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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

For those wondering, it is talking about the movie, not the book. For those that are confused about this comment, the book and movie are very different stories though the movie takes place in essentially the same universe. The director, Verhoeven, claimed "the book was too boring to finish." The movie has a lot of Nazi symbolism.

As a sci-fi enthusiast I love the book. As a lover of bad movies, I love the movie. I recommend both, but for completely different reasons.

Edit: If you're leaving a downvote care to explain? Do you want me to cite that Verhoeven didn't finish the book? (which is in the article here!) That the book and movie aren't different? Or what? I'm very confused. I'm just trying to say that the article is talking about the movie and not the book.

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There are plenty of people who (correctly, I think) consider the movie to be superior to the book (as both entertainment and as a genuine artistic accomplishment). You may be catching flak from them.

The movie is great. But it falls into the "bad movie" category because it is campy. "Bad movie" is more a genre. And it is hard to argue otherwise with Starship Troopers because it did poorly on release and got popular during the same time bad movies became popular (there's also a strong overlap between lovers of bad movies and Starship Troopers). "Bad" here doesn't mean unenjoyable, really the opposite.

I guess we have different definitions of “bad” (which you seem to be defining more as “not appreciated in its own time”), because I think it is a genuinely good movie with a successfully realized artistic vision, rather than a piece of empty but entertaining schlock. It’s campy because the aesthetics of fascism that it’s satirizing are campy.

IMO, a lot of people read the book when young and when the movie came out, their view of it was colored by faint memories.

When bringing up all the symbolism and themes in the movie, I always get a lot of quizzical looks and disagreement.

It's very weird/disturbing.

Starship Troopers isn’t a bad movie.

Watch it at the movies after a few beers with some mates and you will see its not as bad as all that, watched it twice since on the small screen and like everything it looses something. Yes camp acting and dodgy physics but that about sums up SciFi for the masses.

What do you mean by "bad" though? "Bad movie" is a genre. Starship Troopers is SUPER campy. Entertaining? Yes. Campy? Also yes.

What's good about it? I don't know much about movies I'm just curious why it's good.

The movie is a brilliant, satire of an over-the-top fascistic, militaristic society. It takes a similar tack to Huxley’s Brave New World but puts the focus on glorifying strength and violence against the enemy instead. It illustrates a society completely saturated in war propaganda, with all of the negatives of war being instantly dismissed. The pace at which the fictional society switches its media-directed gaze is frenetic. It’s like orgy-porgy meets Triumph of the Will.

That's a pretty good analysis.

I haven't seen it but I know it was featured on Red Letter Media's re:View series where they review movies they actually like [0]. Especially at the start they discuss its legacy and why people like/hate it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkEdyq3UE5M

Just so you know, Red Letter Media has a sub-show called "Best of the Worst." "Bad" is a weird classification. I call it "bad," but I love the movie. People call it bad because it is super campy.

By coincidence the Youtube algrorithm landed me on the very first re:View the other day where they explained the distinction between the type of movies they would feature on Best of the Worst vs re:View. Basically, BotW would be for "so bad they're good movies", movies that are truly awful but have redeeming quality in their ability to be laughed at, whereas re:View would be for movies that they think are truly good but are not as well known today, or at least not known as good movies today (as is the case for Starship Troopers).

As for Starship Troopers, you really could call it a flop. It cost $105m to make and the US box office was $22m. Since then it has made $121m, so barely a profit.

I'd put Starship Troopers in the "bad" category because it is really campy. It is so on the nose that it becomes absurd and funny (past the on the nose that is annoying). It reminds me of a scene in Birdemic where they are like "Man, that was a good movie: An Inconvenient Truth." which was thrown in out of nowhere as if the writer only read the summary on the wikipedia entry for "foreshadowing" and said "oh, I need some of that in my story." In Starship Troopers it is undeniably clear that they are drawing parallels to Nazis, they even make fun of this in this article where they talk about the identical flag. Everything about this movie is extremely over the top. But this is also what makes it so funny.

Enjoyable and a lot of fun, but definitely in the bad movie category.

I agree with you so much i could have written your comment myself, word for word.

> As a sci-fi enthusiast I love the book. As a lover of bad movies, I love the movie. I recommend both, but for completely different reasons.

Thought the book was interesting science fiction with (in retrospect) bad politics mixed in.

I don't remotely understand the movie, the bits which were supposed to be satirical were lost in whatever slim excuse for a plot the movie had. It basically stripped away all the interesting science fiction bits and devolved into a bunch of people running around with guns shouting randomly at giant bugs.

> devolved into a bunch of people running around with guns shouting randomly at giant bugs.

That was part of the satire actually. When a pro-militaristic society knows nothing but violence, they continuously look at the problem through a violence-only lens.

> It basically stripped away all the interesting science fiction bits

The propaganda bits and sarcastic take-down of fascism is the big part of the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijvTiDnWJLE

Its probably easier to see the sarcasm with all of the Federal News Network clips in a row?

Or maybe the "Failure of Democracy" speech?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxgrr0wL8M

> Its probably easier to see the sarcasm with all of the Federal News Network clips in a row?

Maybe it was a good satire I have no idea. I get enough politics in my life passively without going to a movie to get even more of it.

If I'd thought of it as "Political Satire" I'd have never gone to the movie. I was looking for a good/ interesting science fiction movie which it wasn't.

I don't agree with Heinlein's weird quasi-militaristic ideals. But I also didn't want to sit though 2 hours of someone skewering it. If they'd made a good movie and skewered Heinlein, I'd have been fine with that.

Back in the 90s, making fun of Nazis / fascism / hyper-violence was a safe subject. Its hardly "political" in the context of the time when it was made.

Case in point: Star Wars, the beloved Sci-fi space opera, also leans on heavy Nazi / Fascist themes when building up the empire. Its supposed to be the "safe" subject of discussion and biting satire.

Star Wars leans on Nazi symbolism and fascist themes, it doesn't wade neck deep in them. People don't try to defend the weaknesses of Star Wars by saying "But it's such a great satire", they don't have to because the franchise stands alone.

Whenever I point out the fact that Starship Troopers makes zero sense and is just a plain bad movie, the singular response I get is that "It's great political satire". Again, maybe it is. That's not the genre of movie I was interested in watching, it still isn't.

Also, for what it's worth, the only Star Wars movie released in the 90s was The Phantom Menace which was nearly as bad as Starship Troopers.

Ehhh. I don't think I'd rate Starship troopers in my top20, or even top 50 films I've seen.

Its kind of straightforward to me. So I'm not really going to defend it. Its neither high-brow nor low-brow... requires a bit of thinking but not really enough to keep my brain active the whole time.

A movie that was more-low brow (ie: Mission Impossible) would be better, as would a high-brow movie. Starship troopers kinda sits in an awkward spot as a film for me.

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I think the point that David Roth is making here however, is that we're seeing more, and more politicians make "Starship Trooper" arguments today, in 2020, to defend themselves and their actions.

Starship troopers was never a "good" or "great" film. Its more horrifying to see that the modern political discourse has leaned into Starship Troopers.

Starship Troopers was a over-the-top, almost cartoon-interpretation, of political satire. The fact that modern arguments of 2020 are looking anything like Starship Troopers is the problem.

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