@@SierraSierraFoxtrot I have to agree with you. Even after more than a quarter of a century later the CGI still stands up and partly why it does is it's not overused. Verhoeven and his crew managed to find a good - if not perfect - balance on their first go.
Paul Verhoeven is one of those veey few raw and straight to the point filmmakers. Doenst matter if he talks about: - corporativism (Robocop) - government (Total Recall) - sensuality (Basic Instinct) - entertainment business (Showgirls) - fascism (Starship Troppers) Everytime you finish one of his movies you get the sense of "damn.... he's got no inhibitions" ans thats why his movies are such masterpieces
@@Mathematik_Anhaengerthe critics, up until the last couple years, have praised Marvel movies from the start. And in our world today, that’s the only reason the audience likes them. A consensus of “the experts,” the Watchmen of critics is set BEFORE the general audience even watches it. It’s not like back in the day when you read the local critic in the paper and you knew it was just his opinion. Collectivizing opinions into an apparent fact is the most destructive thing for movies, or really any kind of art
@@Whaddayamean13 No, I Mean rotten tomatoes specifically should be banned, but the voices of critics help me to understand the value of a film. If you search long enough, you will find a critic with your Taste. And if you search longer (time well spent for movie enjoyers) you will find a number of critics, with each of whom you usually are d accord in certain espects. I rarely never get surprised by the quality of a film. This is the reason I go to cinema for Films I otherwise would not have seen (the Killer eg), and Stay at Home for those that dont get acclaim by said critics (Dune 2). Eventually I will watch every film, but I dodge the pricy cinema.
Paul lived in my hometown of the Hague, Netherlands, during the war. His neighbourhood was destroyed by a mistake bombardement by the English. He always said that had a profound influence on his later life. That could have been an influence on starship troopers. Also, public nudity was already a “done deal” on Dutch television during the 60’s. Was Showgirls ahead of it’s time? It’s not about nudity, but about power, money, influence, greed etc.
Have you ever read the Starship Troopers book...? It's such a scathing indictment of society and citizenship expectations and where it's going in general and it's SOOOO so good. It should be required reading in high schools for critical thinking. I need to read it again
@@Hylebos75I’d be mortified if every kid had to read that. It’s not satirical or ironic in any way, the fascist regime depicted is genuinely what Heinlein wanted. He wrote it as a response to the suspension of nuke testing, in favour of nuke testing. Paul famously hated the book and used the movie to mock Heinlein’s ridiculous fantasy and turn it into a satire. Paul saw firsthand the effects of fascism on his home country, and recognised it in the book after two pages.
Starship Troopers really opened my eyes to my military service. I didn’t see the movie till after I came back from Iraq in 2005. I really didn’t like the film at first viewing because it reminded me too much of my experience and when I watched it I finally saw what the film was doing.
@@DamienWalter Putting a spotlight on not just the military culture but the culture that enables it, how media also plays a part in shaping minds young and old in favor of the military industrial complex.
@@Maya_Ruinz100%. And his movies were sadly predictive. Robocop takes place in a corporatocracy, which the US has now become. Starship Troopers is in a fascist state, which the US is now flirting with, though I pray we will pull it back from the precipice.
I saw it in theaters when it came out, and thought it was just a campy action movie full of tropes… about ten years later I watched it again on the advice that there was a much deeper meaning, and it opened my eyes and mind to the things you’re taking about. Now… every time I see it, I find something else (sometimes minute details) that give me even more reason to think about the deeper meaning of the movie.
@@Maya_Ruinz in addition, it also puts a spotlight on ourselves, as we peel back the layers of first our ridicule, then our enthusiasm, then our agreement with its message it forces us to look on ourselves and WHY we get convinced and gung ho. It asks us if our current society is any different, in the end.
Fantastic video, Paul Verhoeven is a masterful director whose work is often misunderstood and viewed as schlocky or sensationalist but there's a lot more going on that viewers can't or won't understand. Excellent interviewee too.
I see a lot of people talking about his american movies. Please, if you're a fan of Verhoeven, watch his other movies. His early movies when he was working in his country (Netherlands) like Soldier of Orange, Spetters, Katie Tippel. When he came back in his country, after his Hollywood period, with Black Book (my favorite Verhoeven movie). His now french period with Elle and Benedetta. Too many people say they're a fan of his work and they only watch a few of his american movies. There is a gold mine waiting for you.
You are so right, he's like Penelope Cruz, good in US movies brilliant in his home country. Soldier of Orange is one of the best WW2 tales you can see, period. And Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) is one of the best book translations into a film. Maybe a bit shocking for Americans, but the story is do strong.
Robocop is easily one of my favorite movies of all time. It sells itself on the ridiculous cheesy spectacle. The entire concept is hilariously silly and promises to be just a pointless action movie, it pretends to be less than it is. You get yourself all settled in for something easy and you’re greeted with immense brutality. And at every turn it reminds you that it’s a piece of entertainment. So often you get movies that do everything they can to convince you they mean something, desperate to be taken seriously. Here we have a movie that does everything it can to convince you it’s a joke, it has something to say but it doesn’t want you to know that. It wants you to laugh, but it wants you to be just a little bit disgusted about it.
I very much agree. In fact it's many great films all in one. It's one of the best action flicks of all time, but also a thought provoking science fiction piece, a satire on modern media, a critique of corporate influence, it's a revenge flick, a gory horror film, a crime thriller, a hero's journey, even a Christ allegory. And it does all these things better than almost any other film you can name! And ironically, I'm really guessing that the initial pitch was probably something as ridiculous as, 'let's remake Terminator, where he's the good guy'
@@jameshakola3603 Not even just a satire of modern media, a condemnation of it. It beats us over the head with the idea that TV and movies are vapid commodities with no value, and it tries to camouflage itself as fitting into that canon. Situating a christ allegory or hero’s journey into that even seems to criticize the use of those archetypes. There’s so many levels of analysis at play in a movie that is so hilariously summarized as “a cyborg police officer goes to war against crime in Detroit.” It shows such a deep love of what movies can be, and the value that entertainment can have in our lives while begging us to think deeply about what it actually means to us.
Its a heart braking master piece that shines a light on the brutality of capitalism and moral corruption, set with an incredible soundtrack that still haunts my dreams.. somehow Murphy makes it through and gives us all hope... "I really need to tell you something.."
It’s sad that we live in a time where films like these can’t be made anymore. Even the goriest of modern films can’t hold a candle to the raw confronting emotions a Verhoeven film will make you feel. And it just works on different levels too. His films age really well, in my opinion. First time I watched Starship Trooper it was just a cool ‘sci-fi war movie’, now decades later it’s such a political one full of commentary on society.
The monomyth comes from the Bible, that's why all the stories have the same ring, the same themes, and the same message. How does that last guy in the book solve all the world's problems, and what lessons were learned
True. On one hand, sexuality has a really hard time for the past decade or even more and on the other hand, the gore is just.. how to put it.. it's not the same. Somehow the violence in Verhoeven is just better executed. Many other movies are very violent but it feels way more like cronenbergian body horror, the emphasize is so strong while in Verhoeven the violence is there yeah but at the same time it feels better implemented. I saw a good bunch of movies trying to be "like the 80s" but either they are parodies/borderline parodies and just way too meta or more saw-like torture porn. Emulating Verhoeven is really hard but I have the feeling some directors think it's just "let blood spray all over the place" but that's not it.
@@valeriacaissa4552 I think it ultimately also just comes down to the personality of the person in charge. Dutch directness and stubbornness might have helped here.
@@valeriacaissa4552 I think the violence issue is thus. Modern media types have never butchered an animal or seen one butchered and then eaten it. Over and over and over until it has become mundane a part of living life, a chore. The strange fetishization of violence and gore in particular comes from the unfamiliarity of it. Every new media maker has grown up watching the simulated hyper real version. So they admire this unreality and try to emulate it in their works. Even their attempts at realism come from learning material hand selected in a sterile environment. I would like to say that this is a good problem to have, but it has an unintended consequence of people being to quick to turn to killing, or voting for a war because there is no frame of reference. That's not even touching on how sex is handled or in most cases not handled, as well as the alphabet revolution on screen and off. But has similarities to the earlier subject of violence. Western society is not having relations with the opposite sex as much, raising a family or even sharing bonds with other like minded people. We have a fundamental disconnect from reality and keep trying to inception our way into deeper and deeper simulacrums of escapism with no clear understanding of what we are trying to escape in the first place. There is enough subject matter here for an essay video really.
Starship Troopers is such a fascinating piece of media. Verhoeven actually refused to read the book because he thought it's obviously a fascist propaganda, so he made a movie based on what he thought the book was obviously about. But he preserved enough of the book to still make it possible to see that he unknowingly misinterpreted the book. So you end up with weird situation in which the movie shows you fascist-like iconography but otherwise there nothing else fascist in the movie. And the reaction is equally fascinating. You have one group of people who just like it as a cool action flick. Then you have supposedly smart people who picked up the fascist iconography and treat it is scathing satirical depiction of fascist regime and critique of propaganda. And then you have people who actually read the book or really paid attention to what is actually happening in there and who are confused why there's so much fascist iconography.
