Claiming something is satire doesn't suddenly stop it from being bad. The work has to be good on its own merits. Starship Troopers is not.
Apparently Verhoeven took one glance inside the book and disliked and then used that dislike to turn his original product into this "satire."
Eh, given Verhoeven's track record I can accept that the film is satire, its just that its satire of sci-fi action films in general, not the Starship Troopers book. Honestly if they had followed the book closer it could easily have been satire of itself. Just make sure to amp up the pointless political tracts of Heinlein and maybe integrate them into the combat or something.
Maybe Verhoeven should've done satire of Stranger in a Strange Land instead.
That's the biggest difference between the book and movie. The book was about developing leadership.
Whatever happened to China ITTL?Er...near as I can tell, Verhoeven never said anything like this. The Nazi imagery was pretty much just there for effect. The film does, however, nicely parody shots of things like Triumph of the will, so maybe somebody took that far too literally.
As for the book...ironically, given the first-person view and the constant banging over the head about the ideology, it can be taken as an in-universe propaganda piece. The bugs are transparently stand-ins for communist China (who, of course, are also a big threat mentioned in the backstory), and the characters happily march off to nuke 'em, so fascistic it may or may not be, but jingoistic it definitely it is. I prefer the 'reality' to be closer to Forever War, a much more interesting book, where it's all just a pointless slog across a vast cosmos against an enemy they barely understand.
Well they did defeat the evil Commies of Russia anyway.According to Michael Ironside, the choice for Rico's race in the film was more to do with Verhoeven riffing on the 'perfect blonde heroes' of old military propaganda.
'cause, y'know, they were totally trying to do a realistic and straight portrayal of military training, much like Robocop was a dead serious presentation of American law enforcement and corporate politics. I suppose the films are just so very very very subtle with their bent that it's hard to miss.
As befitting the attitudes of the 50s, probably nuked for being evil commies.
Nah, they were orbitally bombarded for being crazed lunatics who wanted all non-Chinese (including their Soviet and Indian "friends") dead by the A4. (Sorry, can't resist referencing AANW)
