I'm surprised the author never even mentions the book by Robert Heinlein. Granted the movie tells a different story than the book but they share the similarity in that on the surface they both preach of the virtues and nobility of war but upon closer inspection, we see that they're telling a different story entirely.
"The screenplay, by Robocop writer Edward Neumeier, furnished the old-fashioned science-fiction framework of Robert A. Heinlein’s notoriously militaristic novel with archetypes on loan from teen soaps and young adult-fiction, undermining the self-serious saber-rattling of the source text."
> He lays out an interesting model for democracy, but it depends critically on permanent war.
That's not true in the fiction, and I can't understand how you would claim that it would "really work that way" or any other claim.
In the book, this model of government has existed for a long time, and there has been no war for a long time. So, Heinlein claims that it works without war. But, you know, maybe he's full of shit. (that's devil's advocacy; I'm generally a big fan of RAH.)
But on top of that, why would it depend on war? You're born without a franchise, like in modern democracy. But in modern democracy, you get your franchise simply by waiting 19 years (or some other number). In the book, you get your franchise by agreeing to do Federal Service. You apply, you choose a preferred form of service, you do aptitude testing, and you give up control over your own life for N years. When each term is up, you can either re-enlist, or retire. When you retire, you gain full citizenship! There's no requirement that Federal Service be military (Heinlein has claimed in other writing that he intended for "95%" of service to be non-military, but others have noted that this is less-than-clear in the book-as-written). But even if it was all military... Switzerland has a military, with mandatory civil service, but no war.
That's a pretty interesting point. I don't remember the book well enough to recall astronauts or firefighters getting the vote. I must have projected some later thought on my reading.
In that light, it seems a lot more like the Fifth American Republic (i think that's what they were called) in the Diamond Age. People would be required to show up at a certain place and time and perform some activity. For example, walk in a room, pour poison into a cup, leave the room. Five minutes later, walk back in the room, drink the liquid in the cup. Someone else has the job of emptying the poison and replacing it with water. They never get to see each other, but they build immense trust in their fellow citizens.
In any case, thanks, I thought mechanized infantry veterans who had actually seen combat were the only voters in the Starship Troopers system.
The novel was far more explicit in its commentary. In fact, most of the novel is the protagonist wondering why they're going from planet to planet, destroying other races as they go.
The movie, on the other hand, conceals the irony well enough that it bleeds over into the real world.
I don't know about that. Heinlein seems pretty keen on his notion of citizenship through military service, albeit perhaps as a means of preventing "unnecessary" wars rather than enabling them. Either way, it's a pretty terrible political philosophy.
That aspect of serious advocacy is completely absent from the movie.
Not military, just service. Any kind of public service. As they said in the book, they'll have you count caterpillar hairs if there's nothing else to do--anyone can get franchise.
Serious advocacy of citizenship through military service? One soldier was there just so she should could have children. (Gotta listen during the shower scene.)
The problem with Heinlein's corpus is there are so many characters who can be read as author avatars representing his views that it's hard to tell if any of them should be read that way.
I actually think that all of them should be, but in a nuanced way -- that is, they all represent points of view that Heinlein wanted the reader to think about, but not necessarily points of view that Heinlein held, or wanted the reader to adopt.
Note that in Starship Troopers, the novel, the franchise was restricted to service veterans, not necessarily military. And currently serving troops or other government workers were not eligible to vote.
It's not just a different story; the book has some political points to make which, I think, the movie is trying to directly rebut. Feels a bit tasteless to use the book license for this purpose, to me, but then again I'm a Heinlein fan and I thought Robocop was dumb.
One of the big issues in the book is that patriotism isn't just a rhetorical trick to get naive young boys to volunteer for a meatgrinder (though of course Verhoeven and Neumeier are right, it does that too). If no one stands up for a society, then that society is vulnerable to predators. Sometimes it's foreign invasion, sometimes it's internal predators like corruption and profiteering. I think this call to have a little backbone is relevant in every era. (This position is straightforwardly argued by the mouthpiece character, Dubois.)
And another issue, a little less prominent but often-criticized, is the idea of only giving the franchise to those who earn it. Heinlein later wrote that he wasn't so much advocating this particular plan for the franchise, (e.g. forwarding an alternative: only give the franchise to mothers!), but that he felt that democracy was going in a bad direction (bread, circuses, demagoguery, and holy-war-style partisanship), and that maybe this "franchise-for-all" premise should be revisited.
