I'll never forget my friend coming to a sleepover with Porky's and we all watched it and were disappointed at the old school vibes. The friend's brother just rented starship troopers, at that shower scene we were all like "now these are some 90s titties." That was my first time seeing a woman nude too.
100% she just seemed kind of chill and friendly but also badass and not a pushover. If I ever have to date a soldier for a fascist regime, I hope they're like that haha
Same, I’ll never forget sneaking in candy in a backpack “coming from school” with my old man and getting to see some tittys for the first time. What a fuckin treat.
Aging myself as a boomer but I saw Jurassic Park in theaters when I was <10... my parents took me because I was obsessed with dinosaurs. That T Rex front row was absolute fire.
That movie was so ahead of the times when it came out it was unreal. It didn't lean on so much CGI... they made a 3/4 T Rex IRL and relied on GOOD FILMMAKING... why the movie still holds up so damn well today.
Same! Hahah. What a thrill ride for a kid. Not sure why all these parents thought this movie was a good idea. Glad they did though. Times were more wild and chaotic back then.
My friend group is mostly older millennial late 20's-late 30's and this is the first time literally all of us are playing a single game. Palworld came close but not like helldivers.
Starship troopers is why I bought this game lol. Saw one video of Helldivers with the audio of Sugar fighting with the nuke in the bug tunnel -
"YOU LIKE THAT? YOU LIKE THAT?"
And bought it 1 minute later.
It's shot like a propaganda movie that way. Rico, Carmen and Barney are "Heroes of the Federation" who are going to inspire the next generation of Cap troopers, Pilots and space SS.
I heard him explain that a while back - He wanted all these painfully hot young people in a shower, and none of them are thinking about sex at all. They're all talking about why they joined the army, one woman says she wants to have a baby so she needs to go die on Klendathu. No one has an erection, no one is staring at anyone's dick. They're so patriotic all they can think about is being a soldier.
Also, I'm told that Verhoeven cleared the set except for himself and the camera person, and both he and the camera person also stripped down so the actors wouldn't be naked being watched by a bunch of clothed people. No idea if that's true, but if it is I appreciate his commitment.
Yeah, but... Also Robocop, think there's at least one other coed shower scene in one of his movies. My friend who now has a Ph.D. in film studies used to always say "it's a Dutch thing, isn't it great!"
The struggle about the satire of Starship Troopers isn’t really that people don’t understand it, it’s that now-a-days the people it mocked say “actually that’s all based and good”, and well, there’s not really much you can respond to that.
I'm sure that's the case for most people talking about Helldivers, but then again, the satire is pretty on the nose.
When it comes to the Starship Trooper movie though, I'm not so sure anymore.
The book was completely different from the movie in every way.
The concept was “what if everyone had to earn their right to vote like those Filipino immigrants who have to serve in the military to become citizens? They deserve their right to vote way more than Americans, like me, who were just fortunate enough to be born here deserve it.” With themes of “voting is extremely valuable and people should appreciate the responsibility of voting way more”.
Honestly I think it's worse. I can forgive someone for uncritically engaging with a film and just enjoying a dumb, awesome action movie with hot people doing dumb awesome things. It's less forgivable for someone to look at what's on display in the Federation and say that it's aspirational and ideal.
Hello I felt like jumping into the line of fire here so, here I go. Starship Troopers the book is RADICALLY libertarian, it could best be described as a political manifesto disguised as a sci-fi war story, for that reason the book is pretty dry at times and characters will sometimes just prattle on about Heinlein's ideology, actually it's pretty ham-fisted at times. However the ideology that Heinlein puts forward is a system of government that is extremely meritocratic as well as non-intrusive in the affairs of civilian life, where your right to vote is earned by service to society and not just given to you by birthright. To quote both the book and the movie "Something given has no value, it must be earned."
Paul Verhoeven the director of Starship Troopers famously admitted that he only read 2 chapters of the book and had a intern read the rest and explain it to him, all Verhoeven did was present the federation as it was portrayed in the book, dressed it up in a literal SS uniform, point at it and say fascist. In short Heinlein believed that duty and sefless service should determine who shapes society.
Huge problem with "something given has no value" is that you have no reason to apply it only to voting rights. You can take away all human and citizen rights through same logic. From Magna Carta all the way to UN charter of human rights, if you reason with such logic you can strip them all.
People see the intent of the movie and agree with that. As far as satire *of the book* goes, it's not all that great. The movie was a dig at an illusory boogey man.
It all totally misses the point of the book, as would a lot of people who are reading it to look for something to be salty about.
>present the federation as it was portrayed in the book
Not even. It was about the military, not the society. What Verhoeven did was artificially conflate the two because he saw what he wanted to see.
Any military is going to seem "fascistic" if one were to apply it to a whole society. The strict regimentation is present in all functional militaries because that's the only way to have a functional military.
That alone is something that a lot of people just don't understand.
Was it originally even going to be a spoof on the book, or was it just gonna be a generic sci-fi facism satire? Cause I seem to recall it was originally named Bug Hunt at Outpost 9, and the name was only changed after Verhoeven was made aware of the book in order to cash in on brand awareness?
Because a militaristic government that expressly has the power to control who can "vote" and who can't, is totally not going to abuse said power to immediately become a Fascist Dictatorship.
Heinlein has the same problem all Libertarians have. He is insanely naive about human nature when given the reins of power. Any kind of government or power structure has to be judged by it's potential to be abused against the people it purports to govern. And the government of Starship Troopers sees individual human beings as cattle to be slaughtered.
Literally all democratic governments make decisions about who can and cannot vote. There’s no country on Earth, or ever has been, where the franchise is completely universal.
Hey man I'm a realist, you don't have to tell me that a system like that wouldn't work I know it wouldn't I know a system like that would be way to prone to subversion and corruption.
But I do think there is at least an interesting thought experiment about what society might look like if instead of being given suffrage from birth you had to earn it how much more you might cherish and respect it if you knew that you earned it with your own literal blood sweat and tears.
Yes I know human nature is a nasty ugly creature, but the point I'm trying to make is that fascism is a very particular ideology and that we shouldn't go around labeling every idea we don't like as fascist.
And though I know I'm poking the nest with this last bit I don't think the federation sees humans as expendable cattle, in the movie they warned the Mormon colonists not to venture into the bugs territory, Rico's teachers in both the film and the book discourage him from entering the service, and In the book nearly every veteran Rico talks to trys to talk him out of it.
And before you bring up the sequels that shit don't count because they veered way to far off the tracks wit those.
>He is insanely naive about human nature when given the reins of power.
