Fun fact: the "helmet-off" cadet who got killed during training & the female cadet who accidentally shot him are married in real life. They met on set & have been together for 25 years.
17:35 That's one of the gags in the film. Earlier in the film, Neil Patrick Harris' character is shown in propaganda detailing the fastest way to kill a bug. It's an easy kill shot. None of the Troopers ever aim for it. They all waste ammo. None of them use their sights. The director did this on purpose for the whole gag of it.
@@spikedpsycho2383 The whole point of shooting drills is that you teach your body to aim as a reflex. The brain simplifies repeated actions, like how you don't have to consider the exact way to move your arm to switch on a light in a room you're familiar with. That means you don't have to think about where to aim, you just think _to_ aim.
@@CruelestChris the whole point of this mockery...is infantry go in with infantry weapons. Totally inadequate to defeat the enemy bugs. The powered armor was eschewed in the movie. Still....they have - No tanks - No infantry fighting vehicles - despite hover transports to move infantry, they have no gunships. - The one weapon suitable for killing bugs, the mini nuke bazooka, they only use once. - the Navy could have bombarded the site before landing. Abd lastly they were training to fight other infantry. None of their infantry training equipped them to handle bugs.
@@spikedpsycho2383 That's because their government doesn't want to win this war, because if they did they'd have to find a new enemy. Their whole society requires they have a war with someone, otherwise there's no need for military service. The hive of stupid vicious ants they can just kick every so often is perfect, they can say whatever they want about it. That's why they suddenly start fighting effectively (full air support) when the idea the bugs might be intelligent comes up. They can attack Klendathu whenever they want, they choose not to.
@@CruelestChris Read the book, Verhoven twisted EVERY part of the book to fit a political narrative. In the book the Federated Government KNEW the Arachnids were intelligent and had colonized dozens of worlds, but after numerous attempts at opening peaceful relations and being ignored the Government used an alien race to negotiate a treaty establishing borders and areas for future colonies. In the book the government actively dissuades service, even in the war. Second this is the first war the Federated Government had ever had, they had peaceful relations with over 40 other space faring races. Earth and its colonies had been at peace for 500 years, but a radical religious group ignored every warning from the Government and illegally colonized a planet belonging to the Arachnids. When they were wiped out the Government apologized to the Arachnids and did nothing else. The war started when the Arachnids began invading other human colonies breaking the treaty. People who served gave up all civil liberties while serving, they were property of the government and the government made it VERY clear that service was horrific and deadly. Anyone could serve unless they were mentally incapable of understanding the oath, so no matter the physical disability or deformity if you volunteered for service the government had to take you. Also it was a crime punishable by death to try to stop someone from serving. Federal Service could include terraforming, scouting for potential mining asteroids, building infrastructure on colonies, working in waste disposal, policing, fire fighting, and the frontier medical corp were all federal service. According to Heinlein 19 out of 20 veterans of federal service had never served in any military capacity. Also only veterans of federal service could vote or hold political office, but were held to a higher standard by law than anyone else. What a normal person would get a fine for a citizen would get executed for. Rico's father in the book proudly proclaimed that not one Rico had served for 100 years. Also citizens were forbidden from acquiring fortunes, or holding onto any serious wealth, they were expected and forced by law to donate everything earned past what was considered necessary for a middle class life. While non citizens could have as much wealth as they desired as long as they paid their taxes. Non citizens had full civil liberties but were not allowed to vote or hold political office but could protest, had full freedom of speech, freedom of religion, could own any property, run any corporation or business, move freely, basically non citizens had more freedoms than even people in liberal democracies have today. Except they could not vote. Notice I said Veterans, anyone still serving or who made a career of service was ineligible to vote, voice any political opinion, support any political cause or candidate, and had no civil liberties at all while serving, they were property for the entirety of their service. The whole idea of the book is that citizens sacrifice for the good of the whole of humanity, and since they did they were allowed to vote and hold political office to determine the laws and guide humanity to a bright peaceful future without war or conflict. Of course Verhoven the racist claims to be anti fascist yet oddly supports very fascist and white supremacist movements and ideals so of course he would twist a book about an egalitarian peace seeking government that only allows those who were willing to give their life for humanity to vote or hold office. Also in the book MI used drop pods and powered armor at all times, each had nuke launchers on their rifles, and their rifles easily destroyed an arachnid, issue was power and ammunition ran out before the bugs did. The Bugs also used advanced tactics and strategy, were feared by all other sentient races in the galaxy because they were expansionistic and had only one race they would trade with. All of that would have ruined Verhoven's political agenda and narrative while making the movie. He went out of his way to mock the book the ideas in the book and did what so many brain dead idiots do today and call something fascism that opposes their political agenda.
Denise Richards even said later in interviews that she hated her performance in this movie. I suspect it was a result of Verehoeven directing her to act that way on purpose, as he clearly wanted the young actors to have a soap opera-ish way about them. All part of the satire.
Want something else you can't unsee Watch Star Wars ep4 again, pay VERY close attention to Darth Vader when he meets Leia for the first time, how he moves and stands You can hate me for it later ;)
I met Casper Van Dien at the Calgary Expo a few years ago. He was a super funny, super nice guy. We took a picture together and rather than invade his personal space I kinda went back to back with my arms crossed. He smiled and "Oh? Are we doing this?" and did the same thing, laughing the whole time. Totally cool guy. I told him he looked great and he seemed genuinely pleased. My girlfriend more or less gushed over him and he was super cool about that too. He did a panel with Dyna Meyer and they clearly had a blast.
I was at that panel, they said there was a lot of competition on set and then they challenged each other, who could do 10 push ups fastest. They looked like they were still friends and had a great time hanging out and answering questions.
If you haven't seen 'District 9' I think you'd love that one. Alien invasion with social commentary and great make up and bug effects. Great reaction, of course!
@@turtlemop8712 - I know Cinema Rules just reacted to it earlier this week, so that’s why it’s fresh in my mind, but it definitely hasn’t been covered by almost any of my fav reaction channels, like CineBinge, obviously, and Simone & George would really love it, I think.
@@alanwake5696 Step one towards that goal is to stop using the word "female". It was already a kinda weird word to use when we have both "woman" and "girl" to choose from, but thanks to incels a lot of women find it a red flag these days.
@@korganrocks3995 it was tongue in cheek self deprecating humor. And the female thing comes from those of us who were in the military. I appreciate the sentiment, but not interested in taking any advice from a faceless name on the internet.
If you'd like to see something similar to a sci-fi satire like this one, I recommend "Demolition Man" with Sylvester Stallone. It's definitely not as dark as Verhoeven's work, but it's funny and generally a lot of fun.
@@adamskeans2515 Oh my God yes I am constantly watching things that happen and am all like "DEMOLITION MAN WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PARODY DYSTOPIA NOT AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL!"
The commitment and complete absence of irony with which Ironsides delivers the line "The sucked his brains out." is one of my favorite moments in all of cinema.
@@bumfricker2487 Unfortunately, people back then didn't understand that it was all a satire. People took it seriously and didn't like it because of that.
Did you notice that the biology teacher was Blanche from The Golden Girls? The officer uniform design was partly based on Verhoeven's choice, having been a child in The Netherlands during WWII, combined with what one of the production designers said at the time, "If you're looking for sexy uniforms, you gotta go with the Third Reich."
In 1981 Ironside was in a film called "Scanners" where he played a telepath who was able to make people's head explode. He had a long career before and after this movie and has often been required to act out ridiculous scenes. A true professional actor.
All the actors 100% acted the hell out of this movie. Hands down my favorite part was the mom absolutely losing her mind with glee over the group of kids stepping on bugs.
Casper Van Dien was cast in the lead by Verhoeven speciffically because of his looks. He looked exactly like an image from a German WW2 recruitment poster.
@68K Me too but Germans were unrealistic with their propaganda. Look up their cloning program, it is not actual cloning as we know it today but they brainwashed girls and guys to create the perfect race, creepy AF.
Look at him at 3:10 ... he is a bit too tanned and his hair could be lighter, but in all other aspects he fits the bill. Maybe he's an "americanized" version of that propaganda poster Übermensch. BTW, I once knew a guy whose father was the result of that Nazi breeding project. It kinda worked, his father was this insanely tall muscular blonde dude, and the guy looked a lot like his father. Not that I'd call it a smart idea or good or moral in any way, but the result certainly looked a lot like the Nazis had imagined...
If I'm not mistaken, he has said since that he hired the young cast specifically on their looks and 'poor' performances. He hired attractive actors with not great acting abilities intentionally to make it seem cheesy and trashy in contrast to the OTT violence and horror
I think you're the first reactors I've seen that noticed that the terms of Federal Service are for a minimum term and then it's the _military_ and not the volunteer who gets to decide if they can leave or not. Also, yes, during the training part of the movie they're not a war with the bugs (they just study them in high-school biology the way we might do mice or frogs), they only start officially fighting the bugs after the meteor - which raises the interesting question of who the human shaped targets with human style weapons they're using for target practice are supposed to represent.
Well if we are assuming that the movie universe in somewhat inline with the book they fight other human militants, rebels etc etc. But more interestingly another alien race they call "Skinnies". They were featured in the animated show Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles.
@@moonoracle115 This movie has nothing to do with the books, considering Verhoeven hated the book. If anything it's a satire of the book. The implications are likely that, before the bugs, Humans were fighting other Humans. I think we can assume that Earth is now just 1 large fascist government, so clearly there were no more Humans to conquer. Now their wars have to be waged amongst the stars and will never end.
It's a very unfaithful adaptation of the book, and yet Paul Verhoeven somehow managed to make it into its own thing: an incredible satire and commentary on fascist, militarized societies. The constant use of media as propaganda, the lack of privacy, the public punishments and executions, the ridiculous incompetence and inefficiencies of training your troops by playing laser tag against teammates and cardboard cutouts when the enemy is nothing like that in reality. Doesn't hurt that Basil Poledouris made such an incredible score to go along with it. Thanks for the reaction you two!
The writers actually manage to sneak in quite a lot of the world building into the movie early on, even if Voerhoven frames it differently. And I won't crap on the laser tag training for force on force training, as the bugs weren't their active enemy yet, and that's something current day militaries do, with MILES systems. The whole jungle gym format of the military base is kinda stupid though.
Also it's pretty interesting that this 'fascist' society as presented in this movie is a multiracial gender inclusive one, that has an all volunteer military, and despite the propaganda not only has live coverage of a military operation, but allows debate on the topic of the war and alternative opinions to be aired, but when the initial disaster of the start of war happens they dont downplay it or try to hide it but allow the press to fully show the extent of the failure, and sack the person in charge. These are not the actions that were done by the most well known real life fascist government.
There was also an animated series that was like a blend of the series and the book and included a TON of stuff the movie left out like an entire other alien race and power armor, mechs, and jet packs.
I wouldn't say that is unrealistic. I grew up in the 80s in Glendale Arizona the public humiliation and lack of privacy was very real to me that struck a chord. Glad I grew up in an awesome family and had good friends or I would be a suicide statistic. Kids were especially cruel here but we learned street smarts being from a multi-ethnic area.
@@MandoWookie You write _"it's pretty interesting that this 'fascist' society as presented in this movie is […] that has an all volunteer military"_ I would argue, if you want a fascist society that rules for decades, you better take care, that the children of the rich folks doesn't die in the wars. And pretending there is an open debate is also necessary to keep the people in line. You also write about the 'multiracial' thing. Fascists only need enemies, they don't care what defines them. If there are aliens, then aliens are "the others". If there aren't aliens then idk the irish/italians/jews/trans/etc. are "the others". The only constant is that there is an "Us" vs a "Them". So i don't think, that the depiction of fascism is in any meaningfull way different then the ones we had and have in human society.
I saw this in theaters back in '97, it was made even better because there were some very drunk marines there who were cheering and randomly screaming, "Go Marines!" or "Go Crickets!". This also has another fantastic soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.
I saw this in the cinema and when the guy gets his head blown off in the training accident I realized this wasn't a star trek or star wars type movie. The effects still look great for a 1997 film.
I saw it in the cinema too, multiple times. As for the star trek comparison, it is actually the anti-star trek. Check out the review and analysis on Red Letter Media.
@@inarar5334 Found it weird when hearing that some people couldnt identify this as satirical of authoritarian military goverments. I always thought it is so obvious that its impossible to miss.
@@Blackstaralpha same, mainly because nobody misses it in Robocop and they have nearly identical tones. They both even use newscast interstitials to drive home the point, not to mention very similar scores.
the very notion of launching meteorites across the galaxy is ludicrous. A testament of how easily media can convince an audience of scientific lunacy. the bugs may not be peaceful and probably not interested in co existence, but they did not instigate this war
The book had a lot of messages about being a citizen, why wars are fought, and how the Veteran Citizen government in the book and the movie came about, but Johnny Rico's story was mostly about Heinlein's views on what a citizen of a nation should be.
@@jacksmith-vs4ct Heinlein was not parodying anything, he was all serious about the militant fascist society being “the best”. It was Verhoeven who made it into a fascist critical parody in the movie, it was also a critique of US Hooray-patriotism and foreign policy in the Middle East (Gulf wars).
@@n3rdy11 I'd quibble that it's not strictly fascist. Democracy-for-veterans, along with a brutal penal system and militarism. Looks despotic, but I suppose it's Heinlein's conceit that such a system would actually have broad public support (including from the civilians - even if they can't vote, the system would either require their acquiescence or their brutal suppression). As much as I wouldn't want to limit the franchise to veterans, I question whether such a society would be that militaristic. US militarism seems to depend on the limited political influence of veterans, and faith that conscription is never going to be enforced again. [Actually, I guess what's being pilloried here is the actual system, and the public political consciousness that supports it. And Verhoeven has called it "fascism," but I think he uses the term loosely. Still, respect for his perspective, since he actually lived under Nazi occupation as a child in the Netherlands]
@@n3rdy11 That is not true at all. If Heinlein "was all serious about the militant fascist society being 'the best'" then why did he run for California State Assembly as a liberal Democrat? Why did so many of his books feature protagonists from hedonistic anarchical or libertarian societies? Why did his political nonfiction book "Take Back Your Government!" emphasize grassroots movements to bring the voice of the people into government? People who dismiss Heinlein as a fascist are really ignoring his entire life in favor of their misinterpretation of one book.
The first time I saw it I thought the insect aliens looked just like the hydralisks from SC. On another note the aliens from Tiberium Wars reminded me a lot of War of the worlds remake.