Why do I think Verhoeven was spitting in Heinlein's face? I probably shouldn't try to paraphrase Heinlein, because he was a complex guy with complex political opinions, but I think he generally favored military strength (though he generally did not favor a strong central government). I'm not as familiar with the Verhoeven oeuvre, but seems to be focused against military-industrial complex (though that's more straightforwardly a Robocop thing), and his anti-war rhetoric is so un-nuanced (it's so slapstick that some people thought it was pro-war) that it's tempting to believe he's anti-all-war (contrasting with people who think the phrase "just war" is meaningful, a group I feel confident includes Heinlein). As I said earlier, I think it's a bit tasteless to try to make a franchise work into a direct attack on the original.
For some contrast: IIRC, Haldeman wrote The Forever War in part as a direct reply to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had lots of direct combat experience, too (as contrasted with Heinlein, who I think never saw combat), which partially informed his views on books like Heinlein's. Personally, I think The Forever War is too good at raising new issues to be seen entirely as a reply to anything, but I understand that was a motivator.
Multiple sources I've come across over the years have claimed that the movie started out as an original property and only became an "adaptation" of Starship Troopers shortly before it went into production, when the studio realized they had an option on Heinlein's book and that it was sorta-kinda similar. (This is much the same thing as what happened to the movie I, Robot, which started out as an unrelated script, I believed called Hardwired.)
My suspicion is that Verhoeven -- like Alex Troyas with I, Robot -- knew full well that their movies had very little to do with the source material and put on a game face in interviews. I've always wondered if the movie might not have done better in its initial run without the studio forcing that connection onto it. A film can't really be both a military dystopia satire and a good adaptation of Starship Troopers, any more than a brutal deconstruction of Objectivism would make a good adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.
"Hey, you're writing an answer to Starship Troopers." I told him don't be silly -- of course the soldiers have powered suits, working in a vacuum, in space. What, they should fight in long underwear?
There is more there about his views on Starship Troopers, among other things.
Thank you so much for that link. Obviously I recalled incorrectly, I thought I'd read Haldeman make that claim. And as you say, it's interesting to read his views on ST.
> I'm surprised the author never even mentions the book by Robert Heinlein. Granted the movie tells a different story than the book but they share the similarity in that on the surface they both preach of the virtues and nobility of war but upon closer inspection, we see that they're telling a different story entirely.
Except that the "we" that see that in the case of the book excludes many of its critics (and, notably, the creators of the movie), and that, in the case of the movie, it doesn't actually take "closer inspection" to see that, since it pretty much hits you over the head with it.
My memories are hazy, but Robocop felt very different. It did not criticize the establishment (i.e. the police) very much. In fact, the main character was a cop who got fatally wounded by "the bad guys" and then was resurrected as a badass robot and delivered sweet payback.
Most of the satirical elements in Robocop were directed at corporations.
Watch it again.. the bad guys are not some random street thugs, it is OCP, a mega corporation that produces the robots and is essentially a government organization (since that world is a "corporatocracy").
More specifically, "the bad guys" and OCP were actually in cahoots. The CEO of OCP has the main villain kill a junior OCP executive after the executive humiliates the CEO.
There is also a subplot where OCP is deliberately working with street gangs to drive up the crime rate and gather public support for demolishing the entirety of old Detroit and building the corporate-owned "Delta City" in its place.
The movie does criticize the establishment, it just stops short of criticizing the actual street cops.
Side note: I'm actually looking forward to the remake. I had strong fears that the reboot would be strictly all-action and contain none of the social commentary. While it looks like the movies will lose its satirical elements, the cynicism will remain. I watched another movie by Jose Padilha recently and I'm hopeful.
>>The movie does criticize the establishment, it just stops short of criticizing the actual street cops.
That is what I meant. Contrast that to Starship Troopers, where the military (the organization the main characters are a part of) is spared no criticism.
The central characters in Robocop were treated empathetically, the scathing social satire and black comedy were not central to the main storyline of heroes and villians, so there was still an engaging film even for those viewers lacking the social awareness needed to appreciate irony.
In Starship Troopers, every character was disposable, hence the gigantic 'whoosh'.