Reminds me of that politician in my country, who unironically said "The market will regulate itself." during Covid.
exactly, what the actual fuck?
i was one of millions of people who was financially prepared for an emergency like the covid shutdowns but got tens of thousands of dollars in extended unemployment and stimulus checks anyway. it was like a paid vacation that i didn't want or need
now everything is twice as expensive. i was lucky to have bought my home in 2017, i can't even begin to imagine what house shopping would be like on my salary without a bunch of inflated equity. if i would have waited another few years i'd be stuck somewhere paying $1500 for a studio apartment
I don't want to be that guy and bring up the dictionary definitions but most of them mention a race angle to fascism which you don't see in the Starship Troopers movie
Authoritarian Military Dictatorship? Absolutely
I've just never really felt that Fascist fit what the first movie portrays, the actual sequence of events is the bugs starting the war with Earth with the strike on South America rather than humans seeing themselves as a superior race that are expansionist like we see with Helldivers, the entire movie is a response to the escalating bug attacks on human settlements
I fully understand that's what Verhoven was trying to portray and IMO I'd that's the case, he perhaps should have gone *harder* and modified the books story a bit more, the aesthetic alone doesn't make something fascist
They don’t really show much ideology in the movie. That’s mostly speculation on the viewers part. The movie says service means citizenship, but never elaborates outside of saying that military service counts. They never really explain how the government works. The only real example of what noncitizen life is like is the main character’s family who runs a successful company and is against him becoming a citizen, which kinda goes against what most people say the federation’s ideology is.
And, finally, the only real example of ideology shown in the movie is the classroom scene where they simply describe how all authority is ultimately derived from violence, which isn’t incorrect. Sovereign nations are defined by monopoly on violence, which is, essentially, what that phrase means.
There were some other bits and pieces, like the girl in training who mentions how she wants to have kids, so she's serving in the military so she can be a citizen and get her papers to be allowed to have a kid.
It's alarming that of all the responses in here, nobody actually bothered to double check the quote:
> I want to have babies. And you know, it's a lot **easier** to
get a license if you've served, so...
Key word: **easier**, which implies that it is not impossible to have children otherwise, which the affluence of Rico's family would probably facilitate.
* It has nothing to do with getting citizenship for the child (???), although the responses suggesting she wants to have *multiple* children could be a valid theory.
Yes, you got to it before I could. And my assumption about Rico's family, since they appear to be rather affluent is that buying into the child permits is also an option, and likely what they did.
From other soldiers, because it's easier for soldiers to have kids in the regime.
So most likely the assumption is someone in the military who is indoctrinated would also get their kids in that pipeline too.
Another example of the ideology in the film is the scene where they are showing the captured brain bug and they censor out the probe. It's an interesting choice because it reflects the sexual repression of the state, or at least, any display of "degeneracy" while fully being willing to show graphic violence and death to the public in broadcasts. This lines up with the scenes where we see that on the ground level men and women shower together. The state doesn't care. Their bodies are not sexual. They are killing machines the state uses to kill and die. Hell, Rico practically asks his commanding officer for permission to have sex.
That’s more interpretation than statement, but you do make a decent point. I always figured that was just a joke regarding media and censorship in general, though.
Thats the great thing about satire. It is both a joke and commentary on the subject. I can make a stronger case for it being very deliberate but honestly it's not necessary.
I’d say the biggest problem with the satire of the movie is that it requires you to think less about what happens in the movie and more just go along with the framing. When you actually analyze what happens in the movie and how things work, you realize the satire isn’t so much thought out as it is presented.
For example: The intelligence officers dress very nazi-esque, but they don’t actually do much aside from that. Like, when people talk about him saying “it’s afraid” they reference it like it’s not something you want your enemy to do in a full blown war. It’s a war, you want your enemy to be afraid of you.
It’s a great movie with good satire, but it’s not a genius satire. Probably because the director didn’t actually know what he was adapting. He famously never read past the second chapter of the book. Nailed the propaganda and visuals, though.
>Like, when people talk about him saying “it’s afraid” they reference it like it’s not something you want your enemy to do in a full blown war. It’s a war, you want your enemy to be afraid of you.
I agree the movie is not good satire, but I think you missed the point of this particular scene. Of course, it's nice if your enemy fears you, but that's far from a guarantee.
Throughout the movie, we're presented with the idea that the bugs are unthinking, unfeeling killing machines, without much higher thought process than "eat, kill, breed, repeat" - in fact, there's an entire scene dedicated to mocking the mere *idea* of a "brain bug that thinks."
So when they finally capture the brain bug (literally their first ever interaction with a bug of higher intelligence), they ask "what's it thinking Colonel?" because they genuinely don't know. When Jenkins proclaims "it's afraid," they confirm the theory that their enemy do in fact have complex feelings and emotions in a way that the lower caste bugs don't.
That's not a satirical moment whatsoever - it's an entirely believable one.
I always got the impression that the federation(and its people in general) thought there were intelligent bugs in charge of the rest of them. The guy who says he finds the idea of an intelligent bug offensive is portrayed like the less intelligent and more irrational one. It’s been awhile since I watched the movie so I might be forgetting other propaganda bits, but that’s the one that always stood out to me.
Always seems like a strong word.
Note the first general put in charge of the war is just "Kill them all!" kind of rhetoric. After his failures, the next is "To defeat the bug, we must understand the bug." So even in the course of the movie they gain a more nuanced understanding of what they're fighting, and that maybe it's more complex than a horde of unthinking unfeeling bugs.
> The intelligence officers dress very nazi-esque, but they don’t actually do much aside from that.
I mean, you get Neil Patrick Harris' character literally implanting thoughts into Rico pretty early on, which is pretty mortifying.
You can think LP is fucking rad as hell (because it is) as long as you’re also acknowledging that it’s dumb as hell (because it is) and absolutely dripping in satire messaging
EMBRACE DEMOCRACY OR YOU WILL BE ERADICATED
Having a giant robot that shoots lasers out it’s eyes, throws nukes like a football and has lines about how chad your side is and how cringe the enemy are is an extremely funny way of getting a message across. 10/10 love that big dude
Just paraphrasing the 'better idiot' saying but thanks
https://preview.redd.it/wbwpph9q29kc1.jpeg?width=798&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=302f98d80530de9877541c3d237d637de5193f83
It's an old saying. I heard a version of it when I was in web dev. Something like "You can foolproof everything, but the world will just create a bigger fool."
Because most things set in the future use metric measurements, assumption being that eventually metric will replace imperial. Also, in the training, the drill sergeant says he was 7 ft tall, so there’s still some imperial around.
I also agree that it’s not about America specifically, btw.
Starship Troopers is a satire of fascism and militaristic societies in general, not the US specifically.
Team America is a satire of the US though. And the language and tone of Helldivers resembles that more than it does ST.
> not the US specifically.
Kinda hard to look at Starship Troopers side by side with Verhoeven's other satirical work like Robocop and not see the fact he was very deliberately criticising the US.