Its more the novel this is based on inspired Warhammer 40k, starcraft was created by Blizzard after the failed to get a license to make a Warhammer 40k RTS game. In the novel Starship Troopers the MI wear power armor and a dropped into battle in drop pods. The Bugs(and the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise) inspired the Warhammer tyranids which are the inspiration for the Zerg
The boot camp stuff was 1 year before the initial "Planetary Defenses are better than ever!" scene. The asteroid hitting Buenos Aires was pretty much Pearl Harbor 2.0 for Humanity. That's why a year later the fleet is mobilized, the defenses are beefed up, etc.
In the book, the mobile infantry wears massive mech suits, so it makes a bit more sense to have them on the ground instead of just using artillery. But that was way too expensive to make, so they made them wear regular armour instead. We see those suits in one of the sequels though.
@@Klaus-em3ixThank you. There are so many of them now that I can't keep track of what was shown in which. Part of the 25 year long "we must repackage everything as an existing popular IP" craze Hollywood has had.
@@morphman86 Hollywood has always been like that. 25 years ago was just when you started recognizing the pattern. The Wizard of Oz was a reboot of a popular franchise. Gone with the Wind was the biggest IP in the world when the movie was made.
This was literally filmed as a propaganda film. I mean, Starship Troopers would be a movie playing at cinemas in the universe where Starship Troopers takes place.
Because the characters wear Nazi uniforms we're supposed to think their prosperous multicultural meritocracy is the bad guys. That's how dumb Verhoeven is, or how dumb he thinks the audience is.
@@fakecubed Or maybe he trusts the audience to be smart enough to realize that we're probably not seeing the whole picture here? The idea of this entire movie is that it's a propaganda film. We see what appears to be a prosperous multicultral society, but we're only shown the POV of rich people and the military who have an agenda to paint a rosy picture of this militarized authoritarian society. We also see indications that public, corporal punishment is common place...so how are political dissenters treated? For that matter, how are those who are not able bodied and can't serve in the military treated in this alleged meritocracy? The one woman in the shower scene who mentions she joined the military to "get licensed to have babies" strongly hints at eugenics! So is everyone actually prosperous and happy? How do we know that this prosperty we see isn't on the backs of an oppressed underclass? Maybe he trusted his audience to be smart enough to pick up on that? He was kind of clearly kind of naive in that trust!
I love this movie on many levels - it's a clever social satire disguised as a big dumb effects movie which is brilliant - but one that doesn't get discussed enough is how well the CG holds up. After 25 years I think this movie still looks great.
"clever social satire" Big dumb travesty, imo. I recommend reading the book, which is actually a quality piece of art, and an actual rumination on society, which the moron Verhooven didn't bother to read which is why the movie is a fucking brainless travesty.
No, it's a complete misunderstanding of the book. Militarism doesn't equal fascism. In a fascistic state there is nothing but the state. You wouldn't be allowed to not do military service and no one would thrive as a civilian because there would be no civilians. So the big dumb effects movie only obscures that Paul can't read. Still like the movie though.
@@TheTurinturumbar No, It's a *deliberate satire* of the book. In the movie, it's not really a fascistic state, it's actually rather progressive in a number of ways- but in order to maintain a status quo within said state, there always has to be an enemy to fight against - real, or simply perceived through propaganda. Because war is always profitable. It's clear to me in this that humans are the antagonists, and the bugs are just defending themselves from human colonialism. I also never bought the "bugs firing asteroids across the galaxy" thing that the state was perpetuating - very false flag behaviour. What would the arachnids gain from doing such a thing? - Anyway, it's a fantastic movie with amazing visual effects that stand up incredibly well after all this time, and it is also fun to ponder on its meaning. :)
@@philrob1978 I don't see how that adds up. If it's war for profit they were trying to satirize then painting it as fascism is missing the mark quite badly. Fascism is action communism, not predatory capitalism.
@@TheTurinturumbar That's what I'm saying - it isn't "fascism" in the movie at all - the society portrayed is a potential consequence of modern corporate and militaristic opportunistic greed. This is absolutely a consistent theme with Verhoeven's sci-fi movies Robocop/Total Recall/Starship Troopers. With the latter, what happens when there are no "enemies" left on Earth to allow that gravy train to continue? They look up. Allow that to fester for a century or so and we end up where this movie is.
Props have been very good before this. CGI though is really good for its day. But plenty of movies had been using practical effects for ages And some people had gotten really good at it.
I can really recommend The Expanse as a Show to watch! It's probably the best Sci fi Show around at the moment and one of my favourites. Also you talked about asteroids and I had to mention it
Point of interest. The book was once on the recommended but not required reading list for the military services. Fair to note that the movie and the book have very little in common.
In fairness the political structure of the society in the movie closely follows the book, in particular the fact that national service (which in the book isn't all military, you might serve in something like the Peace Corps or building infrastructure or whatever) is the price of the franchise. Rico's parents are wealthy but they don't have the right to vote. Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in a fit of pique after he saw an ad signed by a lot of prominent scientists calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Heinlein felt that people who had not sacrificed for their society should not have the right to influence its direction. Verhoeven, having lived in a country occupied by actual Nazis, knew where that would lead.
@@localroger Considering how little Nazi's believed in their own suffering and sacrifice for the nation that is kind of ironic. This is the issue of thinking that living through something gives you an understanding of something.
This is one of those rare instances in which I actually _read most of the book_ before seeing the _movie._ The main characters all have the same names and play largely the same roles, but it's _very_ different. I don't remember any point where they actually _deal_ with any bugs.
Such a fun movie, and I'm glad you guys "got it" throughout the film with the humor. Some reactors don't "get it". PS - love your shirt Simone! PPS - yours too George!
Oh wow! I was watching the video and thinking the exact same thing. So I'm not the only one who's had that impression from other reactions about this movie, huh? Thank you for that, makes me feel better. On a day when I happened to need it to no less. Had a great time watching it with you all. Thanks.
I gotta say, I love your SquareSpace advert! Stylistically appropriate for this movie, too! The only way it could be better is if you'd said "Would you like to know more?" at the end 😉 Anyway, the movie... yeah, there's a sliiiiiiight subtext going on! When the movie was released, most critics took the film at face value and thought it was celebrating fascism, completely missing the fact that pretty much everything in the movie is deliberate, from the fascisty uniforms to the stupidly attractive cast members. I mean, of course they all look like they'd just stepped off the set of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place (which was actually true for some of them!); this is propaganda, so naturally the heroes are gorgeous in a vacant sort of way! I guess the critics failed to notice that most of the adults are maimed in horrible ways... which just goes to show that even when the satire is as obvious as this, some people just aren't going to get the joke. As far as I know, the original script was much more a generic soldiers vs alien bugs story that was intended to show off Phil Tippett's creature FX talents. However, when the budget was going to be so high, the studio decided that they needed a recognisable property to help sell the film so they optioned Starship Troopers. Similarities between book and film are scarce, though. While some of the character names and situations were retained, the political stance is poles apart. Indeed, Verhoeven never even finished reading the novel before he made the film, as it was so far away from his own political views. He chose instead to make the story more of an overt satire on militarism and propaganda, drawing on his own childhood experiences of living in Nazi-occupied Holland... which makes the accusations of the movie glorifying fascism all the more ironic! Perhaps the biggest change, though, was the fact that in the book the troopers all wear power-armour; in fact, it can probably be said that Starship Troopers was the source of all sci-fi mech-suits, so you can imagine how fans of the book felt when they found out that the film has dropped their favourite element! Sadly though, the budget wouldn't cover swarms of bugs AND mech-suited troops, so the titular troopers essentially became hilariously ill-equipped WWII ground troops. But even without power armour, they're gonna fight... and they're gonna win! Ooo-ahh!!
One thing that did translate faithfully from the book to the screen was Dizzy's death. In the book, he died on the retrieval boat. In the movie, she died on the retrieval boat. And I think Heinlein would have liked making Dizzy a young woman and Johnny's love interest. He definitely would not have liked some of the other changes.
Paul Verhoeven was clear in his commentary that this was a parody of military mindsets. Interesting because Robert Heinlein's original novel was not like that at all...the bugs were the bad guys and the military was depicted in a good light. If anything, the theme was that society outside the military was in decline, morally. Verhoeven was also surprised that test audiences HATED Carmen Ibañez (Denise Richards's character), as he saw her breakup with Johnny as well-telegraphed and simply a woman choosing her career over a relationship. I was surprised by that as I thought he was trying to make her unlikable.
Never understood the hate for Carmen. She never cheated on her boyfriend and simply chose a career path after HS. She knew a relationship would never work out like that so she broke up with him right away when she realized that.
@@fipse it came across that she was stinging him along. Hence the dear John video breaking up with him. She was waiting until she found out she would make it through flight school.
It's kind of scary how good this movie actually is when one looks beneath the surface. Like Robocop, it's a heart-pounding action film, and yet also simultaneously both funny and satirical, and extremely disturbing and tragic.
Paul Verhoeven has had a lot to say about a lot of things in our modern society, some of the most important ones only becoming relevant, or more relevant, in recent years. It’s interesting because when you look for it and notice what he’s conveying you won’t know how you didn’t get it before. But even more interesting is that even if you ignore the underlying or overt messaging, or even somehow find yourself in disagreement, you can still enjoy his movies on the surface as they are.
You guys seem to have missed the "one year earlier" between the first battle on the planet and the rest of the movie. At the time the asteroid hit, nobody knew about the bugs, nobody was at war, they had no planetary defenses.
pretty sure they did know about the bugs as it was also stated at one point that the asteroid was retaliation for terran expansion or something into the bug territory which they didn't think were that smart at the time.
also the planetary defense system might not have actually worked or even existed. The government of Starship Troopers is extremely incompetent and would always rather patch up public perception with propaganda than fix the underlying issues.
The underlying commentary is director who tried to rebrand a story as just about the opposite of it's initial origin. The troopers are extremely well trained and equipped with the best kit available- like mech suits, the Mobile Infantry are supposed to be one man armies given millions or billions worth of gear per soldier. Also, the society is only lead by those that sacrifice to secure voting or political office, while civilians are unrestricted otherwise; in the book and film, the implication is the two classes get along (after an initial civil war a thousand years ago) and the politicians opt to not screw over the civilians due to be held accountable by veterans who watched comrades give their lives for the federation. So we get the film where we have human mass wave tactics and 20th century Germany commentary over a purely elective and entirely unrestricted means to political office, where, Rico comes from a rich family, Despite not being able to vote. In the end it made for a messy, confused, gory awesome fest of a classic.
I think the issue is that the author of the book actually glorified fascist, authoritarian regimes and hid it under the veneer of a space war story....and the director chose to directly satirize the novel and the author's depiction of the glorious military Terran Federation. IOW, he joked about what Heinlen took seriously.
@@eschatological He did a very poor job of 'directly' satirizing it. He needed to humanize the 'bugs' and/or show actual negative effects of the "Fascism". No inter-human war, no poverty, no protests, no martial law, no scape-goated group/race of people, no resource shortages, no legislation that shows why the exclusive government is bad, a volunteer military, military commanders publically taking responsibility for failures and resigning, etc. There was an idea and a framework, but Paul didn't make it a reality. He made a movie about killing 'bugs' in which a few people wear Nazi-like uniforms.
@@yodieyuh Yeah, I've never understood why people love this movie, tbh. It's campy, but there's better camp. I feel like it gained traction during the brief fascination America had with Denise Richards....and coed showers.
@@yodieyuh The movie is an excellent satire. You simply didn't understand it. No good satire movie explains to you the negative affects of it's subject. A good satire simply gives you the propaganda, and you can pull the negative aspects from it with critical thinking. Not everything needs to be spoon fed to you. The enemies being bugs and not humans is literally what makes it such a good satire. If it were humans, it makes you empathetic. That's the exact opposite reaction that he was looking for in the audience. This is a satire of Fascist propaganda. You're not supposed to connect with the enemy. The enemy is supposed to give you a feeling of disgust. That's literally the whole point. It further deepens the divide between the tribal US vs THEM mentality. The further you can distance yourself from the enemy, the better the satire. It's a propaganda film. You're not supposed to connect with the enemy. It's a tribalism mentality that's being pushed here. The less you can empathize with the enemy, the stronger you build your tribal walls. This is done effectively in this movie. Because it's propaganda, you have to try very very very very hard to empathize with an enemy. That's the whole point. It's supposed to feel like a "utopia". It's a propaganda movie. What propaganda movie talks shit about themselves? That's why it's supposed show only the "good things" about their society. The negative parts are subliminal and therefor much more effective. It's not in your face as you said it should be, because that would make it a lesser of a satire. The movie doesn't need to tell you that having a strong military presence in high school is bad. It just shows it as it is in society. It shouldn't have to tell you it's bad. You simply feel it underneath your skin. The whole televised segments with the people having debates? Yeah, that gives you insight on their society. When they talk about strong values such as strength and power and authority is being better than weak values like empathy and understanding? That's how they are as a society and they don't need to tell you that it's bad, you simply feel unnerved by it naturally. The fact that the soldiers can literally see their own infantry company get cut to shreds in the most violent and upsetting way possible, but be completely fine the next day joking around with each other shows the power of brainwashing that fascism has on their mentality. The movie doesn't tell you it's bad, because you already know it. This is what makes it a great satire. When I first saw the movie, I was 11. I didn't even understand the concept of "satire". But the film didn't need to spoon feed it to me as you suggested it should have. As a 11 year old, at first all I thought was cool soldiers killing bugs. But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized that there was something deeply disturbing about that society, and even though I can find similarities to my own American reality, there was something there that would terrify me deeply if I were to swap places and live in that world. That's why the movie is an excellent satire. It doesn't spoon feed you information on why certain things are bad. It makes you look beyond the propaganda and makes you think critically as it did to me as a 11 year old.
In the Book, Juan (Johnny) Rico was Filipino. And the Mobile Infantry werent cannon-fodder, they were power-armor wearing supersoldiers. Starship troopers is one of the first written examples of power armor in fiction.
Another Paul Verhoeven's movie you should watch is "Black Book", terribly underated movie about spies in the Nazi germany. I'll never get tired of recommending it.
@@stu2729 "Black Book" has a lot more in common with Verhoeven's European movies than his American ones. He said that "Black Book" began as a stack of leftover story elements from his earlier Dutch resistance movie "Soldier of Orange", which is also damn' good.
The book Starship Troopers was a major inspiration for Warhammer 40K. Blizzard wanted to make a Warhammer 40K game, but were unable to license it, so instead they changed some stuff around and made Starcraft instead.
