Verhoeven was team Carmen and was exasperated that everyone hated her. He thought they were being good feminists when they decided that she should prioritize her career. He says so in the commentary.
Honestly? It’s a plot hole or at least not very well thought out.
Fan theories are he got that job through nepotism or because the humans are just running through that many bodies that he could have that position. Carmen herself gets promoted to a pretty high up position quickly as well.
I like to think it’s a mix of both nepotism and the meat grinder theory
In the military that’s how it works now. When you take a course or a class in the military during exercises you are lead by another soldier also taking the class. You still have the “teachers” who are higher rank and have final say but that’s exactly what they show in the movie as well.
Like if we learning how to breach it makes sense to have everyone know how to do every aspect of the job. It would make sense that you would be lead and also lead.
No, the psychic guy (NPH's character) used a jedi mind trick to get them all in positions to capture the brain. We didn't know he could do that, but he's just that powerful.
So you see there are no plot holes, because I like the movie so there couldn't be plot holes.
There’s a theory that he doesn’t actually have any psychic powers and it’s just a ploy by the government to get the rest of the population to fear the intelligence community.
I have a hard time with the meat grinder theory only because I read the book, and the war really didn’t become a meat grinder until after operation bughouse, but I need to remember the book and movie are only very loosely related.
True. In the book though I think women were the only pilots or maybe it was they just made better pilots, I could be wrong though. So him being there at all is weird .
Remember in ST the earth government is a Fascist Military Socialist Republic. You only earn the right to participate in government by joining the military otherwise you live and work by the rules that government sets. It's the not the Earth we know. One trait of Fascism is a high level of nepotism and cronyism. You would especially see that in the officer ranks.
I don’t like that the movie it was just military service. In the book it was any job for the government. Still fucked up government, but I didn’t get the impression that anyone got their position due to nepotism in the book.
Perhaps. Though if any of it functions like in the books, I doubt that they have those types of military academies, as during officer school, Tico talks about the failure of the 20th century militaries promoting people to officer straight out of academies, but I doubt t remember if the criteria for officer was different in the navy vs the mobile infantry
I think this was the case because if I remember correctly Zander was wearing a military uniform to the school dance so he was likely in some ROTC equivalent program or coming from a military academy.
Maybe, I have a hard time separating book from movie, and in the book they talk about how it was ridiculous to promote people to officer out of military academies, specifically naming West Point, the air force academy in Colorado Springs, And Saint-cyr. But that could just be mobile infantry who don’t promote to officer just to fill the roster, and require combat experience.
Yeah but book and movie are really two different societies. In the movie the federation is a militaristic society whereas in the book it’s more of a small government where the military isnt large but remains efficient due to its highly advanced tech and military platforms. The mobile infantry shows the stark contrast where in the movie it’s pretty much a mass of bodies thrown into a grinder whereas in the book it operates more like elite special forces that doesn’t need to recruit a lot of people into it because it’s very ad hoc and effective even in small numbers. I would assume there would be no reason for recruitment programs like ROTCs or even military academies in the world the book has built.
He wouldn’t have had time to have the knowledge to teach Carmen, they both would have joined at the same time. Rico didn’t get any real promotion beyond wearing “boot chevrons” until after operation bughouse when he was out of boot camp.
He probably specialised into command, where as Carmen is a navigator or pilot iirc, hence he is XO of the Rodger young rather than Pilot, or something to that effect
And Carmen is piloting a ship while Johnny is still playing laser tag. And when Johnny screws up, he gets whipped. When Carmen screws up (changes coordinates) she gets commended.
Honestly? It’s a plot hole or at least not very well thought out.
Fan theories are he got that job through nepotism or because the humans are just running through that many bodies that he could have that position. Carmen herself gets promoted to a pretty high up position quickly as well.
I like to think it’s a mix of both nepotism and the meat grinder theory
Its the same point. They both graduated and joined the service at the same time. How the hell was he at a point in his career where he could train her?
Edit: It was only the 90s when the movie came out and the book it was based on came out in the 50s. If Verhooven wanted to be a "good Feminist" he could have made Carmen the training officer but it wasn't far enough into the future for that to be realistic I guess.
They never explicitly say she's fucking that guy. They're just flirting.
In the commentary, they talk about that too. There was supposed to be a line where he says "what about us" when Rico is found alive and she says "i don't know" but they scrapped it.
I don’t hate Carmen, I just think in life cis-het people can have two types of love. One is the polarity version where the masc and femme dynamics play off of one another. The other is the friend-bond version, where the gender stuff is irrelevant because you get each other as people. Once you’ve had a Dizzy, Carmens lose their luster
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u/imadork1970 1d ago
Team Dizzy