I pointed out loads of ironies in a story that was clearly intended to demonstrate how wasteful war and fascism are. Still don’t think that the Starship Troopers film was satirizing fascism? Within the first two minutes of the commentary featuring Ed Neumeier and Paul Verhoeven, Verhoeven says this:

In fact, it’s saying, of course, that this fascist propaganda that is current—apparent in the movie should be really read—at least that’s how we meant it—should be read as something that is not good. So whenever you see something that you think is fascist, you should know that the makers coincide with your opinion thinking that it is not good. That is not a good statement and this is not good politics, and if you see a black uniform, you should also know ‘bad, bad, bad!’ You know, it’s very simple, you should know, read—read it differently than that. We all agree with that. It’s bad.

There you fucking have it. A film that is basically about overglorified animal hunting is intended to be comedic. Who would have thought? Not the Washington Shitpost, which Neumeier and Verhoeven unhappily mention in the commentary, and certainly not all of the anticommunist bores polluting X (formerly known as Twitter).

Anticommunists apparently think that satire is just something that you do only to get yourself out of trouble, like when Roosh V prefaced his pro-rape article with ‘lol jk’ only after it exploded. I’m fucking surprised that they haven’t tried to reclaim Paths of Glory yet. I can easily see them missing every single irony in that film and thinking that it was pro-war all along… wait… oh crap, they might be reading this right now and getting ideas! I wasn’t serious, guys, really.

Both the author AND director have stated it was the bugs that launch the attack. You very clearly missed how the story tells you it happened.

Even the director of the “satire” movie said that the bugs actually sent the asteroid in his version.

Except the director confirmed in commentary it did in fact happen. Your “its a false flag!” cope is pure invention.

Here I was thinking it was impossible because it was a poorly thought out movie script that didn’t spend 3 seconds thinking about astrophysics.

Don’t pretend Verhoeven was the kind of subtle genius that only you could understand.

I don’t know where they got the information that it was also Neumeier’s intention, but twenty-four minutes into the commentary:

In the beginning of the movie, you think that basically the bugs attacked, that the bugs are bad, that the bugs have to be destroyed, it says ‘Klendathu has to be destroyed!’ Isn’t it? That’s what the first item of the movie says, the first fact net, but now later you find out that that’s only part of history, because the real history started with the Mormon extremists setting up a colony in a territory that they were not asked to come into, which is the Klendathu—let’s say, the Arachnid territory, and then we, basically after they retaliate, and they retaliate by killing the […] Mormons, but also by sending a meteor to Buenos Aires, as we see later in the movie, then we get really pissed off and forget about all that and say, ‘Oh, look at that meteor! How bad! We have to attack!’

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but in an alternative commentary, where somebody does mention in the first several minutes that there is no indication anywhere in the story that the aliens could have even launched that meteor, Verhoeven still says that the meteor was supposed to be the insects’ retaliation, albeit conceding that the natural disaster theory ‘was an interesting point of view’.

I still think that the natural disaster theory makes a hell of a lot more sense than the director’s intent, but in any event: so what? Why would Verhoeven and Neumeier give a fuck if audiences thought that the meteor was a natural disaster? The story was not about a meteor, it was about showing how wasteful and pointless neofascism would be even at its best. They are ’way unhappier about all of the people who miss the point of the film, not the speculation about the casus belli.

Anyway, most of the other replies are contentless crap mocking somebody for sympathizing with dangerous animals over the neofascists who poked them. Examples:

I’d rather be “the bad guy” serving the interests of humanity than a “good guy” serving the interests of fucking aliens.

Commies empathising with the bugs? You love to see it

Only a dirty fucking Commie would side with literal bugs over his own people. The brain bugs would starve if only Commies existed.

I am human. Therefore humans are the good guys.

Communists always side with the disgusting bug creatures because that’s what most accurately represents them and their ideology.

I think that you get the picture. In a way, it is actually pretty fitting that anticommunists would sympathize with humans whom we see repeatedly kill and endanger each other in a useless, pointless war that could have easily been prevented in its entirety. That kind of wastefulness suits anticommunists nicely.