Oh, shit.... this is gonna be GOOD! I know how Simone got squeamish during much tamer movies.... this is gonna be EPIC! =D Edit: Also, I want to recommend the movie Dragonheart.
wow... someone seen/knows-about and recommends dragonheart... I really liked this movie, it has it's flaws, but it's still good before we had 'eragon' movie and also the 'how to train your dragon' movie series, we had dragonheart
@@redmoonbloodmoon3161 I first saw Dragonheart on HBO, and immediately sought it out on DVD. Yes, it does have it's flaws, but I think it's an absolutely amazing movie overall. Plus it shares an actor in common with this movie. I have watched it dozens of times, and it's one of the few movies that actually makes my cold-hearted ass tear up at the end. I am so waiting for one reaction channel to do that movie, and Cinebinge might just be the one.
I am 55. I read this book in the 5th grade. When I saw the preview for this movie, before it showed the title... I leaned over to my wife in the theater and said that I remember an old book similar to this. Aracnids, Space Marines... at the time Starship Troopers popped up on the screen. It was really funny.
Michael Ironside, the actor who played Lt. Radchek, was also in Total Recall. Also, I cannot believe you missed the obvious old joke. When Lt. Radchek said "Fire at will" some smart @$$ always says "Which one is Will."
I always love how Blizz cribbed a ton of stuff from 40k, Aliens, SST, and....Space Battleship Yamato. Ha ha, they just had to get that awesome captain in there. "Battlecruiser operational"
Just a lil bit more, every time I see this film-- I am reminded that nearly the entire supporting cast are stacked with performers with large to extremely large ranges and talent, despite their characters having limited range-- remember Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam, Michael Ironside, Rue McClanahan and Dean Norris…were all this this film.
verhoeven was born just before WW2 really kicked off and remembered seeing plenty of nazi atrocities as a small child in holland - he even made a great film early in his career, soldier of orange, about the dutch resistance - but this is his most blatant (and funny) satire on fascism/militarism. really glad you guys keyed into the humor here, which seems so over the top as to be glaringly obvious, but audiences at the time definitely didn't get it (the movie barely made back its budget) and you still see reactors on youtube taking it as a straight sci-fi action movie.
It's shocking that anyone would take this as a pro fascist movie given Verhoeven's background. And after Robocop he had clearly shown he likes to make satirical movies.
I'm so glad I was informed about the fish tongue bug. I genuinely mean that. It's fascinating and has started me on a journey to seek out all sorts of awful creatures. I am glad I don't live in California. Even though I'm not a fish that bug would still freak me out a little. Anyone heard of the Candiru? It's a tiny parasitic catfish that lives in the Amazon. While it's never been scientifically proven the stories persist that it's attracted to the scent of urine. Once it gets the scent it makes a mad dash up the stream into the urethra. Using the backward facing spikes on it's head it lodges itself in there and happily drinks your blood. Lucky for me I live in Australia where the only dangerous creature is all of them.
I’m so glad you two Get It. Everyone _hated_ this movie when it came out. Fans of the original book hated it because Verhoeven’s unspoken goal was “if you like this book, you’re a wannabe fascist, and I’m going to make sure everyone knows it”; and general audiences hated it because they either wouldn’t or couldn’t process a story whose subtext asked you to side with the gross-looking bugs at the same time its text was telling you to do the opposite.
Lots of sledgehammer political satire in Verhoeven which is what I love. The original is by the famous sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein. The human society has elements of ancient Sparta.
The fact that anyone could watch the scene of kids stomping on cockroaches and still not get it boggles my mind, let alone the blatant nazi uniforms...
I think it have a lot to do about adaptations before 2000, the movie and the book have barelly anything in common. You could say this kind of adaptation was kinda rare back than and lot of people didn't get it, this days we are used to it 😅
@@heptonaut This movie would have likely been boycotted: 2002 was just 1 year after 9/11. The Buenos Aires Meteor, in a film that wasn't recognized as satire, would have likely been considered in terrible taste. Of course, this movie existed before 9/11, so obviously not a reference to that event. It was certainly prescient.
The movie is actually based on the book “Starship Troopers” by famous sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein. The book received some criticism due to the militaristic focus and was even described as fascist by some. Book is really good though and covers quite a bit more than the movie, which is a bit more novel considering the director :)
Yeah, the book is described as fascist by people who don't actually know what fascism is. The book is more libertarian in nature, as was Heinlein himself. (Not a member of the Libertarian Party, but an advocate of libertarian political philosophy.) In the book, military service, i.e. service to the State, is entirely voluntary. In a fascist society everything is in service to the state. “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” - Benito Mussolini I liked that the movie retained enough of Heinlein's political thesis during the classroom scenes to undercut Verhoeven's "the Federation is fascist" message. It's rather hilarious that in arguing against Heinlein Verhoeven got to pick and choose how to present Heinlein's argument and Verhoeven still lost. A libertarian society with a fascist paint job is still a libertarian society.
@@flatebo1 That's just, like, your opinion, man. I'd say Verhoeven clearly won the argument, and we can't both be right. Also, would libertarians really be ok with having their right to procreate restricted? Considering the way they lost their shit about masks and vaccines I doubt it...
@@korganrocks3995 I'm mot sure the "baby license" is an aspect of the book. I don't recall it, anyway. So that may be more of a Verhoeven thing than a Heinlein thing. And no, Verhoeven did not win the argument because Verhoeven clearly understands nothing about fascist governments. Fascist governments do not vote out incompetent political leadership as the Federation does after the disaster on Planet P. Fascist government's do not allow live broadcasting of active military operations. Fascist governments deify their political leadership. To publicly disgrace a failed political leader is to undermine the entire premise of fascism. Fascist governments conceal the failures of their leaders. They displace blame onto patsies. Fascism is all about the subordination of everything to the state. A fascist government would conscript soldiers into tis military. The Federation cannot - because it cannot force a person to become a citizen against his will. Like far too many people who love to label everything they dislike as "fascist" Verhoeven's understanding of it is entirely surface-level. Which is pretty much why he seems to think that using Nazi-inspired uniforms is all he needs to do to make his "war turns people into fascists" argument. Kind of like how the anti-capitalist message of Robocop utterly fails due to Verhoeven's complete failure to understand capitalism.
@@flatebo1 How can you be sure the failed political leader who is publically disgraced is anything but a patsy, while the people who are really in charge avoid all accountability? Modern problems require modern solutions, so fascism in the future might become more subtle than "glorious leader can do no wrong". 😉 That said, ten years ago I would have assumed traditional fascism wouldn't fly today, but this last decade has made it depressingly clear that there are still a lot of people who will flock to it as soon as someone like Trump says the quiet part out loud and gets away with it... Starship Troopers is actually one of the only Heinlein books I haven't read, so I can't speak on the differences between book and film. Thank you for the substantial answer though, that's not something I'm used to seeing. Could you elaborate on Verhoeven's complete failure to understand capitalism, because I don't see anything odd about Robocop in that sense?
@@korganrocks3995 Well, maybe because the Sky Marshall is the elected head of the war effort (and possibly the government - this is somewhat unclear). What evidence do you have, other than your simple presumption, that there *are* other people "really in charge" behind the scenes? There might be , but given the stress the movie and book place upon the citizen accepting personal responsibility for how the state exercises the political power granted to it by the citizen, this might be difficult to pull off, much less sustain. "Modern problems require modern solutions..." There are no "modern problems". There are just the same old problems with a modern paintjob. Humans haven't evolved into some radically different lifeform over the last cople centuries. The problems people face now are the same ones people have dealt with for millennia. Food. Shelter. Family. Security. Liberty. How much to we want and what are we willing to do to get it? "That said, ten years ago I would have assumed traditional fascism wouldn't fly today,..." 36 years ago I took a class on American Utopian Communities. Utopian communities are either secular (most 1960's socialist communes) or religious (like the Amish, Shakers, early Mormons) and either embrace technology (Mennonites) or reject it (again, Amish). But all of them sell the same product - "unconditional" love, acceptance and care for/by community members...so long as you blindly obey the dictates of the community's leaders. Utopian communities control their members in a variety of ways, including financially (you sign over *all* of your worldly possessions to the community/group), intellectually (forbidden books/music/even words as well as mandatory use of new terms, idiosyncratic redefinitions of existing words, mandatory reading, etc.) and socially (members are highly discouraged/forbidden to have any meaningful contact with outsiders, even family). Utopian communities are, in essence, miniature totalitarian states, i.e. mini-fascisms each with their own "Dear Leaders", such as David Koresh or Jim Jones. Any community member who doesn't submit to the group is ejected from the community. Anyone being expelled loses all of his possessions - because they aren't *his" possessions. They belong to the community. He loses his job (because he typically works in a community-owned business or for a business owned by community members). And he loses every social relationship since other community members are forbidden from interacting with him. And he's likely alienated everyone he knew prior to joining the community. So the excommunicant winds up completely broke, alone and often lacking any foundation upon which to start anew. Anyway, after a semester of studying a variety of utopian communities on the last class before finals the professor went around the room asking every student whether they would consider joining a utopian community either permanently or just on a trial basis (utopian communities that accept new members typically put them through a probationary period before acceptance) to see if they'd like it. There were around fifteen students in the class. I was the last one he called upon. I was the only one who said "Never." Every other student was willing to at least give a utopian community a try - if they found one that appealed to their sensibilities. Every one was willing to, in essence, give fascism a shot. I had long wondered just how many people answered dishonestly. Once the first few people said "yes" there is mounting social pressure for every following person to agree with the group consensus. I'd wondered whether the high pro-utopianism rate was simply an effect of selection bias. They all had chosen to take a class about utopian communities, after all, so maybe they were predisposed to view them favorably. The last couple years have pretty clearly shown that there are a vast number of people who actively want someone else to take responsibility for their lives. To tell them what they can and cannot do. To tell them who they can and cannot associate with. To tell them what they can and cannot think about. These people are not conservatives. They are modern leftists/progressives. They are, if not fully committed to fascism, at least very well-disposed towards it. The modern left ostracizes anyone who deviates from the approved ideology. They actively seek to deprive them of jobs, careers, friends, even access to their own property (consider how the Canadian government went after the bank accounts of those protesting government policy). The modern left redefines words, then insists that everyone use and understand them in their "new" meaning - even in historical contexts where that new meaning is wholly inapplicable. The modern progressive left is a utopian cult. It's rainbow-flag fascism. "Could you elaborate on Verhoeven's complete failure to understand capitalism..." Sure. What Verhoeven presents in Robocop is not capitalism. It's a corporatocracy . Capitalism is characterized by the free exchange of goods and services between willing participants. Capitalism is a self-regulating system with little use for government as governmental interference invariably distorts market incentives and thus subverts the goal of capitalism. Capitalism is, in short, democracy applied to economics where every transaction is an election, every dollar is a vote and every vote counts.. Contracting a company, like OCP, to provide a basic government service, like policing, is anathema to capitalism. It involves those wielding political power selling the power of the state to a favored company. Exploiting access to governmental power and patronage like this is the bread and butter of corporatocracy because it is literally "rule by corporations" Which is what OCP is doing.. OCP rules because OCP bought the government.
The biology class bug dissection scene always reminds me of when I was in college taking biology. ... Big frogs... My assignment in partner was also queasy... But I'd been processing animals since I was a little kid...lol. The instructor commented as he watched me "zip, zop," and open the frog..." You've done this before.." "Yeah. Old hat to me." ( I was 50 years old and in first year... Only year...of college. )
Paul Verhoven grew up during the occupation of Netherlands, so the designs were by choice, but this movie is definitely propaganda winning so to speak. At the start Rico isn't sure if violence is the answer, every grown up that served is horribly maimed, in a normal story the main characters might learn to resolve things without violence. But in this movie they're chearing that the bug is afraid, rather than the normal story where they learned to be different from those before, and maybe in that story they'd learn to live with the bugs, but not this one where violence is the answer.
The bug is "afraid". Another great detail: obviously it is terrified, no need to be psychic to know that. I heard the intelligence people just fake being psychic (I mean, cards? Really? Every con artist has to know the lie should be slightly more elaborate, but I guess the simpler, the more effective it is! XD), giving them a psychological advantage over everyone else. It makes a lot of sense once you see the movie like that.
@@leovk5779 No, no, no, you're not getting it. The very fact that it CAN be afraid is the point - its a fucking bug, dude. The Federation are legit unclear if these things are even sentient, ya know? For it to be afraid, it has to understand what is happening. As an example, there's nothing to suggest ants have the capacity to know fear - they're not advanced enough cognitively to espouse emotions like that. But this thing? It *is* afraid. That's why they cheer - they realize they're not just fighting a mindless swarm which will require total genocide to combat, but a foe that is conscious, has a mind, has emotions. And can know fear. Which would you rather be fighting: A mindless swarm that will never ever ever stop and knows no fear, only instinctual programming driving it to expand and consume, or a foe that can and does know terror at your coming?
@Richard Moore Fact is, Vehoven did a terrible job in a sense, because tons of people who watch this come away thinking "damn dude, i'd like to enlist". He tried to do a mocking jab at militant fascistic societies and their propaganda, but in large part all he did was make propaganda for militant fascistic societies lol That said, it illuminates something many viewers don't realize - you have been propagandized to. Look at your wording there Richard - "normal", being the keyword. You have been so utterly consumed by propaganda demonizing this sort an ethos, that you have internalized it as 'abnormal' relative to the media you've seen. Reality check: In nature, violence is regularly the answer to resolving issues. When facing a foe, its better they are afraid than resolute in unconscious instinct. Predators and prey do not learn to live together - they fight to the death, because one cannot survive without the other dying. What I mean to say is, you have been propagandized to and conditioned to perceive reality in a way that is utterly-abnormal, yet, you perceive the normality of naturalistic function as 'abnormal', and you are not alone - that is perhaps the most noteworthy facet of this film as per the many and varied responses that Ive observed.
@@no-xr8wv Maybe that was Verhoeven's point, to show the propaganda does work, if you feel pumped at the end of the film isn't that actually scary? You've been shown horrors of war, with obvious sarcastic tones that its definitely a good idea to sign up, and you still want to go along with it. I find that scary. Luckily its just a harmless film with a federation that doesn't actually exist that you can't sign up for service in.
@@no-xr8wv In addition, the ethos of the federation is "might makes right" and that seems to be something that's not "normal" to teach kids, exactly as you say propaganda, hey? But history shows that its exactly right, history written by the victors, but co-operation also served people very well in history, and for whatever reason co-operation is the only "normal" thing to teach kids.
If you want more Paul Verhoeven you can always do Basic Instinct, that has one of the most popular scenes in the history of movies, Sharon Stone leg cross, but no more great Sci fy unfortunately. And yes this movie is a heavy criticism on popular populist government regimes, humans for sure are the bad guys, even the acting is a parody of 80s and 90s TV and movies, specially stuff like Beverly hills 90210 or Baywatch and action movies.
