I really liked Starship Troopers as a kid. Pretty sure I said it was my favorite movie for a time. Last year or so, I had the chance to watch it again with some friends, and I was excited because now I could watch it with my Adult Knowledge that it's actually a satire of fascism. I was honestly bored out of my mind, and I wanted to turn it off halfway through.
Because it's not really a typical satire, right? It's an example of a movie that a fascist society would make. This kind of necessarily means that the movie needs to be trite and shallow. Neither the characters nor plot is compelling. Because of this, the action sequences fall flat to me, too.
I watched robocop the day before, and I actually liked it way more than when I was younger. I can also enjoy other satire of fascism like Warhammer 40k which I think is ridiculous enough to be fun.
I don't know, it sucks for the people who genuinely uphold it as a fascist piece of art because... Damn, it's really childish and boring when taken at face value.
Anyone with me on this? I honestly found it disappointing.
Ridley Scott has supposedly been working on trying to make an adaptation of Forever War for the better part of a decade now and as excited as I was when that news first came out it has transformed to complete and comprehensive dread as the years have gone on given how much he is clearly not up to the task of doing it now (which lets be honest he probably never was). If anyone's gonna do it it should probably be Denis Villeneuve but it'll take another 10 years at least with how busy he is on Arrakis. Also: there's some aspects of the book, particularly with its views on homophobia that probably need some tweaking and updating.