Starship Troopers: Crap Satire or Just a Crap Movie?

[LadyKenobi]

That is the first time I've seen "Starship Troopers."  Given the lack of VOD, it will most assuredly be the last.

WTF, people.  What the f'ing F.

So this came up in previous threads, but I thought it deserved a discussion of its very own:  Did the guys just riff satire, or a truly horrible movie with satiric elements?

I trust Mike Nelson's definition of satire over mine, so I'm going with "truly horrible movie," but I'd be interested in hearing what the rest of you think.

[Rainbow Dash]

The movie certainly has a cult following that I just don't get.   I saw it once years ago and thought it was awful. 

[Pak-Man]

It hits all of the satire notes, but it kinda forgets the part where it says something meaningful. About the only message I could glom from it is, "War isn't as much fun as you might suspect!"

[oinker]

I think the intent was to succeed on both the "cool action movie" and "biting satire" levels simultaneously. It's a hard trick to pull off, and they ended up failing at both.

[Johnny Unusual]

I saw it about a year ago and really enjoyed it.  I think it's very clever in the way it uses the media and basically gets the nature of propaganda, creating a tongue-in-cheek pro-fascist adventure movie (one of the cleverest touches in the New World Order world was the Buenos Aries with no Hispanic people and the very, very white people with Hispanic names.

I think the meaningful thing that this satires "says" (or rather shows) is sort of the mindset of fascism and showing the kind of values a fascist society would display through their art.  This would actually be a great double bill with Inglorious Basterds, since both are about movies where art and the media is used as a blunt instrument of hate to smash in the faces of the enemy... and empathy.

[Darth Macho]

Paul Verhoeven's shtick is to #1: create puerile American sleaze entertainment and then #2: comment on puerile American sleaze culture. He wants to have his tits 'n gore and cluck his European tongue at it too. See also, Robocop; Showgirls; Total Recall.

The problem with this movie is that instead of satirizing ideas or beliefs it satirizes itself. Casting attractive but inexperienced actors and directing them to act vapid--*but not telling the audience ahead of time*--leaves audiences assuming it's a low-quality production instead of a deliberate choice.

If you want to suck on purpose you have to let everyone in on the joke, otherwise people will honestly believe that you suck. Pulling this stunt in the late 1990's was the height of self-destructive folly.

[losingmydignity]

Nabokov once said that parody is a game and satire is a lesson. Starship Troopers was neither. But rifftrax's riff was sublime parody.

[Lemming Howard]

I always thought the main message of this movie was that given the right context the Nazi's master race philosophy is okay if your opponents are giant bugs.

[Raven]

I think the higher concept of this movie is to be a Propaganda movie made by this society for this society.  If you look at it from that perspective, the actors appearances and wooden acting make a little more sense but the point wasn't made clear.  It only gets halfway home. 

[Darth Geek]

I think the satire would have worked better if the action scenes were less goofy fun and more harsh and horrifying. Like them getting all excited before AND after, and the battles are like the Normandy scene in Saving Private Ryan.

[Trekker4747]

It's not... "that bad" of a movie.... Ok yeah it sorta is, but my biggest problem is that it seems like events that span decades is condensed into a few days/weeks.  It seems like Rico graduates secondary school, enlists, go through boot, gets into a battle, gets recruited to another squad and becomes leader of that squad all inside of a few weeks!  When talking about the new enlistees he says to Busey something like, "Buncha kids!" and I'm thinking... Ummmmm Rico? You were standing there just a few weeks ago!

Then there Richards, she goes from highp-school student to pilot trainee to piloting a large starship in the span of time! Even if we assume she already had something like a private pilot''s license it's not like if you have one of those in our world you get to just graduate to flying 747s or F-14s. It takes years to get to that point.  Big-lips there gets there inside of weeks.

Doogie goes from espionage grunt to heading the division inside that span of time.  Things seem to happen way to quickly in this movie!

[TheUnabeefer]

Said it before and I'll say it again: It's a B movie with an A movie's budget.

(and not one of those "we tried to make a bad movie" shit storms like Sharknado... More "The Room" and we claim it's satire after the fact)

[no_springs]

It's a B movie with an A movie's budget.

I once heard it described as a B movie trying to be an A movie pretending to be a B movie.

[KidFlash]

(and not one of those "we tried to make a bad movie" shit storms like Sharknado... More "The Room" and we claim it's satire after the fact)

With Verhoeven's track record, I have no reason to doubt that the satire was always part of the plan. Remember, a large part of the film's key players (him, the writer and the producer) are the ones that brought the phrase 'I'll buy that for a dollar!' into the lexicon.

[Locuststakethesky]

I don't know what all you guys are talking about, it's obviously a brilliant satire of 9/11 and the War in Iraq...

http://www.cracked.com/article_19259_6-mind-blowing-ways-starship-troopers-predicted-future.html