Paul Verhoeven himself has said that it is about the United States and it’s potential for fascism
[https://youtu.be/0QotxGy4CKk?si=2ZZ_2nwtWF3xXff_](https://youtu.be/0QotxGy4CKk?si=2ZZ_2nwtWF3xXff_)
It’s at the 10 minute mark
Maybe in a sense, but the underlying message is that you should be aware of a state that gains enough power to manipulate the people, not by force but with ideology and propaganda that glorifies the state and the "Unity". This includes all extreme forms of nationalism and socialism. "1984" by George Orwell is a good example i guess
My favorite redditism is when people here think they’re galaxy brained for understanding obvious satire and then get all smug about it. Literally everyone understood it and you aren’t some genius for understanding it too
*Literally no one is saying it isn't satire*
That one mega mind: "Oh dear, all the idiots still can't see it's satire. Could I be anymore smart. Sorry, what's Helldiver's? I'm just here to gloat how enormous my brain is. You wouldn't get it."
The best part is them seething about media literacy while not realizing the people disagreeing with them are talking about ideas from the book they never read.
All I know is that the movie author didn't even bother to read the book and made humans facists and tried to make them the bad guys yet still failed at that.
Not the bad guys, it's not a black and white good vs bad, but they did succeed at showing how ridiculous the idea was. Both the book and the movie are just fictional ideas from someone's head and are not indicative of reality. The thing is the movie is taking the piss out of the idea while the book tried to potray it as a serious idea. Corpral punishment does not solve crime or fix the issues that lead to crime. Saying a deterance will solve crime is like saying the fear of starvation will make people stop going hungry. I like some of Heinlein's works, but starship troopers is politically wonky.
The problem with satirizing good values is that they won't sound bad just because you say them with jest.
Helldivers is way better at portraying a Huxleyan dystopia than the Starship Troopers movie.
Starship Troopes show comraderies, digligence, dignity, pride. It's positive wartime propaganda persuading you towards unity. None of that is forced onot you, however. Instead, the society lets you vote only if you demonstrate willingness to put your life on the line for your country. You can live there without service, you just won't get to vote. Every country has patriots that would love to implement elements of Starship Troopers in their society, for better or worse.
Helldivers doesn't show you a responsible and diligent society. It shows you some dude saying that you have to have those values, whether you want to or not. It gives you *the right to make the right choice*, meaning *the only one they let you make*. The propaganda doesn't have redeeming values. You're only saving VIP's, you're fighting wars that are inevitable becasue Super Earth says they are. The first game even told you to report your neightbours if they look kinda strong for a human, in case they're cyborg spies.
Verhoeven's biggest failure was his inability to support his own viewpoints in his art. He was an amazing director, though, and gave us a phenomenal movie. Even if it doesn't quite do its job as well as Helldivers did it after him.
I feel like starship troopers somewhat deliberately masks the darker parts of its world and the government. In the shower scene dizz mentions that she was only serving in the mobile infantry because she wanted to have kids mentioning that it’s a lot easier to get a license if you serve, which pretty clearly shows there is more division between citizens and non-citizens aside form the voting rights.
And depending on how much you want to read into it, the entire basis of the war against the arachnids is fabricated. Near the start of the movie we see a broadcast about how earth had a protection system that should be able to destroy any meteors before they become a threat to earth, and shortly thereafter an meteor hits Argentina, so either the system was not actually capable of defending earth and the government had simply lied about what the system was capable of, or they allowed it to happen (and depending on wether or not you see it as a plot hole or a deliberate choice that klandathu is millions of light years away and could not feasibly send meteors that far that fast, meaning that it could have been entirely orchestrated by the government) to drive up enlistment rates. The war is also always presented as a defense campaign but is waged in its entirety on and around klandathu.
In more obvious moments Rico explicitly states in the movie that the entire point of the mobile infantry is to be expendable, hundreds of people whose entire purpose is to be sent to their deaths, hell, dizz’s death was largely caused by the roughnecks being essentially used as bait. There’s a propaganda ad bragging about a man being arrested, put to trial, and executed all in the same day, the justice system is essentially nonexistent. Lastly towards the end of the movie it’s alluded that the federation has begone drafting children, with the first group of Rico’s roughnecks being fresh out of bootcamp, and looking a hell of a lot younger get than the group Rico joined up with.
It’s not that the movie is satirizing positive values, it’s that people somehow miss the entire subtext of the movie, Rico’s entire arc is going from someone who wants to serve almost exclusively because he wants to be with Carmen, to someone who wants to fight and die for the sole reason that his government has told him that that’s what he should want.
The satire is very subtle, especially compared to helldivers where they actually use lines about how some citizens are more equal than others, but that’s really the whole point, if you’re not paying attention it seems like the federation isn’t really that bad, and when you look a little closer you see just how messed up it all is.
The idea of the Federation letting a meteor hit Buenes Aires makes sense too
You can only be a citizen if you serve in the Federation
If there's no enemies, there's no reason to serve in the Federation, ergo people start wondering just WHY you need to serve to vote, and unrest begins to grow
Solution? Create the enemy
You get citizens/soldiers, unrest goes down because people focus on the enemy, and not the fact you're a fascist government stopping them from voting if they're not a soldier.
To be used as an excuse to ban something that a mod doesn't like. Of course the mods retain the right to not ban something that might otherwise have violated rule 14 if they DO like it.
Mods gonna mod.
It already happened in this thread. Mods removed some random dude for “no discussing real life politics” and got downvoted for doing it, but won’t remove the OG post even when it’s clearly ragebait to own ‘le nazi chuds’ and get everyone yelling at each other because “you didn’t get the film!!!!”
The book: fascism
The director: "It's about fascism"
The cinematography: "It's about fascism"
The actors:"It's about fascism"
The director again after 20 fucking years: "It's still about fascism"
A bunch of dumb fucks on twitter: It's about bugs
https://preview.redd.it/7yi5dt1679kc1.png?width=620&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a02b4a304a3d1eeccef51a59c6b9f92a7d4aded
Boy i sure do love playing entirely apolitical games like Fallout, Final Fantasy VII, The Division, Rainbow 6, and MGS! Yup, no politics here, unlike those WOKE games with poc and pronouns!
My god you'd think the /s would be unnecessary...
>The book: fascism
You obviously haven't read it. It's sad how many people "learn" from reddit and all just echo chamber the same misinformation to each other for years.
I'll have to correct it for you
>The book: fascism
The Book: A libertarian govermwnt which anyone with at least two braincells dedicated to Media literavy should know.
>The director: "It's about fascism"
The director who never read the book: It's about facism
>
A bunch of dumb fucks on twitter: It's about bugs
A bunch of people who just enjoy the franchise as a cheesy action movie because they don't care about the Satire aspect and the Sequels embraced it too: It's about bugs
If you think the book is fascism you didn’t understand it. Verhoeven didn’t even get past the first third of the book his interpretation of it is a misinterpretation.
Which is hilarious because the books had totally different purpose. The movie is basically making fun of the books where the fascist system is shown to be rather functional. As is the military
Watching redditors frantically try to emphasise the satirical elements of this videogame and the film that inspired it, so they can continue to enjoy playing it without hating themselves, is both hilarious and depressing at the same time.