It's funny how in the book it's revealed at the last minute that the main hero is Filipino. It's meant to be subversive and anti-racist, since most of the audience back in the day would have assumed he was white. Then you watch the movie and "Rico" is a white dude lol.
I'm so glad The Algorithm led me to this video. I was born at the right time to grow up just as Verhoeven was stamping his mark on Hollywood from 1987 to 1997. He made some of my favourite films from that period. The way I saw it at the time, as a very young film enthusiast in Australia, this Dutch guy had come to Hollywood to make a string of films that took the piss out of both Hollywood and America, in a really cheesy way, while still managing to make genre classics better than most of what Hollywood could produce. He beat them at their own game, held up a mirror to them, and the audience lapped it up. In hindsight, I think the American film industry were sick of him by the time he made Showgirls and had it in for that film from the start. I remember hearing the "worst film ever" mantra and "something.. something.. hates women", and decided to watch it anyway even though I wasn't the intended audience. A lot of the themes and subtext went over my head at the time, I didn't really get it, and I didn't really like it, but I remember thinking "this is in no way the worst film I've seen; I think they might be overreacting a bit". Of course, his response was great, actually showing up at the Razzies to accept two awards for being shit, then "giving the audience what they want" by ramping up the cheesy spectacle in Starship Troopers and basically calling Americans fascists to their faces. And the crowd cheered. Legend.
"Flesh + Blood" is my favorite Verhoeven film. It's an underrated and obscure movie, but a masterpiece nonetheless. It didn't get the exposure it deserved perhaps in part because Verhoeven depicted the middle ages a little *too* accurately..
Verhoeven holds a special place in my heart. Every christmas since I turned four we would watch the same movie. That movie was Total Recall. My mom loved sci fi and she made sure to introduce me to the best of the best.
Wow, making a 4year old kid watch Total Recall is really badass. OK: an R rating means basically every kid may watch it as long as a parent is sitting next to it but come on. The escalator scene alone. And then the story - how can a child even try to wrap its head around it?
Meanwhile, I wouldn't been allowed to watch that until I was 16 or smth XD I always read these comments like: "Yeah I watched Saw with my mom when I was 4". Even Winnie the Pooh was too scary for me when I was 7.
The other day I had a dream that I was a co-producer-director on a remake of Demolition Man, amd I managed to convince Verhoeven to get on board. It was awesome!
All I dream is being a passenger in trains where I lose all my gear and when checking the time tables to find where my gear might be its all gibberish. And then I wake up.
I was a child of the 80s and grew up on Orion Pictures. Flesh & Blood was the first one I remember at 9 or 10 years old but Robocop is the one that had a profound effect on me. See I grew up in suburb of Detroit and I had never seen such visceral violence. Paul’s films are always going to deliver: A cast that is beautiful, hyper violence, sex, what-have-u, and two stories, the movie and the lesson. The movies you covered are all classics in my opinion. I loved how everyone hated Basic Instinct and Show Girls, made me just want to watch them more. I have always felt Verhoeven was finding the taboo in whatever his film was about and jamming it all in your eyeballs. Knowing what life was BEFORE the Internet makes his work all the more special. Younger folks will have a harder time understanding how unique these movies were at release. Great video!
Wow, I had no idea people disliked Showgirls that much. I was 17 when I watched it and I loved it, and some of the scenes stayed with me. A curious thing is that my all time favorite film “Before Sunrise” came out in the same year and had a profound effect on me.
Showgirls will hopefully one day be widely recognized as the most misunderstood movie ever made. It’s a work of genius. Much in the same way that David Lynch intentionally made Twin Peaks as a cheesy soap opera to comment on the state of television at the time, Verhoeven intentionally made Showgirls “bad” as a comment on Hollywood at the time. He was basically saying, “if you like tits, ass, and and trash, here you go. I made this for you. Eat it up!”
work of genius? what?! the only thing good in the film are some of the shots. the acting is wooden, the dance scenes are terrible and the plot is cliché. Boogie Nights is how you tackle a film like this well. i dont believe any director has intentionally made a bad film that will flop at the box office just to appease a margin of society. Lynch is leagues ahead of Verhoeven. The only reasons Verhoeven has had success is excellent scripts. his films are always terribly cast and he makes the average actors in them seem even more wooden EVERY TIME. look at all the films listed above and every one of them has pretty wooden performances throughout and these are meant to be his better films?? one of the most overrated directors of all time.
It wasn't a bad movie. It was well done. I didn't agree with tge critics at all. I don't think it's some masterpiece either. Moral of the story: Don't let others decide for you what you are supposed to appreciate. People hide or are unaware of their motives/triggers.
Ive never seen the film, but I will now that I know it has some angles to it that go beyond the propaganda that made me not watch it earlier. Starship Troopers too, I´m pretty sure I haven´t seen it but I will sometime in near future. Total Recall and Robocop allready were high on my list of best ever films.
In "Starship Troopers" Verhoven was holding up a mirror to the American fascination with war and fascism. BTW, so was the author of the book that movie was based on. And I absolutely LOVE both that movie and that book.
Yeah it goes for many of the films - maybe the many years of hollywood indoctrination until then had taught the audience that "war is fiction" it does not happen to you, but the explicit stuff from Showgirls & similar was not ingrained nearly as much for american audiences. Violence and gore, sure thing, but nudity and sex, outrage. It was harder to brush off as just hollywood fiction. Not an easy thing to throw on a whole theater audience compared to just a VHS you watch back home. War and murder was "easier" for the audience. Scary.
I love Verhovens movies. I rewatch them all the time. I loved Starship Troopers as a kid for the sheer action spectacle and missed the satire. As a 13 year old you just see action and boobs, you miss the fascism. I think that goes to show how powerful propaganda can be.
Especially when it came out just before the War of Terror, where Muslims were portrayed as Bugs and invaders, even though we know that asteroid was an inside job
@@Uncanny_Mountain Well we don't know that. As a conspiracy, its just too elaborate. Also I saw George Bush after 9/11. Unless he's an A* class actor, he looked like a little boy who'd been caught with his pants down. He was thinking, 'why the fuck did this happen on my watch, and what the hell do I do now?' But that's not really the point. The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, that was made in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless Bush used it to whip up patriotism, so that he could take revenge on the dictator who his dad hadn't finished off, and make Americans think it was for 9/11. And to wipe out the memory of his failure to protect America. And the rest is history, and follows the same pattern as Starship Troopers, whip up outrage, propagandise youth to sign up as cannonfodder, lash out at the nearest target. But maybe in the film, the asteroid was a false flag.
@@cally77777 wow, you're so intellectual and superior with your strawman arguments and appeals to the same authorities currently funding and arming a Holocaust against semitic people that they deny even exist The whole thing has come full circle White Supremacist Terrorists using Yudaism as an alibi, Naxis just did a change of Uniform
Also Truckbombs Like the one caught on the George Washington bridge that day, covered up by Ghouliani, a member of Opus Dei, like Bill Barr, and half of the Supreme Court The fascist Gaslighting doesn't work anymore Princess
@@cally77777 So there's a difference between the conspiracy theories that have appeared around 9/11. There's the silly ones where the US literally attacked itself. Then there's the unfortunately more realistic ones where the intelligence agencies deliberately didn't tell Bush the Saudis were prepping an attack (Saudi Arabia were the money behind the attacks, not Iraq or Afghanistan) in order to let it happen. Starship Troopers sadly predicted the very same thing.
Paul Verhoeven is a masterclass, there is no doubt if his films were helmed by American directors they would've been very safe & conventional projects, his European flair & sensibilities brought "BALLS" to Hollywood cinema that is sorely missed, his collaborations with the late great Basil Poledouris brought such wonderful orchestral efforts starting with his US debut 1985's Flesh + Blood the medieval epic with the late great Rutger Hauer, Robocop & Starship Troopers, it is so great to hear that he's returning to the US & re-teaming with Ed Neumeier from their Robocop & Starship Troopers collaborations for an erotic thriller "Young Sinner" :)
@@robertjackson8246 it has to be made shockingly obvious so that even sympathiser think it is satirical (if he dial it down, then obviously, some people will think it's their fantasy to live that way).
Fans of the book were disappointed, as fans of just about any book Hollywood attempts to put on the big screen. If you just take the film for what it is, it's a pretty entertaining guilty pleasure.
I'm not a fan of Starship Troopers - I think Robocop did the same satire better, with characters I actually cared about - but I can't deny the movie's impact
I'm not sure who this young lady is, but that was a wonderful analysis. I hope you bring her back in the future. I went to go see Showgirls at the movie theaters when it came out because I had literally just turned 17, and I, in fact, did not like it. But based on everything she just said, I might have to take another look with hopefully a more mature perspective, hopefully.
