My favorite scene is at the end where Rico is now in charge of the unit and is inspecting the new recruits and some of them look like they can't be older than about 13.
Those are child-soldiers, it's a cheeky implication that the humans are, in fact, losing the war despite the cheerful tone of the propaganda video. Verhoeven would be well aware that the Nazis, in the dying days of WW2, conscripted children to fight the last battles.
I've actually never noticed that before. Growing up this movie was like me and my dad's favorite to watch together. I'm going to have to do a rewatch of the movie with him sometime and point it out.
A word about the use of CGI or not: there's a scene where the camera closes in on the front window of a giant spaceship, the actors are inside the room composited into the spaceship model, then the camera view moves through the window and the scene continues inside the ship. It's so seamless it goes unnoticed. It's use of CGI to make the movie better, not easier to produce.
While I'm disturbed by Matt "Best Chapo" Christman's disembodied left hand, his point about Verhoeven's courage in making a movie that a fascist government would make was amazing.
Lindsay Ellis did a great video on Mel Brooks's "The Producers" and nazi imagery in satire, and she pointed out that movies like Cabaret or American History X try to portray fascism negatively but have ultimately had their works used as empowering media by neonazis (kinda like the quote about how war movies ultimately make war appealing, which is a sentiment I've personally seen, as I know many marines that adore Emery in Fullmetal Jacket) but neonazis have been reluctant to even acknowledge Springtime for Hitler due to how ludicrous and silly it portrays nazis.
Her video on the ideology (or lack thereof) of the First Order in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the commodification of the imagery and aesthetics of fascism without dealing with any of the actual implications of them politically is really good too imo.
@@jarvy251 Because the prosperity and peace under fascism always comes from having an enemy, internal or external, to use as a scapegoat and direct society's violence towards. From the first scenes in the school it's clear that the previous generations have all been horribly scarred and brutalised by wars and this supposed utopia is built on endless human suffering. It's not culturally diverse, because from what we see all of Earth seems to be a monoculture with even Buenos Aires being Anglo. And any racial diversity came solely from treating the bugs (and who knows who else before them) as mindless enemies to destroy. It's completely fascist.
@@jarvy251 The film is from the perspective of the fascist society. Of course they're going to show themselves economically well off. You only see one city.
@Bubs I'm curious how you or anyone else for that matter could read the book and come away with the conclusion that they exist in anything other than a completely fascist society. I understand Heinlein was essentially a crypto fascist, so the narrator does his best to disguise this, but the facts betray him. Every aspect of their society is centered around the military. If you want to be a citizen, you have to serve. If you want to vote, you have to serve. It's made to sound like it's dangerous but ultimately very honorable. There's an entire huge section devoted exclusively to Heinlein lovingly, almost fetishisticly describing the military powersuit the soldiers use in excruciating detail. Honestly with that opening scene in the book alone I don't understand how anyone could read it and not conclude that clearly these are the bad guys, and whatever society and upbringing got them to this point must be inherently bad. They drop down on an unsuspecting planet of peaceful aliens in the dead of night and systematically begin ruthlessly slaughtering them. The narrator begins throwing grenades and firing into crowds indescriminantely, at one point stopping to muse to himself that one of the places he's just bombed might have been a church with people in it. MIGHT. He doesn't know and doesn't seem to really care beyond his main objective which he says is to expend as much of his ammunition as possible. Towards the end of their disgusting raid he throws a nuclear weapon at and destroys the local water treatment facility. THAT'S A WAR CRIME. The only reason were given for why they're on this mission is vauge and tossed off as "we were just there to shake things up and send a message." And the best part was although the movie is distinctly antiwar, the book is meant to be decidedly PRO military. This is Heinlein trying his best to make this society sound GOOD.
I remember 20 years ago when I was about 10 years old and this movie first came out, my friend’s parents sat us down to watch Starship Troopers and told us “watch this because this is what war and the military is really about” I didn’t understand then but I think that shaped me in some way...
Verhoeven is indeed a genius and SST is literally an IQ test for the audience. Best scene is the point when the Brain bug is physically interrogated by Nazi Dugy Howser and he says "It's Afraid!" and everyone cheers. It just rings the total callousness and dehumanization of this society, the fact that the enemy is afraid is not considered a basis for mutual peace or understanding that the enemy is not an irredeemable soulless villain, it's just a exaltation of raw power.