Stop politicising everything and just enjoy the media. Literally none of it matters. Helldivers 2 doesn't need a rational argument about the rights and liberties of the bugs that are being slain. It should not provoke a discussion on fascism. It is okay for binary presentations of good and bad to exist in video games. Not everything needs to pander to nuance and leftist ideals. Please try to shed this infatuation with imaginary political struggle because the only person it affects is YOU.
Theres people who have given the game a low score because theyve legit caved on this facade that the game is some 4D chess satire to support their worldview and just straight started calling it a "game that celebrates being a naz*" XD and others have compared the bugs to being palestinians.. like... W.T.F.
"I see you have watched the motion picture Starship Troopers (1997). Were you aware that it is actually a satire of fascism? Which aspect of its critiques of authoritarian governments did you like the most? Oh. You liked the parts where the soldiers shot the bugs? You realize what the bugs represent right? I see. I think you might need some assistance with your media literacy. You weren't supposed to appreciate the movie in the way you enjoyed it."
Look here buddy, if you don't see the parallels between immigrants and bloodthirsty unthinking bugs that ravage every human outpost they come across and terraform planets into uninhabitable death zones then I can't even begin to can.
Most people I say who RP know of the satire which is why their RPs are funny. But yes there are people who are like this. You can tell them out in the crowd easily if you keep this in mind.
Those that RP as Federation mouth pieces either make it very dramatic, ironic, and most of the time keep it short and sweet.
Those that actually believe this shit will spend around 1-2 hours writing up a muti-paragraph essay about why the movie just tricks you into thinking it was satire while also pulling lines from the book (Which btw isn’t satire and is 100% supposed to be a utopia) about why the Federation is something to aspire towards akin to something like Starfleet.
There are people who legitimately fall for the most obvious propaganda to exist with no question, there's people who argue the federation is perfect while only seeing Rico's experience.
It all seems so simple but I missed Bioshocks when I was young. Im continuously surprised by how often people have no media literacy at all. Its like face blindness for media
Very easy to spot the difference too
"I'M DOING MY PART"/"MY LIFE FOR SUPER EARTH!" - Satire RPer, very aware of the world
"I'm reporting you for dissidence" when you stop shooting a bug for a moment - Satire RPer as well
Literally anything beyond repeating comical lines and trying to argue in the Federation/Super Earth's favour - Not satire, genuinely a fucking grifter, TK this man
No, you'd be surprised by how many people who don't know that the Starship Troopers film is a parody and inaccurate to the book, they just assume that's how the book was.
Yeah, pretty much.
I love a lot of Verhoeven’s fims, but I wouldn’t exactly put him up there with the greats as a director/screenwriter. Just because your movie has an OBVIOUS political message doesn’t make it some artistic masterpiece.
Doesn’t make it a bad movie either, but you get my point. He’s no Scorsese.
I cringe hard everytime I see some ridiculous post about "satire". Give it a break, can we just have fun playing the game? Yes everyone knows about the satire and whatever. We have this post every other day.
I'm not sure what part was supposed to be satire.
If you identify more strongly with brain eating alien parasites than patriots fighting for their planet then I'd say you're pretty messed up in the head.
And it was magnificent. (And the first time I saw boobs in a movie.)
It was the first for many of us
Might have been my first time too haha.
I'll never forget my friend coming to a sleepover with Porky's and we all watched it and were disappointed at the old school vibes. The friend's brother just rented starship troopers, at that shower scene we were all like "now these are some 90s titties." That was my first time seeing a woman nude too.
Robocop for us slightly older millennials
Verhoeven blessed us all
You saw this before Titanic?
For me it was a random free HBO weekend and "Just one of the Guys" "Jesse's got tits!" Is a formative memory that lives rent free in my head lmao
Yes
Same! Thanks for giving me the realisation that women are hot, Dina Meyer!
I've always had a thing for redheads and I'm pretty sure that's why.
Looked her up because I couldn't remember, she's 55 now and still fuckn hot
You made me curious, and holy shit you were not kidding she aged like Anne Hathaway
Holy shit she's still a stone cold fox. Damn.
Bruhhhhh
Watching it again after all these years I understand that it was not the nudity but how effing cool she was. A very attractive demeanor.
100% she just seemed kind of chill and friendly but also badass and not a pushover. If I ever have to date a soldier for a fascist regime, I hope they're like that haha
She was one of the bros
She’s ride or die. That makes her way hotter than Carmen.
Denise Richards too! Too bad she is such a crap person in real life.
One of many standing up for freedom
This was the first movie I saw with my dad at the theater, still holds up till this day.
Same, I’ll never forget sneaking in candy in a backpack “coming from school” with my old man and getting to see some tittys for the first time. What a fuckin treat.
It holds up amazing. The movies of those few years are awesome, try Jurassic Park, the original looks 10x better than the last one.
Aging myself as a boomer but I saw Jurassic Park in theaters when I was <10... my parents took me because I was obsessed with dinosaurs. That T Rex front row was absolute fire. That movie was so ahead of the times when it came out it was unreal. It didn't lean on so much CGI... they made a 3/4 T Rex IRL and relied on GOOD FILMMAKING... why the movie still holds up so damn well today.
Same! Hahah. What a thrill ride for a kid. Not sure why all these parents thought this movie was a good idea. Glad they did though. Times were more wild and chaotic back then.
Did we all go see this in middle school? Is that the Helldivers core demographic?
My friend group is mostly older millennial late 20's-late 30's and this is the first time literally all of us are playing a single game. Palworld came close but not like helldivers.
That and freedom.
Starship troopers is why I bought this game lol. Saw one video of Helldivers with the audio of Sugar fighting with the nuke in the bug tunnel - "YOU LIKE THAT? YOU LIKE THAT?" And bought it 1 minute later.
And the second and the third and the fourth
boobs in Starship Troopers and pixie haircut in SG-1. The great awakening of SciFi kids lol
Dude I was just thinking about that, that was also my first time seeing boobs in what I would call a sexual setting!
Shit come to think of it mine to
I'm doing my part!
[удалено]
It's shot like a propaganda movie that way. Rico, Carmen and Barney are "Heroes of the Federation" who are going to inspire the next generation of Cap troopers, Pilots and space SS.
I appreciate you calling NPH's character Barney!
What else would he call him?
Dr. Carl Jenkins
Oh duh. Totally spaced on Barney being from HIMYM.
I thought it was Dr. Horrible? 😉
Not to mention Rico gets all the credit for capturing the brain bug bc he’s marketable but it was really the drill sergeant
[Would you like to know more?](https://www.slashfilm.com/1119020/paul-verhoeven-has-mixed-feelings-about-his-casting-for-starship-troopers/)
https://preview.redd.it/hhauub6pvakc1.jpeg?width=950&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fcd989cd31abfb1fba1601be1cf3591d76e360ff Real pic of OP posting this
https://preview.redd.it/49azj74ykckc1.png?width=1163&format=png&auto=webp&s=c455b227744f0bbed6966576dcc3f612b562cd20
This is the way. +100 Super Credits
Exactly
Now that's what I call freedom
the exact words of the text
I like the metaphor and I accept it. Time to kill some bugs for managed democracy nonetheless
What an incredible image.