Well done. Sometimes you can’t hear the person speaking over the back ground noise. Which is annoying but shows how well you gripped me because I want every micro detail
Verhoeven is an underrated master. What is the name of the interviewee? That explanation of the negative reaction to Showgirls strikes me as just right. P.S. Fans of video essays and Verhoeven should check out Kyle Kallgren's amazing and very personal youtube essay about him, about growing up in the Netherlands and the Netherlands' experience of occupation in WW2. One of the best video essayists out there.
Verhoeven has been my favorite director for a while. I loved Robocop, Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Vasic Instinct, Showgirls, and Hollowman since they released. Definitely on the surface level at first as a kid, and then on mutiple different levels through out my life as my own perspectives grew and changed.
I watched all these movies before I was even 10. And never knew as a kid wouldn't, that they were all directed by the same man. They all happened to be my favorite movies. It's like he was always pushing the violence and sex and even as a kid it thrilled me without knowing exactly what it was.
Robocop was done on a relatively modest budget. If the execs had put more money into it, we would have had a smoother ED-209 animation. As it is, the 'clockwork' ED-209 is canon for me. There's some video titled 'what if ED-209 had 60 fps' well that means the movie would have had a bigger budget.
I remember when I saw Robocop for the first time back in the 80´s, I've never saw anything like that and I felt at that very moment that I was witnessing the born of a classic, now 40 years later I confirming that.
Imagine being so beautiful that you literally have to address it with absolutely no sense of ego. It seems like an incredible gift just as much as an incredible burden.
Talking about Starship Troopers. The US military just dropped their High School and GED requirements to join the army and navy. They last time they became less picky was a year before the Iraq War, Vietnam, and WW2.
Verhoeven is Dutch. He has the directness of a dutch person. He was not beating around the bushes when he showed something. He is raw but also very aesthetic. And he is an outsider to US, as a result he has good observations of the culture there. I can't believe there was a time when the box office offered his movies. Adult cinema is dying. Now all we get is the comfort sh.t. 23rd movie taking in the same universe. Sequels to prequels.
Starship Troopers is a masterpiece, probably his best amongst all his other masterpieces. It has seven layers of interpretation and works at all layers. Absolutely stunning vision that touches on every complexity man holds.
That's how I fet the first time I saw Showgirls too. I found the over acting was very purposeful, and intentional. The actual story is horribly depressing, which might also be a reason so many people hated it. But I never got the hate myself either.
This is a great point. I rewatched Showgirls tonight. Behind the exuberant veneer of camp is a story that's a little too real, right up to the redemptionless ending. We like to think we're so progressive in the 21st century, but no studio would dare to make a film about exploitation without smothering it in finger-wagging moralism. Showgirls pissed people off not because it was overacted, but because it cut a little too close to the bone.
The interesting thing about Verhoeven's films is that even if you didn't like this or that particular title, you still saw them when they were originally released in the theaters. There was a wild, cynical, at times tasteless exuberance about them which made them enjoyable - and they definitely were not like other American popcorn movies. We also now recognize that his films came packing a trenchant subtext of critique - critiques of the film and entertainment system, capitalism, technology, crime, justice, the military and on and on, all of which left the viewer feeling a bit queasy in the stomach at the tend of each film (though the viewer didn't always know why). In short, his films entertained, but also disturbed and provoked, and you couldn't just leave a Verhoeven film at the door as you walked out of the cinema. Without a doubt, his great masterpiece is Starship Troopers, deceptively presented in the guise of a cheesy sci-fi B movie, that offers a devastatingly satirical critique of war films, their portrayals of heroism and grandeur and the incipient fascism, made flatly obvious here, that is woven within. Star Troopers still remains news and is the subject of continuous discourse.
Nice video and I'm looking forward to the podcast episode. One minor thing, though: why talk about Verhoeven in the past tense? While he's not been as active as he used to be, he's still making movies that are well worth checking out.
I watched Starship troupers when it first came out in a cinema near Edinburgh. After the first shocking battle scene, there was complete silence in the audience, apart from one girl who laughed nervously. I heard a guy say to someone, "She thinks this is FUNNY!!"
@@HuplesCat Gremlins was a brutal film, with a body count higher than most slasher movies, yet it was marketed at kids and rated PG. I honestly don't think it would get made today, but such were the 80's.
It's always eye opening to hear well founded alternative opinions and views to the mainstream. This should have been 2h long, much of this needed more room to go more into depth and for your excellent guest to elaborate more.
I think, the 'tragedy' of verhoeven lies in the fact that he needed american level of budgets to make his sci fi visions into films, and therefore the films were mainly aimed at american audiences who were unable to see behind surface level of meaning
I'm English, not American - but surely most people who love his films do get them? I watched RoboCop as a teenager for the guns and robots, but the critique of corporations wasn't exactly subtext - it was pretty much the main plot.
Or that’s his genius. He knows that not everyone is going to realize the satire but in the guise of mainstream big budget movie making he hammers the theme home while still providing “surface entertainment.”
I appreciate your comment. Not for its insight into your obnoxious condescension, but rather for its saving me from wasting hours of my time investigating further videos from the creator of this channel who clearly endorses the sentiment. Thank you very much.
RoboCop is possibly my favorite movie of all time. PV is a filmmaker who in every US film he made, he showed us a reflection of ourselves. this is how the rest of the world sees us. and every time it's so ugly we barely recognize us.
I disliked Starship Troopers greatly on first watch but some friends pointed out to me that it was supposed to be a satire. I re-watched it with that in mind and have loved it ever since.
Verhoeven is an enigma. He'll do exciting action/satires like Robocop or Starship Troopers, ridiculous camp like Basic Instinct or Showgirls, and then there's Black Book, a morally complicated WW2 story with a genuinely strong and emphatic female protagonist. Like who IS this guy 😵💫
At the end of the day, he writes very human stories and it comes through in each of his films. Like, Murphy still retains a piece of himself when he becomes Robocop and the troopers are likable kids who get caught up in militaristic fervor that molds their thinking in ways they never stop to consider.
Showgirls is only disguised as camp. The real story is about possession of the soul. "Nomi" - the protagonist's name, means "no me". Human beings who are not conscious, preyed upon by evil spirits organized as the Establishment - represented as "entertainment biz". So white Nomi is "hosted" by black Molly. these colors mean something, you have to find out what. in the end Molly gets raped by her "idol". Observe that Nomi pushed CC down the stairs to get her place as Goddess, but we learn that she's a killer and a prostitute. Basically the spirit(Nomi) gets lost in Babylon - whose mistress is the scarlet whore.
He never missed, it's more that we often missed his point because we weren't engaging with the material the way he does. A perfect example from the man himself of how he considers potential audiences and I don't think he's wrong especially in recent years, "Hollow Man leads you by the hand and takes you with Sebastian into teasing behaviour, naughty behaviour and then really bad and ultimately evil behaviour. At what point do you abandon him? I'm thinking when he rapes the woman would probably be the moment that people decide, 'This is not exactly my type of hero', though I must say a lot of viewers follow him further than you would expect."
In Starship Troopers they don't travel across the galaxy to fight bugs for no reason. They go in retaliation to the bug's attack on earth. That is what the whole first part of the movie is about. Bug meteors hit earth. Cities blow up. People die. People join Marines. Marines are deployed to bug planet far, far away. They seek revenge.
@@DamienWalternot really. Humans invaded bug space against treaties and spun the response into war, the bugs hit bA to shock us into peace. We just decided to do genocide on the bugs who were the innocent in all of this, not us
@@HuplesCatThen bugs should have resisted invaders and left the home planet alone. Long supply lines could have solved their issue over time. They didn't know who they were dealing with.
Verhoeven is simply one of those directions who sets out to do what he wants to do and does it, regardless of whether you like it or or threatens your sensibilities or makes you uncomfortable. Whenever I hear he's making a movie I have to see it just because I know it's not going to be the same old trash we've been getting. Even Showgirls, for all its campy faults, is more interesting than pretty much all the CGI-fests we've been getting.
I have all of Paul Verhoeven's Dutch language films, and all but the two most recent films he's made. I'll be ordering them soon. Verhoeven is my favorite movie director. If I could meet a film director, he'd be the one!
I love Paul's movies, and Starship Troopers is my favorite, what really floored my young mind off 11 years old was idea that fascist were the good guys of the story and it was told from their worldview, the concept just shocked me and has been burned in my mind ever sense(Along with the nudity and gore)! I was not prepared for that kind of nuance thinking or even such a concept.
Yes, it’s such a sly slight of hand on his part that it may have even helped get the movie financed because it looks like a sci-fi shoot ‘em up on the surface but the dread of the fascist society it reflects sinks in more as you get older and rewatch it. Unless you first saw it when you were already pretty mature.