@Cybersix Well considering their ultimate endgoal is genocide I'd be happy. The difference here is we are told that the Humans and the Bugs can't actually communicate but at that point when you the viewer realize they actually can communicate the characters in the movie don't give a shit. They're just happy this alien that they could actually now possibly make peace with is scared of them.
@Cybersix if there was a situation where I was in total control over a fash grunt like Nux in Fury Road, unless he specifically did some horrible shit I'd probably try to treat him with some compassion. but accepting this "be kind to your enemies or you become like them" thing is not an absolute but to a degree I agree. for example fascists around the world rape and torture captured "suspected communists" they mutilate women's genitals, bash babies' skulls open, and generally do all manner of dehumanizing things. as a communist I would never advocate any sort of sexual violence in any scenario. Thats one of the big tragedies of ww2 is that Soviet troops raped many german women. theres no justification or excuse for that kind of thing. But if I had 5 minutes with a fascist piece of shit who I know had revelled in rape and slaughter of innocent people, I'd peel his face off his skull just to see the fear in his eyes. because its always us in fear of them, and if I had the chance to make any single one of them feel completely powerless, terrified and in agony, itd be too satisfying to pass up on. I mean, I'm all about the big victory over capitalism, hurting one fash would not be some milestone in the war but personally itd be very cathartic. one might argue that as the weaker force, we need to do all we can to keep the accepted standard of violence down, because they are able to inflict more harm than we are. but in most places, if you are taken by the cops theres pretty much nothing they wont do to you so I think its pointless in almost every way to act as if these are not our bitterly hated enemies who we despise with all our being, except for the question of optics. we do have a responsibility, insofar as it is politically beneficial to come off as a benevolent force, even to enemies. in the chinese and cuban revolutions captured enemies were often treated with respect and sent home because usually they were just some conscripted peasant and they would then spread the message that the communist forces had them totally surrounded and then offered to let them go free if they stopped fighting. thats good for optics. but yeah thats my whole opinion on the question of treating the enemy with compassion. other than the compassion of ending a miserable, wretched, evil life, because it must be horrid to live inside the mind of a fascist, and they deserve, at best to be quickly put out of their misery.
@Cybersix I'm late to the party but whatever. One of the things about that movie, is that it shows that fascism is enticing. Authoritarianism is enticing, being a hero genociding faceless enemies is a human tendency. That's something interesting Zizek (not the greatest philosopher, but he has some interesting Ideas) said, that bands like Laibach or Rammstein are not so much a parody of fascism as a re-appropriation of it's aesthetic, and a statement about its power and emotional appeal. I think an important art of fighting fascism is to deal with the fact that it's a very human type of evil, relying on base emotions. It's an uncomfortable reality that many portrayal of nazis, using the third Reich as a shorthand for obvious evil fail to convey. Fascism has been demonized through the specific aesthetic of Nazism, while oftentimes failing to warn about the ideology itself: the cult of a strong leader, of conformity to a heroic ideal and of identity through exclusion. The sad result is that people tend to see Nazism as abstract, as in the past, as something in the sole realm of fiction, and fail to see it when it comes with a paintjob.
@ThisIsMyRealName Same with commies who after all killed way more people than the nazis but get a pass for some reason. To quote Rico, 'I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill 'em all!"
Spec Ops chickens out by claiming it's not an "anti-war" game, and Walt Williams is a 'support the troops' kinda guy. Spec Ops is mostly a milquetoast 'waah all violence is bad' crapfest that boomer gamers fawn over because it "owns the CoD fanboys".
Superman's Daddy Spec Ops isn’t supposed to be anti-war. It’s a critique of gaming and how there is a disconnect between the mass violence carried out for enjoyment, and how it has no moral weight both in games and personally. The good guys in games and the player by proxy kill hundreds if not thousands of people but rarely is it of any consequence.
They missed, or didn't mention this. In the bug society each breed had their own function. The brain bug, soldier, tank, plasma bug even small servant bugs that help the brain bug get around. It's their form which determined their function in bug culture. You're not going to get a soldier bug being a tank bug for example. But in the human culture too, the entire beginning of the movie serves multiple roles. It's an introduction to our protagonist, but more importantly they're being vetted based on their inherent qualities. Because of Carl's intelligence and psi ability he's assigned to theory, Carmen is a pilot, Johnny with his low test scores ends up a grunt. The point being that each are serving the body politic in both bug and human societies in much the same way. Maybe I'm putting too much into it but it seems like Dizzy is the only one of the four who might be going against the grain, she becomes a grunt to follow johnny and she's the only one of the original four who ends up dying too.