  • @Sherad@lemmygrad.ml
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    08 days ago

    Conservatives and media literacy are like oil and water. They can’t stop their knees from jerking long enough to get further than all but the most surface-level analysis.

  • Soviet Pigeon
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    09 days ago

    I am human. Therefore humans are the good guys.

    This a is one of the worst interpretation of art I ever heart. Imagine a Science Fiction movie about how humans put a intelligent humanoid species into slavery. Then this fucker will say, that this is fine, because we are humans. Of course humans are always my top priority. A human life is more worth than the life of a alien bug, because we are humans. But this never excuse actions of humans against non-humans.

    This is basic stuff you learn in the kindergarden. Really.

    • Are they even reasoning at that point or just coming up with a shoddy excuse to snort lines of fascism? Like I haven’t even watched the movie and it seems very likely from a cursory look at it that the point of the “enemy” being non-human is that fascism and similar dehumanizes/others its victims. So since you’re getting the fascist’s point of view, the enemy is presented as something that a human would consider disgusting. And there are real and literal examples of this kind of thing in practice, like the Nazis comparing Jewish people to rats.

    • @dvhen@lemmygrad.ml
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      08 days ago

      I mean that’s speciesist ideology in display. That’s one of the most common argument I encounter when discussing anti-speciesim. Humans can do whatever they want to other species because they are the best. Along with “How dare you make analogies between human and non-human suffering”

      • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        08 days ago

        Even Warhammer 40K is absolutely full of it and even the most blatant and straight up example possible, Orks argument that “Green iz da best” completely whooshes past the fashdom.

        • @dvhen@lemmygrad.ml
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          08 days ago

          I unfortunately know nothing about warhammer 40k. I guess orks are green and supremacists?

          • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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            8 days ago

            Sentient (that is discussable) mammal-fungi hybrids that are basically biological von Neumann machines created and programmed for waging war. For them, it is simply the most fun activity that can exist, and every other being is stupid and inferior to them.

      • @SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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        08 days ago

        “How dare you make analogies between human and non-human suffering”

        This made me think of the book Tender is the Flesh where the whole plot is an analogy for animal suffering. At least thats how I interpreted it. Fair warning if anyone looks it up, it’s an incredibly stomach churning book about cannibalism so tread very lightly.

  • @SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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    08 days ago

    Twitter goes through this phase fairly consistently and it’s annoying every time. Some random blue check fascist account will tweet about how the humans were actually the good guys and the discourse will erupt again. Then it’s just a back and forth between Nazis/bots and normal people for a day then the arguing dies. Fast forward a few months and it happens again. I don’t know why or how this happens but it does.

      • @SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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        08 days ago

        I feel bad for the people who argue against these fascists because, what else can you say about such an obvious movie? Plus its old (-ish) so I don’t know how many new interpretations you could make about it.

  • Mzuark
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    08 days ago

    It’s less that they can’t figure it out and more that they’re simply not pretending to be anything other than fascist at this point. Right wingers don’t see fascism as a negative so any movie saying it’s a bad thing is stupid in their eyes.

  • @SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
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    09 days ago

    Starship Troopers has to be one of the most on the nose criticisms of fascisme there is in modern day film. From the Nazi inspired emblems and uniforms to the white supremacy to the non subtle propaganda to the ‘supreme humans versus ‘bugs’ in a desert’ that need to be exterminated.

    Also I lol’d at the ‘rather side with humans’ as that is one of the basic fascist cirtiques the movie makes, the us versus them rhetoric. This guy will 100% be an outright fascist when he has the chance.

  • @MoonMelon@lemmy.ml
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    08 days ago

    It’s even more obvious in the book where there are neutral alien races and the humans are dropping bombs on them with loud countdown timers to show how merciful yet powerful they are compared to the bugs, so “better side with us.”

    Heinlein’s own politics and philosophy was totally incoherent shitlib/libertarian bootstraps garbage but he at least was an an iconoclast. I guess it’s a low bar for men born in like 1907. I get the sense that if he was alive today he’d have become full QAnon grandpa.