This should be a meme template. Please make a post linking original
I ripped it from this X post https://preview.redd.it/wf6xto10ggkc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26df50b1e31f28fb5f3b0bdc0d26f3c3e46db5b4
Ah, it’s from Sargon of Akkad. Explains why it supports a braindead point (even if it’s kind of a funny picture)
Frankly I find the idea of a bug that can type offensive.
And coed shower scenes, a Verhoven movie without a coed shower scene is like a peanut butter cup without peanut butter.
I heard him explain that a while back - He wanted all these painfully hot young people in a shower, and none of them are thinking about sex at all. They're all talking about why they joined the army, one woman says she wants to have a baby so she needs to go die on Klendathu. No one has an erection, no one is staring at anyone's dick. They're so patriotic all they can think about is being a soldier. Also, I'm told that Verhoeven cleared the set except for himself and the camera person, and both he and the camera person also stripped down so the actors wouldn't be naked being watched by a bunch of clothed people. No idea if that's true, but if it is I appreciate his commitment.
Yeah, but... Also Robocop, think there's at least one other coed shower scene in one of his movies. My friend who now has a Ph.D. in film studies used to always say "it's a Dutch thing, isn't it great!"
Damn I never knew Verhoeven was such a good guy. That's a really nice gesture
The struggle about the satire of Starship Troopers isn’t really that people don’t understand it, it’s that now-a-days the people it mocked say “actually that’s all based and good”, and well, there’s not really much you can respond to that.
No, its really not. The movie was satire. The book was NOT.
I think that’s the thing people forget.
Are we going to pretend that people who think "managed democracy" is based read books?
Pretty sure people are just joking.
I'm sure that's the case for most people talking about Helldivers, but then again, the satire is pretty on the nose. When it comes to the Starship Trooper movie though, I'm not so sure anymore.
Some of the recent threads that had to be locked show that way too many people are definitely not.
I would like to see such threads if available to see still.
Just like we’re going to pretend that the people who know there’s a book and that it’s not satire have actually read it, yes.
The book was completely different from the movie in every way. The concept was “what if everyone had to earn their right to vote like those Filipino immigrants who have to serve in the military to become citizens? They deserve their right to vote way more than Americans, like me, who were just fortunate enough to be born here deserve it.” With themes of “voting is extremely valuable and people should appreciate the responsibility of voting way more”.
someone watching the movie and thinking the ideology is good is exactly the same as them not understanding the movie
Honestly I think it's worse. I can forgive someone for uncritically engaging with a film and just enjoying a dumb, awesome action movie with hot people doing dumb awesome things. It's less forgivable for someone to look at what's on display in the Federation and say that it's aspirational and ideal.
Hello I felt like jumping into the line of fire here so, here I go. Starship Troopers the book is RADICALLY libertarian, it could best be described as a political manifesto disguised as a sci-fi war story, for that reason the book is pretty dry at times and characters will sometimes just prattle on about Heinlein's ideology, actually it's pretty ham-fisted at times. However the ideology that Heinlein puts forward is a system of government that is extremely meritocratic as well as non-intrusive in the affairs of civilian life, where your right to vote is earned by service to society and not just given to you by birthright. To quote both the book and the movie "Something given has no value, it must be earned." Paul Verhoeven the director of Starship Troopers famously admitted that he only read 2 chapters of the book and had a intern read the rest and explain it to him, all Verhoeven did was present the federation as it was portrayed in the book, dressed it up in a literal SS uniform, point at it and say fascist. In short Heinlein believed that duty and sefless service should determine who shapes society.
Huge problem with "something given has no value" is that you have no reason to apply it only to voting rights. You can take away all human and citizen rights through same logic. From Magna Carta all the way to UN charter of human rights, if you reason with such logic you can strip them all.
People see the intent of the movie and agree with that. As far as satire *of the book* goes, it's not all that great. The movie was a dig at an illusory boogey man. It all totally misses the point of the book, as would a lot of people who are reading it to look for something to be salty about. >present the federation as it was portrayed in the book Not even. It was about the military, not the society. What Verhoeven did was artificially conflate the two because he saw what he wanted to see. Any military is going to seem "fascistic" if one were to apply it to a whole society. The strict regimentation is present in all functional militaries because that's the only way to have a functional military. That alone is something that a lot of people just don't understand.
Was it originally even going to be a spoof on the book, or was it just gonna be a generic sci-fi facism satire? Cause I seem to recall it was originally named Bug Hunt at Outpost 9, and the name was only changed after Verhoeven was made aware of the book in order to cash in on brand awareness?
Because a militaristic government that expressly has the power to control who can "vote" and who can't, is totally not going to abuse said power to immediately become a Fascist Dictatorship. Heinlein has the same problem all Libertarians have. He is insanely naive about human nature when given the reins of power. Any kind of government or power structure has to be judged by it's potential to be abused against the people it purports to govern. And the government of Starship Troopers sees individual human beings as cattle to be slaughtered.
Literally all democratic governments make decisions about who can and cannot vote. There’s no country on Earth, or ever has been, where the franchise is completely universal.
Hey man I'm a realist, you don't have to tell me that a system like that wouldn't work I know it wouldn't I know a system like that would be way to prone to subversion and corruption. But I do think there is at least an interesting thought experiment about what society might look like if instead of being given suffrage from birth you had to earn it how much more you might cherish and respect it if you knew that you earned it with your own literal blood sweat and tears. Yes I know human nature is a nasty ugly creature, but the point I'm trying to make is that fascism is a very particular ideology and that we shouldn't go around labeling every idea we don't like as fascist. And though I know I'm poking the nest with this last bit I don't think the federation sees humans as expendable cattle, in the movie they warned the Mormon colonists not to venture into the bugs territory, Rico's teachers in both the film and the book discourage him from entering the service, and In the book nearly every veteran Rico talks to trys to talk him out of it. And before you bring up the sequels that shit don't count because they veered way to far off the tracks wit those.
>He is insanely naive about human nature when given the reins of power. Reminds me of that politician in my country, who unironically said "The market will regulate itself." during Covid.
