No, Starship Troopers Is Not Brilliant Satire

Great, now I'm hungry.

It seems like it can only really trick the viewer into accepting its ideas if the viewer isn't really aware of the satire--but you don't believe there are many such people to begin with. And even if there were, this would mean the "satire" only worked on people who weren't aware of it, which seems like a self-defeating accomplishment.

But this is my whole point! The "satire" comes from the fact that it's made by someone who we know disagrees with it. The satire is meta, existing largely outside of the film itself.

Example: my friends are generally pretty intelligent people, but they still use phrases like "bro." But they do so ironically. If you know them, you know it's ironic, but if you don't it's not noticeably different from any random frat boy.

That's kind of how I think about Troopers: it's just sort of mocking an idea by reproducing it, while the people involved stand outside it and say "isn't this ridiculous?" I think this is a fundamentally lesser form of satire than demonstrating that ridiculousness within the work itself.

I see almost no difference between that idea and the idea of other forms of satire, Dr. Strangelove included. Maybe that's where we truly differ. I always felt like I was in on the joke therefore ST never didn't land for me. I think Kubrick was also standing outside Dr. Strangelove and saying "isn't this ridiculous?" Aren't they, in effect, doing the same thing?

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I think they're trying to accomplish the same thing, but going about it in very different ways. I think good satire takes ideas down from the inside. It uses dramatic irony and juxtaposition to expose the flaws in an idea, even on its own terms. Just reproducing the thing incredulously is more like sarcasm.

Sarcasm is my middle name.

No, seriously...

"Actually, my middle name is Marion, but I don't want you spreading that around."

From another film about bugs and the military!

OK, I COULD TELL when watching "troopers" that it was supposed to be SATIRE on many virtues such as patriotism, war, army, macho-men,and even "non-negotiation between competitors, and all out war to wipe each other out." That was pretty clear---to me.BUT-- many horror-sci-fi movie viewers could take this as a straight movie! People like this could read a zinger by Oscar Wilde, one of my favorite authors, and miss the point and go "Huh?" and not get it.WHY?

For one reason its an entertaining,monster-movie, and not WELL ENOUGH WRITTEN OR PREFORMED .It's just not good enuff written satire! if it's too easily flown in as a good bug-monster movie., its not really well enuff pointed satire."Idiocracy" is a very GOOD satire.You can't MISS the satire! --unless yer brain-dead.and literally dead! Its not just an OVER-EMPHASIS on war,army, macho, ect. It's dead-on! (Anyone remember the famous phamplet from the past,"A Modest Proposal", where a great satirist & writer proposed that poor families,,I think Irish, Ireland, make money by producing babies for the wealthier class to EAT? THAT was dry,witty, dead-on satire! Perfectly written! no mistaking it! THAT was brilliant!) Starship Troopers is not brilliant, there's NO MISTAKING brilliant satire for anything else! ---whereas I picked up slight satire in starship, it ALSO wanted to be an entertaining action, fun, romantic and alien-bug movie. That was it's downfall. It wanted to also fit in action, alien-bug horror movie, to make money. (His Las Vegas-dancers' movie was depressing, bad porno. It made you even feel bad about ALL the characters! No one was very sympathetic, everyone was rotten.The writer must be so cynical, hates women,people, & does not believe in anything.Talk about vile; compared to him,Nazis sound more idealistic. WHY? At least Nazis said, they believed in SOMETHING! (The Fatherland.) Verhoven believes in no one, & nothing.Nothing but corruption.(I do not approve of Nazis. Not what I meant.)

NO, this movie-maker of "Starship Troopers" has not made any brilliant or satirical movies-- just movies of degredation, violence, sex, and not much else. Cheap crap. Campy horror-movies. MORE VIOLENCE, & MORE sex. Sleezy junk. (Is he the one who made the Sharon Stone-Michael Douglas-sleezy-sex-sleezy-characters-murder movie? Notice in that one, the murderer does NOT get caught? Maybe that's one of his beliefs, unlike most movies.) NO MOVIE as sleezy as "Showgirls" could be brilliant! it's only SLEEZE.

You got too hung up the whole satire thing. Paul Verhoeven did infuse criticism in the film. Same way as he did with Robocop. There he was more successful making jokes since the movie lend itself for that perfectly. He suggests a link between America's attitude and fascism. The so called jokes that did not seem effective according to you are not supposed to be effective. The whole film is an attack on America's wish to police the world. The aliens are everyone who is against America. Honestly it requires very little thought. The brilliance of the film does lie in the fact that while he is attacking America he has made an incredible and spectacular sci fi actioner that is plain fun misdirecting a lot of people including you what it really is about.

Check me if I'm wrong, but isn't the fact that Verhoeven's anti-fascist criticism "requires very little thought" just a further indication of how it's not actually brilliant in the first place? On that note, isn't satire just supposed to be criticism disguised as humour? Your whole "misdirection" thing doesn't ring true because the main reason why Starship Troopers sticks out these days is because everyone likes to talk up its recognisably satirical approach to the source material. If anything, the problem is that the satire is too obvious, which is why it's ultimately rendered ineffective.

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I honestly didn't even get catch any satire when I saw Starship Troopers. It just seemed a little over-the-top.

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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

IIIII getchya.