@@robfalgiano As a result of watching this movie, it really changed the type the entertainment I like as well as affected how I view the world. Not that I'm a fascist, but it made me understand that everybody's concept of good is not universal and that what is such varies from person to person.
@@cane6074 Yes, great art does that. Even when it’s disguised as something else. Quite honestly the movie creeps me out because it’s so PLAUSIBLE. And when fascism is cloaked in the guise of beautiful looking young people it’s even more insidious.
Maybe it's influence from reading the book, but I didn't see fascism in this movie. It's a system where votes are earned through service and the only thing you lose if you choose not to serve is the vote. The military sees about 10 percent of volunteers, which is about 1 percent if the population. The rest could be doing almost anything. They can resign at any time Service is not mandatory and can't be forced upon people. Only those incapable of understanding the oath can be denied the right to serve as race, religion, etc... are of no consequence. Everyone is there entirely of their own volition for the betterment of the species before they were ever set foot in battle, if they ever do. Those don't seem like very fascist qualities to me. Though, I think it more likely that since this is a post scarcity society where no one starves, healthcare and education are freely available, discrimination is non existent, etc... It's hard for me to see it as analogous to the Nazis and maybe I'm not separating the Nazi ideals from the fascist political system very well. It felt weird to see the Nazi imagery in the movie. The book made it feel like a very perfectly executed conservative government. But that's most likely because it's post scarcity and it's easy to make that look good, regardless of your beliefs.
@@fijipoddIf you think losing the vote is not a horrible penalty you probably grew up in a free country and take voting for granted. Conscription or penalizing opting out removes democracy from warmaking, which is a mark of authoritarian systems. When the threat is real there ahould be plenty of volunteers!
Wow. Gotta check out Showgirls again. Only saw it at release and don't remember it. Didn't realize Verhoeven made it, which means I missed the subtext of that entire film, given his track record. Great vid. Outstanding commentary, Olga.
I've tried to go back and watch it for its commentary on Vegas, and by proxy the US, but I just can't get past the wooden acting by Elizabeth Berkley. It's so bad it hurts.
It hardly ever gets mentioned that Showgirls is simply All About Eve, updated with sex. My friends and I loved showgirls. We went to see it twice when we were in uni. We are straight men.
Verhoeven is the master at reminding you that you’re watching a movie without taking you out of the movie. The R rated elements in his movies were always done with a kick so it brought a sense of humor to what, on paper, are very dark elements. Great filmmaker
Starship troopers especially has alot of deeper meaning. You can see the reflections through several of his films, total recall and robocop especially. The entire premise is from the "utopian ideal" a philosophical conundrum into what the greater good for humanity would actually be. As in the perfect world. Its quite obvious that Paul was smitten by the dystopian path.
Paul Verhoeven is one of my favorite directors, unique and authentic, i dont know any other director that made movies similar to his, genuinely enjoyable hollywood blockbusters that at the same time were always also the opposite, a thoughtfull parody, or a cynical pamphlet. His first dutch movies are also very good, even without the budget. One of them ('Turkish Delight', also with Rutger Hauer before he got world wide fame) has been chosen as the best dutch movie of the last century. At that time he got frequentky asked why there was always so much violence and nudity in his movies, but no message. He used to respond that messages were for answering machines, not for movies. Looking back, i think he was already fooling the critics at that time ;)
I read his biography and there in he stated that he in fact really hated violence and just wanted to show people how horrible and shocking violence can be.
Something that i didn't notice when i first saw Robocop, but is obvious to me now, is that the window in the boardroom is bulletproof. The storytelling is in the worldbuilding... :D
Haven't seen Showgirls beginning to end since it came out (when I was in Middle School ironically) I latter lived in Vegas and worked around the adult industry. Time to re-watch it.
VHS: Robocop was my first Video Rental. The rentals opened content for teens & tween too young to see movies in the theatre. Great vidi. BTW I'd buy that for a dollar is from an ad campaign for a regional lotto. The catch line went what we would say Viral and it's worked in to Robocop as a wink&nodd to the audience from the region the movie filmed in.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s I 100% agree with her take on the cultural shift on nudity. It's weird, it's like we pushed the envelope so far with violence and people were just like 'meh' just make sure the kids don't see it. As soon as the same thing happens with sex, people lose their minds and start shouting from the rooftops "Will somebody just please think of the children?!?" My take, we need a 'new' cultural revolution. People need to take a step back and stop being 'appalled' by nudity and sex between consenting adults. This outdated and frankly prudish mindset needs to change.
Agreed. When I was a child I saw movie violence that gave me nightmares, but as soon as there was kissing on screen my parents stopped the VHS😅 It was incomprehensible to a young mind, still don't really understand it now
The problem with a new mindset towards sex is the dead hand of the past- our puritanical past is very strong and reasserts itself every other generation.
It's sickening. "Make love, not war" was a serious slogan that some took as a joke, and others, a threat to their morals. War is not more virtuous than sex and love. Those who think so are the real perverts.
The FX in Starship Troopers holds up after 25 years. Amazing work.
You can thank Phil Tippet for that. Stop go animation was killed by CGI, we need to go back to the tried and true
The CGI looks good enough to be confused for models and the models looks crisp enough to be confused with CGI.
@@SierraSierraFoxtrot I have to agree with you. Even after more than a quarter of a century later the CGI still stands up and partly why it does is it's not overused. Verhoeven and his crew managed to find a good - if not perfect - balance on their first go.
Total Recall too. The miniatures, oil painted backgrounds, and practical effects withstand the test of time.
@@Uncanny_Mountain Phill Tippet is brilliant. Mad God was mind blowing from a practical effects standpoint.
Paul Verhoeven is one of those veey few raw and straight to the point filmmakers.
Doenst matter if he talks about:
- corporativism (Robocop)
- government (Total Recall)
- sensuality (Basic Instinct)
- entertainment business (Showgirls)
- fascism (Starship Troppers)
Everytime you finish one of his movies you get the sense of "damn.... he's got no inhibitions" ans thats why his movies are such masterpieces
and the strong message is, sadly, often overlooked.
@@KootFloris yeah I feel like the OP doesn't understand his films 😂 if no one talks about these things who will?
😂Se4k8
K8i4kim4.yyc
Basic Instinct isnt about sensuality
Capitalism (all of the above)
“Hated by critics, loved by audiences.” Let’s get back to that kind of film making.
That already is every marvel movie. Please get away from that
@@Mathematik_Anhaengerthe critics, up until the last couple years, have praised Marvel movies from the start. And in our world today, that’s the only reason the audience likes them. A consensus of “the experts,” the Watchmen of critics is set BEFORE the general audience even watches it. It’s not like back in the day when you read the local critic in the paper and you knew it was just his opinion. Collectivizing opinions into an apparent fact is the most destructive thing for movies, or really any kind of art
@@Whaddayamean13 then we should not change the filmmaking, but the Way people interact With critics.
@@Mathematik_Anhaenger I think the Rotten Tomatoes score should not be revealed until at least a month after the film’s public release
@@Whaddayamean13 No, I Mean rotten tomatoes specifically should be banned, but the voices of critics help me to understand the value of a film. If you search long enough, you will find a critic with your Taste. And if you search longer (time well spent for movie enjoyers) you will find a number of critics, with each of whom you usually are d accord in certain espects. I rarely never get surprised by the quality of a film. This is the reason I go to cinema for Films I otherwise would not have seen (the Killer eg), and Stay at Home for those that dont get acclaim by said critics (Dune 2). Eventually I will watch every film, but I dodge the pricy cinema.
Paul lived in my hometown of the Hague, Netherlands, during the war. His neighbourhood was destroyed by a mistake bombardement by the English. He always said that had a profound influence on his later life. That could have been an influence on starship troopers. Also, public nudity was already a “done deal” on Dutch television during the 60’s. Was Showgirls ahead of it’s time? It’s not about nudity, but about power, money, influence, greed etc.
well, its a bit about nudity, in the sense of telling americans how hypocritical it is to be offended by skin
Have you ever read the Starship Troopers book...? It's such a scathing indictment of society and citizenship expectations and where it's going in general and it's SOOOO so good. It should be required reading in high schools for critical thinking. I need to read it again
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t that incident the inspiration for Black Book (2006)?
@@Hylebos75I’d be mortified if every kid had to read that. It’s not satirical or ironic in any way, the fascist regime depicted is genuinely what Heinlein wanted. He wrote it as a response to the suspension of nuke testing, in favour of nuke testing. Paul famously hated the book and used the movie to mock Heinlein’s ridiculous fantasy and turn it into a satire. Paul saw firsthand the effects of fascism on his home country, and recognised it in the book after two pages.
He saw real violence, death and mutilated bodies of War with his own eyes. Hence, he never shied away from depicting it accurately in his movies.
Starship Troopers really opened my eyes to my military service. I didn’t see the movie till after I came back from Iraq in 2005. I really didn’t like the film at first viewing because it reminded me too much of my experience and when I watched it I finally saw what the film was doing.
How would you describe what it's doing?
