with the theory that it's almost impossible to make a true anti-war film because action scenes and drama will almost always be attractive to audiences.
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u/VictorianGuy 4d ago
But what about Dizzy?
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u/raginpete 4d ago
Dizzy death is brutal.
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u/HereWeGoYetAgain-247 4d ago
You always leave the bug parts in. Ripping them out promotes blood loss.
She might have lived if they left them and let the doctors handle it.
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u/AznSensation93 4d ago
You ain't wrong about leaving penetrative wounds alone, never take it out, but also nah, she got stabbed 4 times. Leaving that bug limb in would've done nothing.
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u/HereWeGoYetAgain-247 4d ago
Hey, it’s the future, they have the green liquid tanks!
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u/AznSensation93 4d ago
Yeah, but that was for Rico with 1 stab wound, granted a very large one that also probably should've killed him also from blood loss, but chest stab wounds probably aren't as easy to repair as muscle and bone vs muscle, bone, and organs.
It's okay though, Rico can still see Dizzy with the help of Carl lol.
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u/IllogicalResponse 4d ago
Meanwhile Denise Richards gets fully impaled (not in a sexy way) and just shrugs it off. Dizzy got done dirty.
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u/misfitx 4d ago
A modest proposal would have ended them.
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u/mbsmith93 4d ago
For the uninitiated: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm
TLDR: The solution to poverty is to eat poor people
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u/SpacecaseCat 4d ago
These viewers are too busy trying to form their own Fight Clubs to read classic literature like that.
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u/ProfessionalHefty349 4d ago
I’ll have to consider what you mean by this while I enjoy this plate of baby back ribs.
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u/Spaceboy779 4d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah, dressing Doogie Howser up as a Nazi was apparently too subtle, lol
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u/shawndw 4d ago
12 year old me didn't pick up on that and I thought he looked cool as shit. My parents not so much lol
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u/SheriffBartholomew 4d ago
I mean, the Nazis did have great uniforms and overall fashion sense.
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u/Nbdyhere 4d ago
Yeah, famously Verhoeven (director) laughed at the response because it was clearly a jab at fascism and Nazis. Given that he lived under Nazi rule, he had a pretty solid perspective.
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u/zoobrix 4d ago
famously Verhoeven (director) laughed at the response because it was clearly a jab at fascism and Nazis.
When I started watching Starship Troopers for a bit at the start I was a little unclear if the constant jingoistic calls to duty were supposed to come off as a jab at military service and nationalism, or if the movie was actually in support of it. Then I saw the first officers uniforms and was like "oh they're the nazis," and after that it just got more and more obvious. I get a young kid can watch it and not get it's satire, but I don't understand how an adult couldn't see that.
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u/Akiasakias 4d ago
Not quite accurate. He was BORN under Nazi rule, but the war ended while he was in diapers.
The government shown is small and toothless. Its not a genuine representation of fascism at all.
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u/morbie5 4d ago
obviously satirical
That is news to me as a 14 year old at the time lol
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u/Big-Occasion-5264 4d ago
At 14 > tits and bugs yo!
At 24 > this really says something to me politically
At 34 > this is the best love story I've ever seen
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u/ac_cossack 4d ago
Helldiver checking in. I'm doing my part!
The actual book is totally different. Most Troopers never saw eachother on the battlefield, they just jump packed around and launched tactical nukes. It was all about the psychology of doing that and being at war. It's a short book and a good read if you like sci fi.
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u/Permanenceisall 4d ago
God not this again
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u/FlynnerMcGee 4d ago
Moreso, because there were almost no reviews at the time that "missed" the sarcasm. They just didn't like it.
This myth is perpetuated by millennials (mainly on reddit) who watched the film as kids years later and who couldn't see more than a kick ass bug killing film at the time.
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u/dern_the_hermit 4d ago
Yeah it's like there's this weird internet forum mentality that if something is satire then it is beyond criticism.
Honestly, I think it's a muddy satire, and that parts of it veer into absurdism.
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u/Porrick 4d ago
I'm an elder millennial on Reddit but I've heard the "reviewers didn't understand satire" line since long before Reddit existed. I think the first time I heard that was in the '90s when my dad was recommending I watch this new movie that all the critics missed the point of. I was in my late teens, old enough to get the satire.
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u/Spiritual-Tap-7611 4d ago
There is a line in Community from season 2 where the group are trapped in the space shuttle (bus simulation).
Troy says "There is a time and place for subtlety. And that time was before Scary Movie."
That quote pops up in my head every time one of these stories pop up on reddit
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u/SomethingIWontRegret 4d ago
Well, my problem with it was that it wasn't a film adaptation of Starship Troopers, and poisoned the well for making an actual film adaptation of Starship Troopers.