I think it’s more to point that, while being labeled the enemy and that it must be annihilated, the human society is a mirror of the bug society and it’s to point that in any type of fascism you need an enemy no matter what. And also ultimately, a fascist society is a self loathing society which project his insecurities and characteristics unto others. You can also argue that while the bug society is working this way because it evolved organically this way, the human society was similar due to the will of certain people. Therefore, if you show even an example of a society that while being similar can rebute the fascist regime, it needs to be annihilated to no question the status quo of this fascist society... Don’t know if I make sense and it’s been a long time since I have seen this movie.
Mrdead Inmypocket I think you're onto something. Johnny in particularl becomes increasingly warrior bug like over the course of movie. He starts off unsure and conflicted about even joining the military by the midpoint he only fucks when ordered to and at the end he's willing to abandon his high school love in order to follow orders until he's psychically controlled by Carl.
The perfect companion film to this movie is Olympus has Fallen. They are very similar, but one is made to be dead-serious and the other as a scathing indictment of culture.
I don't know if anyone has made the connection down here in the comments, but one thing I read someone pointing out once was that during the basic training sequence they aren't being trained against models of the bugs, they're being trained to shoot at humanoid silhouettes soldiers with guns, even though their enemy isn't shaped like them at all, and instead of using pop-out-from-cover video-game gun tactics mostly use brutal, charge-and-kill melee. They aren't being trained to shoot bugs, they're being trained to eventually fight the inevitable revolution that a fascist world state would inevitably face.
The more I think about it the more that I think that Buttigeg rubbed one or a dozen out to this movie. I had that horrible thought and now you must too.
Something that's really great about the scenes Virgil mentions where the instructor breaks a recruit's arm and then throws a knife into the guy's hand, is how efficient these punishments are. Immediately after the injuries the recruits are given emergency treatment. There's a false sense of mercy, when all that's happening is an accelerated process of getting the soldiers battle-ready. A perfect one-two punch of discipline and training.
I wouldn't agree it's not mercy, it's that mercy delivers a sort of parenting that the political moment has starved away. When the poor cannot provide for their children, it makes the allure of a Drill Instructor who can invest in you, validate you, and still beat you "with a lesson" as a perfectly functioning political mechanism. They've gotten to the point where the fascist government doesn't even need to be desperate, people inevitably just live by their terms. It's discipline and training, but this isn't even some false notion of depth, what we see is so real/truthful of something pathetic/sad. Like, where the present moment is just barely behind is merely that the society isn't efficient enough to just ruthlessly throw away lives while making sure that anyone who's comfortable is still vulnerable and viewed with disdain or scrutiny outside of the prestige of service. Any ideas outside of that are not necessary, hence when there's even remotely an opportunity to leave it gets literally crushed (the meteor/asteroid or whatever).
Hilariously despite getting injured as a matter of training, the mobile infantry troopers seem to be completely unaware of basic medical knowledge. Rico and Ace basically kill dizzy by removing the Claw lodged in her abdomen causing her to bleed out.
@@rotopope The book is less fascist than the movie is, what are you talking about? This would be like saying Star Trek is an endorsment for modern communism, which it isn't, neither is Starship Troopers fascist.
@@rotopope Endorsment? What are you talking about? The only fascistic element is the focus on the military and that comes given the specific context of the sci-fi setting. Is Star Trek endorsement of communism? I don't find it so.
The thing which stands out to me about this fascism is the intentional ineffectuality of their military technology. It becomes apparent the Fleet and Mobile Infantry aren't optimised to achieve quick and overwhelming victories, by, say, bombarding planets from space or by using massive air power and robot tanks and drones, but to maintain the political status quo, by creating as many veterans of grunt infantry combat as possible. The political control of the Citizens (veterans) depends on them being numerous, as living propagandists and office holders of the state. But for them to be numerous, not only does the Federation have to manufacture wars as often as possible, it also has to fight them in such a way as to produce lots of casualties, to keep public opinion impassioned in its patriotism and to create heroism narratives, and so as to prolong their wars, because war is the central raison d'etre of a fascist government. So it deliberately fights wars using huge numbers of grunts with small arms when there is no _military_ reason to do so at all, and the fact that in the movie they are fighting an insectoid species or multi-species symbiosis which has a biological warrior caste highlights the fact that the Earth Federation has an _ideological_ warrior caste, which technologically is completely superfluous. This contrasts with the technological load-out of the Mobile Infantry in Heinlein's book, where they have flying power armour and automatic grenade launchers, to allow them to win when badly outnumbered, because the training system is so brutal only a small fraction graduate to combat service, and Citizen rule is maintained by heavier indoctrination, as well as by the Citizens' capacity for violence after their service, and the military is kept at strength by a career length service term.