@@DamienWalter Putting a spotlight on not just the military culture but the culture that enables it, how media also plays a part in shaping minds young and old in favor of the military industrial complex.
@@Maya_Ruinz100%. And his movies were sadly predictive. Robocop takes place in a corporatocracy, which the US has now become. Starship Troopers is in a fascist state, which the US is now flirting with, though I pray we will pull it back from the precipice.
I saw it in theaters when it came out, and thought it was just a campy action movie full of tropes… about ten years later I watched it again on the advice that there was a much deeper meaning, and it opened my eyes and mind to the things you’re taking about. Now… every time I see it, I find something else (sometimes minute details) that give me even more reason to think about the deeper meaning of the movie.
@@Maya_Ruinz in addition, it also puts a spotlight on ourselves, as we peel back the layers of first our ridicule, then our enthusiasm, then our agreement with its message it forces us to look on ourselves and WHY we get convinced and gung ho. It asks us if our current society is any different, in the end.
Fantastic video, Paul Verhoeven is a masterful director whose work is often misunderstood and viewed as schlocky or sensationalist but there's a lot more going on that viewers can't or won't understand. Excellent interviewee too.
Who's a clever boy then?
I see a lot of people talking about his american movies.
Please, if you're a fan of Verhoeven, watch his other movies. His early movies when he was working in his country (Netherlands) like Soldier of Orange, Spetters, Katie Tippel. When he came back in his country, after his Hollywood period, with Black Book (my favorite Verhoeven movie). His now french period with Elle and Benedetta.
Too many people say they're a fan of his work and they only watch a few of his american movies. There is a gold mine waiting for you.
I'll have to look into those. I do really enjoy his movies but I have only seen the American ones (as I grew up in America).
You are so right, he's like Penelope Cruz, good in US movies brilliant in his home country. Soldier of Orange is one of the best WW2 tales you can see, period. And Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) is one of the best book translations into a film. Maybe a bit shocking for Americans, but the story is do strong.
Black Book was a good movie. Carice van Houten was great in it.
Thumbs up! You left out one of my favorites, The Fourth Man.
Robocop is easily one of my favorite movies of all time. It sells itself on the ridiculous cheesy spectacle. The entire concept is hilariously silly and promises to be just a pointless action movie, it pretends to be less than it is. You get yourself all settled in for something easy and you’re greeted with immense brutality. And at every turn it reminds you that it’s a piece of entertainment. So often you get movies that do everything they can to convince you they mean something, desperate to be taken seriously. Here we have a movie that does everything it can to convince you it’s a joke, it has something to say but it doesn’t want you to know that.
It wants you to laugh, but it wants you to be just a little bit disgusted about it.
I very much agree. In fact it's many great films all in one. It's one of the best action flicks of all time, but also a thought provoking science fiction piece, a satire on modern media, a critique of corporate influence, it's a revenge flick, a gory horror film, a crime thriller, a hero's journey, even a Christ allegory. And it does all these things better than almost any other film you can name! And ironically, I'm really guessing that the initial pitch was probably something as ridiculous as, 'let's remake Terminator, where he's the good guy'
@@jameshakola3603 Not even just a satire of modern media, a condemnation of it. It beats us over the head with the idea that TV and movies are vapid commodities with no value, and it tries to camouflage itself as fitting into that canon. Situating a christ allegory or hero’s journey into that even seems to criticize the use of those archetypes. There’s so many levels of analysis at play in a movie that is so hilariously summarized as “a cyborg police officer goes to war against crime in Detroit.” It shows such a deep love of what movies can be, and the value that entertainment can have in our lives while begging us to think deeply about what it actually means to us.
My favorite part of the movie: the 6000 SUX car!
Its a heart braking master piece that shines a light on the brutality of capitalism and moral corruption, set with an incredible soundtrack that still haunts my dreams.. somehow Murphy makes it through and gives us all hope... "I really need to tell you something.."
A great description... @@jameshakola3603
It’s sad that we live in a time where films like these can’t be made anymore. Even the goriest of modern films can’t hold a candle to the raw confronting emotions a Verhoeven film will make you feel. And it just works on different levels too. His films age really well, in my opinion. First time I watched Starship Trooper it was just a cool ‘sci-fi war movie’, now decades later it’s such a political one full of commentary on society.
"How our social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos."
Hits way harder in 2023 than it did in 1997
The monomyth comes from the Bible, that's why all the stories have the same ring, the same themes, and the same message. How does that last guy in the book solve all the world's problems, and what lessons were learned
True. On one hand, sexuality has a really hard time for the past decade or even more and on the other hand, the gore is just.. how to put it.. it's not the same. Somehow the violence in Verhoeven is just better executed. Many other movies are very violent but it feels way more like cronenbergian body horror, the emphasize is so strong while in Verhoeven the violence is there yeah but at the same time it feels better implemented.
I saw a good bunch of movies trying to be "like the 80s" but either they are parodies/borderline parodies and just way too meta or more saw-like torture porn. Emulating Verhoeven is really hard but I have the feeling some directors think it's just "let blood spray all over the place" but that's not it.
@@valeriacaissa4552 I think it ultimately also just comes down to the personality of the person in charge. Dutch directness and stubbornness might have helped here.
@@valeriacaissa4552 I think the violence issue is thus. Modern media types have never butchered an animal or seen one butchered and then eaten it. Over and over and over until it has become mundane a part of living life, a chore.
The strange fetishization of violence and gore in particular comes from the unfamiliarity of it.
Every new media maker has grown up watching the simulated hyper real version. So they admire this unreality and try to emulate it in their works. Even their attempts at realism come from learning material hand selected in a sterile environment. I would like to say that this is a good problem to have, but it has an unintended consequence of people being to quick to turn to killing, or voting for a war because there is no frame of reference.
That's not even touching on how sex is handled or in most cases not handled, as well as the alphabet revolution on screen and off. But has similarities to the earlier subject of violence. Western society is not having relations with the opposite sex as much, raising a family or even sharing bonds with other like minded people. We have a fundamental disconnect from reality and keep trying to inception our way into deeper and deeper simulacrums of escapism with no clear understanding of what we are trying to escape in the first place.
There is enough subject matter here for an essay video really.
Starship Troopers is such a fascinating piece of media. Verhoeven actually refused to read the book because he thought it's obviously a fascist propaganda, so he made a movie based on what he thought the book was obviously about. But he preserved enough of the book to still make it possible to see that he unknowingly misinterpreted the book. So you end up with weird situation in which the movie shows you fascist-like iconography but otherwise there nothing else fascist in the movie.
And the reaction is equally fascinating. You have one group of people who just like it as a cool action flick. Then you have supposedly smart people who picked up the fascist iconography and treat it is scathing satirical depiction of fascist regime and critique of propaganda. And then you have people who actually read the book or really paid attention to what is actually happening in there and who are confused why there's so much fascist iconography.
Service Guarantees Citizenship.
It's funny how in the book it's revealed at the last minute that the main hero is Filipino. It's meant to be subversive and anti-racist, since most of the audience back in the day would have assumed he was white. Then you watch the movie and "Rico" is a white dude lol.
@@gradycdenton Its funny because Filipinoes are the fascists of their own island in the treatment of natives.
Paul Verhoeven did Robert Heinlein dirty!
Recollecting his career, Kyle MacLaughlin said this about Showgirls: "When your agent tells you not to do a movie, listen to him!"
I'm so glad that I saw the R-rated Showgirls. If I saw the NC-17 version, I would have needed therapy for decades!
@randywhite3947 Nobody cares randy
This is an absolutely beautifully put together homage of Verhovens work. Really well done 🫡
I'm so glad The Algorithm led me to this video. I was born at the right time to grow up just as Verhoeven was stamping his mark on Hollywood from 1987 to 1997. He made some of my favourite films from that period. The way I saw it at the time, as a very young film enthusiast in Australia, this Dutch guy had come to Hollywood to make a string of films that took the piss out of both Hollywood and America, in a really cheesy way, while still managing to make genre classics better than most of what Hollywood could produce. He beat them at their own game, held up a mirror to them, and the audience lapped it up.
In hindsight, I think the American film industry were sick of him by the time he made Showgirls and had it in for that film from the start. I remember hearing the "worst film ever" mantra and "something.. something.. hates women", and decided to watch it anyway even though I wasn't the intended audience. A lot of the themes and subtext went over my head at the time, I didn't really get it, and I didn't really like it, but I remember thinking "this is in no way the worst film I've seen; I think they might be overreacting a bit". Of course, his response was great, actually showing up at the Razzies to accept two awards for being shit, then "giving the audience what they want" by ramping up the cheesy spectacle in Starship Troopers and basically calling Americans fascists to their faces. And the crowd cheered. Legend.
Ironically Verhoeven films are quintessentially Hollywood. Total recall, Robocop, Starship troopers etc
Well, I loved the movie. Elizabeth B was hotter than lava and she was a strong woman. The allegations of misogyny were lies, as usual.