@@JoeCool7835 It's not terrible, and if you like it that's great, there's a lot of movies that I like and others don't, but in my opinion it just isn't on the same level as the other 3, fast from it actually.
While I love this movie, I do wish they had pulled more from the book - The idea of Mobile Infantry wasn't storm troopers, but the first "space Marine" in powered armor. it was a really cool idea.
Sure was, but for the point Verhoeven is making the infantry need to be meat for the grinder. It would be cool if someone made a more faithful adaptation, but unfortunately the trend in Hollywood seems to be to copy the originial enough to make the remake uninteresting, while changing enough to make it objectively worse than the original! 😆
Movie rifle is essentialy an outer shell/chassis for a Ruger Mini 14 5,56x45 rifle and stockless 12 gauge pump action shotgun, placed below the rifle's barrel. So, it's relatively easy to build a fully functional, live firing Morita, if someone have an urge and money to do so...
You successfully completed the Paul Verhoeven Sci-Fi trilogy! I truly wish he would make at least one more. and yes, humans are the bad guys in EACH of these films. It's incredibly nihilistic and awesome!
Well not really. In the second movie the bugs reveal that yes, they want kill us all because they consider us inferior with our individualism or something like that.
Did the bugs send the Asteroid? how did they do that? we haven't seen any space bugs, they send their spores into space is the only thing we have heard. Also, based where they are in the galaxy, and the info of them shooting an Asteroid at us it would take...billions of years for it to get to us; so the question really is did the Bugs shoot Asteriods at us or is this something humans just taken advantage of? In the book it is not so clear cut. Also the book was published somewhere in the 1960's and is one of the grandfathers of science fiction, it also is first to feature the Hive Mind or Insect alien that we see. other iterations would be Warhammer 40K's Tyranids which came out in the 1960's i believe im not sure on that one, later on Aliens from the 1986 film and Finally the Zerg from Starcraft which is much more recent of 1991.
How does the Stardrive work? The humans can have unexplained FTL equivalent locomotion but bugs who can project plasma out of orbit through natural evolution and have successfully inhabited multiple planets in multiple star systems need some deep explanation? We see, on screen, characters with NO hint of deception trace the asteroid's path from Klendathu system to them and then project a path to Sol space. We heard they use plasma to send spores, we see multiple planets across multiple systems already inhabited, we see bugs who evolved the ability to shoot things in space, we see the asteroid path traced in real time. In real life humans don't have technology to take humans to other planets in our own system, they don't have machines that can instantly rebuild body tissue on a person, and humans can't control creatures through psychic abilities.
Well, in the book, the bugs are decidedly intelligent, use weapons, build factories, all that. It's outright said that the conflict is inevitable, since both species are after the same "real estate" (which is _rare_ ) and their societies are so different that there's little chance of living next to each other without the threat of violence. Those have FTL spaceships, no problem with that. Even then, nobody ever figures out whether the asteroid was in fact launched by the bugs or not - it's not a thing that starts the war, unlike in the movie. In the movie, the bugs are entirely different. They don't really show any technology at all, they just "happen" to have bugs that can shoot into orbit. For all we know, they didn't even spread to those other planets on their own - they might very well be an invasive species that humans (or other aliens) carried there, either on purpose or accidentally. They have no industry, and it doesn't even look like they have any over-ground farms. There's very strong vibes that the asteroid was completely unrelated to the bugs, they just needed a cheap scapegoat (that backfired). And don't forget that in both the book and the movie, humans have FTL and loads of defences around the Earth. In both cases, the reason they don't detect and deal with the asteroid is that it comes from an unexpected direction - which tentatively suggests that it _didn't_ follow a nice path from Klendathu to Earth (as suggested in the movie); in fact, even if you wanted to make such an assault, you wouldn't really launch it through real-space over many lightyears (and no, it wasn't even travelling at near-lightspeed or something - the destruction it caused was pretty tiny, compared to what a space civilization could do with an asteroid _on purpose_ ). _If_ it was an assault, it was most likely of the "nudge an asteroid in the Solar system" kind of operation. But more likely, it just didn't have anything to do with the bugs in the first place.
One of the theories is that the bugs *didn't* send the meteor. Bugs are way the hell over on the other side of the galaxy, it would take FOREVER to reach Earth and how could they possibly be so precise from so far away? The Federation covered up their incompetence of having a lacking detection and defense system against rogue asteroids by blaming the bugs for the attack. It also makes a great excuse to rally the people to start a war that will be costly that higher ups have probably been wanting for years. It is similar to how warhawks blamed the accident that sunk the _USS Maine_ on a Spanish attack or mine in order to help start the Spanish-America War.
If you’re interested in a space movies revolving around such nutty-crazy ideas (like, for example, the space Nazis living on the dark side of the moon), I’d recommend the 2012 sci-fi film Iron Sky. It's quite a bit of fun entertainment.
This movie was loosely base from the 1959 book Starship Troopers is where we get the idea on a "The space marine" style soldiers for the modern movies, games and TV shows from ALIENS to Halo. Fun fact the term Space Marine was around longer than that from the 1930s Sci Fi books Amazing Stories December 1936. The backstory of the Starship Troopers book here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
A good friend working at _Studio ADI_ took me on a tour of the shop when this was in pre-production.¹ I got the see the brainbug. It was not only true to size, but disgustingly gorgeous! *Loved the ad!* 😄 ··•✺•·· ¹ ─ As well as _Alien³_
I always thought they used the meteor as a reason to go to war with the bugs because it seemed impossible to send a meteor from one side of the galaxy to the other without crashing it into a different planet
12:30 “What about the Planetary Defense Systems?” They weren’t built yet. The anti-asteroid cannon shown in the beginning of the movie was from a year later than Johnny graduating and joining the Academy. Only after the Bug asteroid hits Earth does the Federation build fixed defense turrets for Earth. Before that the Federation’s main planetary defense was the Fleet. “Sparta’s walls are its soldiers.” The Bug asteroid was able to get past the Fleet, so the Federation built anti-asteroid cannon on the Moon’s orbital ring to defend Earth from future Bug asteroids.
I loved the movie for what it was :) Since this came out, several movies and series have picked up the military uniforms from this one to use as hand me down props, including the classic, Firefly series :) The Death from Above tatoos take on a different meaning if you read the book and realize what type of troops they really were. :P
Thanks for telling me about the tongue parasite thing, the inclusion of pictures was especially helpful. I'm definitely going to have dreams about that now
My favourite Verhoeven movie and one of my all time favourite movies. It's so cheesy, so funny, soooo violent, the bombardment of stupid clichés and tropes is constant and the satire is so on point. Pure cinematic goodness! And the CGI still holds up pretty darn well I'd say.
One thing that's not very clearly explained in the movie. The bugs clearly don't have any ability to throw asteroids at other planets, much less ones all the way across the galaxy.
Well, it's not clearly explained on purpose: it's playing tricks with the audience, making us root for the bad guys XD An anti-propaganda masterpiece in my opinion.
I never really picked up on the idea that they were sent by humans... though I figured that with his parents they just sometimes "accidentally" let one through to keep rallying people.
That tongue bug you talked about has a pretty good found footage horror film about it called The Bay. But yes, we started the conflict with the bugs by making military outposts on their homeworld unintentionally. It’s basically a satire of the old Star Trek episode where the aliens are fighting us because we made an outpost on their home world, when Kirk finds out he stops fighting and it’s resolved peacefully
Been going through a lot of your old stuff, reliving some classics! Great stuff. Especially appreciate taking a moment to talk about the movie at the end. :)
29:46 You are correct. Verhoeven studied a lot of the old propaganda movies from Nazi Germany for this movie. Its a satire of totalitarianism. The beginning of the film also spoofs with 90`s teen show`s of the time, like Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210.
Actually its not fascist its a harsh but fair meritocracy. In order to get a say in how society is run or to hold a position of governmental power one must show they are willing to work to improve society at large and if it comes down to it be willing to bet their life for it. And they are always looking for a better system for governing themselves they only use the system they currently works because its stable and "It works". In the finished book it was mentioned only 2% of people got their citizenship through military service most got theirs through backbreaking or dangerous volunteer work. Also the movie was originally another movie that was half finished called Bug Hunt at Outpost 9 that they basically slapped the Starship Troopers brand on after reading like 3 pages of the book trying to satirize something they didn't understand in the first place... The amount of disrespect the The director and writers showed to the author in interviews is honestly infuriating as well. Robert A. Heinlein the author of the book is considered by many to be the Tolkien or Lovecraft of Hard Sci-fi worldbuilding.
@@redrick8900 No its more like how the US was originally run tax paying landowners only getting a say. Why should we let those who do nothing but drag us down make decisions that affect the rest of us?
If you're interested in seeing an early Paul Verhoeven film I recommend Soldier of Orange (1977). He was still making movies in The Netherlands then so it's in Dutch with subtitles. It stars Rutger Hauer who got his start with Verhoeven. Not a sci-fi movie (it's a WWII movie) but still very good. And not quite so violent.
This film is the ultimate satire against War and Politics, as director Paul Verhoeven despised the novel and stopped reading it half way through, calling it "boring and dull," as well as learning that it serves as military propaganda. The film received mixed reviews by Critics, and it was a box office disappointment, making $122 million against a $100 million dollar budget, but was nominated for Best Visual Effects, losing to TITANIC, which opened up a a week later in December 1997.
I always found it kinda funny that everybody prides themselves of having "got" this one, and yet they totally miss the point of Showgirls. Funny because they really are two sides of the same coin.
![[소금X, 고추X] 상갓집 다녀온 뒤 상문 걱정!? 초간단 비방법으로 해결하세요!/일산용한점집 [더샤머니즘]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y2PGAXVN8hY/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun fact: the "helmet-off" cadet who got killed during training & the female cadet who accidentally shot him are married in real life. They met on set & have been together for 25 years.
That's nice to know :)
Man willing to forgive (accidental) headshot. Woman willing to love the guy inside the horribly maimed head. A match made in Klendathu! :)
Awesome!
Nice story for the grandkids.
Met granny by headshoting me! :P
"Son, your mother blew my head off. I knew it was love at first, um.....*ahem."
17:35 That's one of the gags in the film. Earlier in the film, Neil Patrick Harris' character is shown in propaganda detailing the fastest way to kill a bug. It's an easy kill shot. None of the Troopers ever aim for it. They all waste ammo. None of them use their sights. The director did this on purpose for the whole gag of it.
aiming in the fog of war...... Vietnam, Iraq
TELLING PEOPLE WHERE to aim on adrenaline
@@spikedpsycho2383
The whole point of shooting drills is that you teach your body to aim as a reflex. The brain simplifies repeated actions, like how you don't have to consider the exact way to move your arm to switch on a light in a room you're familiar with. That means you don't have to think about where to aim, you just think _to_ aim.
@@CruelestChris the whole point of this mockery...is infantry go in with infantry weapons. Totally inadequate to defeat the enemy bugs. The powered armor was eschewed in the movie. Still....they have
- No tanks
- No infantry fighting vehicles
- despite hover transports to move infantry, they have no gunships.
- The one weapon suitable for killing bugs, the mini nuke bazooka, they only use once.
- the Navy could have bombarded the site before landing.
Abd lastly they were training to fight other infantry. None of their infantry training equipped them to handle bugs.
@@spikedpsycho2383
That's because their government doesn't want to win this war, because if they did they'd have to find a new enemy. Their whole society requires they have a war with someone, otherwise there's no need for military service. The hive of stupid vicious ants they can just kick every so often is perfect, they can say whatever they want about it. That's why they suddenly start fighting effectively (full air support) when the idea the bugs might be intelligent comes up. They can attack Klendathu whenever they want, they choose not to.
@@CruelestChris Read the book, Verhoven twisted EVERY part of the book to fit a political narrative.
In the book the Federated Government KNEW the Arachnids were intelligent and had colonized dozens of worlds, but after numerous attempts at opening peaceful relations and being ignored the Government used an alien race to negotiate a treaty establishing borders and areas for future colonies.
In the book the government actively dissuades service, even in the war. Second this is the first war the Federated Government had ever had, they had peaceful relations with over 40 other space faring races. Earth and its colonies had been at peace for 500 years, but a radical religious group ignored every warning from the Government and illegally colonized a planet belonging to the Arachnids. When they were wiped out the Government apologized to the Arachnids and did nothing else. The war started when the Arachnids began invading other human colonies breaking the treaty.
People who served gave up all civil liberties while serving, they were property of the government and the government made it VERY clear that service was horrific and deadly.
Anyone could serve unless they were mentally incapable of understanding the oath, so no matter the physical disability or deformity if you volunteered for service the government had to take you. Also it was a crime punishable by death to try to stop someone from serving.
Federal Service could include terraforming, scouting for potential mining asteroids, building infrastructure on colonies, working in waste disposal, policing, fire fighting, and the frontier medical corp were all federal service. According to Heinlein 19 out of 20 veterans of federal service had never served in any military capacity.
Also only veterans of federal service could vote or hold political office, but were held to a higher standard by law than anyone else. What a normal person would get a fine for a citizen would get executed for. Rico's father in the book proudly proclaimed that not one Rico had served for 100 years. Also citizens were forbidden from acquiring fortunes, or holding onto any serious wealth, they were expected and forced by law to donate everything earned past what was considered necessary for a middle class life. While non citizens could have as much wealth as they desired as long as they paid their taxes. Non citizens had full civil liberties but were not allowed to vote or hold political office but could protest, had full freedom of speech, freedom of religion, could own any property, run any corporation or business, move freely, basically non citizens had more freedoms than even people in liberal democracies have today. Except they could not vote.
Notice I said Veterans, anyone still serving or who made a career of service was ineligible to vote, voice any political opinion, support any political cause or candidate, and had no civil liberties at all while serving, they were property for the entirety of their service.
The whole idea of the book is that citizens sacrifice for the good of the whole of humanity, and since they did they were allowed to vote and hold political office to determine the laws and guide humanity to a bright peaceful future without war or conflict.
Of course Verhoven the racist claims to be anti fascist yet oddly supports very fascist and white supremacist movements and ideals so of course he would twist a book about an egalitarian peace seeking government that only allows those who were willing to give their life for humanity to vote or hold office.
Also in the book MI used drop pods and powered armor at all times, each had nuke launchers on their rifles, and their rifles easily destroyed an arachnid, issue was power and ammunition ran out before the bugs did. The Bugs also used advanced tactics and strategy, were feared by all other sentient races in the galaxy because they were expansionistic and had only one race they would trade with.