I recommend 'Hollow Man', Verhoeven's last, and largely forgotten Hollywood film, released in 2000. It's even more subversive, and the subversive message is even more subtle. So subtle in fact that I doubt even the film's producers were aware of what was going on. It's either a terrible B-grade hollywood sci-fi thriller, or brilliant black comedy, depending on whether or not you latch on to the subtext.
Another movie in the same vein is "Battleship." It "woooshed" a lot of people, but there are some controvertible clues that it was more than just an "America, fuck yeah!" movie. Most notably the song during the end credits which is Creedence's "Fortunate Son." I'm sure some people won't even be convinced by that fact, but then Reagan used Springsteen's "Born in the USA" during his campaign in 1984, so I guess some people just aren't wired for satire.
For me, the best thing about "Battleship" is how the director convinced the US military to donate the use of all that hardware to a movie with such an anti-military message. The DoD doesn't do that sort of thing lightly, they require script approval and have a strict policy that they won't help with a movie that is at all critical. Slipping that right under their noses like that was a real coup.
I agree with your analysis of Robocop, but I'm not looking forward to the remake at all. There's no need for a remake. There is nothing that feels old about Robocop. Watch it again and it still stands as a great movie altogether. The remake will just put more nonsensical special effects and you can bet there will tons of crappy acting in it.
yes it did critize the police. In Robocop,police officers are just cannon fodder for fabricated street wars set by big business.
In fact corps own the police,the media,the city,politics and gang bangers are hired as "consultants".
The police officers portrayed in the movie are not part of the establishment that exists in the movie.
Especially the several officers at the precinct. They are shown fighting the good fight, fighting for the people, in the face of the impossible conditions coming down from above.
Robocop is even more over the top. One of the first scenes in Robocop is a guy being eviscerated with bullets in a board room meeting and one of the businessmen says "That's life in the big city!".
Starship Troopers has the heroes wearing Nazi uniforms, and it has a scene from in-fiction television, "teaching" children that killing terrestrial insects is what they should do to assist with the war on the bugs.
I don't remember much of Robocop, but how much more satirical can you get than that?
In-movie propoganda reel from Starship Troopers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faFuaYA-daw Note Neil Patrick Harris sharply dressed in a rather SS-officer-esque uniform.
Could one of you folks downvoting me please tell me what you disagree with? I'm really not getting why this was controversial or offensive. Did you think I was badmouthing Robocop, or what?
It's funny the article mentions rifftrax. For their halloween special they did a live performance over night of the living dead. One of the jokes during the movie was the fact that online bloggers will never stop trying to educate the rest of the world about the brilliance of starship troopers.
I watched Starship Troopers a few months back. One of the thing I loved the most about the movie is those TV segment where it just broadcast propaganda and always ends with: "Do you want to know more?"
It remotely felt like when I read 1984 for some reason. Couldn't entirely tell why.
"Roger Ebert, who had praised the “pointed social satire” of Verhoeven’s Robocop, found the film “one-dimensional,” a trivial nothing “pitched at 11-year-old science-fiction fans.”
I was about that age when it came out. Still one of my favorite movies, sci-fi, satire and all. I think I'll sit down and watch it this weekend.
Another unsung layer to this movie is just how well it ties into key influences on Heinlein prior to his writing the novel. The novel itself is heavily influenced by WWII wartime military and popular culture, and roots its social thought experiments in that context. The movie turns this into visual leverage, weaving together elements from WWII era propaganda films and Hollywood's subsequent decades of iconography of that era.
I didn't really see it as satire until I read articles saying it was. I thought it was just a really campy military sci-fi movie. I also don't really see how the movie portrayed the bugs as acting in self-defense. The movie begins with them slinging an asteroid that destroys Buenos Aires.
Red Dawn was a serious drama. It was also pretty ridiculous. Stuff isn't always black-and-white.
Seriously, there's plenty of reasons not to like Red Dawn, but I get tired of people talking like it's just a bunch of rah-rah America-wins jingoism. You may have forgotten that the movie ends with most of the protagonists dead and no end to the war in sight.
Uh, there was a lot of rah-rah and jingoism. You must be exhausted of someone else saying it had a happy ending.
"I was there, serving at the time as senior vice president for production in the administration of Frank Yablans, then-CEO of the company, when Yablans declared in no uncertain terms that he wanted to make the ultimate jingoistic movie and that Al Haig would take him there. “It will be a sure-fire international blockbuster,” Yablans enthused.
...