The only things it had in common with the book were the names (and nothing else) of the protagonists and the name of the enemy species. Absolutely nothing else.
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u/Senecaraine 4d ago
I'm not shocked, we watched that movie and all of my friends loved it. It took us two weeks to realize some of us realized it was satirical and the others legitimately wanted to live in that world.
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u/AlienInOrigin 4d ago
Those reviewers will never become citizens with that attitude.
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u/Hypthtclly_Spkng 4d ago
This is intrinsically mixed up with the fact that the book was vehemently anti-fascist by way of a different path, but was likewise misunderstood as being pro-fascist for similar reasons. Some of the people saw the movie having read said book, and assumed some things because of the changes.
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u/Lampwick 4d ago edited 4d ago
Part of the problem is that 95% of the time someone using the term "fascist" doesn't actually know what it means. If it looks "authoritarian" in some way they immediately leap to "fascism", completely missing the whole nationalism, cultural purity, and government as "champion of the people" schtick it's based on.
Which is why people thinking the world of Starship Troopers (book) is fascist is so perplexing. It's not even an authoritarian government. Looking at the rest of his body of work, it's obvious why Ed Neumeier recast the story to make Earth fascist: he was trying to recapture the only success he'd ever had (Robocop) and knew Verhoeven would jump at the opportunity to make more cartoonish jabs at fascism. All he needed was a vehicle he could rewrite into an appropriate fascist farce, and Starship Troopers fit his needs.
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u/throwleboomerang 4d ago
It’s been probably a decade since I read the book, but I don’t recall it being particularly anti-fascist. I thought it was one of Heinlein’s many explorations into philosophies of government (moon is a harsh mistress, etc.) and on the balance it seemed slightly pro-military rule in my memory.
Guess I’ll have to get on Libby and see how long the waiting list is…
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u/LoadCan 4d ago
Heinlein loved his time in the military, and it shows through in his book, but having re-read it very recently, it's not pro-military rule. Heinlein is explicit when he describes the structure of Terran democracy that only honorably discharged veterans can vote. Current service members cannot vote. You earn citizenship by completing service. Guys like Juan Rico, who opt for a career in the military, don't end up voting until later in life. The generals and admirals who spend decades in uniform don't vote until late middle age.
What he's exploring is how to make democratic participation matter to people, how do you get individual voters to be more society minded than individually minded, that sort of thing. He ties it to military/civil service because that's what he knew.
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u/similar_observation 4d ago
Verhoeven didn't even get past the first chapter before deciding to make the film a deep satire.
Otherwise, he would've picked a Filipino lead.
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u/MadMonksJunk 4d ago
he may have made a great movie as a result but his entire take on the book is a braindead inability to read the difference between character thoughts and authorial thoughts.
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u/manquistador 4d ago
Slightly pro-military? Pretty sure it ends with son and father fixing their relationship due to their military service. Felt like the central thesis ended up being military service makes you a better person.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 4d ago
Service is very explicitly continuously voluntary, no country offers its service members that freedom today.
And holding power requires someone to abandon all privilege and stand on the lowest rung of human society. Even the fighting power structures were egalitarian. Everyone drops.
The two big things I see being controversial are the book being pretty pro corporal punishment, but thats somewhat balanced by being very anti imprisonment, and the whole civilian and citizen thing.
Roughly speaking what the book calls civilian and citizen we would call permanent resident and naturalized citizen. The lack of birthright citizenship seems weird to us since we're used to it but if you move to another country you'll have to earn your place, and the normal drawbacks of a lack of birthright citizenship don't apply since it was a united world government so statelessness fundamentally wasn't a thing(at least among humans, how it works with actual aliens is never discussed).
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u/CFCYYZ 4d ago
What Hollywood does with a dead author's work is beyond that author's control. Robert Heinlein (d. 1988) was a USN officer and buried at sea with full honors. Hardly a fascist, he knew real fascism in the world.
(my ital, bold) From WikiP:
Heinlein used topical materials throughout his juvenile series beginning in 1947, but in 1958 he interrupted work on The Heretic (the working title of Stranger in a Strange Land) to write and publish a book exploring ideas of civic virtue, initially serialized as Starship Soldiers. In 1959, his novel (now entitled Starship Troopers) was considered by the editors and owners of Scribner's to be too controversial for one of its prestige lines, and it was rejected.[48] Heinlein found another publisher (Putnam), feeling himself released from the constraints of writing novels for children. He had told an interviewer that he did not want to do stories that merely added to categories defined by other works. Rather he wanted to do his own work, stating that: "I want to do my own stuff, my own way".[49] He wrote a series of challenging books that redrew the boundaries of science fiction, including Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966).