Really good points. I am a veteran, but it's from that vantage point where there's a visceral truth that the film basically portrays when we see Johnny's parents as distant figures, but ones he's attached just enough to so that the (arguably planned) loss shakes him and then hardens his convictions. Johnny parroting his various military role models really is part of a future fascist society because it's such a core psychological vulnerability for people who may not even necessarily be in poverty, but are on the fringe or just close enough to the margins where ideology can make the world make sense. You'll thank the person embarrassing you, hurting you, or humiliating you because fascism is, in a perverse way, still a form of actual investment that people become alienated to, yet starved of. So my manufacturing this belief as you point out, it isn't simply just numbers but the trauma itself of there being a distinction between service and the culture imposing ideas about the seeming vacuousness of not "proving yourself" as a citizen, it shows the logical conclusion of the current American military where the choice isn't made necessarily out of ideology but desperation most of the time. From there, the ideology is just learned. But as that goes on, and as it becomes culturally more dispersed, they reach a point of being post racial, post gender, and frankly just this sense of a culture where there's no longer a sense of poverty, but just the illusion that you're just making a critical interpersonal decision that's is thought of as being divorced from any politic. Minds are made up.
@@ArctheLadder What fascinates me about fascism is how naturally it comes to reactionaries in post-industrial societies. Conservatives, libertarians, and even religious fundamentalists have to be indoctrinated. Fascism is an ideology that is just as likely to spawn in the brain of some scrawny 28-year old Japanese peasant the relatively liberated 1920s women run away from as it is in some unloved but upper-middle class British boarding school dropoff who internalizes the abuse from their prefect as fatherly love. Even when capitalism is working relatively fine and the culture hierarchies are in place, fascists just seem to spontaneously spawn even without a sniff of propaganda.
I wondered about the ineffectual mobile infantry landings as well. But if the assertion that this is a film that a fascist society would make about itself, then maybe that is the key to this point. It is possible that their society has those resources and uses them in intelligent ways but like our own movies portrays combat in a particular way to elicit a particular emotional response from the target audience. I would imagine the fascist society would want to glorify the lowliest ground pounder and his comparatively puny life to underline the believed importance of the service of each person. Even being cannon fodder gets you the vote in this society, every man is a hero, etc etc.
@mercb3ast but that undermines the movie as a movie made by a fascist state to glorify itself. Which is it? They don't seem permanently bothered by the deaths as long as the state is triumphant. They seem pretty happy with the outcome at the end of the movie.
Sadly at the time of release the sheer *irony* flew over heads of the majority of the ‘U.S’ audience! As ‘Robocop’ summed up the pure greed of Capitalism in the 80’s in dark humour ‘Starship Troopers’ tackled blind patriotism beautifully! Anyway I’m off for a cuppa! All the best from Tottenham,London,UK!!
I can sort of understand why. Even with the obviously german uniforms, the "fascist" federation is depicted as a wealthy, culturally diverse utopia, where not only is joining the military not compulsory, it is looked down upon as something freeloaders do. Actually having some fascism in the film might've helped.
Blind patriotism? No one is forced into the military. One teacher tried to persuade them. No one in Rico's family has served in the last hundred years, while maintaining an upper class life with wealth and property.
John Toas -Next thing you’ll be telling me ‘Showgirls’ was about harnessing that feminine energy!😆 Go travel the world & leave your town the effects are startling!
Not just apparently. He unironically wants it, and makes what is in my opinion an excellent case for why. The case being that the world of Starship Troopers is not a fascist society. "Citizenship guarantees service" WOULD be a fascist creed. Verhoeven set out to make a satire and fucked it up, offering the superficial trappings of fascism but none of its core values. Instead he almost inadvertently offered a rousing war film and a defensibly viable political system. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kVpYvV0O7uI.html
@@questor55 Fascism can be far less totalitarian than "citizenship guarantees service", especially several generations in as Starship Troopers seems to portray, or a fascist society that organically grew out of a military democracy. If you missed the point that "service guarantees citizenship" is a horrifying dystopian creed, you certainly don't understand what fascism is.