Even Milius, a stoic, good-natured individual who is more about bluster than action, became alarmed. Wandering into my office one day, he confided his concern that he was being railroaded into what he described as “a flag-waving, jingoistic movie.” Milius said his intent was to make a movie about the “futility of war,” adding, “I have a nervous feeling that Yablans and Haig are jabbering away on their hot line about a different movie.”"
When this first came out, the adverts on TV showed a movie full of action and dripping in coolness, I went to the first day of opening and the audience was dumbstruck about 15 minutes in, it was so 90210-esque. The social satire was brilliant in my opinion.
Starship Troopers 3 is great too, with a lower-budgeted, more aggressive critique of patriotism, nationalism, propaganda and religion. It's also hilarious. Avoid part 2 like the plague.
Not that I had a lot prior to that, for a variety of reasons (Starship Troopers and other "really? you didn't notice that? you caught it in X" moments). But still.
I strongly suspect Ebert and the other critics were in on the joke. They knew if they played it straight and panned the movie, even more unwitting teenagers would pour into the theaters on opening weekend.
(At least, I had no idea the movie was satire until the opening scene started playing. The early internet reaction was mostly nerdrage from Heinlein fans.)
Edit: In retrospect, I was very familiar with Verhoeven's films, but somehow still bought into the hype that he may have 'sold out' until the movie started playing. This movie really had some great marketing/pr.
Wow, what a smart, timely and appropriate comment. However, making a smarter and even more condescending one is too easy. Here:
Folks, consider this for a moment: the movie is better than that crappy blog post, the book is better than the movie, it isn't the best book of that author, and that the author, while good, isn't the best the literature can offer.
I have to wonder if the failure of so many people to pick up on the blatant satire in, for example, Starship Troopers and Robocop is due to something akin to Poe's Law as applied to so many other films which were not satirical muddying the waters.
Dirty Harry is, seemingly, not satirical, yet it is every bit as ridiculous as Robocop.
So, you take a famous sci-fi novel, completely change it, then use it's good name to make money and push your own politics. What exactly is misunderstood? You love money, you have a particular agenda, and you fuck over something else to achieve your personal goals. Other people are upset about this. Again: What is misunderstood?
Quite, if you wanted to make a satire then start with a blank slate.
Do not take a known work (of which the audience will have their pre-conceptions if they read it) then eviscerate it for your own satirical needs then act surprised when said audience gets pissed off for the butchery.
In the broad sense, it is satirizing a sort of militaristic/jingoistic mentality. Specifically it does this by satirizing one particular manifestation of this mentality, its source material.
That is the problem though, it doesn't satirize the source material.
It satirizes a strawman of the source material since it cuts out or alters almost every part of the book that does not support the movie's satirical objective.
I think that is what pissed a lot of people off who read the book.
If they wanted to satirize jingoistic mentality they could have done it without butchering the book by starting with a new IP (but then they couldn't have taken advantage of the "Starship Trooper" title.)
I love, love this film. I remember being a bit disappointed by it when it first came out because of how different it was from the book. But after Sept. 11, one of the cheap cable channels, either TBS or TNN, put it on constant rotation...I don't know if they were in on the joke! but after the fifth or so viewing of it, and while the whole War on Terror was emotionally raw...I finally saw the brilliance in SS
Verhoven's other work is brilliant too, but SS is one of my most treasured DVDs
The movie had some satirical elements, but regardless, it was mostly just crap. This is just revisionist hipsterism, just like the script writer of Far Cry 3 claiming it was all satire of "tropes" after it caught some flak.
This movie isn't misunderstood or clever at all. It was originally exactly as dumb as people think it is (working title: "Bug Hunt On Outpost Nine), but the studio realized they could get the license to Starship Troopers for free.
Verhoeven didn't even read Starship Troopers-- he skimmed a few chapters, decided it was depressing and that Heinlein was a fascist, and made the movie a parody of the book, and a lazy parody at that.
When people call this movie dumb, they're completely right, albeit not for the reasons they may think.
I never read Starship Troopers (actually, never knew it existed) but always enjoyed it as a fun movie. I know, fun and dumb do overlap at certain points, and maybe that's why I liked it. I like one of the comments here describing it as "Ken and Barbie go to outer space" or something like that - sums it up well for me.
I've read the book, and seen the movie. Let me tell you, I can't say that anything more than a skimming of that book is necessary. It's about as one dimensional as sci-fi gets. Worse even than Scott Cards work, and I don't say that lightly. Both Enders Game and Starship Troopers replace that tedious work of actually figuring out what sort of character development you want to be in your story with "young naive guy matures as he learns the value of war."
