That poor dog…
Starship Troopers is a comedy in the same way that Plan 9 From Outer Space or Ken Russell’s Tommy are comedies – completely unintentionally. The movie is deadly serious about its drama and meaning and it’s funny only because it is so inept.
When you cant grasp satire, dont start giving lectures on humour.
Look, people. It is very clear that Verhoeven meant Starship Troopers and Showgirls to be parodies. That doesn’t make them great movies, it just means that Verhoeven hates the movie-going public and made these movies to illustrate his thesis.
There are titties in Starship Troopers?
I might have to at least give it a cursory watch.
I think he meant satires, you think it was parodies. Anyway, Robocop is on the same boat as Starship Troopers, do you hate that one too?
I love RoboCop. In fact, it was a revelation – I expected it to be stupid, but it was wonderful, informed dark satire.
But a.) RoboCop isn’t based on anything else. In particular, it isn’t a completely shifted in every way version of some literary work.
b. ) RoboCop is VERY obviously meant to be humorous and satirical – “I want a car that gets really shitty gas mileage”? the Chiodo brothers hack commercials? The tongue-wedged-firmly-in-cheek news broadcasts? Even though both movies had the same screenwriter, ST isn’t anywhere near as blatant or obvious in its satire. You can take ST as absolutely straight.
I didn’t say I hated them.
But if you look at the arc of Verhoeven’s career, you can definately see the misanthropic thread increasing. It’s there in Robocop and Total Recall, but it doesn’t dominate the movies. Verhoeven doesn’t hold the protagonists of those movies in contempt. But then there’s Basic Instinct and Showgirls and Starship Troopers, where the misanthropy has grown to include not just the surrounding authority figures and society, to include the protagonists.
This is why it doesn’t make sense to be annoyed at people who didn’t enjoy “Showgirls”. Because if you want to see a movie about a slut and her tits, you’re not going to enjoy a movie that deliberately punishes you for wanting to see a movie about a slut and her tits.
And that’s precisely what is satire.
If you think that the style of RoboCop is the same as that of Starship Troopers, our sensitivities are too different for us to meaningfully discuss or argue this.
Indeed. I can’t imagine how anybody could watch any Verhoeven movie and think “Yep, this dude is 100% sincere and he’s just an inept film maker.” While I don’t mean to imply he’s as clever as Swift, it is a little like when I introduce A Modest Proposal to my Intro to Writing students and they’re all horrified that somebody would suggest eating babies.
I couldn’t disagree more. ST is nothing but satire, while RoboCop has enough human elements and genuinely disturbing moments to stand up as a valid story in it’s own right (I had actually barely considered RoboCop as satire, but then I was a child in the 80s so perhaps it wasn’t as obvious when I finally saw it).
If you can take ST as straight then you’re an idiot. You really think the bits where the media is interviewing soldiers on the front-lines while people are being dismembered by bugs in the background are intended to be serious?
Oh, and ‘Sphere’. I read the book thought ‘this was written to be made into a film’. Considering what an easy job they had they really managed to fuck that one up.