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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

I think you're reading too much into it. They're from Buenos Aires because in the novel Rico is a Latino guy from Buenos Aires and the movie wanted all the characters to have gone to school together, therefore they're all from Buenos Aires. Verhoeven is not a Heinlein fan and says he didn't even read the book before making the movie.

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This is the kind of thing I think of 80% of movie rabbit holes people get into… Often the explanations are plain and unglamorous. But of course everyone is free to interpret what they want from the end result - just maybe not adscribe it to the creator’s original intent.

Fortunately the creators have been asked what their intent was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QotxGy4CKk

Thanks! Here's where they talk about Buenos Aires (10m): https://youtu.be/0QotxGy4CKk?t=600

It's not totally clear to me what their purpose was. Did they just use Buenos Aires because that's where the book was set, without any deeper motivation?

On that specific point no they don't go in depth, but then it's a short interview. He does say it's a comment on contemporary American culture, as with the rest of the movie you interpret it your own way. Clearly though from the interview he makes it clear the intent was political satire, and a deliberate critique of fascism and kind of world and people it might produce. That's the lens to look at these things through. But there is no one way to read it all, that's why I find it so re-watchable.

If you want to read it that all the other cultures were wiped out in the war and only one culture survived, sure.

If you think the one world government imposed a monoculture, maybe.

If you think humans are herd creatures that naturally converge on group-think consensus and globalisation is just going to go that way, fine.

Or maybe it was lazy film making cutting corners for budget and convenience reasons. OK. But in rebuttal to that possibility I submit in evidence the entire back catalogue of Paul Verhoeven movies.

In the novel, Rico is Filipino.

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