@@KarstenOkk Fascism is the primacy of the state over the individual. thats what Mussolini (the creator of fascism) says anyways. Service is non-compulsory and the society outside of the military is just a normal capitalist society, ricos father actually doesn't want him to go into the military because its not necessary to live a happy life. In ST you get to choose if you want to serve. Saying you have to earn your right to have a say is the ultimate in MERITOCRACY. The service is designed around your abillities as well, so even if you are helen keller they would find a way for you to serve and earn your citizenship. If you think a meritocracy is dystopian you are probably a communist, which is why you are trying to brand it fascistic even though its a democracy.
If no one gets a satire, then it isn't actually effective at all. The "effect" we're looking for in satire is for the audience to think more critically about something than they did before.
Good and effective might not overlap fully. It is great satire. But I have seen a large swathe of people, who refuse to conceive, that Starship Troopers is fascistic.
@kinsmarts me for starters. Just because it looks different doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to understand why what they're doing is monstrous. If you don't get it by the "it's afraid" line I don't understand you tbh.
I like how at the end Neil Patrick Harris shows up in a damn SS uniform to just tell the audience what it's really about if they didn't get it at first
I want to see paul veerhoven do a warhammer 40k movie. Warhammer is one half stupid cool sci fi nonsense and one half satire of all forms of totalitarianism. Hed be perfect.
An actually good Final Fantasy movie would be nice. Even if the plots of the games became installments in a series, they would be far better than what is out there.
@@thefrenchbastard1646 40k isn't as much satire now, but it used to be. Old school 40k had a very similar morbid humor that old school 2000ad (Judge Dredd) had. Partly because some of the same people were sometimes involved.
The point about the courage to make a bad or ugly film to prove a point is very compelling to me. I think that's what Kubrick was trying to do in a way lol, he just couldnt divorce his work from aesthetic beauty.
I think about the mid 00's military ads where the feckless shlubs hensen into immaculate officers worthy of respect , capped off by the narrator saying shit like join the US Navy ,it is a Global force for the good of mankind
Jake Busey served me breakfast at 2am in a Denny's in Missouri in 2002. Not kidding. Asked him about it, couldn't remember his name, but I was like, "yo, you're that guy from Starship Troopers, right?", and some girl in the booth in front of me heard me and said the same thing, agreeing with me and asking him too. He denied it, but we both knew it was him. What was Jake Busey doing working as a waiter in a Denny's in Missouri in 2002?
"It's afraid!" and they cheer. None of the humans ever show the slightest fear in the movie, except with one major exception, just unrelenting aggressivity of one form or another, perhaps with status anxiety at most. That really makes the movie overview clear. Could it be? The bugs are the good guys! No way. Fear is to be cherished? Or perhaps listened too. I'd love to hear the Chapos' take on Battlestar Galactica!
Uhhh...did we watch the same movie? There were soldiers screaming and getting ripped to shreds on Klendathu. They show the troopers retreating and running away in panic. The sole surviving officer of the outpost towards the end was scared shitless. The fleet admirals were visibly nervous when all the ships started getting blown up by the plasma.
Also when they come across the wounded bug, and there’s a close-up of the eye which would imply that we should empathise with it... only for them to blast it to shit with the rifles. They can’t even recognise fear on a gut level.
@@mrquestion72 Did you miss the part where the aliens were provoked by mormon colonists? It's not strictly stated, but I took it as a hint that the federation probably started the conflict.
@@hamdiatasoy2456 Is he really? That's unfortunate. Is that why he drinks so much water too? Cause he's got permanent diarrhea and needs hydration? I don't know anything about the condition
YES! When I re-watched this during the heart of the GWB years, it made so much more sense. Essentially, Verhoeven made a teen movie for a fascist/dystopian future. One of my all-time faves.