All of that would have ruined Verhoven's political agenda and narrative while making the movie. He went out of his way to mock the book the ideas in the book and did what so many brain dead idiots do today and call something fascism that opposes their political agenda.
I"ve watched this movie for years, i never noticed how much she grinned until you guys pointed it out. I can't unsee it.
Denise Richards even said later in interviews that she hated her performance in this movie. I suspect it was a result of Verehoeven directing her to act that way on purpose, as he clearly wanted the young actors to have a soap opera-ish way about them. All part of the satire.
Want something else you can't unsee Watch Star Wars ep4 again, pay VERY close attention to Darth Vader when he meets Leia for the first time, how he moves and stands
You can hate me for it later ;)
I heard that the director was specifically looking for attractive actors who couldn’t really act, to sell the empty, propaganda feeling.
@@user-il9ze9py8c lmao
Let's not blame PV for her bad acting.
I met Casper Van Dien at the Calgary Expo a few years ago. He was a super funny, super nice guy. We took a picture together and rather than invade his personal space I kinda went back to back with my arms crossed. He smiled and "Oh? Are we doing this?" and did the same thing, laughing the whole time. Totally cool guy. I told him he looked great and he seemed genuinely pleased. My girlfriend more or less gushed over him and he was super cool about that too. He did a panel with Dyna Meyer and they clearly had a blast.
I was at that panel, they said there was a lot of competition on set and then they challenged each other, who could do 10 push ups fastest. They looked like they were still friends and had a great time hanging out and answering questions.
If you haven't seen 'District 9' I think you'd love that one. Alien invasion with social commentary and great make up and bug effects. Great reaction, of course!
Yes I’ve been hoping district 9 would start making the rounds on react channels soon
@@turtlemop8712 - I know Cinema Rules just reacted to it earlier this week, so that’s why it’s fresh in my mind, but it definitely hasn’t been covered by almost any of my fav reaction channels, like CineBinge, obviously, and Simone & George would really love it, I think.
Shrimps
Break out the canned cat food!!
@@richardrobbins8067 - haha, good idea!
It's crazy how well the CGI holds up. I put this up there with Jurassic Park for CGI, which is so insane.
Sequels CGI are luke really terrible then you look at this one and im like "what the hell happened?"
@@robfus Budget is what happened. This one was a cinematic release, where as the sequels were all straight to the DVD bargain bin I believe.
Not that much cgi in Jurassic park
@@spelcheakBut the CGI that is there holds up. That's the point.
"They're going to play so much Mario Kart." George actually made me laugh out loud on that one.
It was great! :D
I'm gonna have to use that next time I have a female over (Which may be a long time from now).
Mario Party and Chill?
@@alanwake5696 Step one towards that goal is to stop using the word "female". It was already a kinda weird word to use when we have both "woman" and "girl" to choose from, but thanks to incels a lot of women find it a red flag these days.
@@korganrocks3995 it was tongue in cheek self deprecating humor. And the female thing comes from those of us who were in the military. I appreciate the sentiment, but not interested in taking any advice from a faceless name on the internet.
If you'd like to see something similar to a sci-fi satire like this one, I recommend "Demolition Man" with Sylvester Stallone. It's definitely not as dark as Verhoeven's work, but it's funny and generally a lot of fun.
I second this very much!
Demolition Man would be a good one
and prescient
@@adamskeans2515 Oh my God yes I am constantly watching things that happen and am all like "DEMOLITION MAN WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PARODY DYSTOPIA NOT AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL!"
Oh man, it's sooo good!
Rue McClanahan from the GOLDEN GIRLS as the blind biology teacher is one of the best random casting choices.
@@michaelconnor1542 thank you for being a friend
What about Dougie Houser, as a Psi-cop
The commitment and complete absence of irony with which Ironsides delivers the line "The sucked his brains out." is one of my favorite moments in all of cinema.
Mine is his, "Hold what you've got! "
The quality of the CGI was so good that for quite a long time, Starship Troopers was used as a benchmark for new resolutions and tech for DVD etc
@@ThreadBomb yep, and it cost a fortune and make back very little money
@@bumfricker2487 Unfortunately, people back then didn't understand that it was all a satire. People took it seriously and didn't like it because of that.
Did you notice that the biology teacher was Blanche from The Golden Girls? The officer uniform design was partly based on Verhoeven's choice, having been a child in The Netherlands during WWII, combined with what one of the production designers said at the time, "If you're looking for sexy uniforms, you gotta go with the Third Reich."
23:06 you probably didn’t notice him, but that guy freaking out was Kuato. The guy from Total Recall who had the baby in his stomach
Wasn't Kuato the stomach baby?
He was the brother and host of of Kuato.
“They sucked his brains out”
Ironside saying that line without cracking broke me 😆
In 1981 Ironside was in a film called "Scanners" where he played a telepath who was able to make people's head explode. He had a long career before and after this movie and has often been required to act out ridiculous scenes. A true professional actor.
@@stvdagger8074 He also literally said "suck your brains out" in Scanners.
All the actors 100% acted the hell out of this movie. Hands down my favorite part was the mom absolutely losing her mind with glee over the group of kids stepping on bugs.
Casper Van Dien was cast in the lead by Verhoeven speciffically because of his looks. He looked exactly like an image from a German WW2 recruitment poster.
@68K Me too but Germans were unrealistic with their propaganda. Look up their cloning program, it is not actual cloning as we know it today but they brainwashed girls and guys to create the perfect race, creepy AF.
@@carn9507 Italy has a pretty big range of skin tones. Italians with Piedmontese roots are far more fair-skinned than people from Sicily
Look at him at 3:10 ... he is a bit too tanned and his hair could be lighter, but in all other aspects he fits the bill. Maybe he's an "americanized" version of that propaganda poster Übermensch.
BTW, I once knew a guy whose father was the result of that Nazi breeding project. It kinda worked, his father was this insanely tall muscular blonde dude, and the guy looked a lot like his father.
Not that I'd call it a smart idea or good or moral in any way, but the result certainly looked a lot like the Nazis had imagined...
If I'm not mistaken, he has said since that he hired the young cast specifically on their looks and 'poor' performances. He hired attractive actors with not great acting abilities intentionally to make it seem cheesy and trashy in contrast to the OTT violence and horror
@68K to me he look more north West Europa... More precisely belgium, netherland and Luxembourg...
I think you're the first reactors I've seen that noticed that the terms of Federal Service are for a minimum term and then it's the _military_ and not the volunteer who gets to decide if they can leave or not. Also, yes, during the training part of the movie they're not a war with the bugs (they just study them in high-school biology the way we might do mice or frogs), they only start officially fighting the bugs after the meteor - which raises the interesting question of who the human shaped targets with human style weapons they're using for target practice are supposed to represent.
Likely insurgents or dissidents who don't agree with the government.
And why did the Terran Federation have a huge, armed to the teeth Space Battle Fleet BEFORE they even knew about Arachnids?
Well if we are assuming that the movie universe in somewhat inline with the book they fight other human militants, rebels etc etc. But more interestingly another alien race they call "Skinnies". They were featured in the animated show Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles.
@@kallemattiwaris2422 Because it would be insane to wait until something is threatening you to start building a military.
@@moonoracle115 This movie has nothing to do with the books, considering Verhoeven hated the book. If anything it's a satire of the book. The implications are likely that, before the bugs, Humans were fighting other Humans. I think we can assume that Earth is now just 1 large fascist government, so clearly there were no more Humans to conquer. Now their wars have to be waged amongst the stars and will never end.
It's a very unfaithful adaptation of the book, and yet Paul Verhoeven somehow managed to make it into its own thing: an incredible satire and commentary on fascist, militarized societies. The constant use of media as propaganda, the lack of privacy, the public punishments and executions, the ridiculous incompetence and inefficiencies of training your troops by playing laser tag against teammates and cardboard cutouts when the enemy is nothing like that in reality. Doesn't hurt that Basil Poledouris made such an incredible score to go along with it. Thanks for the reaction you two!
The writers actually manage to sneak in quite a lot of the world building into the movie early on, even if Voerhoven frames it differently.
And I won't crap on the laser tag training for force on force training, as the bugs weren't their active enemy yet, and that's something current day militaries do, with MILES systems.
The whole jungle gym format of the military base is kinda stupid though.
Also it's pretty interesting that this 'fascist' society as presented in this movie is a multiracial gender inclusive one, that has an all volunteer military, and despite the propaganda not only has live coverage of a military operation, but allows debate on the topic of the war and alternative opinions to be aired, but when the initial disaster of the start of war happens they dont downplay it or try to hide it but allow the press to fully show the extent of the failure, and sack the person in charge.
These are not the actions that were done by the most well known real life fascist government.
There was also an animated series that was like a blend of the series and the book and included a TON of stuff the movie left out like an entire other alien race and power armor, mechs, and jet packs.
I wouldn't say that is unrealistic. I grew up in the 80s in Glendale Arizona the public humiliation and lack of privacy was very real to me that struck a chord. Glad I grew up in an awesome family and had good friends or I would be a suicide statistic. Kids were especially cruel here but we learned street smarts being from a multi-ethnic area.
@@MandoWookie You write _"it's pretty interesting that this 'fascist' society as presented in this movie is […] that has an all volunteer military"_
I would argue, if you want a fascist society that rules for decades, you better take care, that the children of the rich folks doesn't die in the wars. And pretending there is an open debate is also necessary to keep the people in line.
You also write about the 'multiracial' thing. Fascists only need enemies, they don't care what defines them. If there are aliens, then aliens are "the others". If there aren't aliens then idk the irish/italians/jews/trans/etc. are "the others". The only constant is that there is an "Us" vs a "Them".
So i don't think, that the depiction of fascism is in any meaningfull way different then the ones we had and have in human society.
I saw this in theaters back in '97, it was made even better because there were some very drunk marines there who were cheering and randomly screaming, "Go Marines!" or "Go Crickets!". This also has another fantastic soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.
I saw this in the cinema and when the guy gets his head blown off in the training accident I realized this wasn't a star trek or star wars type movie. The effects still look great for a 1997 film.
I saw it in the cinema too, multiple times. As for the star trek comparison, it is actually the anti-star trek. Check out the review and analysis on Red Letter Media.
SSP DARK FLEET
The opening scene didn't immediately clue you in?
I love the little touches of the movie like the fact all the ex army characters like the school teachers were horrible scarred in some way.
There's definitely a good portion of social commentary in this movie, hidden by the over the top action and cheesy comedy. Love it!
Just like Robocop.
@@inarar5334 Found it weird when hearing that some people couldnt identify this as satirical of authoritarian military goverments. I always thought it is so obvious that its impossible to miss.
@@Blackstaralpha same, mainly because nobody misses it in Robocop and they have nearly identical tones. They both even use newscast interstitials to drive home the point, not to mention very similar scores.
@@Blackstaralpha Yeah, the really scary part are the people who think the Terran Federation is an admirable political, social and judicial model.
the very notion of launching meteorites across the galaxy is ludicrous. A testament of how easily media can convince an audience of scientific lunacy. the bugs may not be peaceful and probably not interested in co existence, but they did not instigate this war
The book had a lot of messages about being a citizen, why wars are fought, and how the Veteran Citizen government in the book and the movie came about, but Johnny Rico's story was mostly about Heinlein's views on what a citizen of a nation should be.
Yeah the book is incredibly different and pretty sure Heinlein was kinda parodying nationalism though hard to say.
It also helped popularize mechs/exo suits. As it's one of the earliest cases of a big robot piloted by a person.
@@jacksmith-vs4ct Heinlein was not parodying anything, he was all serious about the militant fascist society being “the best”. It was Verhoeven who made it into a fascist critical parody in the movie, it was also a critique of US Hooray-patriotism and foreign policy in the Middle East (Gulf wars).
@@n3rdy11 I'd quibble that it's not strictly fascist. Democracy-for-veterans, along with a brutal penal system and militarism. Looks despotic, but I suppose it's Heinlein's conceit that such a system would actually have broad public support (including from the civilians - even if they can't vote, the system would either require their acquiescence or their brutal suppression).
As much as I wouldn't want to limit the franchise to veterans, I question whether such a society would be that militaristic. US militarism seems to depend on the limited political influence of veterans, and faith that conscription is never going to be enforced again.
[Actually, I guess what's being pilloried here is the actual system, and the public political consciousness that supports it. And Verhoeven has called it "fascism," but I think he uses the term loosely. Still, respect for his perspective, since he actually lived under Nazi occupation as a child in the Netherlands]
@@n3rdy11 That is not true at all. If Heinlein "was all serious about the militant fascist society being 'the best'" then why did he run for California State Assembly as a liberal Democrat? Why did so many of his books feature protagonists from hedonistic anarchical or libertarian societies? Why did his political nonfiction book "Take Back Your Government!" emphasize grassroots movements to bring the voice of the people into government? People who dismiss Heinlein as a fascist are really ignoring his entire life in favor of their misinterpretation of one book.
This movie inspired a lot of the Brood War cinematics for StarCraft. Alien/Aliens influenced a lot of the cinematics in the base game as well.
Not as well known, but the book was a big inspiration for Gundam.
The first time I saw it I thought the insect aliens looked just like the hydralisks from SC. On another note the aliens from Tiberium Wars reminded me a lot of War of the worlds remake.
They even used sound bites from Aliens in the first "StarCraft"
Its more the novel this is based on inspired Warhammer 40k, starcraft was created by Blizzard after the failed to get a license to make a Warhammer 40k RTS game.
In the novel Starship Troopers the MI wear power armor and a dropped into battle in drop pods. The Bugs(and the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise) inspired the Warhammer tyranids which are the inspiration for the Zerg
The boot camp stuff was 1 year before the initial "Planetary Defenses are better than ever!" scene. The asteroid hitting Buenos Aires was pretty much Pearl Harbor 2.0 for Humanity. That's why a year later the fleet is mobilized, the defenses are beefed up, etc.
One of the best, most misunderstood, sci-fi/satires ever made.
In the book, the mobile infantry wears massive mech suits, so it makes a bit more sense to have them on the ground instead of just using artillery.
But that was way too expensive to make, so they made them wear regular armour instead.
We see those suits in one of the sequels though.
At the end of the third movie
@@Klaus-em3ixThank you. There are so many of them now that I can't keep track of what was shown in which. Part of the 25 year long "we must repackage everything as an existing popular IP" craze Hollywood has had.
@@morphman86 Hollywood has always been like that. 25 years ago was just when you started recognizing the pattern. The Wizard of Oz was a reboot of a popular franchise. Gone with the Wind was the biggest IP in the world when the movie was made.