The movie, for all of its self-aware cheese, has much more to offer.
I'd like to like Starship Troopers more but I can't.
Starship Troopers had a couple smart things to say but said it through a shit movie. Turgid dialog, horrible acting, repugnant characters and general cheesiness. I know the writers wanted to say all these people are idiots but society doesn't go astray because everyone is an idiot – you have to show how smart characters are caught in situations that constrain them to be idiots or at least a have few characters that realise the ridiculousness but are overridden or sidelined. You can't just write a bad movie and blame the characters for being stupid.
My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element.
Starship Troopers tries to parody the military machine but it fails because its a terrible military action movie. To be a good parody of the military (and the political and social machine around it), it must also be a good military action film – both levels must work for the film to be good.
I like to give Galaxy Quest as a good example of a film that's both excellent parody and an exemplar of the genre being parodied. It absolutely pillories Star Trek, bad sci-fi writing, unbelievable monsters, magic science, red-shirts, ridiculous sets with no purpose and humanoid aliens-of-the-week but at the same time it has likeable characters, excellent acting, a properly scary villain and has a real sense of "earning" the ultimate victory at the end.
Starship Troopers has none of this and tries to use cheesiness and parody as an excuse for failing to make the movie better. Sorry, I have to evaluate a film based on more than its satirical message.
> My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element.
The obvious counterexample that leaps to mind is Catch-22, which isn't a good war novel at all but is a brilliant antiwar satire.
I agree. The grandparent's rule seems to exclude many of the classics of satire.
Consider Voltaire's Candide. Taken at face value, its genre is somewhere between "young man's growth story" and "colony-era adventure novel". Is it a good example of high-quality writing in those genres? Certainly not.
I don't understand this comment. What's "bad" about the movie? I think it works very well. Of course the characters say cheesy things sometimes, they're brainwashed kids acting macho. I always found the action compelling and the acting is good - it's a very well made movie, as you'd expect.
I think you're missing some sort of point here. None of the points in your comment hit home for me at all. Galaxy Quest is a baffling comparison to make and is not in the same league at all.
Edit: You do realise there's a difference between parody and satire, right? GQ is the former, ST is the latter.
I think they purposely show the protagonists serving in forces and promotional videos as too cheesy. That's the whole idea. We are over-glorifying violence. In the movies, they dumb down the bugs. In real life we dumb down human beings. There is a scene where kids are squashing roaches commenting 'everyone is doing their bit'. Ah hate hate everywhere?
Well it has the brainy colonel Carl Jenkins, to show how smart people are can be oblivious of their society failings and participate to the "massacre". Also, there is little point insisting on this part given the recent history (nazism, war agains terrorism, etc).
>Star Trek, bad sci-fi writing, unbelievable monsters, magic science, red-shirts, ridiculous sets with no purpose and humanoid aliens-of-the-week
as they say, can't see a forest for the trees :)
Relax, man, you don't like it, obviously. Tastes are different. Galaxy Quest is a nice funny movie, Starship Troopers is a brilliant masterpiece. Kandinsky's black square is just a square a child can paint (i think i drew a lot of black squares among everything else while dreaming at classes in school).
I love Verhoeven and the long running joke he played at the expense of Hollywood (mostly with Starship Troopers, Robocop, Basic Instinct and Showgirls - Flesh + Blood is great but not as sarcastic as his later american movies).
Starship Trooper, the novel, is hilarious on its own, with its hawkishness and interesting political views (it's less creepy than Ender's Game in that aspect though). But Heinlein is a much better writer than Card and Stranger in a Strange land makes up for the juvenile tripe he wrote earlier. I guess Vietnam had to happen for some people to reflect on the Rah-rah-rah kind of military Sci-Fi.
(I know there's a cult of Heinlein on HN - I've always wondered if there was an intersection with the Cult of Rand and the Cult of Card)
Edit: as a thought experiment, it would be interesting (as in "depressing") to imagine the exact opposite: an adaptation of Old Man's War by the current Hollywood industry.
I've never understood the praise for Old Man's War; I read it, and it felt like a Heinlein tribute act, with no creativity or originality, and saying nothing that Heinlein and his contemporaries hadn't already said. Did I miss the point?