More the not being able to access basic freedoms without declaring mindless obedience to a militaristic state, and the lost kids like Rico wandering into the military and bring turned into one of the mindless drones he spent his career fighting
@@soconfused8031 Per the Book that the film is based off of 1) military/combat service is not the only service accepted in exchange for citizenship (though it all is supposed to be physically/mentally guralling 2) Rico specifically choose infantry and turns down other ways to server ( though in the book MI is the only military role he is given) 3) Just because a book/movie is about a societies military doesn't mean that country is militaristic, though the society in SST might have that tendence, the book and IIRC the movie specifically point out that most people are NOT in favor of military service and don't care about it(think of how ricos dad reacts). Especially since until the bugs attack the military was seen as pretty useless and just a way so people could get citizenship and move on. 4) Basic freedoms were guaranteed to non-citizens only the franchise and ability to hold public office were restricted. It's certainly fair to debate how the franchise should be granted but how is it any less arbitrary to require 2 years of public service than to say anyone born here who gets to the age of 18 gets to vote? It could have many benefits sense you have to make a not insignificant sacrifice in order to control the destiny of your society instillin quite a sense of duty to use you voice well. Immigrants often exhibit a similar phenomena. 5) The bugs are literally a metaphor for communism this is stated explicitly in the book, the bugs don't care about their individual losses because the survival/expansion of the species is what's important the drones literally don't have any agency. The bugs are the aggressor in the movie, they attack presumably innocent colonist (who ignored the government's advice and settled anyway) then attack earth with a giant asteroid killing millions then the humans retaliate (with the invasion of klendathu the movie shows these events out of order).
@@Patmorgan235Us It's interesting that for some watchers the bugs' callous disregard for individual life in service of the collective is derided as Communistic, and that for other watchers the Federation's callous disregard for individual life in the service of the collective is derided as Fascism
Just watched the "failure of democracy" classroom clip. The comment section is filled with weird roman statue avi guys being like "he's right you know"
RedLetterMedia made a retrospective video on the movie and some genius in the comment section claimed the society wasn’t fascist because rational large son Sargon of Akkad told them so. The fucker also had a Spock profile pic!
@@sliceofbryce Because the liberal-conservative consensus is melting down like crazy and anarchism and socialism were put into the cold, hard ground decades ago. That only leaves religious fundamentalism (and the Christianity variant was absorbed into the liberal-conservative consensus in the 80s), neoreactionaries, libertarians, and fascists. And it's pretty clear the fascists easily put the neoreactionaries and libertarians in the hospice.
Another way the society is different than Troopers is that that society rewards military membership with citizenship where as we reward immigrants who fight in our shitty wars with deportation
Another terrible movie plot device in accurate to the book 📚 Starship Troopers fans & Veterans!🕷I re-did the audiobook 📚 w sound 🔊 💥 effects and voice acting! 🎤 8 hrs. Please 🙏🏼listen 👂 and SHARE!!! FB page “Starship Troopers the book” ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zwFMszIVGko.html
People are defending it because it fails to be fascist. The closet thing we see is Carl wearing a trench coat. Just limiting the right to vote only to those who do federal service isn’t fascist it’s still a democracy with limited suffrage.
@Mercb3ast " All their Jews and State Enemies are already dead, generations ago." They never even talk about a genocide where are you getting that idea from?
#BugLivesMatter (This isn't just a gratuitously offensive throwaway reference to BLM, the point is that in the fascist ideology of the film, the bugs actually *are* metaphorical stand-ins for the dehumanized POC victims of white supremacist colonialism, a connection Verhoeven makes especially clear in the fortress defense battle, which runs through the tropes of an old-school Western-movie "frontier stockade versus the savage Injun hordes" battle scene about as blatantly as possible.)
@@ivanovleftney6006 Why assume the two are mutually exclusive? White supremacist reactionaries have a long history of combining their fear of communism with their fears of antiracism and decolonization, often depicting communism as itself a plot against white supremacy by nonwhite foreigners (and/or Jews). The widespread protest signs after Brown v. Board that said "race mixing is communism" were perfectly consistent with the ideology that Heinlein expresses in the novel and Verhoeven skewers in the movie.
@@ivanovleftney6006 well, the writer of the book was a dumbass who was a great example of the "Libertarian to fascist pipeline" Verhoven meanwhile recontextualized the whole movie to instead go "wow, Robert A. Heinlein’s a sociopath" So it stands to reason that a scene where Heinlen's basically screaming about killing communists gets turned into representing imperialistic violence against a dehumanized ethnic group
Here’s an amazing IMDb user review from middle aged oldwerewolf56: “ 10/10 I loved this movie and, if it represents Fascism, I'm a Fascist Starship Troopers Is one of my all time favorite Science Fiction films and I've been hoping for a sequel. I am 58 years old and started watching Science Fiction in the 50's with classics like War of the Worlds, Earth v. Flying Saucers, etc and I still enjoy the old ones. Starship Troopers has all the elements needed to be a successful and popular film: (1) admirable and realistic characters (2) good v. evil (3) heroes who are flesh and blood and not supermen (4) humor which isn't always intentional and (5) some of the greatest special effects I've seen in years. The evil arachnids were the best spider-monsters I've ever seen. As far as the film having a Fascist quality, I say bull. I'd like to live in a society where (1) college was free (2) military veterans were highly respected and received more rights (3) military and civilian leaders admitted their mistakes and were forced to step down and (4) where a woman could become the top leader. As far as I'm concerned, this film had no flaws. I loved it.“
Doogie Howser as Josef Mengele is one of the more inspired bits of casting ever. Also, isn't it kind of sad that there are, like, only two good movies about space marines? Tragically untapped creative reservoir if you ask me.