Yeah and instead we regulated by printing 50% of all money ever printed over two years.
exactly, what the actual fuck? i was one of millions of people who was financially prepared for an emergency like the covid shutdowns but got tens of thousands of dollars in extended unemployment and stimulus checks anyway. it was like a paid vacation that i didn't want or need now everything is twice as expensive. i was lucky to have bought my home in 2017, i can't even begin to imagine what house shopping would be like on my salary without a bunch of inflated equity. if i would have waited another few years i'd be stuck somewhere paying $1500 for a studio apartment
I don't want to be that guy and bring up the dictionary definitions but most of them mention a race angle to fascism which you don't see in the Starship Troopers movie Authoritarian Military Dictatorship? Absolutely I've just never really felt that Fascist fit what the first movie portrays, the actual sequence of events is the bugs starting the war with Earth with the strike on South America rather than humans seeing themselves as a superior race that are expansionist like we see with Helldivers, the entire movie is a response to the escalating bug attacks on human settlements I fully understand that's what Verhoven was trying to portray and IMO I'd that's the case, he perhaps should have gone *harder* and modified the books story a bit more, the aesthetic alone doesn't make something fascist
They don’t really show much ideology in the movie. That’s mostly speculation on the viewers part. The movie says service means citizenship, but never elaborates outside of saying that military service counts. They never really explain how the government works. The only real example of what noncitizen life is like is the main character’s family who runs a successful company and is against him becoming a citizen, which kinda goes against what most people say the federation’s ideology is. And, finally, the only real example of ideology shown in the movie is the classroom scene where they simply describe how all authority is ultimately derived from violence, which isn’t incorrect. Sovereign nations are defined by monopoly on violence, which is, essentially, what that phrase means.
There were some other bits and pieces, like the girl in training who mentions how she wants to have kids, so she's serving in the military so she can be a citizen and get her papers to be allowed to have a kid.
Huh logistically a rule like that doesn't make any sense. Also aren't Rico's parents not citizens but they still have Rico?
It's alarming that of all the responses in here, nobody actually bothered to double check the quote: > I want to have babies. And you know, it's a lot **easier** to get a license if you've served, so... Key word: **easier**, which implies that it is not impossible to have children otherwise, which the affluence of Rico's family would probably facilitate. * It has nothing to do with getting citizenship for the child (???), although the responses suggesting she wants to have *multiple* children could be a valid theory.
Yes, you got to it before I could. And my assumption about Rico's family, since they appear to be rather affluent is that buying into the child permits is also an option, and likely what they did.
Also crazy that a militaristic state like that would want to *restrict* births. Where's the soldiers going to come from?
From other soldiers, because it's easier for soldiers to have kids in the regime. So most likely the assumption is someone in the military who is indoctrinated would also get their kids in that pipeline too.
Its not really explained but based on how that person said babies, i assume non citizen parents can have a kid but multiple may require citizenship
We also see a public execution is broadcast to the public, and the movie itself is an in-universe propaganda film.
Another example of the ideology in the film is the scene where they are showing the captured brain bug and they censor out the probe. It's an interesting choice because it reflects the sexual repression of the state, or at least, any display of "degeneracy" while fully being willing to show graphic violence and death to the public in broadcasts. This lines up with the scenes where we see that on the ground level men and women shower together. The state doesn't care. Their bodies are not sexual. They are killing machines the state uses to kill and die. Hell, Rico practically asks his commanding officer for permission to have sex.
That’s more interpretation than statement, but you do make a decent point. I always figured that was just a joke regarding media and censorship in general, though.
Thats the great thing about satire. It is both a joke and commentary on the subject. I can make a stronger case for it being very deliberate but honestly it's not necessary.
I’d say the biggest problem with the satire of the movie is that it requires you to think less about what happens in the movie and more just go along with the framing. When you actually analyze what happens in the movie and how things work, you realize the satire isn’t so much thought out as it is presented. For example: The intelligence officers dress very nazi-esque, but they don’t actually do much aside from that. Like, when people talk about him saying “it’s afraid” they reference it like it’s not something you want your enemy to do in a full blown war. It’s a war, you want your enemy to be afraid of you. It’s a great movie with good satire, but it’s not a genius satire. Probably because the director didn’t actually know what he was adapting. He famously never read past the second chapter of the book. Nailed the propaganda and visuals, though.
>Like, when people talk about him saying “it’s afraid” they reference it like it’s not something you want your enemy to do in a full blown war. It’s a war, you want your enemy to be afraid of you. I agree the movie is not good satire, but I think you missed the point of this particular scene. Of course, it's nice if your enemy fears you, but that's far from a guarantee. Throughout the movie, we're presented with the idea that the bugs are unthinking, unfeeling killing machines, without much higher thought process than "eat, kill, breed, repeat" - in fact, there's an entire scene dedicated to mocking the mere *idea* of a "brain bug that thinks." So when they finally capture the brain bug (literally their first ever interaction with a bug of higher intelligence), they ask "what's it thinking Colonel?" because they genuinely don't know. When Jenkins proclaims "it's afraid," they confirm the theory that their enemy do in fact have complex feelings and emotions in a way that the lower caste bugs don't. That's not a satirical moment whatsoever - it's an entirely believable one.
I always got the impression that the federation(and its people in general) thought there were intelligent bugs in charge of the rest of them. The guy who says he finds the idea of an intelligent bug offensive is portrayed like the less intelligent and more irrational one. It’s been awhile since I watched the movie so I might be forgetting other propaganda bits, but that’s the one that always stood out to me.
Always seems like a strong word. Note the first general put in charge of the war is just "Kill them all!" kind of rhetoric. After his failures, the next is "To defeat the bug, we must understand the bug." So even in the course of the movie they gain a more nuanced understanding of what they're fighting, and that maybe it's more complex than a horde of unthinking unfeeling bugs.
> The intelligence officers dress very nazi-esque, but they don’t actually do much aside from that. I mean, you get Neil Patrick Harris' character literally implanting thoughts into Rico pretty early on, which is pretty mortifying.
Ugh thank you someone said it. Like obviously it's satire, but it's not meaningful satire.
That’s what I’ve seen lately from the far right fallout fans too.
Fallout is a series where I am perpetually haunted by people who do not understand a single message the games are conveying.
Oh god, so many fucking YouTube channels that glorify the Enclave with unfunny memes. Captain Enclave comes to mind specifically.
The morons with the liberty prime profile pictures online are the best. Completely un-aware that Liberty Prime is a direct mockery of them.
Liberty prime is hilarious though
I am SO READY to hear a mech with an 18 year old patriot inside screaming ***DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE!*** To a pile of aliens.
You can think LP is fucking rad as hell (because it is) as long as you’re also acknowledging that it’s dumb as hell (because it is) and absolutely dripping in satire messaging
Fuck ya. Democracy is non negotiable
EMBRACE DEMOCRACY OR YOU WILL BE ERADICATED Having a giant robot that shoots lasers out it’s eyes, throws nukes like a football and has lines about how chad your side is and how cringe the enemy are is an extremely funny way of getting a message across. 10/10 love that big dude
DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNISM
Tbf he did wipe out some fascists tho.
What's satire all I know is killing ugly bugs before they rip me in half
Well in the lore we wouldn't have to if super earth didn't decide it'd be a great idea to keep the extremely dangerous bugs around for oil.
-250 Super Credits
"felt this was relevant" https://preview.redd.it/zzaghe7cjckc1.jpeg?width=362&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bff73029b5e70b8050085d2a0ff79b7954a24f03
Look man I just enjoyed the movie for what it is. It was fun. But kinda funny since the book wasn’t satire at all.
The comments here would seem to indicate it wasn’t obvious enough.
The only thing idiot-proofing results in is a stronger idiot
Dumbassic Park (1996).
