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Casper Van Dien is loving the Starship Troopers renaissance but still finds it mind-boggling some take it at face value (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 5 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/gaming@lemmy.ml
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[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The main arguments for it being a pro military and pro war movie is that the Bugs ARE attacking and that if humanity wants to survive, they will have to fight. Then, while most people do die, the movie ends with a major victory that looks like it may help save humanity.

I don't really think you can argue those points away to claim its an anti military/war movie. The movie would have needed for humanity to have attacked the bugs first, starting the war; or at the least having had most everyone die for no reason, without making a shred of progress in the war effort.

I mean, they were fighting to save our entire species, and the two most vocal people in the entire movie (Ricos parents) that were against the military machine were some of the first people to die in the movie.

[–] ReynT1me@lemmy.one 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are the bugs really initiating the attacks? Because with the distance between Klendathu & Earth it seems pretty obvious the movie is trying to imply the bugs aren't the ones sending meteors at the humans.

When I rewatched the movie with a friend recently he was surprised that the movie ended with what felt like an anticlimactic resolution - because the war keeps going forever (or so it seems). I really like the interpretation that Starship Troopers (the movie itself) is an in-universe propaganda film used to recruit soldiers to feel important and make a difference in the war effort.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The movie point blank says the bugs attacked first and that it's a colonization species that just hurls meteor filled bugs randomly into space in order to try and find new planets to colonize.

Also, when the "main" character in the movie (Rico) is in basic training and about to quit the military, a bug meteor impacts the earth, taking out an entire city, and killing his parents, so the bugs were most definitely attacking humanity, and earth directly.

The movie also ends on a high note, making it seem like they learned some very important information by capturing one of the until then unknown bugs that was able to think and direct all the mindless bugs. So while the war will go on, it leaves the viewer to think that humanity was making progress towards a victory. The movie also marked the first time that humanity actually went to the bug home planet and "took the war to them".

[–] ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 30 points 5 months ago

The movie point blank says

The in-universe propaganda TV show point blank says these things. The film is pretty vague on the origins of the bug conflict - we know that the "Mormon extremists" tried to colonize a bug world and got killed for the trouble, and we know that Zegema Beach in the outer rings also gets nuked like Buenos Aires did, but not much else besides these two totally contextless events. In fact the very first propaganda film we see is about how great the Earth's planetary defenses are - so why was the asteroid allowed to impact at all? This and the fact that Klendathu is so far away that launching meteors towards Earth doesn't make sense is why many people who analyze the film conclude that the destruction of Buenos Aeries was a false flag, or at least was allowed to happen, by the fascist government in order to spur the people to support the war.

Also, the cinematography speaks for itself. Look at this shot from the battle of Klendathu sequence, where the mobile infantry are literally swarming over the arachnid home planet like ants. The movie wants you to question who the "bugs" really are, because any time humans and arachnids are on screen together, the humans are swarming around the much bigger aliens, only barely managing to bring them down (except in the very brief shot of the aircraft bombing the valley).

And the ending of the film - Dougie Howser walks out in a Nazi SS uniform and uses his psychic powers to tell everyone that the brain bug is afraid. You can tell it's afraid just by looking at the fucking thing, the way it's recoiling from him - it looks like it's about to cry! Johnny Rico's whole character arc in the film is being a kid who wants to do some good and who has some humanity in him getting that humanity ground out of him by the military machine until he's shouting the exact same catch phrase that the older generation shouted at him. An older generation that is without exception portrayed as broken by their lives in the military meat grinder.

Last thing I promise: and really, the film isn't about the conflict with the bugs. Listen to the director's commentary with Verhoven and the script writer, and they barely talk about the bugs at all. The movie is really about the ways in which a fascist society perpetuates itself and destroys the people in it. Whether the bugs started the war or not is irrelevant - the war is necessary for that society to exist. It's a society that brainwashes you as a kid, and then incentivizes you to maintain your brainwashing as an adult. It's a society of broken people breaking their children. It's a society where a hundred hot young adults can stand around in the shower together and everybody is so horny for the political ideology that they forget to be horny for each other!

[–] sirjash@feddit.de 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Klendathu is shown to be on the opposite side of the Milky Way. It is physically impossible for the bugs to hurl meteors at these distances while accounting for drift, every piece of matter in between and also the time difference. "Oh yeah, let's launch this meteor so it can destroy a city called Buenos Aires, that hasn't been founded yet by a species that hasn't evolved yet."