"Flesh + Blood" is my favorite Verhoeven film. It's an underrated and obscure movie, but a masterpiece nonetheless. It didn't get the exposure it deserved perhaps in part because Verhoeven depicted the middle ages a little *too* accurately..
Very true
I loved this presentation. Captured the aesthetics of Verhoven wonderfully. Kudos
Verhoeven holds a special place in my heart. Every christmas since I turned four we would watch the same movie. That movie was Total Recall. My mom loved sci fi and she made sure to introduce me to the best of the best.
Same here dude. Total Recall since 5, now I'm 40 and still watch yearly.
Saw it in 2012 at the age of 17 and it became an instant Top 10 favorite film. The remake blew
@DeepEye1994 What remake? (I saw it. But my brain puked it up.)
Wow, making a 4year old kid watch Total Recall is really badass. OK: an R rating means basically every kid may watch it as long as a parent is sitting next to it but come on. The escalator scene alone. And then the story - how can a child even try to wrap its head around it?
Meanwhile, I wouldn't been allowed to watch that until I was 16 or smth XD I always read these comments like: "Yeah I watched Saw with my mom when I was 4". Even Winnie the Pooh was too scary for me when I was 7.
The other day I had a dream that I was a co-producer-director on a remake of Demolition Man, amd I managed to convince Verhoeven to get on board.
It was awesome!
All I dream is being a passenger in trains where I lose all my gear and when checking the time tables to find where my gear might be its all gibberish. And then I wake up.
Wow, after watching this I realize I really need to watch Basic Instinct and Showgirls.
Find a VHS player and old cassette copies for the full experience.
Nah... to get the FULL experience, you need those things AND be a 13 year old boy...😂😂😂 @@DamienWalter
Verhoeven's first French movie, "Elle" with Isabelle Huppert, is a masterpiece.
The fact critics actually thought Starship Troopers was pro-fascism is everything you need to know about critics.
Service Guarantees Citizenship.
I was a child of the 80s and grew up on Orion Pictures. Flesh & Blood was the first one I remember at 9 or 10 years old but Robocop is the one that had a profound effect on me. See I grew up in suburb of Detroit and I had never seen such visceral violence. Paul’s films are always going to deliver:
A cast that is beautiful, hyper violence, sex, what-have-u, and two stories, the movie and the lesson.
The movies you covered are all classics in my opinion. I loved how everyone hated Basic Instinct and Show Girls, made me just want to watch them more. I have always felt Verhoeven was finding the taboo in whatever his film was about and jamming it all in your eyeballs.
Knowing what life was BEFORE the Internet makes his work all the more special. Younger folks will have a harder time understanding how unique these movies were at release. Great video!
Wow, I had no idea people disliked Showgirls that much. I was 17 when I watched it and I loved it, and some of the scenes stayed with me. A curious thing is that my all time favorite film “Before Sunrise” came out in the same year and had a profound effect on me.
Never understood the Showgirls hate. Love that movie.
Showgirls will hopefully one day be widely recognized as the most misunderstood movie ever made. It’s a work of genius.
Much in the same way that David Lynch intentionally made Twin Peaks as a cheesy soap opera to comment on the state of television at the time, Verhoeven intentionally made Showgirls “bad” as a comment on Hollywood at the time. He was basically saying, “if you like tits, ass, and and trash, here you go. I made this for you. Eat it up!”
work of genius? what?! the only thing good in the film are some of the shots. the acting is wooden, the dance scenes are terrible and the plot is cliché. Boogie Nights is how you tackle a film like this well. i dont believe any director has intentionally made a bad film that will flop at the box office just to appease a margin of society.
Lynch is leagues ahead of Verhoeven. The only reasons Verhoeven has had success is excellent scripts. his films are always terribly cast and he makes the average actors in them seem even more wooden EVERY TIME. look at all the films listed above and every one of them has pretty wooden performances throughout and these are meant to be his better films?? one of the most overrated directors of all time.
@@DW-lx9wt Cool. Merry Christmas.
@@DW-lx9wt Are you perhaps the kid of the showgirl babe? :)
It wasn't a bad movie. It was well done. I didn't agree with tge critics at all. I don't think it's some masterpiece either.
Moral of the story: Don't let others decide for you what you are supposed to appreciate. People hide or are unaware of their motives/triggers.
Ive never seen the film, but I will now that I know it has some angles to it that go beyond the propaganda that made me not watch it earlier. Starship Troopers too, I´m pretty sure I haven´t seen it but I will sometime in near future. Total Recall and Robocop allready were high on my list of best ever films.
I wish there was more content on youtube like this. But this only works because I love Vorhoeven's work so this was entertaining from start to finish.
In "Starship Troopers" Verhoven was holding up a mirror to the American fascination with war and fascism. BTW, so was the author of the book that movie was based on. And I absolutely LOVE both that movie and that book.
Yeah it goes for many of the films - maybe the many years of hollywood indoctrination until then had taught the audience that "war is fiction" it does not happen to you, but the explicit stuff from Showgirls & similar was not ingrained nearly as much for american audiences. Violence and gore, sure thing, but nudity and sex, outrage. It was harder to brush off as just hollywood fiction. Not an easy thing to throw on a whole theater audience compared to just a VHS you watch back home. War and murder was "easier" for the audience. Scary.
You and Verhoven obviously didn’t understand the book then
@@ryanpeck3377Verhoeven did understand the book. That's why he satirized it with his film.
@@ryanpeck3377 the book itself was a satire.
@@ryanpeck3377sounds like maybe you didn’t understand the book? 😬
Starship Troopers and Robocop are among my top 3 my favourite movies of all time.
I love Verhovens movies. I rewatch them all the time. I loved Starship Troopers as a kid for the sheer action spectacle and missed the satire. As a 13 year old you just see action and boobs, you miss the fascism. I think that goes to show how powerful propaganda can be.
Especially when it came out just before the War of Terror, where Muslims were portrayed as Bugs and invaders, even though we know that asteroid was an inside job
@@Uncanny_Mountain Well we don't know that. As a conspiracy, its just too elaborate. Also I saw George Bush after 9/11. Unless he's an A* class actor, he looked like a little boy who'd been caught with his pants down. He was thinking, 'why the fuck did this happen on my watch, and what the hell do I do now?'
But that's not really the point. The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, that was made in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless Bush used it to whip up patriotism, so that he could take revenge on the dictator who his dad hadn't finished off, and make Americans think it was for 9/11. And to wipe out the memory of his failure to protect America.
And the rest is history, and follows the same pattern as Starship Troopers, whip up outrage, propagandise youth to sign up as cannonfodder, lash out at the nearest target. But maybe in the film, the asteroid was a false flag.
@@cally77777 wow, you're so intellectual and superior with your strawman arguments and appeals to the same authorities currently funding and arming a Holocaust against semitic people that they deny even exist
The whole thing has come full circle
White Supremacist Terrorists using Yudaism as an alibi, Naxis just did a change of Uniform
Also Truckbombs
Like the one caught on the George Washington bridge that day, covered up by Ghouliani, a member of Opus Dei, like Bill Barr, and half of the Supreme Court
The fascist Gaslighting doesn't work anymore Princess
@@cally77777 So there's a difference between the conspiracy theories that have appeared around 9/11. There's the silly ones where the US literally attacked itself. Then there's the unfortunately more realistic ones where the intelligence agencies deliberately didn't tell Bush the Saudis were prepping an attack (Saudi Arabia were the money behind the attacks, not Iraq or Afghanistan) in order to let it happen. Starship Troopers sadly predicted the very same thing.
Violence, power, money, influence, greed, hate, pain, endurance, these themes where always explored and you felt it.
David Lynch, Verhoven and Cronenberg, the trinity of greatness.
Paul Verhoeven is a masterclass, there is no doubt if his films were helmed by American directors they would've been very safe & conventional projects, his European flair & sensibilities brought "BALLS" to Hollywood cinema that is sorely missed, his collaborations with the late great Basil Poledouris brought such wonderful orchestral efforts starting with his US debut 1985's Flesh + Blood the medieval epic with the late great Rutger Hauer, Robocop & Starship Troopers, it is so great to hear that he's returning to the US & re-teaming with Ed Neumeier from their Robocop & Starship Troopers collaborations for an erotic thriller "Young Sinner" :)
I remember being really upset when everybody attacked starship troopers. I thought they were just misguided.
The man put Doogie Howser in a Nazi uniform - how much clearer could he have made it?
For starters read the book? They're not Nazis @@robertjackson8246
@@robertjackson8246 it has to be made shockingly obvious so that even sympathiser think it is satirical (if he dial it down, then obviously, some people will think it's their fantasy to live that way).
Fans of the book were disappointed, as fans of just about any book Hollywood attempts to put on the big screen. If you just take the film for what it is, it's a pretty entertaining guilty pleasure.