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u/InfernalVelocity 4d ago
There’s literally a scene where the recruiter goes “mobile infantry made me the made I am today” and the camera pans out and he’s missing his legs and arms.
How the fuck did people not pick up on the sarcasm? I almost popped a lung at that scene.
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u/DescriptionMission90 4d ago
In the book, you see that guy again off the clock and he has top-tier cybernetic replacements, prosthetics better than the original, which he got free of charge. Juan asks him about it, and he says that he only takes them off when he's working as a recruiter. In fact that's a prerequisite to work as a recruiter, you need to be visibly maimed in some way, because the purpose of a recruiter is to do everything you can to convince eager young idiots that they want to do anything else with their life other than join the military.
The military in the book doesn't want any more eager young fools trying to throw their lives away, they want a small number of elite, disciplined, skilled soldiers who will stay alive. But they're required by law to accept anybody who wants to sign up and can pass the tests.
The movie writers didn't bother to read the book though. So they made a maimed recruiter into a symbol of how desperate the government was to scoop up every incompetent and inform body they could to throw them into the eternal meat grinder.
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u/pawsplay36 4d ago
Some people also think it's a parody of the book, not realizing the book also contains a great deal of criticism and irony. Also, the movie script was originally a different story entirely they added some Starship Troopers to. When it came time to do the adaptation, the director didn't care for the book and didn't finish it, so a lot of the film is critical of Heinlein's endorsement of militarism and right-wing views. However, the book is also anti-fascist and anti-totalitarian.
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u/abbot_x 4d ago
Right, the movie can’t be a parody of the novel because Verhoeven had only the faintest idea of the novel.
The novel is basically Heinlein’s idea about how a society could have a strong military and successfully wage war without the draft. In the 1950s he thought the United States needed a strong military but he was ideologically opposed to compulsory service. It’s interesting he thought this called for reengineering democracy and did not come up with how the actual All Volunteer Force worked!
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u/snowlock27 4d ago
the movie script was originally a different story entirely they added some Starship Troopers to.
What I read years ago was that the script started out as a ST adaptation, then underwent enough changes over various rewrites that the name was removed, then finally when someone said "Hey, we need a title" someone said, "We already have the rights to this Starship Troopers book, why not use that name?"
the director didn't care for the book and didn't finish it
From what I've heard, he read the first chapter, got bored and told an assistant to read it and explain it to him. Said assistant didn't bother to read it either.
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u/Only_Caterpillar3818 4d ago
I was 9 in 1997 and I immediately recognized there was a theme behind this space movie. I interpreted the theme to be the same as WW2. The meteor attack was Pearl Harbor. All the advertisements were similar to war time America. The bugs were the Fascists. The humans were gun toting, enlisted Americans. Even the small spaceships reminded me of the Higgins boats on D-Day.
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u/Crafter235 4d ago
How is it fascist to want to eliminate killer alien bugs who keep nuking our cities?
/s
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u/MyCarIsAGeoMetro 4d ago
By not allocating budget for the nuclear armed mech suits that were in the novel.
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u/Double-Watercress-85 4d ago
It's especially silly, because in some cases, it was the self same reviewers who praised RoboCop for it's biting satire, lamented Verhoeven making straightforward fascist propaganda.
Like, no dude. It's the same joke. It's literally the exact same joke again.
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u/c0ld_a5_1ce 4d ago
I'll be honest, the only reason I know about Starship Troopers is because I went to a sci-fi/Trekkie space camp as a kid and they used Klendathu Drop as their underscoring when we were first boarding the starship simulator (USS Voyager NCC-1990 RIP) and taking our positions. It was the most epic music I had ever heard. That place was awesome.
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u/RunJumpJump 4d ago
If you like Starship Troopers and happen to play video games, I highly recommend you check out Helldivers.
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u/losernameismine 4d ago
I think this was a very American-only problem, all the European/UK/Australian magazines and TV shows got it. All the US mags I read did not, and the Americans I knew at the time didn't get it either.
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u/Less_Party 4d ago
I don’t know how you even recover from that as a critic. It’s not subtle and it’s the damn Robocop guy who has told everyone exactly what he’s doing in interviews. I guess back in the day if you had a newspaper slot it was just yours forever?
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u/PlaymakerJavi 4d ago
We were literally studying WWII and propaganda in school when the movie came out. We thought we were going to see a silly action movie about bugs and then were blown away by how not-subtle the move was about its message. There were literal f***ing commercials depicting the fascist government! And some people still didn’t get it!
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u/Fritzkreig 4d ago
People are really good about picking up on sarcasm here on reddit though!