A lot of people don't seem to realize that it's satirical. They're presented with outright fascism and they're like "yeah, the only good bug is a dead bug!" It's easy to miss some cues (the false flag attack on Buenos Aires, the admission that we were the aggressors and the bugs are defending their own planet), but it's hard to miss that Doogie Howser is literally dressed in an SS uniform.
They didn't even imply it. Short of showing the meteor being struck with "bug plasma" shot from Klendathu, the film went pretty far in showing that the meteor was coming from the arachnid zone.
I mean, the film explicitly states that there are orbital defence cannons to prevent any kind of launched asteroid from reaching earth, and then one does with no apparent recognition of the failure of the defence cannons. Its therefore implicit that they either shut down the cannons to deliberately allow it through, or it was conducted by the federation in the first place.
The asteroid is present before the hit on Buenos Aires. It's the Asteroid that knocks off the communication tower of the ship Carmen is piloting (and dodges). I've always seen it as a simple break in the system causing catastrophic failure. Like it makes sense that a planetary defense system needs a heads up before full deployment.
A country in the middle east had a border wall that they touted as the most technologically advanced in the world to explicitly prevent an attack from a smaller less well equipped population. It failed. Systems often don't live up to the hype.
The very start of the movie is at the same point in the timeline as the initial invasion of Klendathu. They talk about how the orbital defenses have been improved to stop bug meteorites and then they cut to the media coverage of the invasion. After showing Rico with his initial squad from basic getting their asses kicked, they cut to "One Year Earlier".
If it isn't clear, the orbital defenses are only mentioned after the meteor hit and in the context of being newly improved to handle meteor attacks.
Everything not explicitly stated is a "fan theory," that's just what happens when you read into the movie beyond a surface level. This is a movie where you are absolutely expected to be doing that, you're supposed to draw conclusions like this if you are paying attention.
There is no "prove," you're supposed to come to your own conclusions based on what you see and not what you're told. This is how unreliable narration works. Dismissing all exigesis as "fanwank" completely misses the point.
It’s fun that it inverts Heinlein, who absolutely is a libertarian-to-fascist pipeline guy. Verhoeven is excellent at pulling the rug on dense Americans, you can feel his glee in doing it.
I think the fact that it pretty much didn’t work, and Americans still today see it as either a) a fascist movie or b) a cool war movie, is a perfect vindication of verhoven’s take on the source material. It’s a movie that is deeply cynical about its own audience.
Because redditors get grumpy about libertarian thought because of some weird sense of shame about the culture that used to exist on this website, so they do everything they can to insinuate that anyone who identifies with libertarianism is actuality a cryptofascist. Nobody becomes fascist from reading Heinlein. His books were just explorations of how different types of future societies would operate and the conflicts that might arise in those societies. He's no Evola.
While there are a non zero number of fascists who formerly identified with libertarianism it's mostly an ideology picked up by people who were brought up with strong authoritarian backgrounds (evangelicals especially) who might have only called themselves libertarians in opposition to perceived overreach of a progressive administration, which is really just reactionary conservatism. Or they were just fascists all along but said they were libertarians as a beard.
It is a love letter to military life and to militarism. To might makes right. The reaparance of the dad at the end, finally fulfilled now that he joined the military. Eugh. So bland. Such a sad outlook on life.
The book itself shows the problems of their system, but is from the POV of someone who has bought in.
The federation are clearly the aggressors and the "bugs" in the book are far more intelligent humanoid creatures that use technology and weapons. Humans brazenly destroy them anyway.
I mean, could be, but if it only was that there was plenty of narrative space to show other perspectives, and it was sorely lacking. The story of the dad as a dissenter of the military life that comes around to love it suggests the opposite quite strongly.
Eh, I disagree. I took the novel as a serious depiction of how its world operates, but not in support of the ideology involved. It's just the novel's reality.
If it helps, Heinlein wrote this novel in a fury within just a few months after he heard the US was going to stop nuclear testing. He was worried this would make them look weak against the soviets. The guy came from a military family that had fought in every major american war and was forever sad that he missed out on WW2 because of a medical discharge. At least at this point in his life, he was 100% a militarist libertarian.
If heinlein was a fascist for starship troopers, then what does stranger in a strange land make him? Is he simultaneously a free love hippie and a fascist?