@@redrick8900 But they didn't take the script from Gone with the Wind, change the setting to the Alps and repackage it as Sound of Music...
Don't know if anyone else pointed this out to you guys, but the teacher in the biology class scene is Rue McClanahan (Blanche, from The Golden Girls)
And the award for best acting goes to.... George, for his outstanding performance in the Square Space add 🤣
This was literally filmed as a propaganda film. I mean, Starship Troopers would be a movie playing at cinemas in the universe where Starship Troopers takes place.
It’s like “a nations pride” from inglorious bastards
This is what would have happened if the Nazis won.
Because the characters wear Nazi uniforms we're supposed to think their prosperous multicultural meritocracy is the bad guys. That's how dumb Verhoeven is, or how dumb he thinks the audience is.
@@fakecubed Or maybe he trusts the audience to be smart enough to realize that we're probably not seeing the whole picture here?
The idea of this entire movie is that it's a propaganda film.
We see what appears to be a prosperous multicultral society, but we're only shown the POV of rich people and the military who have an agenda to paint a rosy picture of this militarized authoritarian society.
We also see indications that public, corporal punishment is common place...so how are political dissenters treated?
For that matter, how are those who are not able bodied and can't serve in the military treated in this alleged meritocracy? The one woman in the shower scene who mentions she joined the military to "get licensed to have babies" strongly hints at eugenics!
So is everyone actually prosperous and happy? How do we know that this prosperty we see isn't on the backs of an oppressed underclass?
Maybe he trusted his audience to be smart enough to pick up on that?
He was kind of clearly kind of naive in that trust!
@@sandpiperr Political dissenters are speaking freely about their dissent on public TV broadcasts. Did you even watch this movie?
George - "I'm starting to get the sense humans are the bad ones here." Cue Mitchell and Webbs, "Are we the Baddies?" Sketch hahaha
I love this movie on many levels - it's a clever social satire disguised as a big dumb effects movie which is brilliant - but one that doesn't get discussed enough is how well the CG holds up. After 25 years I think this movie still looks great.
"clever social satire"
Big dumb travesty, imo. I recommend reading the book, which is actually a quality piece of art, and an actual rumination on society, which the moron Verhooven didn't bother to read which is why the movie is a fucking brainless travesty.
No, it's a complete misunderstanding of the book. Militarism doesn't equal fascism. In a fascistic state there is nothing but the state. You wouldn't be allowed to not do military service and no one would thrive as a civilian because there would be no civilians.
So the big dumb effects movie only obscures that Paul can't read.
Still like the movie though.
@@TheTurinturumbar No, It's a *deliberate satire* of the book. In the movie, it's not really a fascistic state, it's actually rather progressive in a number of ways- but in order to maintain a status quo within said state, there always has to be an enemy to fight against - real, or simply perceived through propaganda. Because war is always profitable.
It's clear to me in this that humans are the antagonists, and the bugs are just defending themselves from human colonialism. I also never bought the "bugs firing asteroids across the galaxy" thing that the state was perpetuating - very false flag behaviour. What would the arachnids gain from doing such a thing? - Anyway, it's a fantastic movie with amazing visual effects that stand up incredibly well after all this time, and it is also fun to ponder on its meaning. :)
@@philrob1978 I don't see how that adds up. If it's war for profit they were trying to satirize then painting it as fascism is missing the mark quite badly.
Fascism is action communism, not predatory capitalism.
@@TheTurinturumbar That's what I'm saying - it isn't "fascism" in the movie at all - the society portrayed is a potential consequence of modern corporate and militaristic opportunistic greed. This is absolutely a consistent theme with Verhoeven's sci-fi movies Robocop/Total Recall/Starship Troopers. With the latter, what happens when there are no "enemies" left on Earth to allow that gravy train to continue? They look up. Allow that to fester for a century or so and we end up where this movie is.
I love this movie, wish it got more love when it came out. The CGI and props for the time it released were VERY good and still holds up today.
Props have been very good before this. CGI though is really good for its day. But plenty of movies had been using practical effects for ages And some people had gotten really good at it.
I can really recommend The Expanse as a Show to watch! It's probably the best Sci fi Show around at the moment and one of my favourites. Also you talked about asteroids and I had to mention it
This a had a bunch of sequels on comicbooks, movies direct to video, animated CGI series, a fan fave.
Couple of video games, recently. Terran Command and Extermination. An RTS and a co-op shooter respectively.
Point of interest. The book was once on the recommended but not required reading list for the military services. Fair to note that the movie and the book have very little in common.
Actually watched the movie in the military back then - on work time with the unit. Apparently our boss was not the reading type ;-)
In fairness the political structure of the society in the movie closely follows the book, in particular the fact that national service (which in the book isn't all military, you might serve in something like the Peace Corps or building infrastructure or whatever) is the price of the franchise. Rico's parents are wealthy but they don't have the right to vote. Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in a fit of pique after he saw an ad signed by a lot of prominent scientists calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Heinlein felt that people who had not sacrificed for their society should not have the right to influence its direction. Verhoeven, having lived in a country occupied by actual Nazis, knew where that would lead.
@@localroger Considering how little Nazi's believed in their own suffering and sacrifice for the nation that is kind of ironic. This is the issue of thinking that living through something gives you an understanding of something.
Basic Instinct is an iconic 90's movie, technically a neo-noir erotic thriller film, directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Fun fact: the military combat costumes were recycled into Power Rangers Lost Galaxy
They were also painted purple and reused as Alliance trooper outfits in the Firefly series.
This is one of those rare instances in which I actually _read most of the book_ before seeing the _movie._ The main characters all have the same names and play largely the same roles, but it's _very_ different. I don't remember any point where they actually _deal_ with any bugs.
Such a fun movie, and I'm glad you guys "got it" throughout the film with the humor. Some reactors don't "get it".
PS - love your shirt Simone!
PPS - yours too George!
Oh wow! I was watching the video and thinking the exact same thing. So I'm not the only one who's had that impression from other reactions about this movie, huh? Thank you for that, makes me feel better. On a day when I happened to need it to no less. Had a great time watching it with you all. Thanks.
Hollowman was Paul's last good gig in Hollywood! You got to do that one.
I gotta say, I love your SquareSpace advert! Stylistically appropriate for this movie, too! The only way it could be better is if you'd said "Would you like to know more?" at the end 😉
Anyway, the movie... yeah, there's a sliiiiiiight subtext going on! When the movie was released, most critics took the film at face value and thought it was celebrating fascism, completely missing the fact that pretty much everything in the movie is deliberate, from the fascisty uniforms to the stupidly attractive cast members. I mean, of course they all look like they'd just stepped off the set of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place (which was actually true for some of them!); this is propaganda, so naturally the heroes are gorgeous in a vacant sort of way! I guess the critics failed to notice that most of the adults are maimed in horrible ways... which just goes to show that even when the satire is as obvious as this, some people just aren't going to get the joke.
As far as I know, the original script was much more a generic soldiers vs alien bugs story that was intended to show off Phil Tippett's creature FX talents. However, when the budget was going to be so high, the studio decided that they needed a recognisable property to help sell the film so they optioned Starship Troopers. Similarities between book and film are scarce, though. While some of the character names and situations were retained, the political stance is poles apart. Indeed, Verhoeven never even finished reading the novel before he made the film, as it was so far away from his own political views. He chose instead to make the story more of an overt satire on militarism and propaganda, drawing on his own childhood experiences of living in Nazi-occupied Holland... which makes the accusations of the movie glorifying fascism all the more ironic!
Perhaps the biggest change, though, was the fact that in the book the troopers all wear power-armour; in fact, it can probably be said that Starship Troopers was the source of all sci-fi mech-suits, so you can imagine how fans of the book felt when they found out that the film has dropped their favourite element! Sadly though, the budget wouldn't cover swarms of bugs AND mech-suited troops, so the titular troopers essentially became hilariously ill-equipped WWII ground troops.
But even without power armour, they're gonna fight... and they're gonna win! Ooo-ahh!!
One thing that did translate faithfully from the book to the screen was Dizzy's death. In the book, he died on the retrieval boat. In the movie, she died on the retrieval boat. And I think Heinlein would have liked making Dizzy a young woman and Johnny's love interest. He definitely would not have liked some of the other changes.
Yeah well, considering what Heinlen did like, I'm not sure I care!
Paul Verhoeven was clear in his commentary that this was a parody of military mindsets. Interesting because Robert Heinlein's original novel was not like that at all...the bugs were the bad guys and the military was depicted in a good light. If anything, the theme was that society outside the military was in decline, morally. Verhoeven was also surprised that test audiences HATED Carmen Ibañez (Denise Richards's character), as he saw her breakup with Johnny as well-telegraphed and simply a woman choosing her career over a relationship. I was surprised by that as I thought he was trying to make her unlikable.
Never understood the hate for Carmen. She never cheated on her boyfriend and simply chose a career path after HS. She knew a relationship would never work out like that so she broke up with him right away when she realized that.
Based on that, it sounds like the director consistently makes great movies he himself completely doesn't understand xD.
He was dismayed the audience didn't pick up on the Earth had fallen to fascism.
@@fipse it came across that she was stinging him along. Hence the dear John video breaking up with him. She was waiting until she found out she would make it through flight school.
The books were clear Earth had fallen to fascism.
It's kind of scary how good this movie actually is when one looks beneath the surface. Like Robocop, it's a heart-pounding action film, and yet also simultaneously both funny and satirical, and extremely disturbing and tragic.
"They're gonna play so much Mario Party!" - I'm dying!!!
Paul Verhoeven has had a lot to say about a lot of things in our modern society, some of the most important ones only becoming relevant, or more relevant, in recent years. It’s interesting because when you look for it and notice what he’s conveying you won’t know how you didn’t get it before. But even more interesting is that even if you ignore the underlying or overt messaging, or even somehow find yourself in disagreement, you can still enjoy his movies on the surface as they are.
To make the rest of the cast comfortable being nude in the shower scene, Paul Verhoeven directed that part also incredibly nude.
@@ThreadBomb the fact that he's Dutch and seemed to not even notice being nude makes it incredible and hilarious
@@ThreadBomb Incredibly nude = skinless.
That would make me more uncomfortable. How does that make someone more comfortable? Sounds like a perv.
@@johndough3809 That's the legacy of puritanism festering in the American psyche. It's perverted to find nudity perverse.
You guys seem to have missed the "one year earlier" between the first battle on the planet and the rest of the movie. At the time the asteroid hit, nobody knew about the bugs, nobody was at war, they had no planetary defenses.
pretty sure they did know about the bugs as it was also stated at one point that the asteroid was retaliation for terran expansion or something into the bug territory which they didn't think were that smart at the time.
also the planetary defense system might not have actually worked or even existed.
The government of Starship Troopers is extremely incompetent and would always rather patch up public perception with propaganda than fix the underlying issues.
But they dissected bugs in school and the teacher spoke specifically about the alien bugs.
The underlying commentary is director who tried to rebrand a story as just about the opposite of it's initial origin. The troopers are extremely well trained and equipped with the best kit available- like mech suits, the Mobile Infantry are supposed to be one man armies given millions or billions worth of gear per soldier. Also, the society is only lead by those that sacrifice to secure voting or political office, while civilians are unrestricted otherwise; in the book and film, the implication is the two classes get along (after an initial civil war a thousand years ago) and the politicians opt to not screw over the civilians due to be held accountable by veterans who watched comrades give their lives for the federation.
So we get the film where we have human mass wave tactics and 20th century Germany commentary over a purely elective and entirely unrestricted means to political office, where, Rico comes from a rich family, Despite not being able to vote.
In the end it made for a messy, confused, gory awesome fest of a classic.
I think the issue is that the author of the book actually glorified fascist, authoritarian regimes and hid it under the veneer of a space war story....and the director chose to directly satirize the novel and the author's depiction of the glorious military Terran Federation.
IOW, he joked about what Heinlen took seriously.
@@eschatological
He did a very poor job of 'directly' satirizing it.
He needed to humanize the 'bugs' and/or show actual negative effects of the "Fascism".
No inter-human war, no poverty, no protests, no martial law, no scape-goated group/race of people, no resource shortages, no legislation that shows why the exclusive government is bad, a volunteer military, military commanders publically taking responsibility for failures and resigning, etc.
There was an idea and a framework, but Paul didn't make it a reality. He made a movie about killing 'bugs' in which a few people wear Nazi-like uniforms.
I really should re-re-read the book. I've seen the movie more times. Sadly, I loaned out my copy and never got it back.
@@yodieyuh Yeah, I've never understood why people love this movie, tbh. It's campy, but there's better camp. I feel like it gained traction during the brief fascination America had with Denise Richards....and coed showers.
@@yodieyuh
The movie is an excellent satire. You simply didn't understand it. No good satire movie explains to you the negative affects of it's subject. A good satire simply gives you the propaganda, and you can pull the negative aspects from it with critical thinking. Not everything needs to be spoon fed to you.
The enemies being bugs and not humans is literally what makes it such a good satire. If it were humans, it makes you empathetic. That's the exact opposite reaction that he was looking for in the audience. This is a satire of Fascist propaganda. You're not supposed to connect with the enemy. The enemy is supposed to give you a feeling of disgust.
That's literally the whole point. It further deepens the divide between the tribal US vs THEM mentality. The further you can distance yourself from the enemy, the better the satire. It's a propaganda film. You're not supposed to connect with the enemy. It's a tribalism mentality that's being pushed here. The less you can empathize with the enemy, the stronger you build your tribal walls. This is done effectively in this movie. Because it's propaganda, you have to try very very very very hard to empathize with an enemy. That's the whole point.
It's supposed to feel like a "utopia". It's a propaganda movie. What propaganda movie talks shit about themselves? That's why it's supposed show only the "good things" about their society.
The negative parts are subliminal and therefor much more effective. It's not in your face as you said it should be, because that would make it a lesser of a satire.
The movie doesn't need to tell you that having a strong military presence in high school is bad. It just shows it as it is in society. It shouldn't have to tell you it's bad. You simply feel it underneath your skin.
The whole televised segments with the people having debates? Yeah, that gives you insight on their society. When they talk about strong values such as strength and power and authority is being better than weak values like empathy and understanding? That's how they are as a society and they don't need to tell you that it's bad, you simply feel unnerved by it naturally.
The fact that the soldiers can literally see their own infantry company get cut to shreds in the most violent and upsetting way possible, but be completely fine the next day joking around with each other shows the power of brainwashing that fascism has on their mentality. The movie doesn't tell you it's bad, because you already know it.