I'm not a fan of Starship Troopers - I think Robocop did the same satire better, with characters I actually cared about - but I can't deny the movie's impact
Excellent vid on PV and you're editing is top shelf my friend. Olga is a brilliant guest btw...
I get a "my movies end up making the opposite point of the point I'm trying to make" vibe from Verhoeven
This great stuff Damien. A very thoughtful take on a very underrated director,
I wouldn't say he's underrated. His films were mostly very successful - if not notorious - and revered by many people.
I'm not sure who this young lady is, but that was a wonderful analysis. I hope you bring her back in the future. I went to go see Showgirls at the movie theaters when it came out because I had literally just turned 17, and I, in fact, did not like it. But based on everything she just said, I might have to take another look with hopefully a more mature perspective, hopefully.
Well done. Sometimes you can’t hear the person speaking over the back ground noise. Which is annoying but shows how well you gripped me because I want every micro detail
Verhoeven is an underrated master. What is the name of the interviewee? That explanation of the negative reaction to Showgirls strikes me as just right.
P.S. Fans of video essays and Verhoeven should check out Kyle Kallgren's amazing and very personal youtube essay about him, about growing up in the Netherlands and the Netherlands' experience of occupation in WW2. One of the best video essayists out there.
Verhoeven has been my favorite director for a while. I loved Robocop, Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Vasic Instinct, Showgirls, and Hollowman since they released. Definitely on the surface level at first as a kid, and then on mutiple different levels through out my life as my own perspectives grew and changed.
That call-to-action earned my sub
I watched all these movies before I was even 10. And never knew as a kid wouldn't, that they were all directed by the same man. They all happened to be my favorite movies. It's like he was always pushing the violence and sex and even as a kid it thrilled me without knowing exactly what it was.
Robocop was done on a relatively modest budget.
If the execs had put more money into it, we would have had a smoother ED-209 animation.
As it is, the 'clockwork' ED-209 is canon for me.
There's some video titled 'what if ED-209 had 60 fps' well that means the movie would have had a bigger budget.
I remember when I saw Robocop for the first time back in the 80´s, I've never saw anything like that and I felt at that very moment that I was witnessing the born of a classic, now 40 years later I confirming that.
Imagine being so beautiful that you literally have to address it with absolutely no sense of ego. It seems like an incredible gift just as much as an incredible burden.
Did I miss the name of the person providing the commentary? She's brilliant and insightful and I'd love to hear more fom her.
2:26 Olga Yakimenko
Pay closer attention, it'll increase your comprehension.
Keep your game tight and you'll be alright.
@@RightNowManKeep your game tight and your ass tighter! The boys love that shit ;)
Talking about Starship Troopers. The US military just dropped their High School and GED requirements to join the army and navy. They last time they became less picky was a year before the Iraq War, Vietnam, and WW2.
All of these movies are ease to dismiss, but are subtle works of art.
Verhoeven is Dutch. He has the directness of a dutch person. He was not beating around the bushes when he showed something. He is raw but also very aesthetic. And he is an outsider to US, as a result he has good observations of the culture there.
I can't believe there was a time when the box office offered his movies. Adult cinema is dying. Now all we get is the comfort sh.t. 23rd movie taking in the same universe. Sequels to prequels.
Fantastic production. Thank you for making this
"In order to defeat the bug, we must eat the bug" - Klaus
critics hate Paul for the very reason We movie goers love him. he is "balls out" in every movie, no holds barred, no boundary left "un-pushed"..
Starship Troopers is a masterpiece, probably his best amongst all his other masterpieces. It has seven layers of interpretation and works at all layers. Absolutely stunning vision that touches on every complexity man holds.
Oh wow, I used to watch verhoeven movies on VHS with really bad Russian dubbing as a kid, robocop & total recall blew my mind as an 80s Soviet kid.
This was very enlightening and a great explanation!
That's how I fet the first time I saw Showgirls too. I found the over acting was very purposeful, and intentional. The actual story is horribly depressing, which might also be a reason so many people hated it. But I never got the hate myself either.
This is a great point. I rewatched Showgirls tonight. Behind the exuberant veneer of camp is a story that's a little too real, right up to the redemptionless ending. We like to think we're so progressive in the 21st century, but no studio would dare to make a film about exploitation without smothering it in finger-wagging moralism. Showgirls pissed people off not because it was overacted, but because it cut a little too close to the bone.
The interesting thing about Verhoeven's films is that even if you didn't like this or that particular title, you still saw them when they were originally released in the theaters. There was a wild, cynical, at times tasteless exuberance about them which made them enjoyable - and they definitely were not like other American popcorn movies. We also now recognize that his films came packing a trenchant subtext of critique - critiques of the film and entertainment system, capitalism, technology, crime, justice, the military and on and on, all of which left the viewer feeling a bit queasy in the stomach at the tend of each film (though the viewer didn't always know why). In short, his films entertained, but also disturbed and provoked, and you couldn't just leave a Verhoeven film at the door as you walked out of the cinema. Without a doubt, his great masterpiece is Starship Troopers, deceptively presented in the guise of a cheesy sci-fi B movie, that offers a devastatingly satirical critique of war films, their portrayals of heroism and grandeur and the incipient fascism, made flatly obvious here, that is woven within. Star Troopers still remains news and is the subject of continuous discourse.
Nice video and I'm looking forward to the podcast episode. One minor thing, though: why talk about Verhoeven in the past tense? While he's not been as active as he used to be, he's still making movies that are well worth checking out.
I watched Starship troupers when it first came out in a cinema near Edinburgh.
After the first shocking battle scene, there was complete silence in the audience, apart from one girl who laughed nervously.
I heard a guy say to someone, "She thinks this is FUNNY!!"
Chimps laugh when we're terrified
Scots! 😂I screamed watching Gremlins when he popped up with a chainsaw. The entire packed theatre laughed at me.
@@HuplesCat Gremlins was a brutal film, with a body count higher than most slasher movies, yet it was marketed at kids and rated PG. I honestly don't think it would get made today, but such were the 80's.
She probably recognized the violence as over the top. My son laughed all through Pulp Fiction. I was so shocked I missed much of the satire.
He needs to make one more sci fi masterpiece and pass the torch!
The Mote in Gods Eye really needs a film
It's always eye opening to hear well founded alternative opinions and views to the mainstream. This should have been 2h long, much of this needed more room to go more into depth and for your excellent guest to elaborate more.
The full 2 hour interview is on the podcast feed
@@DamienWalter Oh fantastic, thank you
Fantastic Video. Verhoeven made a majority of my favorite movies.
I think, the 'tragedy' of verhoeven lies in the fact that he needed american level of budgets to make his sci fi visions into films, and therefore the films were mainly aimed at american audiences who were unable to see behind surface level of meaning
@@TheJeremyKentBGross the american critics are a part of the american audience
We Americans do not have a monopoly on zombie group think. It's pretty much rampant worldwide. Get off your high horse.
I'm English, not American - but surely most people who love his films do get them? I watched RoboCop as a teenager for the guns and robots, but the critique of corporations wasn't exactly subtext - it was pretty much the main plot.
Or that’s his genius. He knows that not everyone is going to realize the satire but in the guise of mainstream big budget movie making he hammers the theme home while still providing “surface entertainment.”
I appreciate your comment.
Not for its insight into your obnoxious condescension, but rather for its saving me
from wasting hours of my time investigating further videos from the creator
of this channel who clearly endorses the sentiment.
Thank you very much.
RoboCop is possibly my favorite movie of all time. PV is a filmmaker who in every US film he made, he showed us a reflection of ourselves. this is how the rest of the world sees us. and every time it's so ugly we barely recognize us.
I disliked Starship Troopers greatly on first watch but some friends pointed out to me that it was supposed to be a satire. I re-watched it with that in mind and have loved it ever since.
Verhoeven is an enigma. He'll do exciting action/satires like Robocop or Starship Troopers, ridiculous camp like Basic Instinct or Showgirls, and then there's Black Book, a morally complicated WW2 story with a genuinely strong and emphatic female protagonist. Like who IS this guy 😵💫
At the end of the day, he writes very human stories and it comes through in each of his films. Like, Murphy still retains a piece of himself when he becomes Robocop and the troopers are likable kids who get caught up in militaristic fervor that molds their thinking in ways they never stop to consider.
Showgirls is only disguised as camp. The real story is about possession of the soul.
"Nomi" - the protagonist's name, means "no me". Human beings who are not conscious, preyed upon by evil spirits organized as the Establishment - represented as "entertainment biz". So white Nomi is "hosted" by black Molly. these colors mean something, you have to find out what. in the end Molly gets raped by her "idol". Observe that Nomi pushed CC down the stairs to get her place as Goddess, but we learn that she's a killer and a prostitute. Basically the spirit(Nomi) gets lost in Babylon - whose mistress is the scarlet whore.
Best video I’ve seen in ages. Nail hit directly on head. New subscriber here!
He hits way more than he missed and his hits are amazing.