One thing I noticed is that the soldiers get special privileges and are praised by the society they live in. Rico says in the classroom that soldiers get to vote whereas civilians do not. Then in the shower talk all the recruits are talking about joining because of all the unique benefits granted to them if they serve. Sounds scarily similar to the real world where US citizens are baited into the army with "paid for college education" and "free healthcare". Even in the UK we give discounts to soldiers and ignore everybody else. I can't join for medical reasons, but I tried to join, so where's my discount?
Matt and Felix sound so much alike I thought they were the same person for the first dozen or so episodes I listened to. I wish they had Felix on this episode so I could at least differentiate their faces.
@Slartibart Last RoboCop is a compelling character. It's probably the best superhero movie ever. Judge Dredd is this English comic book thing. Which hardly anyone liked. It was a box office disaster when it was done right by Alex Garland and Karl Urban.
@@janfranszuidema8512 I'm a fan of Judge Dredd, I've nothing against Robocop though. Bur I think Robocop is borderline adaptation. It lifts a direct quote from Dredd.
@Slartibart Last Jon Davison (producer) acknowledged the link with Dredd, but I'm not sure. You could also say that Robocop is inspired by Frankenstein, Metropolis, The New Testament and Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter. Or maybe a story in a DC or a Marvel comic. You can even go back to something like Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.
6:00 this kind of reminds me of Mozart's '"Musical Joke", the Divertimento K520, which was understood as such although he never explicitly told anyone.
I feel bad for the cockroaches getting stomped I don’t like when they obviously used real animals or insects in scenes where they are obviously unhappy or getting hurt. The teacher looks psycho that is just as funny if they used fake bugs it didn’t increase the comedy it’s just a bunch of kids killing living things. I feel bad for the guy hired to bring cockroaches thinking his domesticated insects will get to be little stars only to see the movie where his real living things are stomped on by children in a comedy scene
I think the only film I've seen that comes close to the satirical military heights of ST is Full Metal Jacket. FMJ shows in a similar way how young men a broken down and made into mindless killers. Both films are brilliant. Both directors are brilliant.
So glad I watched this in full due to Chapo, as a dumb kid I remember watching a good portion of it and didn't catch any of the nuance or satire, I just thought it was a little cheesy. But I see now It's really a work of propaganda from a fascist dystopian future. A subversive sci-fi spectacle and a satirical masterpiece indeed. If it were not for the nudity and gore it would be taught in schools.
A lot of what they're saying about Verhoeven's willingness to have his actors look bad, often without their knowledge, and to be thought of as having made a bad film, I'd say also apply to Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut--which similarly was panned, and has left people thinking Tom Cruise can't act (though I highly suspect Kubrick intentionally picked the worst takes or directed him to be less realistic). Really I think Godard pioneered this with films like his King Lear in 1987, where he hired an exhausted Burgess Meredith and blank-eyed Molly Ringwald and had them shuffle around with nothing to do, like idiots.
@@overbeb that was kinda Kubrick's thing. He was a perfectionist, and wouldn't stop shooting until he got exactly what he wanted. I mean, he broke Shelley Duvall's brain making the shining.
Checking in, it's early 2024 and people are arguing on twitter over whether the film is a fascist allegory or not. The number of dullards who either don't or won't understand this is staggering, they're exactly like the characters in the movie. Depressing
The one where people completely miss the point of the movie? I saw some idiots try to argue that Starship troopers society was good. No I'm not kidding.