They didn't learn anything at the end, they all remained the same characters, still happy to be gears in a military machine. Oh, and NPR mutilated the brain bug's face vagina.

The music made you feel this way, but that's to manipulate you to do so.

[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

It is physically impossible for the bugs to hurl meteors at these distances

This one always bugged me (no pun intended) when I first saw the movie as a kid. We (humans in the movie) can barely do precision missile-strikes on another planet across the galaxy, and the bugs are way less technologically inferior. How do they even move/manage a meteor?

Buenos Aires is an inside job?

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The bug meteors aren't launched ballistically, they are launched in some kind of superluminal method that isn't explained and doesn't need to be, it did bypass earths defenses however. You can see that happens because the transport ship Denise Richards is piloting literally sees it happen. In the movie the idea of Buenos Aires being a false-flag isn't supported by the text, nor the subtext.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

The movie actually doesn't care if the asteroid was sent by the bugs, was a false flag or just really unfortunate circumstances because it doesn't matter. What matters is how the government reacts and the government instantly presents it as an attack.

It's like with WW1 the assassination of Franz Ferdinand is presented as the reason the war started, but really countries were just looking for an excuse to start a war. Buenos Aires didn't really matter because Earth was just looking for an excuse to start a war.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You're missing the satire. It's a satirical anti-war movie. At face value everything in the movie makes sense, the bugs attacked and we're fighting for our survival. But you really need to take a deeper look at the movie. How do we know the bugs attacked first? The government told us. What do we know about the government? The government promotes a militaristic class society where the only way to be a citizen is to join the military. You regularly see people who have lost limbs, how did they lose them? It's not a peaceful society, otherwise people in military service wouldn't lose limbs. You dig and dig and eventually you would have to question what the movie shows you. You can't really be certain that the bugs attacked first because all you know is what the government tells you and that its in the interest of that government to have this war.

And the movie even backdrops that the war effort is not on the side of humanity. Towards the end of the movie roughnecks get reinforced and those reinforcements are literally children. You don't send children as reinforcements unless you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's a very clever hint that humanity is actually losing that war.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But none of that changes that during the time frame of the entire movie, humanity is being attacked (regardless of who shot first) and that the Bugs will destroy humanity if they aren't fought against. It's hard to be a movie seen as anti military, when during the time frame of the movie, the only thing saving humanity is the military. Everything else is speculation, like who attacked who, why the war started, if the military machine intentionally started the fight....all of that is just at best a "we don't know".

But what we do know, is that aliens are attacking the earth.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But how do you know humanity is being attacked or that the bugs will destroy humanity? Just like you say everything else is speculation that is also speculation. It's also a speculation that the only thing saving humanity is the military. For all we know we're actually the attackers and bugs are just defending their homes and if we never attack there wouldn't be a conflict.

You can't just take away the whys and hows and say it's pro war. It's satire, if you remove all the nuance then of course it's going to be pro war. The whys and hows make this an anti-war movie.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 months ago

Buenos Aires, on earth, was destroyed and everyone living there was killed.. nothing within the movie actually presents as the bugs may not be trying to destroy humanity and just spread/populate the galaxy. All of the government conspiracy inside job false flag stuff everyone here has fun talking about is almost completely baseless. It's all conjecture.

[–] BigLgame@lemy.lol 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is implications in the film that we started colonizing the bugs territory and initating conflict. We caused the war. The bugs were just defending themselves. While we sent massive ships after their planets.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No there wasn't.

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago

Gam*rs

[–] frezik@midwest.social 5 points 5 months ago

People don't even get Robocop, and that one is even less subtle (IMO).

[–] zagaberoo 4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Is it really that mind-boggling? ST has always seemed to me to read whichever way you are already predisposed to. How does everybody dying make it an anti-war movie? I would be shocked if the kind of person who believes in the good of a war machine were surprised that lots of people die in war.

Maybe my memory is a bit hazy, but the bugs actually annihilate a city, right? What is the human response supposed to be? The extreme nature of the government and military only come across as insane if you've already been educated about fascism. Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures, which muddies the antifascist message in my opinion.

It's a great movie, but anyone who thinks it's going to change anyone's mind from their preconceptions is fooling themselves.

What am I missing?