Old Man's War is an ironical counterpoint to Starship Troopers (something that becomes more blatant in the later novels). It's a bit like Hadelman's Forever War mixed with slapstick. It's no masterpiece, but the humor makes it a great read.
I mean, I read it all the way through, but yeah, there didn't seem to be anything that wasn't in The Forever War. Did it really top the Locus poll just because of slapstick humour? shakes head
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 218 ms ] threadHe lays out an interesting model for democracy, but it depends critically on permanent war.
It has been a long time since i read the book, but i think the author gives it a fair shake. Nothing really screams unfair representation to me.
That's not true in the fiction, and I can't understand how you would claim that it would "really work that way" or any other claim.
In the book, this model of government has existed for a long time, and there has been no war for a long time. So, Heinlein claims that it works without war. But, you know, maybe he's full of shit. (that's devil's advocacy; I'm generally a big fan of RAH.)
But on top of that, why would it depend on war? You're born without a franchise, like in modern democracy. But in modern democracy, you get your franchise simply by waiting 19 years (or some other number). In the book, you get your franchise by agreeing to do Federal Service. You apply, you choose a preferred form of service, you do aptitude testing, and you give up control over your own life for N years. When each term is up, you can either re-enlist, or retire. When you retire, you gain full citizenship! There's no requirement that Federal Service be military (Heinlein has claimed in other writing that he intended for "95%" of service to be non-military, but others have noted that this is less-than-clear in the book-as-written). But even if it was all military... Switzerland has a military, with mandatory civil service, but no war.
In that light, it seems a lot more like the Fifth American Republic (i think that's what they were called) in the Diamond Age. People would be required to show up at a certain place and time and perform some activity. For example, walk in a room, pour poison into a cup, leave the room. Five minutes later, walk back in the room, drink the liquid in the cup. Someone else has the job of emptying the poison and replacing it with water. They never get to see each other, but they build immense trust in their fellow citizens.
In any case, thanks, I thought mechanized infantry veterans who had actually seen combat were the only voters in the Starship Troopers system.
The movie, on the other hand, conceals the irony well enough that it bleeds over into the real world.
The book is a good read.
That aspect of serious advocacy is completely absent from the movie.
Universal suffrage for free seems an obviously bad idea.
One of the big issues in the book is that patriotism isn't just a rhetorical trick to get naive young boys to volunteer for a meatgrinder (though of course Verhoeven and Neumeier are right, it does that too). If no one stands up for a society, then that society is vulnerable to predators. Sometimes it's foreign invasion, sometimes it's internal predators like corruption and profiteering. I think this call to have a little backbone is relevant in every era. (This position is straightforwardly argued by the mouthpiece character, Dubois.)
And another issue, a little less prominent but often-criticized, is the idea of only giving the franchise to those who earn it. Heinlein later wrote that he wasn't so much advocating this particular plan for the franchise, (e.g. forwarding an alternative: only give the franchise to mothers!), but that he felt that democracy was going in a bad direction (bread, circuses, demagoguery, and holy-war-style partisanship), and that maybe this "franchise-for-all" premise should be revisited.
Why do I think Verhoeven was spitting in Heinlein's face? I probably shouldn't try to paraphrase Heinlein, because he was a complex guy with complex political opinions, but I think he generally favored military strength (though he generally did not favor a strong central government). I'm not as familiar with the Verhoeven oeuvre, but seems to be focused against military-industrial complex (though that's more straightforwardly a Robocop thing), and his anti-war rhetoric is so un-nuanced (it's so slapstick that some people thought it was pro-war) that it's tempting to believe he's anti-all-war (contrasting with people who think the phrase "just war" is meaningful, a group I feel confident includes Heinlein). As I said earlier, I think it's a bit tasteless to try to make a franchise work into a direct attack on the original.
For some contrast: IIRC, Haldeman wrote The Forever War in part as a direct reply to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had lots of direct combat experience, too (as contrasted with Heinlein, who I think never saw combat), which partially informed his views on books like Heinlein's. Personally, I think The Forever War is too good at raising new issues to be seen entirely as a reply to anything, but I understand that was a motivator.
My suspicion is that Verhoeven -- like Alex Troyas with I, Robot -- knew full well that their movies had very little to do with the source material and put on a game face in interviews. I've always wondered if the movie might not have done better in its initial run without the studio forcing that connection onto it. A film can't really be both a military dystopia satire and a good adaptation of Starship Troopers, any more than a brutal deconstruction of Objectivism would make a good adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.
