I love that film. I have to give it credit for how ingenious it was. Similar to the film How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, you really have to pay attention to what’s going on, otherwise the humour is likely to go over your head. In fact when I first watched it it never occurred to me that the makers intended it to be satirical (and I have a feeling that most of the others who watched it didn’t know either).
Starship Troopers spoilers
Some ironies that I noticed:
The press baselessly claims that the bugs somehow ‘launched’ meteors at the Earth, when the meteors could have easily just been natural disasters. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Earth has assaulted another planet.
A bug catches one of the troops and severely injures him. The general doesn’t shoot the bug, but instead the victim, to end his suffering, then the bug gets away. A perfect example of how wasteful capitalist militaries can be.
One of the troops somehow concludes that a fellow human sent a distress signal not because they were under assault, but to lay a trap for the troops. Shortly afterwards somebody obliviously sent a distress signal to others, presumably ‘trapping’ them too (by his own logic).
Somebody seriously suggests blowing up the entire bug planet, which is hypocritical given that a meteor’s devastation of Buenos Aires was the excuse for reinvading.
Somebody suggested that human intrusion on the bug planet was exactly why the bugs were so upset with us in the first place. They brush this question off. So the entire conflict could have been avoided had humanity simply minded its own business.
Late in the story there is a graphic scene of the ‘brain bug’ sucking out somebody’s brains, but it isn’t vastly different from a scene earlier in the story when the students were dissecting dead bugs.
This is what a good satire looks like. The only time that it bonks you over the head is when an officer nonchalantly says that his service was what ‘made him the man that he is today’, then the camera immediately shows us his missing legs. Everything else is very subtle.
The press baselessly claims that the bugs somehow ‘launched’ meteors at the Earth, when the meteors could have easily just been natural disasters. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Earth has assaulted another planet.
Been a while since I watched the film but I recall one of the propaganda sequences talking up Earth's ring of fortifications around the moon. The clip even shows a shot from the space station blowing up a space rock.
The Arachnids are never shown with any FTL and their territory is shown as being clear across the galaxy from Earth. The clear implication is that Beunos Ares was an inside job.
The press baselessly claims that the bugs somehow ‘launched’ meteors at the Earth, when the meteors could have easily just been natural disasters. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Earth has assaulted another planet.
It's virtually impossible for the bugs to blow up Buenos Aires with an asteroid It would difficult to achieve even with the tech of Star Wars and other sci-fi settings. You pretty much need to go to WH40k level shenanigans where an alien civilization shoot an asteroid through the warp that materializes right next to Earth.
I love that film. I have to give it credit for how ingenious it was. Similar to the film How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, you really have to pay attention to what’s going on, otherwise the humour is likely to go over your head. In fact when I first watched it it never occurred to me that the makers intended it to be satirical (and I have a feeling that most of the others who watched it didn’t know either).
Starship Troopers spoilers
Some ironies that I noticed:
This is what a good satire looks like. The only time that it bonks you over the head is when an officer nonchalantly says that his service was what ‘made him the man that he is today’, then the camera immediately shows us his missing legs. Everything else is very subtle.
Don't forget right at the end, when Niel Patrick Harris shows up in a full on SS outfit.
Been a while since I watched the film but I recall one of the propaganda sequences talking up Earth's ring of fortifications around the moon. The clip even shows a shot from the space station blowing up a space rock.
The Arachnids are never shown with any FTL and their territory is shown as being clear across the galaxy from Earth. The clear implication is that Beunos Ares was an inside job.
Kind wild how only 4 years later the entire plot of Starship Troopers became reality.
Real US propaganda entirely passed those levels in 2022
It's virtually impossible for the bugs to blow up Buenos Aires with an asteroid It would difficult to achieve even with the tech of Star Wars and other sci-fi settings. You pretty much need to go to WH40k level shenanigans where an alien civilization shoot an asteroid through the warp that materializes right next to Earth.