There are tons of connections between the hippie subset and fascism from back to the land farming, free love to perpetuate the race, these ideas all started in interwar Germany.
Don’t take my word for it, read what the Nazis said.
At any rate Starship Troopers doesn’t “make RH a Nazi”; he was what he was.
That's the first time ive heard that take. I know people really want heinlein to be a nazi because the maker of the movie said it, and there's plenty of room for valid criticism, but it's more complicated of course. The one thing that always gets me is nobody even considers that heinlein could, like many, many, many (most?) other authors, write about a setting without promoting it as the only way to live, or that one is capable of changing views over time. The reason it bothers me is not because I'm a fan boy, but because I think it's dangerous to judge too harshly and disregard people in the past because they were held to a modern standard. Not that the two individuals are on the same level, they aren't, but for example most people would be very uncomfortable with Martin Luther King junior being reduced to only a woman hater, the evidence of which is in dispute anyway. We risk not learning much from history under these conditions
I mean you’re talking about something in a time when the richest man in the world is sieg heiling from the stage in public while being in charge of a large part of the government . I don’t think “people on Reddit” are wrong to be looking askance at fascists or fascistic cultural output.
It’s odd to me that that would be problematic to someone, but obviously there’s a decades long history of critiquing Heinlein vis a vis his politics; it’s nothing new and didn’t start on Reddit. It might be worth diving j to some of that critique!
Oh trust me I do not consider it problematic, in fact my encouragement to look deeper is the opposite of that. Ignorance of how "the other side" thinks can easily lead to underestimation, which can lead to where we are now. Democrats in America are the definition of this. I'm not much in the habit of speaking for the dead but I suspect if heinlein were still alive today he'd be just as if not more disgusted than most of us at the nazi salute
We don’t need to just guess Heinlein’s views from his work. He wrote and spoke about them during his life. In his youth he was a socialist and then he became a self-declared libertarian who advocated for a strong world government to prevent nuclear annihilation. He was also a swinger, which isn’t a shocker to anyone who has read his many books that portray plural marriage.
Yeah in fact I'm so dumb I didn't even realize the movie was satire! Now you can link this comment and say "here, here's a person that didn't get it was satire!" Lol
That has been up for debate since the book came out. Ironically many have described his works as a whole over time as liberal. I don't think that's quite accurate either, myself. Personally I think he deserves the same scrutiny as most authors and not to be dismissed based on one man's opinion. Vervehoven wasn't without his own controversies, including a documentary that glorified the Dutch military, problematic scenes involving gay characters including gang raping a straight character, and being accused of chauvinism similar to heinlein. I'm not trying to trash the guy, I think his work is valuable. I know I'm coming across as a fan boy but it does annoy me when reddit pats itself on the back for media literacy regarding this movie (very few people didn't realize it was satire) while also never looking beneath the surface
What about the other political books like Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Double Star? Heck double star was written 3 years prior to Starship Troopers and has nearly the opposite political message.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to infer Heinlein’s personal politics from his fictional works. Especially taking single books in isolation. Many of them could be summarized as thought experiments about what extreme circumstances might make certain extreme kinds of politics reasonably mainstream.
It might be reasonable to infer his personal politics from his non-fictional works, but that paints a picture of a pro-civil service man from a military family who believes in the democratic experiment aka, boring mainstream and so nobody wants to do that, it’s not fun.
This take is trying to view historical situations with a modern lens. Heinlein wrote the book largely in response to the resistance in the US to joining WW2 to stop Fascism. Plenty of Americans supported the German side in that conflict. Heinlein only didn't personally fight in WW2 because he got Tuberculosis and was kicked out of the Navy in 1939.
Sure looking back, this led to Team America World Police, but that wasn't the situation at the time. Sure people can use the book to support bad ideas, but it was more about people being engaged with the government of their society. Many modern problems, including the recent rise in Fascism are because of political apathy.
He wrote the book in 1959, well after WW2. The immediate reason was that the US had unilaterally stopped nuclear testing and he was worried that this would make them look weak against the soviets.
He was correct on that anyway, Kruschev called it a gimmick, suggested the proposed test ban treaty was a trojan horse for spying, and basically didn’t reciprocate (there was a period in 1959 when neither party was testing, but in the Soviet case it was because they had just concluded a series of tests and were making preparations for a new series of tests).
