Finally a reddit post about Starship Troopers that didnt miss the message. For something so on the nose, you'd hope this wouldn't be so rare...
https://old.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/1b8qajw/erm_guys_are_we_the_baddies/
I can't be bothered to copy paste all the comments are smugjerking their media literacy
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This is unironically what Verhoven was trying to say but he made the mistake of thinking a human audience would have any reason to sympathize with literal bugs. Especially after how viscious and animalistic the the bugs are shown to be. It's a good example of failed satire.
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The point is that you don't feel bad for the bugs though, showing that people are still susceptible to the same propaganda that Nazis relied on 80 years ago.
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So it's actually about proving propaganda works even when you know it's propaganda?
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Yeah, but they're still literal bugs. If he had stayed closer to the book it might have worked since the bugs were an advanced civilization. But as it stands in the film the audience has no more reason to sympathize with them than the ant hill in their backyard they just doused with poison.
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I agree and I think Ender's Game did a better job with the sympathy for bugs thing but I still love Starship Troopers anyway idk. Guilty pleasure I guess.
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All enemies in propaganda are displayed as sub human savages who act on animal instincts. You're not supposed to like the fricking bugs, the point is that the movie is told by an unreliable narrator/director.
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But at no point are we even able to see a hint of underlying "humanity" in the bugs. If that was the angle he was going for there has to be something to make the audience realize there might be more to the villains than what they are being told.
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It's just played straight. The perspective is from the government fighting the bugs. Movie literally ends with a recruitment ad.
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Actually, Verhoven was a secret fascist because he made a movie where the facists look cool.
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Unironically this.
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This is probably also true.
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Do we know that he actually wanted audiences to sympathize with the bugs?
I agree that he wanted to create a parody of a fascist state responding to a foreign threat but I'm not convinced he was trying to say anything like “acshually you guys the bugs are just misunderstood good guys!
In directors commentary for the movie he states explicitly that the asteroid that hit earth WAS sent by the bugs, it's not a false flag. But it was a response to space Mormons settling on their planet. So there's shades of grey involved in all of it. I never get the feeling that he's saying humans are in the wrong for responding, but the crazy authoritarian unlimited war that they instantly resort to rather than something with a little more diplomacy and less death.
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If that's true then he still kind of dropped the ball. He shouldn't have depicted the over-the-top war from the POV of an average infantryman. Because from his POV the bugs are just mindless, voracious pests. How would one even go about handling the grey of politics with that? Whay would you even want too? Just kill them all and eliminate the threat.
This is why I keep saying everytime the topic comes up: Starship Troopers is satire; just not very well done.
It's the most radical centrist position to hold and therefore the right one.
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In my opinion, the entire movie is the based-cringe-based IQ curve made manifest, where the extreme ends are generally able to understand that humanity is good (be it becuase the movie is cool, or because you recognize it as a failed satire that tries to tell you a near-utopia is bad), whilst the middle is trying to claim that the bugs are actually the moral side.
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