Starship Troopers: one of the most misunderstood movies ever

[Idris2002]

Is that your only demand?

Incest for breakfast, incest for lunch, and then a proper dinner.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I was gutted they didn't wear power armour like the book.

They wear the M.I. suits in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder- the one with Jolene Blalock in.

 

[Reno]

..and James Cameron nicked the M.I. suit idea for Aliens, which was strongly influenced by Heinlein's Starship troopers.

 

[kabbes]

I've just remembered Job: A Comedy of Justice. Heinlein the atheist's take on what a divine war might /actually/ be all about. Fucking brilliant.

Seriously, if you are at all into a Sci-Fi, you should read a good half-dozen of his books,

 

[Artaxerxes]

Robocop wasn't predicting anything, it was a satire of what what going on in right then in the 80s with corporations and the privatisation of public services. The intention of Starship Troopers was never to predict anything. It was a satire of totalitarian regimes informed by Verhoeven's experience of growing up in Holland under Nazi occupation. It was projecting the past into the future.

Guess I was trying to say its more along the lines of you can't reboot the franchise or remake them because todays society makes some of the stuff in the film look sensible.

 

[Reno]

Guess I was trying to say its more along the lines of you can't reboot the franchise or remake them because todays society makes some of the stuff in the film look sensible.

I have no idea what you are on about.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I have no idea what you are on about.

tl:dr the new Robocop was fucking shit and flat and wasn't able to use the same satire.

 

[Sea Star]

I loved this film, and very happy to see this thread as I've been going on about how great this film is for years now.

 

[Reno]

tl:dr the new Robocop was fucking shit and flat and wasn't able to use the same satire.

That's only because Hollywood films are more shit now, not because of today's society.

 

[twentythreedom]

Who else genuinely felt just a tiny bit sad and sorry for the alien monster maggot thing at the end when they were being nasty to it and it was scared

 

[Pingu]

..and James Cameron nicked the M.I. suit idea for Aliens, which was strongly influenced by Heinlein's Starship troopers.

rmf. Firefly reused a lot of the uniforms etc from starship troopers

 

[Orang Utan]

Who else genuinely felt just a tiny bit sad and sorry for the alien monster maggot thing at the end when they were being nasty to it and it was scared

The Fanny monster?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've just remembered Job: A Comedy of Justice. Heinlein the atheist's take on what a divine war might /actually/ be all about. Fucking brilliant.

Seriously, if you are at all into a Sci-Fi, you should read a good half-dozen of his books,

I reckon "If This Goes On" is prophecy, and Donald Trump is Nehemiah Scudder.

 

[seventh bullet]

Its amazing, seriously.

edit: Actually its a bit disturbing looking back, you know how Verhoeven basically predicted modern life and corporate shitness back with Robocop? Well he did the same with Starship Troopers and modern jingoism and military fetishism. Guys a fucking seer.

It wasn't a prediction but merely an exaggerated depiction of actually happening shite under Reagan's 1980s neoliberalism. A whole city pretty much bought and a more brutal form of corporate gentrification.

Edit: Reno got there first.

 

[lefteri]

so is this satire too?

 

[MrSki]

so is this satire too?

With a time machine thrown in.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The book is very, very different. And not satire. The film is just one chapter of the book.

It's Heinlein isn't it? All sorts of dodgy shit in his oeuvre.

 

[kabbes]

It's Heinlein isn't it? All sorts of dodgy shit in his oeuvre.

Oh, he was right mental. He was really, really anti-big state, though. So he was also criticising militarism in Starship Troopers. But it isn't satire, it's more direct than that.

I tell you what, though. You can certainly raise many eyebrows at Heinlein, and his views of women are odd, to make a large understatement. But on that score at least, he was writing of future societies in which women were at least fundamentally *equal* to men in terms of abilities, intelligence and status and was doing so in the 1940s and 50s, at a time at which things he wrote about that we now would view as normal would at the time have been scoffed at. He may have been barking up the wrong tree about many things but there are certainly some ways in which he was a genuine social visionary.

 

[Orang Utan]

I tried Stranger In A Strange Land and found it unreadable. I was about 18 though.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I tried Stranger In A Strange Land and found it unreadable. I was about 18 though.

I got about halfway through it. Complete dreck but I was away in France and I had nothing else to read

 

[DotCommunist]

I've just remembered Job: A Comedy of Justice. Heinlein the atheist's take on what a divine war might /actually/ be all about. Fucking brilliant.

Seriously, if you are at all into a Sci-Fi, you should read a good half-dozen of his books,

and then have a good long shower

 

[DotCommunist]

Who else genuinely felt just a tiny bit sad and sorry for the alien monster maggot thing at the end when they were being nasty to it and it was scared

yes. Every time. When they drag it into the light squealing and the psi corp man say 'it's scared'

I always felt for the brain bug there. Shit can't help what it is can it? And they have to make it die yellow.

 

[Reno]

Half way though the film, in a throw away line it's revealed that the humans were the aggressors, having started the war with the bugs, so I think you are supposed to feel a little sorry for them. It's all capped off nicely with Doogie Howser having turned the full Mengele by the end.

 

[DotCommunist]

Half way though the film, in a throw away line it's revealed that the humans were the aggressors, having started the war with the bugs, so I think you are supposed to feel a little sorry for them.

well yes, the hoo-rah of it carries you along-thats why its so effective as a satire on militarism- but the bugs didn't strike first. 'We encroached on their breeding grounds' and so on is old sci fi trope stuff. There's a wicked wicked little short about this, the spider aliens lay eggs that take centuries to hatch. A group of gung ho humans raid a nest site and go home with these mother of pearl shimmering stones. The brood queen muses 'I don't know why they took them, but they took them somewhere warm and there is plenty of food there'

 

[Fruitloop]

I think the Mengele happened eventually in Doogie Howser M.D., but happily the world had stopped watching.

 

[DotCommunist]

The Fanny monster?

the ultimate fanny monster is from Dune, the guild navigator

Oh, he was right mental. He was really, really anti-big state, though. So he was also criticising militarism in Starship Troopers. But it isn't satire, it's more direct than that.

I tell you what, though. You can certainly raise many eyebrows at Heinlein, and his views of women are odd, to make a large understatement. But on that score at least, he was writing of future societies in which women were at least fundamentally *equal* to men in terms of abilities, intelligence and status and was doing so in the 1940s and 50s, at a time at which things he wrote about that we now would view as normal would at the time have been scoffed at. He may have been barking up the wrong tree about many things but there are certainly some ways in which he was a genuine social visionary.

He was an articulate nonce mate. He was a humbert humbert for the modern age. You like all the wrong sci fi.

 

[kabbes]

He was an articulate nonce mate. He was a humbert humbert for the modern age. You like all the wrong sci fi.

I think this is not an accurate description of his weirdness. His books are obsessed wth relationships between 20-something women and 60-something men, not adults and children.

 

[toggle]

I think this is not an accurate description of his weirdness. His books are obsessed wth relationships between 20-something women and 60-something men, not adults and children.

don't forget the incest

 

[kabbes]

don't forget the incest

Oh yeah, and he also fucking loved the polygamy.

But no obvious noncing.

 

[Idris2002]

No obvious noncing in Arthur C. Clarke's books either.