There will always be morons that just don't get it. It is how Q Anon went from a 4chan joke to what it is now.
“Mind bottling. You know, when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle”
"It's a moo point. Like a cow's opinion, you know, it just doesn't matter."
It's all water under the fridge
Don't take things for granite.
My first viewing I did mostly take it at face value. But in my defense, I was a dumb 11 year old kid. It wasn't until Neil Patrick Haris came out in full SS uniform that I started asking questions.
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.
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.
The point is the war must continue for ever, this is made very clear in the book - that's what happens when you deify soldiers, when you make a society obsessed with valour there needs to be a war for the generals to earn stripes - when your society's entire social contract and cohesion is based on war your leaders will always find a war that just HAS to be fought...
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.
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.
I would just like to take this moment to suggest people find a comfortable place to sit with a stiff drink, spliff or whatever and listen to the first chapter of the audio book - and I mean really listen, actively visualize the story and everything being described, let yourself really emotionally connect with the events as much as possible - it's a really powerful and well written bit of action sci-fi.
It's on YouTube read by Christopher Hurt, first chapter is about 40 min, I've read a lot of sci-fi and it's without a doubt in my mind the strongest and most thought provoking opening to a Sci fi. It gets you pulled into the characters, the world, and emotion without a break in the action - and for a book punished in 1959 the action is unbelievably believable, it's hard to imagine better high energy action sci-fi combat -- someone needs to make a real gritty anime of it.
Would you like to know more?
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.
Hang on, Troopers mod???
Oh gosh yes! It's popularity has dropped a bit since OWI's little stunt, but you should check it out on Fridays when we try and get the OG's to come back and show us how to kill some BUGS.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2830905314&insideModal=0&requirelogin=1
I mean he's pretty much been on board with it all along. I'm pretty sure he's been involved in most of the sequels in some way.
I don't understand why people wouldn't take it at face value without any further context offered to them beforehand. It's a campy action film that's a lot of fun but with just the faintest dusting of authoritarianism that could be easily disregarded as just part of the ambience of the filmmaker's decisions. It ends on a hopeful scene implying better understanding of the Bugs in order to reach victory.
You've got to read the book to get it, but even then that doesn't really shift the film out of being a Big Action Shooter that's fun to watch.
Umm, I'm pretty sure Heinlein meant it as a system that could work. The book is definitely not the parody the movie is.
I think what made it an obvious parody was the over the top PSA/commercials they broadcasted, and the fact that citizens are treated as a privileged class. I think at one point someone mentions that they have to become a citizen in order to be legally allowed to have children and that's why they joined the army. It's so far abstracted from our own reality, that I even picked up on the fact that it was a parody watching it for the first time at 12 years old.
People don't even get Robocop, and that one is even less subtle (IMO).
Unrelated, but I met Casper at a convention last summer, and he was super cool. He seems like he'd be a fun guy to know.
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