> I think there's more depth to the film than you might be giving it credit for. There's a lot of goofy heavy-handedness on the surface, but there are some layers underneath, in the writing and the arcs of the characters
The problem is that cautionary satire requires subtlety about what you are doing; the heavy-handedness on the surface ruins what's underneath.
I'm also not really convinced that almost literally goose-stepping to Nazis (as opposed to antecedents thereof) really need cautionary satire.
> It's goofy and funny on the meta-level, because, well, it's Michael Ironside, and he's saying things that at first pass sound insane. But there's a whole lot in that dialog, and it's all played deadly straight.
Yeah, but for it to work as satire, either it should sound insane at first and the audience should be lead to accept it at the end of the movie, and only after they leave the theater have a dawning “WTF?” feeling, or it should seem reasonable (if perhaps novel—eye-opening would be ideal) at the beginning and by the end the audience should be stunned at where it leads and that they ever sympathized with it. As it is, we’re presented with violent, militaristic, propagandizing state with fascist imagery from the beginning and, hey, at the end it's exactly what you'd expect from Nazis.
> And then compare Rico's genuine, "I don't know" there, to where his character is at the end of the film. I think it recommends itself to a lot of different levels of examination, without sounding like you're trying too hard.
Being suffused in a society which is filled with overtly fascist propaganda from the beginning and then fighting in war while still steeped in that propaganda can make a doubter into a committed soldier of fascism? Sure, there's a message there, but I don't think its a surprising one in either content or presentation.
Your points are all well-made, but I don't know if a message has to be surprising to be worthy of studying, whether satirically or otherwise.
That said, I do think it's genuinely subversive, and effectively so. It's in conversation with its genre of 'science fantasy action schlock'; it's satire in the same way that, say a late Western Revival like High Plains Drifter is. If you examine it on its own, it barely makes any sense. But when taken in context with what it's supposed to be, in its genre, then I think it becomes a deliberate kind of commentary on those tropes. The old joke goes that, from the other side, Star Wars is about a terrorist organization that murders millions of government servants. It's cautionary less in the direct sense of "Nazis are bad", than "Take a closer look at the mythologies you believe in".
> Your points are all well-made, but I don't know if a message has to be surprising to be worthy of studying, whether satirically or otherwise.
For satire to work, the message must be surprising either in content or in context. Sure, the effectiveness of fascist propaganda is worth studying (in both the investigatory and artistic senses), but I don't think Starship Troopers does so effectively, and particularly not as satire.
> It's in conversation with its genre of 'science fantasy action schlock'
I might agree that ST does not completely fail as somewhat meta-level (and cautionary) satire of the way that 'science fantasy action schlock' (and war porn more generally) function as militaristic authoritarian propaganda simply by being so deliberately modelled on and prominently incorporating heavy-handed fascist propaganda and still succeeding, enough to foster production of sequels, largely as 'science fantasy action schlock'. I don't think that was Veerhoeven’s intent.
> It's cautionary less in the direct sense of "Nazis are bad", than "Take a closer look at the mythologies you believe in".
I don't disagree that it wants to do that. I just don't think it produces the level of identification needed to do that effectively. I don't think audience members see thenselved and their own mythologies in the movie’s Johnny Rico, and his transition from doubter to drone in the militaristic mythology to which he is subjected.
The problem is that cautionary satire requires subtlety about what you are doing; the heavy-handedness on the surface ruins what's underneath.
I'm also not really convinced that almost literally goose-stepping to Nazis (as opposed to antecedents thereof) really need cautionary satire.
> It's goofy and funny on the meta-level, because, well, it's Michael Ironside, and he's saying things that at first pass sound insane. But there's a whole lot in that dialog, and it's all played deadly straight.
Yeah, but for it to work as satire, either it should sound insane at first and the audience should be lead to accept it at the end of the movie, and only after they leave the theater have a dawning “WTF?” feeling, or it should seem reasonable (if perhaps novel—eye-opening would be ideal) at the beginning and by the end the audience should be stunned at where it leads and that they ever sympathized with it. As it is, we’re presented with violent, militaristic, propagandizing state with fascist imagery from the beginning and, hey, at the end it's exactly what you'd expect from Nazis.
> And then compare Rico's genuine, "I don't know" there, to where his character is at the end of the film. I think it recommends itself to a lot of different levels of examination, without sounding like you're trying too hard.
Being suffused in a society which is filled with overtly fascist propaganda from the beginning and then fighting in war while still steeped in that propaganda can make a doubter into a committed soldier of fascism? Sure, there's a message there, but I don't think its a surprising one in either content or presentation.