Everyone assumes he does, but he denies it. For example, on his blog:
http://joe-haldeman.livejournal.com/51726.html?thread=31758#...
"Hey, you're writing an answer to Starship Troopers." I told him don't be silly -- of course the soldiers have powered suits, working in a vacuum, in space. What, they should fight in long underwear?
There is more there about his views on Starship Troopers, among other things.
Except that the "we" that see that in the case of the book excludes many of its critics (and, notably, the creators of the movie), and that, in the case of the movie, it doesn't actually take "closer inspection" to see that, since it pretty much hits you over the head with it.
Everyone doing it was in on the joke and played for it. At first glance it was Ken & Barbie go to Space War, but then there was sooooo much blood...
Really adds another layer to it.
Most of the satirical elements in Robocop were directed at corporations.
There is also a subplot where OCP is deliberately working with street gangs to drive up the crime rate and gather public support for demolishing the entirety of old Detroit and building the corporate-owned "Delta City" in its place.
The movie does criticize the establishment, it just stops short of criticizing the actual street cops.
Side note: I'm actually looking forward to the remake. I had strong fears that the reboot would be strictly all-action and contain none of the social commentary. While it looks like the movies will lose its satirical elements, the cynicism will remain. I watched another movie by Jose Padilha recently and I'm hopeful.
That is what I meant. Contrast that to Starship Troopers, where the military (the organization the main characters are a part of) is spared no criticism.
In Starship Troopers, every character was disposable, hence the gigantic 'whoosh'.
I recommend 'Hollow Man', Verhoeven's last, and largely forgotten Hollywood film, released in 2000. It's even more subversive, and the subversive message is even more subtle. So subtle in fact that I doubt even the film's producers were aware of what was going on. It's either a terrible B-grade hollywood sci-fi thriller, or brilliant black comedy, depending on whether or not you latch on to the subtext.
For me, the best thing about "Battleship" is how the director convinced the US military to donate the use of all that hardware to a movie with such an anti-military message. The DoD doesn't do that sort of thing lightly, they require script approval and have a strict policy that they won't help with a movie that is at all critical. Slipping that right under their noses like that was a real coup.
Especially the several officers at the precinct. They are shown fighting the good fight, fighting for the people, in the face of the impossible conditions coming down from above.
It's just dripping with satire.
I don't remember much of Robocop, but how much more satirical can you get than that?
I'd say it's a tossup.
Censors didn't like that scene, and they insisted it was cut down, with a shorter amount of time for shooting.
The effect is to turn something almost funny into something chilling and horrific.
Having the ED 209 be unable to tackle stairs is another example of the robot failing.
It remotely felt like when I read 1984 for some reason. Couldn't entirely tell why.
They're terrible movies really, but a nice dose of the ultra-blatant satire.
I was about that age when it came out. Still one of my favorite movies, sci-fi, satire and all. I think I'll sit down and watch it this weekend.
feels like a giant whoosh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
I didn't really see it as satire until I read articles saying it was. I thought it was just a really campy military sci-fi movie. I also don't really see how the movie portrayed the bugs as acting in self-defense. The movie begins with them slinging an asteroid that destroys Buenos Aires.
There's nothing too ridiculous a good portion won't buy.
Seriously, there's plenty of reasons not to like Red Dawn, but I get tired of people talking like it's just a bunch of rah-rah America-wins jingoism. You may have forgotten that the movie ends with most of the protagonists dead and no end to the war in sight.
"I was there, serving at the time as senior vice president for production in the administration of Frank Yablans, then-CEO of the company, when Yablans declared in no uncertain terms that he wanted to make the ultimate jingoistic movie and that Al Haig would take him there. “It will be a sure-fire international blockbuster,” Yablans enthused. ... Even Milius, a stoic, good-natured individual who is more about bluster than action, became alarmed. Wandering into my office one day, he confided his concern that he was being railroaded into what he described as “a flag-waving, jingoistic movie.” Milius said his intent was to make a movie about the “futility of war,” adding, “I have a nervous feeling that Yablans and Haig are jabbering away on their hot line about a different movie.”"
http://variety.com/1997/voices/columns/red-dawn-shooting-it-...
I just lost some respect for Roger Ebert. I thought he was more perceptive than that.