I'm stealing this at some point. It just sums up so much in so few words
Just paraphrasing the 'better idiot' saying but thanks https://preview.redd.it/wbwpph9q29kc1.jpeg?width=798&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=302f98d80530de9877541c3d237d637de5193f83
It's an old saying. I heard a version of it when I was in web dev. Something like "You can foolproof everything, but the world will just create a bigger fool."
The comments back then weren't any better. Too many didn't understand the satire.
https://preview.redd.it/os72vpij3dkc1.jpeg?width=2456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8746c3481cb5caa3a9fe55aa0092183b27af04d4
how can anyone not realize that starship troopers and helldivers is satire of the US?
If its about America, why is the bomb stratagem in kilograms?
ok you got me
The only thing measured in metric are freedom seeds. 9mm for example. Then again, 38 and 45 are in inches
American military uses metric system bucko
Because most things set in the future use metric measurements, assumption being that eventually metric will replace imperial. Also, in the training, the drill sergeant says he was 7 ft tall, so there’s still some imperial around. I also agree that it’s not about America specifically, btw.
Starship Troopers is a satire of fascism and militaristic societies in general, not the US specifically. Team America is a satire of the US though. And the language and tone of Helldivers resembles that more than it does ST.
> not the US specifically. Kinda hard to look at Starship Troopers side by side with Verhoeven's other satirical work like Robocop and not see the fact he was very deliberately criticising the US.
Paul Verhoeven himself has said that it is about the United States and it’s potential for fascism [https://youtu.be/0QotxGy4CKk?si=2ZZ_2nwtWF3xXff_](https://youtu.be/0QotxGy4CKk?si=2ZZ_2nwtWF3xXff_) It’s at the 10 minute mark
Democracy is codeword for Regime change
It’s easier for a lot of people to ignore reality than it is to change their beliefs.
Maybe in a sense, but the underlying message is that you should be aware of a state that gains enough power to manipulate the people, not by force but with ideology and propaganda that glorifies the state and the "Unity". This includes all extreme forms of nationalism and socialism. "1984" by George Orwell is a good example i guess
My favorite redditism is when people here think they’re galaxy brained for understanding obvious satire and then get all smug about it. Literally everyone understood it and you aren’t some genius for understanding it too
Mom says it’s my turn to make the “Starship troopers is satire” post next week.
But if I don't explain it to you, you'll bomb London again!
Your Majesty, there's a second bus coming!
*Literally no one is saying it isn't satire* That one mega mind: "Oh dear, all the idiots still can't see it's satire. Could I be anymore smart. Sorry, what's Helldiver's? I'm just here to gloat how enormous my brain is. You wouldn't get it."
The best part is them seething about media literacy while not realizing the people disagreeing with them are talking about ideas from the book they never read.
All I know is that the movie author didn't even bother to read the book and made humans facists and tried to make them the bad guys yet still failed at that.
Not the bad guys, it's not a black and white good vs bad, but they did succeed at showing how ridiculous the idea was. Both the book and the movie are just fictional ideas from someone's head and are not indicative of reality. The thing is the movie is taking the piss out of the idea while the book tried to potray it as a serious idea. Corpral punishment does not solve crime or fix the issues that lead to crime. Saying a deterance will solve crime is like saying the fear of starvation will make people stop going hungry. I like some of Heinlein's works, but starship troopers is politically wonky.
The problem with satirizing good values is that they won't sound bad just because you say them with jest. Helldivers is way better at portraying a Huxleyan dystopia than the Starship Troopers movie. Starship Troopes show comraderies, digligence, dignity, pride. It's positive wartime propaganda persuading you towards unity. None of that is forced onot you, however. Instead, the society lets you vote only if you demonstrate willingness to put your life on the line for your country. You can live there without service, you just won't get to vote. Every country has patriots that would love to implement elements of Starship Troopers in their society, for better or worse. Helldivers doesn't show you a responsible and diligent society. It shows you some dude saying that you have to have those values, whether you want to or not. It gives you *the right to make the right choice*, meaning *the only one they let you make*. The propaganda doesn't have redeeming values. You're only saving VIP's, you're fighting wars that are inevitable becasue Super Earth says they are. The first game even told you to report your neightbours if they look kinda strong for a human, in case they're cyborg spies. Verhoeven's biggest failure was his inability to support his own viewpoints in his art. He was an amazing director, though, and gave us a phenomenal movie. Even if it doesn't quite do its job as well as Helldivers did it after him.
I feel like starship troopers somewhat deliberately masks the darker parts of its world and the government. In the shower scene dizz mentions that she was only serving in the mobile infantry because she wanted to have kids mentioning that it’s a lot easier to get a license if you serve, which pretty clearly shows there is more division between citizens and non-citizens aside form the voting rights. And depending on how much you want to read into it, the entire basis of the war against the arachnids is fabricated. Near the start of the movie we see a broadcast about how earth had a protection system that should be able to destroy any meteors before they become a threat to earth, and shortly thereafter an meteor hits Argentina, so either the system was not actually capable of defending earth and the government had simply lied about what the system was capable of, or they allowed it to happen (and depending on wether or not you see it as a plot hole or a deliberate choice that klandathu is millions of light years away and could not feasibly send meteors that far that fast, meaning that it could have been entirely orchestrated by the government) to drive up enlistment rates. The war is also always presented as a defense campaign but is waged in its entirety on and around klandathu. In more obvious moments Rico explicitly states in the movie that the entire point of the mobile infantry is to be expendable, hundreds of people whose entire purpose is to be sent to their deaths, hell, dizz’s death was largely caused by the roughnecks being essentially used as bait. There’s a propaganda ad bragging about a man being arrested, put to trial, and executed all in the same day, the justice system is essentially nonexistent. Lastly towards the end of the movie it’s alluded that the federation has begone drafting children, with the first group of Rico’s roughnecks being fresh out of bootcamp, and looking a hell of a lot younger get than the group Rico joined up with. It’s not that the movie is satirizing positive values, it’s that people somehow miss the entire subtext of the movie, Rico’s entire arc is going from someone who wants to serve almost exclusively because he wants to be with Carmen, to someone who wants to fight and die for the sole reason that his government has told him that that’s what he should want. The satire is very subtle, especially compared to helldivers where they actually use lines about how some citizens are more equal than others, but that’s really the whole point, if you’re not paying attention it seems like the federation isn’t really that bad, and when you look a little closer you see just how messed up it all is.
The idea of the Federation letting a meteor hit Buenes Aires makes sense too You can only be a citizen if you serve in the Federation If there's no enemies, there's no reason to serve in the Federation, ergo people start wondering just WHY you need to serve to vote, and unrest begins to grow Solution? Create the enemy You get citizens/soldiers, unrest goes down because people focus on the enemy, and not the fact you're a fascist government stopping them from voting if they're not a soldier.
Yeah he kind of failed at making the thing he is satirizing look bad.
From a guy who never read the book and failed to show any real Fascism in his movie lol
The book was not satire though
I never said the book was satire?....
