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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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The main arguments for it being a pro military and pro war movie is that the Bugs ARE attacking and that if humanity wants to survive, they will have to fight. Then, while most people do die, the movie ends with a major victory that looks like it may help save humanity.
I don't really think you can argue those points away to claim its an anti military/war movie. The movie would have needed for humanity to have attacked the bugs first, starting the war; or at the least having had most everyone die for no reason, without making a shred of progress in the war effort.
I mean, they were fighting to save our entire species, and the two most vocal people in the entire movie (Ricos parents) that were against the military machine were some of the first people to die in the movie.
Are the bugs really initiating the attacks? Because with the distance between Klendathu & Earth it seems pretty obvious the movie is trying to imply the bugs aren't the ones sending meteors at the humans.
When I rewatched the movie with a friend recently he was surprised that the movie ended with what felt like an anticlimactic resolution - because the war keeps going forever (or so it seems). I really like the interpretation that Starship Troopers (the movie itself) is an in-universe propaganda film used to recruit soldiers to feel important and make a difference in the war effort.
The point is the war must continue for ever, this is made very clear in the book - that's what happens when you deify soldiers, when you make a society obsessed with valour there needs to be a war for the generals to earn stripes - when your society's entire social contract and cohesion is based on war your leaders will always find a war that just HAS to be fought...
The movie point blank says the bugs attacked first and that it's a colonization species that just hurls meteor filled bugs randomly into space in order to try and find new planets to colonize.
Also, when the "main" character in the movie (Rico) is in basic training and about to quit the military, a bug meteor impacts the earth, taking out an entire city, and killing his parents, so the bugs were most definitely attacking humanity, and earth directly.
The movie also ends on a high note, making it seem like they learned some very important information by capturing one of the until then unknown bugs that was able to think and direct all the mindless bugs. So while the war will go on, it leaves the viewer to think that humanity was making progress towards a victory. The movie also marked the first time that humanity actually went to the bug home planet and "took the war to them".
Nice write-up
Seconding the other poster. Excellent write up; you distilled every rebuttal point I would have made to OP perfectly.
Klendathu is shown to be on the opposite side of the Milky Way. It is physically impossible for the bugs to hurl meteors at these distances while accounting for drift, every piece of matter in between and also the time difference. "Oh yeah, let's launch this meteor so it can destroy a city called Buenos Aires, that hasn't been founded yet by a species that hasn't evolved yet."
They didn't learn anything at the end, they all remained the same characters, still happy to be gears in a military machine. Oh, and NPR mutilated the brain bug's face vagina.
The music made you feel this way, but that's to manipulate you to do so.
This one always bugged me (no pun intended) when I first saw the movie as a kid. We (humans in the movie) can barely do precision missile-strikes on another planet across the galaxy, and the bugs are way less technologically inferior. How do they even move/manage a meteor?
Buenos Aires is an inside job?
The bug meteors aren't launched ballistically, they are launched in some kind of superluminal method that isn't explained and doesn't need to be, it did bypass earths defenses however. You can see that happens because the transport ship Denise Richards is piloting literally sees it happen. In the movie the idea of Buenos Aires being a false-flag isn't supported by the text, nor the subtext.
The movie actually doesn't care if the asteroid was sent by the bugs, was a false flag or just really unfortunate circumstances because it doesn't matter. What matters is how the government reacts and the government instantly presents it as an attack.
It's like with WW1 the assassination of Franz Ferdinand is presented as the reason the war started, but really countries were just looking for an excuse to start a war. Buenos Aires didn't really matter because Earth was just looking for an excuse to start a war.
I think you meant to say "bugs filled meteors"?