This is what makes it a great satire.
When I first saw the movie, I was 11. I didn't even understand the concept of "satire". But the film didn't need to spoon feed it to me as you suggested it should have. As a 11 year old, at first all I thought was cool soldiers killing bugs. But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized that there was something deeply disturbing about that society, and even though I can find similarities to my own American reality, there was something there that would terrify me deeply if I were to swap places and live in that world.
That's why the movie is an excellent satire. It doesn't spoon feed you information on why certain things are bad. It makes you look beyond the propaganda and makes you think critically as it did to me as a 11 year old.
In the Book, Juan (Johnny) Rico was Filipino. And the Mobile Infantry werent cannon-fodder, they were power-armor wearing supersoldiers. Starship troopers is one of the first written examples of power armor in fiction.
Another Paul Verhoeven's movie you should watch is "Black Book", terribly underated movie about spies in the Nazi germany. I'll never get tired of recommending it.
minor correction: occupied netherlands, not germany
100%. Didn´t even know it was by him while watching, it´s really different from the rest of his films.
@@woeshaling6421 Yes, you're right, my bad 😋Which makes sense in a way, since Verhoeven is from Amsterdam.
@@stu2729 "Black Book" has a lot more in common with Verhoeven's European movies than his American ones. He said that "Black Book" began as a stack of leftover story elements from his earlier Dutch resistance movie "Soldier of Orange", which is also damn' good.
“Oh! That’s a Zerg!”
YESSS!! A StarCraft fan! 💖💖💖
The book Starship Troopers was a major inspiration for Warhammer 40K. Blizzard wanted to make a Warhammer 40K game, but were unable to license it, so instead they changed some stuff around and made Starcraft instead.
Oh, shit.... this is gonna be GOOD! I know how Simone got squeamish during much tamer movies.... this is gonna be EPIC! =D
Edit: Also, I want to recommend the movie Dragonheart.
wow... someone seen/knows-about and recommends dragonheart... I really liked this movie, it has it's flaws, but it's still good
before we had 'eragon' movie and also the 'how to train your dragon' movie series, we had dragonheart
@@redmoonbloodmoon3161 I first saw Dragonheart on HBO, and immediately sought it out on DVD. Yes, it does have it's flaws, but I think it's an absolutely amazing movie overall. Plus it shares an actor in common with this movie. I have watched it dozens of times, and it's one of the few movies that actually makes my cold-hearted ass tear up at the end. I am so waiting for one reaction channel to do that movie, and Cinebinge might just be the one.
A team of a human and dragon grifting l. Excellent.
I am 55. I read this book in the 5th grade. When I saw the preview for this movie, before it showed the title... I leaned over to my wife in the theater and said that I remember an old book similar to this. Aracnids, Space Marines... at the time Starship Troopers popped up on the screen. It was really funny.
"The enemy cannot push a button, if you disable his hand"..... such a memorable line
Michael Ironside, the actor who played Lt. Radchek, was also in Total Recall. Also, I cannot believe you missed the obvious old joke. When Lt. Radchek said "Fire at will" some smart @$$ always says "Which one is Will."
So much nostalgia from this movie! xD .. I was so scared of that slug creature when I was a kid..
16:07 Spore crawlers
24:02 Zerg rush
24:09 Mutalisks
25:10 Nydus worm
27:38 Infestor
I always love how Blizz cribbed a ton of stuff from 40k, Aliens, SST, and....Space Battleship Yamato. Ha ha, they just had to get that awesome captain in there. "Battlecruiser operational"
Saw this in theaters. Such a fun movie. My dad went to the same high school as Denise Richards.
Just a lil bit more, every time I see this film-- I am reminded that nearly the entire supporting cast are stacked with performers with large to extremely large ranges and talent, despite their characters having limited range-- remember Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam, Michael Ironside, Rue McClanahan and Dean Norris…were all this this film.
verhoeven was born just before WW2 really kicked off and remembered seeing plenty of nazi atrocities as a small child in holland - he even made a great film early in his career, soldier of orange, about the dutch resistance - but this is his most blatant (and funny) satire on fascism/militarism. really glad you guys keyed into the humor here, which seems so over the top as to be glaringly obvious, but audiences at the time definitely didn't get it (the movie barely made back its budget) and you still see reactors on youtube taking it as a straight sci-fi action movie.
It's shocking that anyone would take this as a pro fascist movie given Verhoeven's background. And after Robocop he had clearly shown he likes to make satirical movies.
Why is it always fascism? It could be totalitarianism.
He also did Blackbook in 2006 about a Jewish spy in the Dutch resistance during WW2 that’s worth watching.
@@LaserWombat Was there any actual proof that the bugs launched the meteorite at Earth?
@@mikerodgers7620 This
I'm so glad I was informed about the fish tongue bug. I genuinely mean that. It's fascinating and has started me on a journey to seek out all sorts of awful creatures. I am glad I don't live in California. Even though I'm not a fish that bug would still freak me out a little. Anyone heard of the Candiru? It's a tiny parasitic catfish that lives in the Amazon. While it's never been scientifically proven the stories persist that it's attracted to the scent of urine. Once it gets the scent it makes a mad dash up the stream into the urethra. Using the backward facing spikes on it's head it lodges itself in there and happily drinks your blood. Lucky for me I live in Australia where the only dangerous creature is all of them.
I’m so glad you two Get It. Everyone _hated_ this movie when it came out. Fans of the original book hated it because Verhoeven’s unspoken goal was “if you like this book, you’re a wannabe fascist, and I’m going to make sure everyone knows it”; and general audiences hated it because they either wouldn’t or couldn’t process a story whose subtext asked you to side with the gross-looking bugs at the same time its text was telling you to do the opposite.
Lots of sledgehammer political satire in Verhoeven which is what I love. The original is by the famous sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein. The human society has elements of ancient Sparta.
You're right, it's a satire movie, although a lot of people didn't realize it was satire until years after it's release.
The fact that anyone could watch the scene of kids stomping on cockroaches and still not get it boggles my mind, let alone the blatant nazi uniforms...
i got it was satire when the logo came into view at the start.
I think it have a lot to do about adaptations before 2000, the movie and the book have barelly anything in common.
You could say this kind of adaptation was kinda rare back than and lot of people didn't get it, this days we are used to it 😅
yeah people really didn't get it at the time. if it had come out 5 years later it would have landed a lot better
@@heptonaut This movie would have likely been boycotted: 2002 was just 1 year after 9/11. The Buenos Aires Meteor, in a film that wasn't recognized as satire, would have likely been considered in terrible taste. Of course, this movie existed before 9/11, so obviously not a reference to that event. It was certainly prescient.
there's also two sequel's Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
The movie is actually based on the book “Starship Troopers” by famous sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein. The book received some criticism due to the militaristic focus and was even described as fascist by some.
Book is really good though and covers quite a bit more than the movie, which is a bit more novel considering the director :)
Yeah, the book is described as fascist by people who don't actually know what fascism is. The book is more libertarian in nature, as was Heinlein himself. (Not a member of the Libertarian Party, but an advocate of libertarian political philosophy.) In the book, military service, i.e. service to the State, is entirely voluntary. In a fascist society everything is in service to the state.
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” - Benito Mussolini
I liked that the movie retained enough of Heinlein's political thesis during the classroom scenes to undercut Verhoeven's "the Federation is fascist" message. It's rather hilarious that in arguing against Heinlein Verhoeven got to pick and choose how to present Heinlein's argument and Verhoeven still lost. A libertarian society with a fascist paint job is still a libertarian society.
@@flatebo1 That's just, like, your opinion, man. I'd say Verhoeven clearly won the argument, and we can't both be right. Also, would libertarians really be ok with having their right to procreate restricted? Considering the way they lost their shit about masks and vaccines I doubt it...
@@korganrocks3995 I'm mot sure the "baby license" is an aspect of the book. I don't recall it, anyway. So that may be more of a Verhoeven thing than a Heinlein thing.
And no, Verhoeven did not win the argument because Verhoeven clearly understands nothing about fascist governments. Fascist governments do not vote out incompetent political leadership as the Federation does after the disaster on Planet P. Fascist government's do not allow live broadcasting of active military operations.
Fascist governments deify their political leadership. To publicly disgrace a failed political leader is to undermine the entire premise of fascism. Fascist governments conceal the failures of their leaders. They displace blame onto patsies. Fascism is all about the subordination of everything to the state. A fascist government would conscript soldiers into tis military. The Federation cannot - because it cannot force a person to become a citizen against his will.
Like far too many people who love to label everything they dislike as "fascist" Verhoeven's understanding of it is entirely surface-level. Which is pretty much why he seems to think that using Nazi-inspired uniforms is all he needs to do to make his "war turns people into fascists" argument. Kind of like how the anti-capitalist message of Robocop utterly fails due to Verhoeven's complete failure to understand capitalism.
@@flatebo1 How can you be sure the failed political leader who is publically disgraced is anything but a patsy, while the people who are really in charge avoid all accountability? Modern problems require modern solutions, so fascism in the future might become more subtle than "glorious leader can do no wrong". 😉 That said, ten years ago I would have assumed traditional fascism wouldn't fly today, but this last decade has made it depressingly clear that there are still a lot of people who will flock to it as soon as someone like Trump says the quiet part out loud and gets away with it...
Starship Troopers is actually one of the only Heinlein books I haven't read, so I can't speak on the differences between book and film. Thank you for the substantial answer though, that's not something I'm used to seeing. Could you elaborate on Verhoeven's complete failure to understand capitalism, because I don't see anything odd about Robocop in that sense?
@@korganrocks3995 Well, maybe because the Sky Marshall is the elected head of the war effort (and possibly the government - this is somewhat unclear). What evidence do you have, other than your simple presumption, that there *are* other people "really in charge" behind the scenes? There might be , but given the stress the movie and book place upon the citizen accepting personal responsibility for how the state exercises the political power granted to it by the citizen, this might be difficult to pull off, much less sustain.
"Modern problems require modern solutions..."
There are no "modern problems". There are just the same old problems with a modern paintjob. Humans haven't evolved into some radically different lifeform over the last cople centuries. The problems people face now are the same ones people have dealt with for millennia. Food. Shelter. Family. Security. Liberty. How much to we want and what are we willing to do to get it?
"That said, ten years ago I would have assumed traditional fascism wouldn't fly today,..."
36 years ago I took a class on American Utopian Communities. Utopian communities are either secular (most 1960's socialist communes) or religious (like the Amish, Shakers, early Mormons) and either embrace technology (Mennonites) or reject it (again, Amish). But all of them sell the same product - "unconditional" love, acceptance and care for/by community members...so long as you blindly obey the dictates of the community's leaders.
Utopian communities control their members in a variety of ways, including financially (you sign over *all* of your worldly possessions to the community/group), intellectually (forbidden books/music/even words as well as mandatory use of new terms, idiosyncratic redefinitions of existing words, mandatory reading, etc.) and socially (members are highly discouraged/forbidden to have any meaningful contact with outsiders, even family). Utopian communities are, in essence, miniature totalitarian states, i.e. mini-fascisms each with their own "Dear Leaders", such as David Koresh or Jim Jones.
Any community member who doesn't submit to the group is ejected from the community. Anyone being expelled loses all of his possessions - because they aren't *his" possessions. They belong to the community. He loses his job (because he typically works in a community-owned business or for a business owned by community members). And he loses every social relationship since other community members are forbidden from interacting with him. And he's likely alienated everyone he knew prior to joining the community. So the excommunicant winds up completely broke, alone and often lacking any foundation upon which to start anew.
Anyway, after a semester of studying a variety of utopian communities on the last class before finals the professor went around the room asking every student whether they would consider joining a utopian community either permanently or just on a trial basis (utopian communities that accept new members typically put them through a probationary period before acceptance) to see if they'd like it. There were around fifteen students in the class. I was the last one he called upon.
I was the only one who said "Never."
Every other student was willing to at least give a utopian community a try - if they found one that appealed to their sensibilities. Every one was willing to, in essence, give fascism a shot.
I had long wondered just how many people answered dishonestly. Once the first few people said "yes" there is mounting social pressure for every following person to agree with the group consensus. I'd wondered whether the high pro-utopianism rate was simply an effect of selection bias. They all had chosen to take a class about utopian communities, after all, so maybe they were predisposed to view them favorably.
The last couple years have pretty clearly shown that there are a vast number of people who actively want someone else to take responsibility for their lives. To tell them what they can and cannot do. To tell them who they can and cannot associate with. To tell them what they can and cannot think about. These people are not conservatives. They are modern leftists/progressives. They are, if not fully committed to fascism, at least very well-disposed towards it.
The modern left ostracizes anyone who deviates from the approved ideology. They actively seek to deprive them of jobs, careers, friends, even access to their own property (consider how the Canadian government went after the bank accounts of those protesting government policy). The modern left redefines words, then insists that everyone use and understand them in their "new" meaning - even in historical contexts where that new meaning is wholly inapplicable. The modern progressive left is a utopian cult. It's rainbow-flag fascism.
"Could you elaborate on Verhoeven's complete failure to understand capitalism..."
Sure. What Verhoeven presents in Robocop is not capitalism. It's a corporatocracy . Capitalism is characterized by the free exchange of goods and services between willing participants. Capitalism is a self-regulating system with little use for government as governmental interference invariably distorts market incentives and thus subverts the goal of capitalism. Capitalism is, in short, democracy applied to economics where every transaction is an election, every dollar is a vote and every vote counts..
Contracting a company, like OCP, to provide a basic government service, like policing, is anathema to capitalism. It involves those wielding political power selling the power of the state to a favored company. Exploiting access to governmental power and patronage like this is the bread and butter of corporatocracy because it is literally "rule by corporations" Which is what OCP is doing.. OCP rules because OCP bought the government.
The biology class bug dissection scene always reminds me of when I was in college taking biology. ...
Big frogs... My assignment in partner was also queasy...
But I'd been processing animals since I was a little kid...lol.
The instructor commented as he watched me "zip, zop," and open the frog..." You've done this before.."
"Yeah. Old hat to me."
( I was 50 years old and in first year... Only year...of college. )
Paul Verhoven grew up during the occupation of Netherlands, so the designs were by choice, but this movie is definitely propaganda winning so to speak.
At the start Rico isn't sure if violence is the answer, every grown up that served is horribly maimed, in a normal story the main characters might learn to resolve things without violence. But in this movie they're chearing that the bug is afraid, rather than the normal story where they learned to be different from those before, and maybe in that story they'd learn to live with the bugs, but not this one where violence is the answer.