Iroquois already responded pretty well, but I'll reply to a couple of things, too:

I didn't mention the jokes at all, and I specifically addressed the "it's not supposed to be good!" stuff. Check out the paragraphs right after the tattoo image.

This is the whole point.

Including me? Where in the essay do I suggest a misunderstanding about this, exactly? It's blatantly obvious. The whole piece is about how blatantly obvious it is. It's just not a particularly clever or illuminating point.

Starship Troopers is the best worst film ever and there's nothing you can do about it!

"Put your hand on that wall! The [spammer] cannot [post a reply] if you disable his hand!"

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Pfft, it's not even the best worst Verhoeven film.

Starship Troopers reminds me of Star Wars in terms of how it relies on content as it's main point of interest, and all of the important film making aspects are done to a sort of mainstream standard that is perfectly mediocre, although Star Wars was better for it's costumes, sets/props, and special effects. I think I only loved it for the violence and action, but Starship Troopers is a very superficial movie. If you took out the action everyone would hate it. And I think it fundamentally fails to capture it's subject matter of war in any meaningful way. It's hard to believe that it had the same director as Soldier of Orange and Black Book because those are actually decent war movies. By Verhoeven, I also really liked Spetters.

People like Star Wars and Starship Troopers for their personalit(ies) too. That can make or break a movie.

I love Starship Troopers for what it is. I first watched it in about 98, I wasn't very old at the time and thought that it was great. Watching it now is a little different for me. I go into it with the mindset of it being something that I don't have to or need to think about while I am watching it. Just watch it and enjoy it.

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You are no Vader. You are just a child in a mask.

On a related note, I reckon that this FILM CRIT HULK essay about Kingsman: The Secret Service covers similar ground to Yoda's essay when it comes to discussing the different types of satire that can be found in an outwardly simple action film. The interesting point is that Hulk outlines that the film's more obvious and inherently flawed attempts at satire (such as the characters making oh-so-clever jokes about spy movie clichés that culminate in the notorious "anal sex" joke because lol remember how James Bond always get to sex the girl at the end of the movie?) actually work to disguise a deeper and more consistent line of satire (namely one that approaches the concept of class warfare by having a poor boy join an independently wealthy spy agency in order to take down a billionaire industrialist whose evil plan is targeted against the 99%). Though I don't agree with the whole essay and still think that Kingsman's layered satirical approach still has some issues, I can still appreciate that it provides a good argument that goes beyond praising the cringe-worthy surface-level jokes and actually finds some actual substance to back up its more outwardly questionable moments.

To tie this back into Starship Troopers, there's not much sign of a deeper satirical thread underneath the more obvious instances cited in both this essay and the ensuing comments. Thinking about Troopers in comparison to Kingsman made me realise that, unlike Verhoeven's earlier RoboCop and Total Recall, there's not really much of an arc for its hero to follow. It's worth noting that, in those other films, there's actually a conspiracy for the hero to gradually uncover and ultimately fight against, all of which involve twist reveals that heighten the stakes for the remainder of the film. With Starship Troopers, there's no such thing. Rico joins the marines and then fights the bugs again and again until the movie ends. Sure, he has to suffer as a result of his parents/friends/mentor/love interest dying, but even those moments come across as perfunctory attempts to invoke a war-is-hell vibe that goes beyond merely seeing faceless extras being massacred by the bugs. The reveal of the Brain Bug's existence and Carmen ending up in enemy territory add only a slight variation to the proceedings just in time for the third act and provide the humans with a chance at a significant victory over the bugs in time for the triumphant ending where the fight against the bug menace continues. In that regard, I wonder if Starship Troopers could have actually benefited from expanding on its superficially satirical elements in a way that informs the narrative rather than just using it as window-dressing for an otherwise straightforward action movie. As it stands, the whole thing feels weirdly inert despite its huge amounts of violence and action, and dropping enough hints that the humans are fascists who might actually be faking the war on bugs only makes it hard for me to genuinely care about the conflict or the characters one way or the other (especially when there's no resolution on that front, which might be intentional but not necessarily for the best).

To illustrate what I mean, imagine how RoboCop would have played out if it was just about Murphy remembering his identity and getting revenge on Clarence Boddicker's gang. Imagine that Dick Jones only appears a couple of times during the film's first half with a couple of subtle suggestions about his true nature that are never actually elaborated upon and Murphy never actually encounters him. Imagine that the film ends with Murphy arresting/killing Boddicker before going on to do more crime-fighting for the police force (with only the slightest suggestion that it is corrupted by OCP). That's an adequately straightforward three-act movie right there, but downplaying the character of Jones or even removing him from the film entirely results in the film losing a lot of its personality and depth. It's not just enough to have outwardly silly instances like an expensive car that's called the 6000 SUX or to show kids who are "fighting the bugs" by stepping on ordinary cockroaches - the real satire has to come from within, which is why I don't think that Starship Troopers truly works as a satire or even as a piece of dumb action fun.

Zotis a question....did you cheer when the evil brain sucking bug was finally captured?

No, but why do you ask? It seems like a really strange question.

My favorite part was when Dizzy (or whatever her name is, the ginger chick) died. I thought her acting during that scene was pretty good, and I actually still feel something each time I watch it.

Zotis I was just wondering if like most viewers, you were rooting for the space marines to do their thing and kill bugs. Did you see it recently by any chance?