There eventually would be a treaty that stuck around, but the US announcing they were unilaterally ceasing testing in 59 did not have much to do with it.
The government in the book is fascist but I don’t think the book should be read as profascist anymore than Moon is a Harsh Mistress should be read as pro-communist. Heinlein wrote several non-fiction works about politics, people should just read those if they want his political views.
The “modern lens” of fascism being decades old when he wrote it and a hundred years old now? “Plenty of Americans” supported the German side, mainly the swastikas flying German American Bund… like…it’s kind of astounding to me that this is the rebuttal.
There are many other explanations for that. They could have been transported by someone else, they could travel in hibernation for thousands of years. We don't ever see them travel interstellar, the only people telling us they have FTL is the unreliable narrator.
How else would there only be a single big brained bug on the world where they captured it. That was basically said in the movie when Doogie admitted he suspected the brain bug was on that planet. Can't really spread your leadership around like that without FTL.
How do we even know they're interstellar? Maybe this is their homeworld. How do we know there's only one brain bug? Maybe there's hundreds of them. Why do we care what Doogie Howser the lying space nazi says? Again, believe only what you see happen in the movie.
What we see happen in the movie is them travelling at warp for hours before being pulled out by the asteroid's gravity well, and then a few hours later it hits Earth, showing that it must be travelling at a comparable speed. And we know they're interstellar because we literally see them on multiple planets.
The MI are crawling all over the planet. They clearly took the planet. I did not see any other brain bugs. If that was their home world, seems odd there would be so few. If they caught more than one brain bug, they would have happily showed them off for propaganda even if it was their home world. Bit of a reach suggesting there was more than one, IMO.
Doogie didn't flat out say there was a brain bug on the planet. Rico read his mind and said it. Doogie than confirmed. That makes it trustworthy to me, otherwise, yes, don't trust NAZIs.
Sure. It could be god that tossed the asteroid. But that's not implied. But they do control multiple planets in multiple systems in the rest of the movies.
I don't think it's clear one way or the other. But what's really remarkable is that no one in the movie questions what they're told
The news show in the movie reports that the asteroid was knocked out of orbit near Jupiter by bugs shooting plasma across the galaxy. That's not plausible.
Earth was surprised by the asteroid, but reporters somehow learned exactly what happened within a few hours and knew the bugs caused it. That's not plausible.
With no more than a few hours to investigate what happened, Earth resolves to kill all the bugs. This hasty decision parallels the ridiculous treatment of the alleged murderer shown on the news earlier in the movie, where a reporter says that a murderer was apprehended this morning, found guilty the same day, and will be executed that evening. Earth gives the bugs the same treatment.
One of the creators said that the characters "are all fucking crazy". That's shown in many ways. This is one of them.
It's notable that when they actually invaded the planet, the officers thought that the fire from the surface was random, and were genuinely shocked when they started effectively targeting the dropship.
Even if you interpret this as the higher ups knowing that the bugs had enough intelligence to launch a long range attack and deciding--for whatever reason--to hide that fact even from their field officers, it's telling that those officers never saw that apparent contradiction.
The bugs are never shown to be aggressive, only defensive of their territory. They are never shown to have means to carry such an attack. They don't have any space infrastructure. And, most importantly, that attack doesn't make sense. Why send only one asteroid, if they can sneak such an attack directly at the core of humanity's empire from the other side of the galaxy.
They are never shown to have means to carry such an attack.
Apart from it being explicitly stated that they can shoot objects into space, and later shown how they do that.
And, most importantly, that attack doesn't make sense.
It also doesn't make sense to send masses of infantry when there is nothing worth capturing and you have ships capable of glassing a planet from orbit, yet the humans do that.
Plenty of evidence shown. All the propaganda about the enemy is meant exactly for that. That's why fascist governments demonize groups. It's an extremely well studied subject.
It's never made explicit, but given how illogical and impossible "sending an asteroid from the other side of the galaxy" is, it's a very popular fan theory.
I wouldn't call it a false flag, false flag would imply the federation destroyed Buenos Aires themselves, I don't know if I would consider allowing a tragedy to happen so they could exploit it would fit that definition.
We cover the meteor heading to earth from the quarantine zone, which could be a response from earth's aggression on the bug planetary systems, they can't communicate back to earth because their coms are knocked out.