The bug is "afraid". Another great detail: obviously it is terrified, no need to be psychic to know that. I heard the intelligence people just fake being psychic (I mean, cards? Really? Every con artist has to know the lie should be slightly more elaborate, but I guess the simpler, the more effective it is! XD), giving them a psychological advantage over everyone else. It makes a lot of sense once you see the movie like that.
@@leovk5779 No, no, no, you're not getting it. The very fact that it CAN be afraid is the point - its a fucking bug, dude. The Federation are legit unclear if these things are even sentient, ya know? For it to be afraid, it has to understand what is happening. As an example, there's nothing to suggest ants have the capacity to know fear - they're not advanced enough cognitively to espouse emotions like that. But this thing? It *is* afraid. That's why they cheer - they realize they're not just fighting a mindless swarm which will require total genocide to combat, but a foe that is conscious, has a mind, has emotions. And can know fear.
Which would you rather be fighting: A mindless swarm that will never ever ever stop and knows no fear, only instinctual programming driving it to expand and consume, or a foe that can and does know terror at your coming?
@Richard Moore Fact is, Vehoven did a terrible job in a sense, because tons of people who watch this come away thinking "damn dude, i'd like to enlist". He tried to do a mocking jab at militant fascistic societies and their propaganda, but in large part all he did was make propaganda for militant fascistic societies lol
That said, it illuminates something many viewers don't realize - you have been propagandized to.
Look at your wording there Richard - "normal", being the keyword. You have been so utterly consumed by propaganda demonizing this sort an ethos, that you have internalized it as 'abnormal' relative to the media you've seen.
Reality check: In nature, violence is regularly the answer to resolving issues. When facing a foe, its better they are afraid than resolute in unconscious instinct. Predators and prey do not learn to live together - they fight to the death, because one cannot survive without the other dying.
What I mean to say is, you have been propagandized to and conditioned to perceive reality in a way that is utterly-abnormal, yet, you perceive the normality of naturalistic function as 'abnormal', and you are not alone - that is perhaps the most noteworthy facet of this film as per the many and varied responses that Ive observed.
@@no-xr8wv Maybe that was Verhoeven's point, to show the propaganda does work, if you feel pumped at the end of the film isn't that actually scary? You've been shown horrors of war, with obvious sarcastic tones that its definitely a good idea to sign up, and you still want to go along with it. I find that scary. Luckily its just a harmless film with a federation that doesn't actually exist that you can't sign up for service in.
@@no-xr8wv In addition, the ethos of the federation is "might makes right" and that seems to be something that's not "normal" to teach kids, exactly as you say propaganda, hey?
But history shows that its exactly right, history written by the victors, but co-operation also served people very well in history, and for whatever reason co-operation is the only "normal" thing to teach kids.
The best "adaptation" of the original book, is the anime Mobile Suit Gundam, talking about a military society in war.
If you want more Paul Verhoeven you can always do Basic Instinct, that has one of the most popular scenes in the history of movies, Sharon Stone leg cross, but no more great Sci fy unfortunately.
And yes this movie is a heavy criticism on popular populist government regimes, humans for sure are the bad guys, even the acting is a parody of 80s and 90s TV and movies, specially stuff like Beverly hills 90210 or Baywatch and action movies.
Actually, there is one more sci-fi movie by Paul Verhoeven, albeit with more of a horror angle. That would be "Hollow Man" with Kevin Bacon.
@@JoeCool7835 Sci fy? Yes. Great? Nope.
@@pedrothevenard Well, I liked it, anyway.
@@JoeCool7835 It's not terrible, and if you like it that's great, there's a lot of movies that I like and others don't, but in my opinion it just isn't on the same level as the other 3, fast from it actually.
This movie is such a gem. It reminded me so much of Quake 2. Absolutly Loved it.
While I love this movie, I do wish they had pulled more from the book - The idea of Mobile Infantry wasn't storm troopers, but the first "space Marine" in powered armor. it was a really cool idea.
Sure was, but for the point Verhoeven is making the infantry need to be meat for the grinder. It would be cool if someone made a more faithful adaptation, but unfortunately the trend in Hollywood seems to be to copy the originial enough to make the remake uninteresting, while changing enough to make it objectively worse than the original! 😆
Movie rifle is essentialy an outer shell/chassis for a Ruger Mini 14 5,56x45 rifle and stockless 12 gauge pump action shotgun, placed below the rifle's barrel. So, it's relatively easy to build a fully functional, live firing Morita, if someone have an urge and money to do so...
You successfully completed the Paul Verhoeven Sci-Fi trilogy! I truly wish he would make at least one more. and yes, humans are the bad guys in EACH of these films. It's incredibly nihilistic and awesome!
Well not really. In the second movie the bugs reveal that yes, they want kill us all because they consider us inferior with our individualism or something like that.
...what're you talking about? Humans are both villains and heroes in his movies.
Verhoeven critiques SOCIETY, not humanity at large.
13:14 "Who started this war?"
😂😂😂😂 For such an innocent question, the answer is super dark.
Hans... are we the baddies?😊
As much as I enjoyed this movie for what it is, I do wish there was a movie that was closer to Heinlien's novel; or at the very least a mini series.
I know there is anime of it. Though its a bit dated.
OMG your Squarespace ad was absolutely brilliant. I've been laughing for 5 minutes about it. Spot on. Cheers.
Did the bugs send the Asteroid? how did they do that? we haven't seen any space bugs, they send their spores into space is the only thing we have heard. Also, based where they are in the galaxy, and the info of them shooting an Asteroid at us it would take...billions of years for it to get to us; so the question really is did the Bugs shoot Asteriods at us or is this something humans just taken advantage of? In the book it is not so clear cut. Also the book was published somewhere in the 1960's and is one of the grandfathers of science fiction, it also is first to feature the Hive Mind or Insect alien that we see. other iterations would be Warhammer 40K's Tyranids which came out in the 1960's i believe im not sure on that one, later on Aliens from the 1986 film and Finally the Zerg from Starcraft which is much more recent of 1991.
How does the Stardrive work?
The humans can have unexplained FTL equivalent locomotion but bugs who can project plasma out of orbit through natural evolution and have successfully inhabited multiple planets in multiple star systems need some deep explanation?
We see, on screen, characters with NO hint of deception trace the asteroid's path from Klendathu system to them and then project a path to Sol space.
We heard they use plasma to send spores, we see multiple planets across multiple systems already inhabited, we see bugs who evolved the ability to shoot things in space, we see the asteroid path traced in real time.
In real life humans don't have technology to take humans to other planets in our own system, they don't have machines that can instantly rebuild body tissue on a person, and humans can't control creatures through psychic abilities.
Well, in the book, the bugs are decidedly intelligent, use weapons, build factories, all that. It's outright said that the conflict is inevitable, since both species are after the same "real estate" (which is _rare_ ) and their societies are so different that there's little chance of living next to each other without the threat of violence. Those have FTL spaceships, no problem with that. Even then, nobody ever figures out whether the asteroid was in fact launched by the bugs or not - it's not a thing that starts the war, unlike in the movie.
In the movie, the bugs are entirely different. They don't really show any technology at all, they just "happen" to have bugs that can shoot into orbit. For all we know, they didn't even spread to those other planets on their own - they might very well be an invasive species that humans (or other aliens) carried there, either on purpose or accidentally. They have no industry, and it doesn't even look like they have any over-ground farms. There's very strong vibes that the asteroid was completely unrelated to the bugs, they just needed a cheap scapegoat (that backfired).
And don't forget that in both the book and the movie, humans have FTL and loads of defences around the Earth. In both cases, the reason they don't detect and deal with the asteroid is that it comes from an unexpected direction - which tentatively suggests that it _didn't_ follow a nice path from Klendathu to Earth (as suggested in the movie); in fact, even if you wanted to make such an assault, you wouldn't really launch it through real-space over many lightyears (and no, it wasn't even travelling at near-lightspeed or something - the destruction it caused was pretty tiny, compared to what a space civilization could do with an asteroid _on purpose_ ). _If_ it was an assault, it was most likely of the "nudge an asteroid in the Solar system" kind of operation. But more likely, it just didn't have anything to do with the bugs in the first place.
One of the theories is that the bugs *didn't* send the meteor. Bugs are way the hell over on the other side of the galaxy, it would take FOREVER to reach Earth and how could they possibly be so precise from so far away? The Federation covered up their incompetence of having a lacking detection and defense system against rogue asteroids by blaming the bugs for the attack. It also makes a great excuse to rally the people to start a war that will be costly that higher ups have probably been wanting for years. It is similar to how warhawks blamed the accident that sunk the _USS Maine_ on a Spanish attack or mine in order to help start the Spanish-America War.
If you’re interested in a space movies revolving around such nutty-crazy ideas (like, for example, the space Nazis living on the dark side of the moon), I’d recommend the 2012 sci-fi film Iron Sky. It's quite a bit of fun entertainment.
The _far_ side of the Moon. There is no (permanent) dark side.
And no one believed the black guy who got turned into an Aryan.
@@LuaanTi And yet, in the film, they call it the dark side of the moon. I remember laughing a lot about that.
This movie was loosely base from the 1959 book Starship Troopers is where we get the idea on a "The space marine" style soldiers for the modern movies, games and TV shows from ALIENS to Halo. Fun fact the term Space Marine was around longer than that from the 1930s Sci Fi books Amazing Stories December 1936. The backstory of the Starship Troopers book here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
A good friend working at _Studio ADI_ took me on a tour of the shop when this was in pre-production.¹ I got the see the brainbug. It was not only true to size, but disgustingly gorgeous!
*Loved the ad!* 😄
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¹ ─ As well as _Alien³_
LOVE how George thought of the OG StarCraft cinematic during the opening! You're awesome, dude! 🤘🏼
That whole thing about the Mormons going to the bug planet is what started the war with the bugs. It forced the bugs to throw a meteor at earth.
I always thought they used the meteor as a reason to go to war with the bugs because it seemed impossible to send a meteor from one side of the galaxy to the other without crashing it into a different planet
Forced?
12:30 “What about the Planetary Defense Systems?” They weren’t built yet. The anti-asteroid cannon shown in the beginning of the movie was from a year later than Johnny graduating and joining the Academy. Only after the Bug asteroid hits Earth does the Federation build fixed defense turrets for Earth.
Before that the Federation’s main planetary defense was the Fleet. “Sparta’s walls are its soldiers.” The Bug asteroid was able to get past the Fleet, so the Federation built anti-asteroid cannon on the Moon’s orbital ring to defend Earth from future Bug asteroids.
I loved the movie for what it was :) Since this came out, several movies and series have picked up the military uniforms from this one to use as hand me down props, including the classic, Firefly series :) The Death from Above tatoos take on a different meaning if you read the book and realize what type of troops they really were. :P
True.
Thanks for telling me about the tongue parasite thing, the inclusion of pictures was especially helpful. I'm definitely going to have dreams about that now
My favourite Verhoeven movie and one of my all time favourite movies. It's so cheesy, so funny, soooo violent, the bombardment of stupid clichés and tropes is constant and the satire is so on point. Pure cinematic goodness!
And the CGI still holds up pretty darn well I'd say.
I love how Space Mormons basically end up starting the war...
One thing that's not very clearly explained in the movie.
The bugs clearly don't have any ability to throw asteroids at other planets, much less ones all the way across the galaxy.
Well, it's not clearly explained on purpose: it's playing tricks with the audience, making us root for the bad guys XD
An anti-propaganda masterpiece in my opinion.
I never really picked up on the idea that they were sent by humans... though I figured that with his parents they just sometimes "accidentally" let one through to keep rallying people.
The life of an Imperial Gaurdsmen in 40k
That tongue bug you talked about has a pretty good found footage horror film about it called The Bay.
But yes, we started the conflict with the bugs by making military outposts on their homeworld unintentionally. It’s basically a satire of the old Star Trek episode where the aliens are fighting us because we made an outpost on their home world, when Kirk finds out he stops fighting and it’s resolved peacefully
Been going through a lot of your old stuff, reliving some classics! Great stuff. Especially appreciate taking a moment to talk about the movie at the end. :)
29:46 You are correct. Verhoeven studied a lot of the old propaganda movies from Nazi Germany for this movie. Its a satire of totalitarianism. The beginning of the film also spoofs with 90`s teen show`s of the time, like Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210.
Actually its not fascist its a harsh but fair meritocracy.
In order to get a say in how society is run or to hold a position of governmental power one must show they are willing to work to improve society at large and if it comes down to it be willing to bet their life for it. And they are always looking for a better system for governing themselves they only use the system they currently works because its stable and "It works".
In the finished book it was mentioned only 2% of people got their citizenship through military service most got theirs through backbreaking or dangerous volunteer work.
Also the movie was originally another movie that was half finished called Bug Hunt at Outpost 9 that they basically slapped the Starship Troopers brand on after reading like 3 pages of the book trying to satirize something they didn't understand in the first place...
The amount of disrespect the The director and writers showed to the author in interviews is honestly infuriating as well. Robert A. Heinlein the author of the book is considered by many to be the Tolkien or Lovecraft of Hard Sci-fi worldbuilding.
@@happyjohn354 It is fascist and merit isn't giving your life over to the state.
Heinlein was a fascist.
@@redrick8900 No its more like how the US was originally run tax paying landowners only getting a say.
Why should we let those who do nothing but drag us down make decisions that affect the rest of us?
The zerg were based on the tyranids in Warhammer 40K, which in turn were probably influenced by the "bugs" in the novel Starship Troopers.
Please watch SHORT CIRCUIT (1986)!
If you're interested in seeing an early Paul Verhoeven film I recommend Soldier of Orange (1977). He was still making movies in The Netherlands then so it's in Dutch with subtitles. It stars Rutger Hauer who got his start with Verhoeven. Not a sci-fi movie (it's a WWII movie) but still very good. And not quite so violent.
This film is the ultimate satire against War and Politics, as director Paul Verhoeven despised the novel and stopped reading it half way through, calling it "boring and dull," as well as learning that it serves as military propaganda.
The film received mixed reviews by Critics, and it was a box office disappointment, making $122 million against a $100 million dollar budget, but was nominated for Best Visual Effects, losing to TITANIC, which opened up a a week later in December 1997.
I always found it kinda funny that everybody prides themselves of having "got" this one, and yet they totally miss the point of Showgirls. Funny because they really are two sides of the same coin.
I thought ST came out in July 1997.
@@Madbandit77 No it was released in November.
@@Dacre1000 Showgirls doesn't suck because of what it's saying. It sucks because it's boring.
Love this movie and I've even managed to get a cameo video from 'Denice Richards' saying hello to me...she was very nice.