Movie yes. Book no. Inaccurate movie in soooo many ways Starship Troopers fans & Veterans!🕷I re-did the audiobook 📚 w sound 🔊 💥 effects and voice acting! 🎤 8 hrs. Please 🙏🏼listen 👂 and SHARE!!! FB page “Starship Troopers the book” ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zwFMszIVGko.html
they did an episode of frost/christman with nick mullen where they talk about robocop, showgirls and starship troopers: soundcloud.com/user-545251374/frostchristman4
I think the thing to keep in mind about fascism is that authoritarianism isn't an ideology, or even a psychosis, it's a personality trait. Like being morose or excitable or conscientious or humble or silly. Sure, there are people who are more susceptible to certain emotions or traits than others, but staring deep into anyone's soul there's almost no such thing as a human completely incapable of being sad or angry or calm or cheerful. Similarly, there's no such thing as a person unable to experience violent, right-wing authoritarianism. It's an emotional state, and as the Milgram experiment showed it's a more widespread emotional state than people feel comfortable admitting. I'm not saying not to punch nazis or anything, just realize that when you trap those nazis in the theater and set it on fire, but for the grace of God YOU would've been the vile dinosaurs jacking off to police officers dragging away the neighboring children.
Do the white upper class characters living in Argentina come from the book? Because if not you have to see that as a clue. Something probably about the fact that fascism isn’t ever truly defeated but only goes into a dormant state until its time comes again.
Has anyone else noticed the Starship Troopers-Beverly Hills 90210 cast crossover synergy? Casper (Johnny Rico-Griffin Stone), Dizzy-Lucinda Nicholson, I think even the Chancellor of California University & Mrs. Teasley showed up as Republic politicians...🤔 I think Denise Richardson even had a role in the 90210 universe
You guys missed this one: the humans start to become more and more bug-like over the course of the film. Verhoeven is making a commentary on how fascist jingoism dehumanizes the enemy of the nation but accomplishes its own dehumanization.
That's a pretty universal for any war. The politics and larger view get brushed away and all that's left is completing the mission and keeping your buddies alive. Listen to interviews of soldiers from any war from any country and you get the same message. It's not intrinsically fascist, it's intrinsically human.
Ed Neumeier 2 for 2? You forgot that Robocop 2 and 3 were both before 1997 when Starship Troopers came out, so he just managed to get back to .500 with that one.
Something important which people pretty much always miss is that Buenos Aires is full of Americans. It presupposes that the previous population was wiped out and replaced with the children of their conquerors. There are no unattractive people, there are no unfit people...it's not just post gender, post racial...but also post genocidal and post eugenic society. This society is built upon what appears to be billions of deaths. Think about it, is there any Middle-Eastern or Asian people in the entirety of the movie? Do you see anyone who doesn't look like or sound like an American in the entire film? You don't...and the entirety of earth and its colonies are at war...This isn't a move made by John 'Murica...Verhoven's first language isn't even English...This was a very clear choice, one where just by using visual clues, you can assume that America conquered the planet and exterminated anyone who didn't meet their own standards of what an American should look like. Once you start peeling off the layers, you start to understand the type of horrific future Verhoven was building here...and the significant majority of people just didn't have the ability to peel the layers back on their own. I first saw the movie when I was 16, and I have to say I didn't get it at first either. It was a guilty pleasure for years, until I re-watched it in my early 30's and finally understood what the movie was really all about.
@@CyanLink That's certainly your opinion, mine differs. The director has talked about how he intentionally cast only attractive and white actors for these parts.
@Wignat Fedposter Its a matter of semantics really. What is your definition of "white". Do you consider people who have general European ancestry white? If so, then it actually makes most people from South America white unless they have a high percentage of non-european ancestry white. Which is the case for significant percentages of South American people as they are more likely to be descendants of Spanish, Italian or Portuguese colonists than native peoples of their respective countries. If that's the case, then you are correct, they are mostly 'white' although they certainly don't tend to look like a northern European like Casper Van Dien. I know several people from Argentina, and they certainly don't look anything remotely like the cast of the film. Buenos Aires is known to be one of the world's most multicultural cities. Which is something not depicted in the movie. People from Buenos Aires are shown as relatively homogeneous and of Northern European descent. While your definition may be more expensive than the one I used; it doesn't invalidate my point. It certainly look like the population isn't what you would expect to find in Buenos Aires. While it may be a factor of the cast, they don't even pronounce the city name as a native Spanish speaker would, and do so like an American would. It would seem to be a trifle to ask the cast to pronounce the name properly... And yet they don't. I'll admit that it may not have been an intentional thing on the director's part... Yet as someone who isn't a native English speaker, I know how pronunciation tends to be important to others and I doubt that Verhoven wouldn't have caught it. So either he didn't care, or he made a specific decision to make Buenos Aires appear to be an extension of whatever came after the US.
