Is it really that mind-boggling? ST has always seemed to me to read whichever way you are already predisposed to. How does everybody dying make it an anti-war movie? I would be shocked if the kind of person who believes in the good of a war machine were surprised that lots of people die in war.
Maybe my memory is a bit hazy, but the bugs actually annihilate a city, right? What is the human response supposed to be? The extreme nature of the government and military only come across as insane if you’ve already been educated about fascism. Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures, which muddies the antifascist message in my opinion.
It’s a great movie, but anyone who thinks it’s going to change anyone’s mind from their preconceptions is fooling themselves.
“I want to make a movie so painfully obvious in its satire that everyone who understands it lives in perpetual psychological torment inflicted on them by all the people who don’t.”
Paul Verhoeven, director of Starship Troopers
The movie makes it clear that:
The bugs were responding to human colonization
Humans fired the first shots
The government is lying to everyone claiming the bugs are mindless. They overjoyed shouts of the soldiers when they learn the opposite is true - is only because they learn that the bugs are terrified.
The endless over the top propaganda is supposed to be a pretty fuckin heavy clue that it’s a fascist state.
One of the hallmarks of fascism is that the enemy are simultaneously too strong - so we must militarise - and too weak, because we are the superior race and destined to prevail.
The movie point blank states towards the beginning that the Bugs were flinging out their pods/eggs/whatever into space looking to land on worlds to colonize
The movie gives all appearances and inferences that the Bugs attacked first. Not the humans. This makes further sense by point 1, and how far away the bugs home world actually is.
The only announcement made of a bug being afraid wasn’t all bugs. It was only the large “thinking” bug at the end of the movie, after it had its mouth cut off and it was strapped down and being experimented on in the lab. There was no inferences at all of any other bugs being made. So no, the government wasn’t depicted in the movie as lying about knowing of any bug intelligence. I didn’t know of any intelligent bugs, and by the end of the movie it was only known that the one type of rare smart bug captured was the only intelligent one, and that it was able to possibly psychically control the other dumb bugs.
The propaganda films say that the bugs are attacking by flinging asteroids from the other side of the milky way, do you know how long that would take?
Also we never see any bugs in space, just the plasma getting thrown, never see how they are supposedly throwing these asteroids.
There’s also no presentation that it isn’t true, and by whatever means, we do know for sure that the Bugs are attacking earth. Retaliation or not, so either way it’s people stuck having to fight in order to save humanity.
4 in particular I think is more open to interpretation based on ones existing biases than people seem to think. Being over the top doesn’t necessarily have to be mockery and authorial intent is peanuts to a random personwatching a movie.
The other points IIRC are individual moments rather than recurring themes. It’s not surprising to me that significant numbers of people overlook them.
Maybe my memory is a bit hazy, but the bugs actually annihilate a city, right?
The bugs were alleged to send an asteroid from another solar system and hit Earth. Logically, the bugs would have to know hundreds of years that they were going to get in a war with the Humans, know how to shoot an asteroid across the galaxy, and know exactly Earth was going to be for the asteroid to hit.
The bugs don’t launch the asteroids ballistically, they are launched superluminally as can be seen by the gravity singularity that Denise Richards detects when they (almost) avoid the asteroid.
Is it really that mind-boggling? ST has always seemed to me to read whichever way you are already predisposed to. How does everybody dying make it an anti-war movie? I would be shocked if the kind of person who believes in the good of a war machine were surprised that lots of people die in war.
Maybe my memory is a bit hazy, but the bugs actually annihilate a city, right? What is the human response supposed to be? The extreme nature of the government and military only come across as insane if you’ve already been educated about fascism. Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures, which muddies the antifascist message in my opinion.
It’s a great movie, but anyone who thinks it’s going to change anyone’s mind from their preconceptions is fooling themselves.
What am I missing?
The movie makes it clear that:
One of the hallmarks of fascism is that the enemy are simultaneously too strong - so we must militarise - and too weak, because we are the superior race and destined to prevail.
Most of your points aren’t true at all.
The movie point blank states towards the beginning that the Bugs were flinging out their pods/eggs/whatever into space looking to land on worlds to colonize
The movie gives all appearances and inferences that the Bugs attacked first. Not the humans. This makes further sense by point 1, and how far away the bugs home world actually is.
The only announcement made of a bug being afraid wasn’t all bugs. It was only the large “thinking” bug at the end of the movie, after it had its mouth cut off and it was strapped down and being experimented on in the lab. There was no inferences at all of any other bugs being made. So no, the government wasn’t depicted in the movie as lying about knowing of any bug intelligence. I didn’t know of any intelligent bugs, and by the end of the movie it was only known that the one type of rare smart bug captured was the only intelligent one, and that it was able to possibly psychically control the other dumb bugs.
The propaganda films say that the bugs are attacking by flinging asteroids from the other side of the milky way, do you know how long that would take? Also we never see any bugs in space, just the plasma getting thrown, never see how they are supposedly throwing these asteroids.
What’s your point? I’m not really sure why you sent this as a reply to me.
The point is that the footage we see is part of the in-universe propaganda, so we have no reason to assume it’s true.
Once again proving that even fictional propaganda is highly effective.
There’s also no presentation that it isn’t true, and by whatever means, we do know for sure that the Bugs are attacking earth. Retaliation or not, so either way it’s people stuck having to fight in order to save humanity.
4 in particular I think is more open to interpretation based on ones existing biases than people seem to think. Being over the top doesn’t necessarily have to be mockery and authorial intent is peanuts to a random personwatching a movie.
The other points IIRC are individual moments rather than recurring themes. It’s not surprising to me that significant numbers of people overlook them.
None of your points except maybe number 4 is true.
It’s the same reason people thought Stephen Colbert was a champion of conservatism until he moved to the tonight show.
The bugs were alleged to send an asteroid from another solar system and hit Earth. Logically, the bugs would have to know hundreds of years that they were going to get in a war with the Humans, know how to shoot an asteroid across the galaxy, and know exactly Earth was going to be for the asteroid to hit.
Is it surprising that people might miss that, though? Especially if they don’t already agree with the antifascist message.
I missed it and wasn’t brought to my attention years later that the movie was satire on fascism. I always took it as a dumb action movie.
Not an unreasonable interpretation!
The bugs don’t launch the asteroids ballistically, they are launched superluminally as can be seen by the gravity singularity that Denise Richards detects when they (almost) avoid the asteroid.
If I recall correctly, most things that the bugs did was fake news, just propaganda to justify the war that sustain the failed government.
Lies !! The bug obviously launched that asteroid ! You’re a traitor spreading lies it’s all that i see !
We must have based humanity off the movie.
“its afraid… Its afraid!!” cheering
Anyone who misses the satire is a dolt, but I do agree satire is ineffective in changing minds. It’s a preaching to the choir sort of genre.