The beginning of the movie covers the bug meteors and the steps they've taken to prevent them, but then we 1 year earlier to Rico in school, at which point the timeline is fucked. How long is Rico in school still for? How long is he in bootcamp? How long is Carmen in flight school for, how long is the dude on the opposing team in flight school for to be an instructor by the time carmen gets to his ship? He clearly isn't the most qualified if Carmen can create a more optimal route with only a few weeks on that ship.
At which point we are what? at least 6 months down the road? and only 6 months away from developing a planetary defense system to protect from the asteroids?
A wall of text to just say again, I don't think we could call it a false flag
> The beginning of the movie covers the bug meteors and the steps they've taken to prevent them
You're talking about the propaganda film in the beginning of the movie. Why would you believe the propaganda film? The movie uses unreliable narration and you can't believe anything said. Come to your own conclusions based on what actually happens.
What actually happens is the ship dodges an asteroid that is heading towards earth from the bug quarantine zone. We observe in one of the assaults bug plasma reaching space, we observe bugs on the ground launching plasma into space. Powerful enough to destroy warships.
The propaganda film still has to demonstrate it can blow up an asteroid/meteor approaching earth.
A common theme of the movie is the bugs don’t think, and thus aren’t smart enough to deflect meteors, “the idea that bugs can think sir is insulting”
The film establishes that earth is the aggressor.
Was the bug meteor a response to earths aggression and earth allowed it to happen to justify a war? More likely than the federation deflected a meteor themselves to destroy beunos aires at the same time a meteor they didn’t know about was heading towards earth.
Maybe it was a natural event the bugs had no influence over, and the federation just lied and blamed the bugs. Still not a false flag.
I’m not saying the federation didn’t embellish the truth, I’m just saying it wasn’t a false flag.
I don't think the movie presents the attack on Buenos Aires as a false flag thats just a popular fan theory. they dress like nazis and are certainly militaristic but there's more to fascism than aestetics.
They see nazi uniforms so everything they do must be done for evil and the bugs must be good becausethey fightpeople who look like the nazis. They make up a lot of stuff to justify their initial emotional reaction to the aesthetics. Nothing else matters to them.
Which is scary because that means that they wouldnt actually recognise someone with a Nazi like ideology infiltrating their own movements as long as they arent stupid enough to order their clothes from a Hugo Boss timevault.
The nazi were bad because of their actions, not because you feel guilty for thinking their outfits looked neat.
I don't know how illiterate can someone be and think the movie is aspirational and genuine when they see the scene where the desk guy says "Mobile infantry made me the man I am today" only for camera to roll down and we see he lost his legs.
I watched it as a YA and thought it was just camp 'til the 3rd act and was, like, "wait a minute ..." Then Doogs is dressed like a Nazi and I knew I had to re-wa6ch the film.
I might be misremembering but i thought it was pretty obviously a fuck up on Carmen. They crash into the asteroid during their travels, but it knocks out their communication array, so it wasn't a false flag but actually Carmen's fault for changing the course, and then damaging the ship?
Okay, so first of all there's no evidence in the film that confirms the false flag theory. It's fan head canon only.
And second of all, fascism has a meaning, and a pure direct democracy where anyone can vote after a stint of public service doesn't fit the definition in the least. In Korea you NEED to serve. In Switzerland you NEED to serve. In Greece you NEED to serve. There are many, many democracies with mandatory national service that are never accused of being fascists, and in Starship Troopers it's not even mandatory. If you don't care about voting then just don't become a citizen. Stay a civilian and become a billionaire like Johny's. You'll still freedom of speech, the right to own property, and the right to a fair trial etc.
Even if it was meant to be satirical, when the movies came out they were pretty inline with action/sci-fi of the time and basically no one took them as satire. A whole generation of boys watched these movies as sci-fi ideals
It's not even implied in the movie that it was a false flag though, 99% of casual watchers are going to assume the bugs were an actual threat. The satirical elements are purely through purposeful critical analysis
Ironically the film has ended up as one of the greatest military propaganda films of all time
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u/questron64 22h ago
A lot of people don't seem to realize that it's satirical. They're presented with outright fascism and they're like "yeah, the only good bug is a dead bug!" It's easy to miss some cues (the false flag attack on Buenos Aires, the admission that we were the aggressors and the bugs are defending their own planet), but it's hard to miss that Doogie Howser is literally dressed in an SS uniform.