He never missed, it's more that we often missed his point because we weren't engaging with the material the way he does. A perfect example from the man himself of how he considers potential audiences and I don't think he's wrong especially in recent years, "Hollow Man leads you by the hand and takes you with Sebastian into teasing behaviour, naughty behaviour and then really bad and ultimately evil behaviour. At what point do you abandon him? I'm thinking when he rapes the woman would probably be the moment that people decide, 'This is not exactly my type of hero', though I must say a lot of viewers follow him further than you would expect."
You know satire is truly biting when most people watching it don't even realize that it's satire to begin with.
Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers is the perfect scifi trilogy.
In Starship Troopers they don't travel across the galaxy to fight bugs for no reason. They go in retaliation to the bug's attack on earth. That is what the whole first part of the movie is about. Bug meteors hit earth. Cities blow up. People die. People join Marines. Marines are deployed to bug planet far, far away. They seek revenge.
false flag
@@DamienWalternot really. Humans invaded bug space against treaties and spun the response into war, the bugs hit bA to shock us into peace. We just decided to do genocide on the bugs who were the innocent in all of this, not us
@@HuplesCatThen bugs should have resisted invaders and left the home planet alone. Long supply lines could have solved their issue over time. They didn't know who they were dealing with.
anyone who's ever experienced the netherlands probably understands.....this is exactly what you would expect of a dutch filmaker in hollywood.
Robo, Recall and Troopers are 3 of my fav films and i have watched them 100s of times over
Verhoeven is simply one of those directions who sets out to do what he wants to do and does it, regardless of whether you like it or or threatens your sensibilities or makes you uncomfortable. Whenever I hear he's making a movie I have to see it just because I know it's not going to be the same old trash we've been getting. Even Showgirls, for all its campy faults, is more interesting than pretty much all the CGI-fests we've been getting.
I love the Sharon Stone story about her Total Recall audition. Beautiful!
Yes. Finding that was one of the reasons we made the video.
I have all of Paul Verhoeven's Dutch language films, and all but the two most recent films he's made. I'll be ordering them soon. Verhoeven is my favorite movie director. If I could meet a film director, he'd be the one!
I love Paul's movies, and Starship Troopers is my favorite, what really floored my young mind off 11 years old was idea that fascist were the good guys of the story and it was told from their worldview, the concept just shocked me and has been burned in my mind ever sense(Along with the nudity and gore)! I was not prepared for that kind of nuance thinking or even such a concept.
Yes, it’s such a sly slight of hand on his part that it may have even helped get the movie financed because it looks like a sci-fi shoot ‘em up on the surface but the dread of the fascist society it reflects sinks in more as you get older and rewatch it. Unless you first saw it when you were already pretty mature.
@@robfalgiano As a result of watching this movie, it really changed the type the entertainment I like as well as affected how I view the world. Not that I'm a fascist, but it made me understand that everybody's concept of good is not universal and that what is such varies from person to person.
@@cane6074 Yes, great art does that. Even when it’s disguised as something else. Quite honestly the movie creeps me out because it’s so PLAUSIBLE. And when fascism is cloaked in the guise of beautiful looking young people it’s even more insidious.
Maybe it's influence from reading the book, but I didn't see fascism in this movie. It's a system where votes are earned through service and the only thing you lose if you choose not to serve is the vote.
The military sees about 10 percent of volunteers, which is about 1 percent if the population. The rest could be doing almost anything. They can resign at any time Service is not mandatory and can't be forced upon people.
Only those incapable of understanding the oath can be denied the right to serve as race, religion, etc... are of no consequence.
Everyone is there entirely of their own volition for the betterment of the species before they were ever set foot in battle, if they ever do.
Those don't seem like very fascist qualities to me. Though, I think it more likely that since this is a post scarcity society where no one starves, healthcare and education are freely available, discrimination is non existent, etc... It's hard for me to see it as analogous to the Nazis and maybe I'm not separating the Nazi ideals from the fascist political system very well. It felt weird to see the Nazi imagery in the movie.
The book made it feel like a very perfectly executed conservative government. But that's most likely because it's post scarcity and it's easy to make that look good, regardless of your beliefs.
@@fijipoddIf you think losing the vote is not a horrible penalty you probably grew up in a free country and take voting for granted. Conscription or penalizing opting out removes democracy from warmaking, which is a mark of authoritarian systems. When the threat is real there ahould be plenty of volunteers!
My favourite director, I love verhoeven films.
Thank you! Loved your points on Verhoven's films. The Showgirls review was totally in sync with my thoughts about that case.
I came out of Starship Troopers wanting to get a tattoo and sign up, so I'd say it worked pretty damned well!
Wow. Gotta check out Showgirls again. Only saw it at release and don't remember it. Didn't realize Verhoeven made it, which means I missed the subtext of that entire film, given his track record. Great vid. Outstanding commentary, Olga.
I've tried to go back and watch it for its commentary on Vegas, and by proxy the US, but I just can't get past the wooden acting by Elizabeth Berkley. It's so bad it hurts.
The editing on this video is elite tier. Incredible work.
Wait, the director of Robocop and Total Recall also did Showgirl and Basic Instinct. Mind blown...
This is a reason to watch he's Dutch movies
i like how the video was edited
It hardly ever gets mentioned that Showgirls is simply All About Eve, updated with sex. My friends and I loved showgirls. We went to see it twice when we were in uni. We are straight men.
Robocop is about a guy who die and still must go to work as a corpo-slave with no rights.
Thank you I really appreciate this video, it gives me a lot to think about. :)
Total Recall can be watched as the entire film is the vacation/adventure Arnie bought
Verhoeven is the master at reminding you that you’re watching a movie without taking you out of the movie. The R rated elements in his movies were always done with a kick so it brought a sense of humor to what, on paper, are very dark elements. Great filmmaker
Great video. Love all Verhoeven's Hollywood contributions. And as mentioned in this video, I have never seen the bad in Showgirls.
the VHS tapes were top notch, baby, because the single voice nasal translation was letting you hear the original voices of the actors.
Lovely video essay! More like this, please.
Starship troopers especially has alot of deeper meaning. You can see the reflections through several of his films, total recall and robocop especially. The entire premise is from the "utopian ideal" a philosophical conundrum into what the greater good for humanity would actually be. As in the perfect world. Its quite obvious that Paul was smitten by the dystopian path.
Paul Verhoeven is one of my favorite directors, unique and authentic, i dont know any other director that made movies similar to his, genuinely enjoyable hollywood blockbusters that at the same time were always also the opposite, a thoughtfull parody, or a cynical pamphlet. His first dutch movies are also very good, even without the budget. One of them ('Turkish Delight', also with Rutger Hauer before he got world wide fame) has been chosen as the best dutch movie of the last century. At that time he got frequentky asked why there was always so much violence and nudity in his movies, but no message. He used to respond that messages were for answering machines, not for movies.
Looking back, i think he was already fooling the critics at that time ;)
I read his biography and there in he stated that he in fact really hated violence and just wanted to show people how horrible and shocking violence can be.
Showgirls is a cinematic masterpiece
Makes me wanna see everything he ever directed that I haven't already seen
Something that i didn't notice when i first saw Robocop, but is obvious to me now, is that the window in the boardroom is bulletproof. The storytelling is in the worldbuilding... :D
Haven't seen Showgirls beginning to end since it came out (when I was in Middle School ironically) I latter lived in Vegas and worked around the adult industry. Time to re-watch it.
Bro was a gigolo over here! Damn boy you runnin the streets wow homie rockin those roads mockin those moms
I lived in Vegas for a time too. I drove by the Cheetah before. It was such a surreal experience.
VHS: Robocop was my first Video Rental. The rentals opened content for teens & tween too young to see movies in the theatre. Great vidi. BTW I'd buy that for a dollar is from an ad campaign for a regional lotto. The catch line went what we would say Viral and it's worked in to Robocop as a wink&nodd to the audience from the region the movie filmed in.
This video is a love letter to Paul. ❤
Growing up in the 80s and 90s I 100% agree with her take on the cultural shift on nudity. It's weird, it's like we pushed the envelope so far with violence and people were just like 'meh' just make sure the kids don't see it. As soon as the same thing happens with sex, people lose their minds and start shouting from the rooftops "Will somebody just please think of the children?!?"
My take, we need a 'new' cultural revolution. People need to take a step back and stop being 'appalled' by nudity and sex between consenting adults. This outdated and frankly prudish mindset needs to change.
Agreed. When I was a child I saw movie violence that gave me nightmares, but as soon as there was kissing on screen my parents stopped the VHS😅 It was incomprehensible to a young mind, still don't really understand it now
The problem with a new mindset towards sex is the dead hand of the past- our puritanical past is very strong and reasserts itself every other generation.
It's sickening. "Make love, not war" was a serious slogan that some took as a joke, and others, a threat to their morals. War is not more virtuous than sex and love. Those who think so are the real perverts.