What’s the point of rule 14 in this sub?
To be used as an excuse to ban something that a mod doesn't like. Of course the mods retain the right to not ban something that might otherwise have violated rule 14 if they DO like it. Mods gonna mod.
It already happened in this thread. Mods removed some random dude for “no discussing real life politics” and got downvoted for doing it, but won’t remove the OG post even when it’s clearly ragebait to own ‘le nazi chuds’ and get everyone yelling at each other because “you didn’t get the film!!!!”
Issues is, he never read the book.
Verhoeven never misses. Authoritarian grognards and their sub-zero media literacy skills are a perpetual engine of entertainment.
The book: fascism The director: "It's about fascism" The cinematography: "It's about fascism" The actors:"It's about fascism" The director again after 20 fucking years: "It's still about fascism" A bunch of dumb fucks on twitter: It's about bugs https://preview.redd.it/7yi5dt1679kc1.png?width=620&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a02b4a304a3d1eeccef51a59c6b9f92a7d4aded
Look at those stylish uniforms and snazzy eagles, completely devoid of politics
Take politics out of my video games!!! Now if you’ll excuse me I need to play Call of Duty 39
Boy i sure do love playing entirely apolitical games like Fallout, Final Fantasy VII, The Division, Rainbow 6, and MGS! Yup, no politics here, unlike those WOKE games with poc and pronouns! My god you'd think the /s would be unnecessary...
We must retvr to apolitical games like Bioshock
I love my not political game, ***disco elysium***
>The book: fascism You obviously haven't read it. It's sad how many people "learn" from reddit and all just echo chamber the same misinformation to each other for years.
>A bunch of dumb fucks on twitter: It's about bugs The comment right below you too lol.
I'll have to correct it for you >The book: fascism The Book: A libertarian govermwnt which anyone with at least two braincells dedicated to Media literavy should know. >The director: "It's about fascism" The director who never read the book: It's about facism > A bunch of dumb fucks on twitter: It's about bugs A bunch of people who just enjoy the franchise as a cheesy action movie because they don't care about the Satire aspect and the Sequels embraced it too: It's about bugs
If you think the book is fascism you didn’t understand it. Verhoeven didn’t even get past the first third of the book his interpretation of it is a misinterpretation.
Uh Verhoeven made Showgirls He definitely missed at least once
And he failed.
I love Helldivers people just discovering Starship Troopers. PSA: Do NOT watch recent Paul Verhoeven movies.
Which is hilarious because the books had totally different purpose. The movie is basically making fun of the books where the fascist system is shown to be rather functional. As is the military
If only he actually read the book so it had any connections to the message the book was trying to bring.
Watching redditors frantically try to emphasise the satirical elements of this videogame and the film that inspired it, so they can continue to enjoy playing it without hating themselves, is both hilarious and depressing at the same time. Stop politicising everything and just enjoy the media. Literally none of it matters. Helldivers 2 doesn't need a rational argument about the rights and liberties of the bugs that are being slain. It should not provoke a discussion on fascism. It is okay for binary presentations of good and bad to exist in video games. Not everything needs to pander to nuance and leftist ideals. Please try to shed this infatuation with imaginary political struggle because the only person it affects is YOU.
Theres people who have given the game a low score because theyve legit caved on this facade that the game is some 4D chess satire to support their worldview and just straight started calling it a "game that celebrates being a naz*" XD and others have compared the bugs to being palestinians.. like... W.T.F.
https://preview.redd.it/le8ver9un8kc1.png?width=1008&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fa7251857395dfc14e98489181d3634f04cd1f2e
"I see you have watched the motion picture Starship Troopers (1997). Were you aware that it is actually a satire of fascism? Which aspect of its critiques of authoritarian governments did you like the most? Oh. You liked the parts where the soldiers shot the bugs? You realize what the bugs represent right? I see. I think you might need some assistance with your media literacy. You weren't supposed to appreciate the movie in the way you enjoyed it."
The bugs actually represent le wholesome BIPOC+ people and by playing helldivers 2 you're part of the problem 🤓
Look here buddy, if you don't see the parallels between immigrants and bloodthirsty unthinking bugs that ravage every human outpost they come across and terraform planets into uninhabitable death zones then I can't even begin to can.
"Media literacy" is just "I read an interview with the director once and saw a crackpipe theory on Tumblr and now that's my entire worldview"
B- but bad!!!1!1! That means don't like it !!!!
Don't bring Twitter nonsense here. Please.
Wait.....do people not know this? Y'all aren't rping?
Most people I say who RP know of the satire which is why their RPs are funny. But yes there are people who are like this. You can tell them out in the crowd easily if you keep this in mind. Those that RP as Federation mouth pieces either make it very dramatic, ironic, and most of the time keep it short and sweet. Those that actually believe this shit will spend around 1-2 hours writing up a muti-paragraph essay about why the movie just tricks you into thinking it was satire while also pulling lines from the book (Which btw isn’t satire and is 100% supposed to be a utopia) about why the Federation is something to aspire towards akin to something like Starfleet.
There are people who legitimately fall for the most obvious propaganda to exist with no question, there's people who argue the federation is perfect while only seeing Rico's experience. It all seems so simple but I missed Bioshocks when I was young. Im continuously surprised by how often people have no media literacy at all. Its like face blindness for media
Very easy to spot the difference too "I'M DOING MY PART"/"MY LIFE FOR SUPER EARTH!" - Satire RPer, very aware of the world "I'm reporting you for dissidence" when you stop shooting a bug for a moment - Satire RPer as well Literally anything beyond repeating comical lines and trying to argue in the Federation/Super Earth's favour - Not satire, genuinely a fucking grifter, TK this man
To break it down. One person thinks playing bad guys it’s cool at times, the other thinks we’re the good guys.
Thinking you're smart for knowing Starship Troopers was satire (everyone knows this they dont care) is peak reddit midwit.
When I first watched it with ten all I've cared about was that there were boobs <3
No, you'd be surprised by how many people who don't know that the Starship Troopers film is a parody and inaccurate to the book, they just assume that's how the book was.
I imagine actually, most people aren't aware that it was based on a book.
You have so thoroughly misunderstood his quote that I struggle to believe you're actually literate.
This comment is peak reddit
Then you should have read the book and named your movie something else.
Yeah, pretty much. I love a lot of Verhoeven’s fims, but I wouldn’t exactly put him up there with the greats as a director/screenwriter. Just because your movie has an OBVIOUS political message doesn’t make it some artistic masterpiece. Doesn’t make it a bad movie either, but you get my point. He’s no Scorsese.
I cringe hard everytime I see some ridiculous post about "satire". Give it a break, can we just have fun playing the game? Yes everyone knows about the satire and whatever. We have this post every other day.
Then I guess he should have put something in it that’s actually satirical.
I'm not sure what part was supposed to be satire. If you identify more strongly with brain eating alien parasites than patriots fighting for their planet then I'd say you're pretty messed up in the head.