Not that I had a lot prior to that, for a variety of reasons (Starship Troopers and other "really? you didn't notice that? you caught it in X" moments). But still.
(At least, I had no idea the movie was satire until the opening scene started playing. The early internet reaction was mostly nerdrage from Heinlein fans.)
Edit: In retrospect, I was very familiar with Verhoeven's films, but somehow still bought into the hype that he may have 'sold out' until the movie started playing. This movie really had some great marketing/pr.
Folks, consider this for a moment: the movie is better than that crappy blog post, the book is better than the movie, it isn't the best book of that author, and that the author, while good, isn't the best the literature can offer.
Why waste time discussing the blog post?
Dirty Harry is, seemingly, not satirical, yet it is every bit as ridiculous as Robocop.
Do not take a known work (of which the audience will have their pre-conceptions if they read it) then eviscerate it for your own satirical needs then act surprised when said audience gets pissed off for the butchery.
It satirizes a strawman of the source material since it cuts out or alters almost every part of the book that does not support the movie's satirical objective.
I think that is what pissed a lot of people off who read the book.
If they wanted to satirize jingoistic mentality they could have done it without butchering the book by starting with a new IP (but then they couldn't have taken advantage of the "Starship Trooper" title.)
Verhoven's other work is brilliant too, but SS is one of my most treasured DVDs
Verhoeven didn't even read Starship Troopers-- he skimmed a few chapters, decided it was depressing and that Heinlein was a fascist, and made the movie a parody of the book, and a lazy parody at that.
When people call this movie dumb, they're completely right, albeit not for the reasons they may think.
The movie, for all of its self-aware cheese, has much more to offer.
Starship Troopers had a couple smart things to say but said it through a shit movie. Turgid dialog, horrible acting, repugnant characters and general cheesiness. I know the writers wanted to say all these people are idiots but society doesn't go astray because everyone is an idiot – you have to show how smart characters are caught in situations that constrain them to be idiots or at least a have few characters that realise the ridiculousness but are overridden or sidelined. You can't just write a bad movie and blame the characters for being stupid.
My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element.
Starship Troopers tries to parody the military machine but it fails because its a terrible military action movie. To be a good parody of the military (and the political and social machine around it), it must also be a good military action film – both levels must work for the film to be good.
I like to give Galaxy Quest as a good example of a film that's both excellent parody and an exemplar of the genre being parodied. It absolutely pillories Star Trek, bad sci-fi writing, unbelievable monsters, magic science, red-shirts, ridiculous sets with no purpose and humanoid aliens-of-the-week but at the same time it has likeable characters, excellent acting, a properly scary villain and has a real sense of "earning" the ultimate victory at the end.
Starship Troopers has none of this and tries to use cheesiness and parody as an excuse for failing to make the movie better. Sorry, I have to evaluate a film based on more than its satirical message.
The obvious counterexample that leaps to mind is Catch-22, which isn't a good war novel at all but is a brilliant antiwar satire.
Consider Voltaire's Candide. Taken at face value, its genre is somewhere between "young man's growth story" and "colony-era adventure novel". Is it a good example of high-quality writing in those genres? Certainly not.
I think you're missing some sort of point here. None of the points in your comment hit home for me at all. Galaxy Quest is a baffling comparison to make and is not in the same league at all.
Edit: You do realise there's a difference between parody and satire, right? GQ is the former, ST is the latter.
Sorry, but this is American politics today. In that sense, the movie scored big.
as they say, can't see a forest for the trees :)
Relax, man, you don't like it, obviously. Tastes are different. Galaxy Quest is a nice funny movie, Starship Troopers is a brilliant masterpiece. Kandinsky's black square is just a square a child can paint (i think i drew a lot of black squares among everything else while dreaming at classes in school).
Starship Trooper, the novel, is hilarious on its own, with its hawkishness and interesting political views (it's less creepy than Ender's Game in that aspect though). But Heinlein is a much better writer than Card and Stranger in a Strange land makes up for the juvenile tripe he wrote earlier. I guess Vietnam had to happen for some people to reflect on the Rah-rah-rah kind of military Sci-Fi.
(I know there's a cult of Heinlein on HN - I've always wondered if there was an intersection with the Cult of Rand and the Cult of Card)
Edit: as a thought experiment, it would be interesting (as in "depressing") to imagine the exact opposite: an adaptation of Old Man's War by the current Hollywood industry.