re: Paul Verhoeven thought Starship Troopers was "too subtle for the American consciousness"

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The satire in ST is pretty on the nose, so I’m not sure what Verhoeven is talking about.

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He's one of those European snobs who thinks everything American is beneath him and we are just cultural Philistines.

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but yo can make a very, very compelling argument its pro military and pro nationalism.

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**jim carey well yeah gif**

Their drill sergeant gives up his rank so he can go kill bugs and ended up catching their Master Mold basically. if PV meant for this movie to be anything other than pro military then he fricked that up big time with that scene.

No teenage boy is gong to see the hack from Shawshank basically frick people up in basic then turn around and put himself BENEATH people he was sending to the meat grinder as anything other than fricking awesome.

I think the cult classic status this movie achieved really helped with a video game release last year, Helldivers 2. The military satire in that game is exactly like it was in the movie and people loved it.

With this remake/reboot that they plan on doing, I hope its more in line with the books and not trying to redo the classic and ultimately, falling on its face

Its seems like Verhoeven tried to make a movie satirizing fascism without knowing what fascism is.

The "fascist" elements in Starship Troopers are all surface level, the United Citizen Federation is a post-modern, neoliberal, limited democracy, it lacks a charismatic dictator, there's a council, merit-based citizenship, no racial or ethnic supremacy, no sign of rigid ideological extremism.

Nowhere in the movie do we see non-citizens being abused. The film depicts Johnny Rico's parents living comfortably as non-citizens, thriving economically and socially, even without political power. Rico's father views service as dangerous and unnecessary. Hell, Rico is a complete dumbass, and his father apparently has the money/power to buy Johnny's way into Harvard.

Even the newsreels, which were supposed to show the propaganda of a fascist hellhole, are more slapstick than jingoistic and threatening.

Nowhere in the movie is there anything that makes the audience gasp and say "Oh my God. What have the humans done? They are just as bad as the bugs."

What Verhoeven does excel at, though, is making cool movies. And you can't beat the Rule of Cool.

Great movies. He made another great one in the 80's....
Flesh + Blood with Rutger Hauer.

I always find it funny that a critique of the movie is "he made the Nazis look too cool so I didn't know I wasn't supposed to root for them".

I didn't need the Nazis to be cartoonishly evil to know not to side with the Nazis.

There were Nazis in Starship Troopers?

Where’s the disdain for liberal democracy?
The racism?
Antisemitism?
The community based on racial purity?
The charismatic leader?

The only comparison I can see to Nazism is the uniforms look kind of similar.

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There were Nazis in Starship Troopers?

Where’s the disdain for liberal democracy?
The racism?
Antisemitism?
The community based on racial purity?

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You can conclude there's something there if you want to carry forward the analogy that some racial groups are viewed as subhuman cockroaches by Nazis. But the movie's bugs are far from slaughtered innocents.

There's a curiously unself aware part of European psychology when it comes to Americans. Granted we have racism and fall short of an egalitarian utopia. But we're a better integrated society with countless racial and cultural groups in our melting pot.

PV seemingly felt a sense of superiority over his less integrated (European) culture. And he ended up projecting the Nazi or Fascist history from his own continent onto the United States.

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The only comparison I can see to Nazism is the uniforms look kind of similar.

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Yes looks similar to.

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Iconography inspired by the German Nazi regime and Italian National Fascist Party appear throughout Starship Troopers as symbols of the United Citizen Federation (UCF). The UCF flag, bearing an eagle, resembles the Nazi coat of arms; officer uniforms are similar to those worn by the Nazi secret police—the Gestapo—including the insignia, and the symbol on infantry uniforms references Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts.[21][25] Neumeier said the Nazi uniforms were used

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Again they don't need to beat me over the head with "guys these are Nazis" for me to go "I think these guys are Nazis".

Black Book is my favorite movie of his