I believe you, but the people I saw it with got it immediately and were very happy with the result. I don’t know how much more obvious the satire could be.
And I understand whoever was saying the satire was ham-fisted. It IS ham-fisted…and a lot of people still didn’t get it. Not people here of course (no sarcasm)
Also, it is 84% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But Contagion really doesn’t belong in this thread for a different reason: it was really fucking awful.
I guess it’s no surprise that M. Night has come up in this thread. I showed up to add my two cents: The Village. I love every second of that movie, passionately. I dunno why. I just do. It’s pretty. It’s pleasant. I like the leads. It’s weird. It’s exciting.
Also, I am too stupid to figure out M. Night’s twists ahead of time. They always get me.
Well, two things.
That said,
Now, if you look at Starship Troopers as a critic - it’s still boring and stupid. However, at least it’s interesting. Verhoeven was trying to do something, at least, and it’s interesting, at least in my opinion, to explain why I think he failed at it, and what he succeeded at, and how the movie might have worked better. That’s as opposed to, say, a movie that’s basically throwaway crap, like a Transformers movie or any number of utterly mindless romantic comedies.
So I’ve only seen it once, in first release. I don’t remember it as boring. My memory of it is that I was disturbed by it, because it felts like a satire that halfway through forgot it was a satire. It was years later that I suspected Verhoeven hadn’t forgotten that it was a satire, but was trying to make fun of me by hitting my “popcorn action flick” buttons with a movie that glorified fascist behavior.
I’m not sure I agree that the movie was a failure, but if it’s gonna be judged by its own standards (and if I’m right about those standards), the question is whether it put lots of people either in that uncomfortable position I was in, or else made them root for the protagonists so that Verhoeven could sneer at them. Of course, there’s no rule that anyone has to judge it by its standards, either.
Yeah, it was a retcon of the metatext: It’s a reinterpretation, not of the story, but of the story surrounding the story, the narrative that the film was packaged with. The director probably didn’t intend it (Showgirls. I rest my case.) but you’d have to be even dumber than Verhoeven to deny doing something that makes you look better to the Serious Critical Establishment.
I didn’t even know that there was a book, and I thought that the movie was great.
I dunno…I tried to watch it, and couldn’t get past the first 30 minutes. I was also desperate for any kind of entertainment, so, I think that there was a problem with the movie.
Written by David Brin. Probably his least complex novel (that I read). But there is nothing wrong with that. Complex novels are hard to make into 90 minute movies.
Whoa whoa whoa. Again, Doogie Howser…Space Nazi Scientist. Verhoeven absolutely knew what he was doing with the imagery and casting.
…he said hoping that Verhoeven did actually cast all the relevant parts.
And we haven’t even talked about how the ‘good guys’ thought it was going to be a walk in the park and got their asses handed to them. Sound familiar?
We’ll have to disagree. I thought it was quite good. I thought the satire was funny and I thought all the action movie bits were a lot of fun.
Or even if you get to make it into a movie that’s twice that length. One of the big problems with The Postman is that it goes on FOREVER. It’s a slog that requires an iron will to finish. Plus, it’s boring.
Vietnam War. Nearly every war movie since the Vietnam War happened. Aliens 2, and it’s even a bug hunt. My point is, having a positive, heroic war movie would have been utterly bizarre by that point, so it’s a thin hook to hang your interpretation on.
Oh, and an anti-science bias is so prevalent in Hollywood that that hook is even thinner. Scientists are either utterly incompetent space cases or morally ambiguous Von Braun types so often that Showgirls Man was, again, pretty much just following the going trend.
I really don’t think Bubble Boy deserves the 29% rotten tomatoes has it at.
It’s not a great movie, but it’s better than its reputation circa 1987 would have one believe. My wife and I loved the scenes with the camel and now think there are a lot of movies that could be improved with the inclusion of a blind camel. 
OTOH, totally get the “Wait… they spent $40 million on this?” complaints.
In Starship Troopers war is declared on an entirely bogus prextext - that some relatively unskilled bugs fired an astoroid from zillions of miles away at Earth, and hit. The bugs were so technologically inferior all they can do is squirt shit into space. It’s so stupid it might have been Colin Powell at the UN.
Then we get the naive kids signing up to be heroes, the whole cheese-eating surrender monkey thing, the whole carpet bombing - sorry, ‘surgical strikes’ - campaign … it goes on and on predicting how an aggressor state goes about its work.
Paul Verhoeven totally nailed the USA.
More on Starsip Troopers:
Nice.
http://www.screeningnotes.com/2013/10/starship-troopers-analysis.html
Multiplicity, a Harold Ramis comedy based on a great National Lampoon story by Chris Miller. It mined a lot of the same territory as Groundhog Day, but Bill Murray refused to get involved with the picture and his role went instead to Michael Keaton. The role didn’t play to Keaton’s particular strengths, but it was still a really good film.
Speaking of Ramis, he was getting a little desperate for a comeback and Murray still didn’t want to return his phone calls when Ramis did the remake of Bedazzled. Not sure whether Ramis wanted Murray for the main role or for the Devil role, but Brendan Fraser (never any director’s first choice, it seems) starred as Elliot and Elizabeth Hurley (sexy and funny, but not quite a movie star) was the Devil. It had its moments (I liked all the surtitles of all the minor character’s sins), but they remade a movie that was pretty flawless the first time out, never a great idea, and gave it an ending with less punch.
The Godfather Part III
I understand the flaws in the film; no Duvall, the casting of Sofia Coppola and George Hamilton, the affair with the Catholic Church, Pacino’s haircut making him look like a roadie for the Chili Peppers, and the Benny Hill-type death of Michael Corleone.
Taken on it’s own, it’s mostly a boring film and re-treads too much of the first two films. But I still give it a solid 6.
*Have you ever been karmically bitch-slapped by a six-armed goddess? *
I agree with Speed Racer. Blu Ray was still newwhen it released, and it was visually stunning. A live action cartoon.