[–] huginn@feddit.it 25 points 5 months ago (4 children)

"I want to make a movie so painfully obvious in its satire that everyone who understands it lives in perpetual psychological torment inflicted on them by all the people who don't."

  • Paul Verhoeven, director of Starship Troopers

The movie makes it clear that:

  1. The bugs were responding to human colonization
  2. Humans fired the first shots
  3. The government is lying to everyone claiming the bugs are mindless. They overjoyed shouts of the soldiers when they learn the opposite is true - is only because they learn that the bugs are terrified.
  4. The endless over the top propaganda is supposed to be a pretty fuckin heavy clue that it's a fascist state.
[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 9 points 5 months ago

One of the hallmarks of fascism is that the enemy are simultaneously too strong - so we must militarise - and too weak, because we are the superior race and destined to prevail.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Most of your points aren't true at all.

  1. The movie point blank states towards the beginning that the Bugs were flinging out their pods/eggs/whatever into space looking to land on worlds to colonize

  2. The movie gives all appearances and inferences that the Bugs attacked first. Not the humans. This makes further sense by point 1, and how far away the bugs home world actually is.

  3. The only announcement made of a bug being afraid wasn't all bugs. It was only the large "thinking" bug at the end of the movie, after it had its mouth cut off and it was strapped down and being experimented on in the lab. There was no inferences at all of any other bugs being made. So no, the government wasn't depicted in the movie as lying about knowing of any bug intelligence. I didn't know of any intelligent bugs, and by the end of the movie it was only known that the one type of rare smart bug captured was the only intelligent one, and that it was able to possibly psychically control the other dumb bugs.

[–] TauriWarrior@aussie.zone 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The propaganda films say that the bugs are attacking by flinging asteroids from the other side of the milky way, do you know how long that would take? Also we never see any bugs in space, just the plasma getting thrown, never see how they are supposedly throwing these asteroids.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What's your point? I'm not really sure why you sent this as a reply to me.

[–] hernanca 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The point is that the footage we see is part of the in-universe propaganda, so we have no reason to assume it's true.

Once again proving that even fictional propaganda is highly effective.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago

There's also no presentation that it isn't true, and by whatever means, we do know for sure that the Bugs are attacking earth. Retaliation or not, so either way it's people stuck having to fight in order to save humanity.

[–] zagaberoo 3 points 5 months ago

4 in particular I think is more open to interpretation based on ones existing biases than people seem to think. Being over the top doesn't necessarily have to be mockery and authorial intent is peanuts to a random personwatching a movie.

The other points IIRC are individual moments rather than recurring themes. It's not surprising to me that significant numbers of people overlook them.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

None of your points except maybe number 4 is true.

[–] Razzazzika@lemm.ee 15 points 5 months ago

It's the same reason people thought Stephen Colbert was a champion of conservatism until he moved to the tonight show.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Maybe my memory is a bit hazy, but the bugs actually annihilate a city, right?

The bugs were alleged to send an asteroid from another solar system and hit Earth. Logically, the bugs would have to know hundreds of years that they were going to get in a war with the Humans, know how to shoot an asteroid across the galaxy, and know exactly Earth was going to be for the asteroid to hit.

[–] zagaberoo 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is it surprising that people might miss that, though? Especially if they don't already agree with the antifascist message.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I missed it and wasn't brought to my attention years later that the movie was satire on fascism. I always took it as a dumb action movie.

[–] zagaberoo 3 points 5 months ago

Not an unreasonable interpretation!

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

The bugs don't launch the asteroids ballistically, they are launched superluminally as can be seen by the gravity singularity that Denise Richards detects when they (almost) avoid the asteroid.

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

If I recall correctly, most things that the bugs did was fake news, just propaganda to justify the war that sustain the failed government.

[–] Dreyns@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago

Lies !! The bug obviously launched that asteroid ! You're a traitor spreading lies it's all that i see !

[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

We must have based humanity off the movie.

[–] macabrett@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 months ago

"its afraid... Its afraid!!" cheering

Anyone who misses the satire is a dolt, but I do agree satire is ineffective in changing minds. It's a preaching to the choir sort of genre.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago

[–] Talaraine@fedia.io 3 points 5 months ago

NGL I'm still a little salty at OWI only making the Extermination game after the Troopers Mod for Squad took off so hard. No credit to the hard work on that mod that rekindled the interest at all.