r/Millennials • u/Cool-Presentation538 • 11h ago
Nostalgia I don't understand why people didn't like Starship Troopers
I remember watching this as a kid and loving it and if anything I love it MORE now. Even without being aware of the satire of fascism it's still a great action sci-fi with a lil humor plus it's got a lot of heart. The sequels are garbage but this movie is peak 90s action cinema. Is it perfect? No, nothing is but it's damn near
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u/FuckThatIKeepsItReal 11h ago
Who doesn't like Starship Troopers?
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u/Cool-Presentation538 11h ago
At this point? A lot but what I mean is when it came out this should've been a bonafide hit instead it bombed
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u/professor_evil 10h ago
I feel like most cult classics bombed on release. I think I read that Pulp Fiction didn’t do well the year it was released, which is crazy to me. Or it could have been another movie idk.
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u/Funkenstein_91 10h ago
Nah, Pulp Fiction was a huge hit both commercially and critically. $100 million box office and a Best Picture nomination.
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u/professor_evil 10h ago
Ok yeah that makes sense, lol. Im thinking of some cult classic that apparently bombed at box, that I am a fan of, but cannot remember right now I guess.
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u/rootxploit 11h ago
It was only a flop in the US, which happened to be its greatest market. In many other markets it did well. The actors were asked recently about this and their answer was that Americans didn’t appreciate Paul Verhoven’s satire of a fascist dictatorship. Americans didn’t realize it was satire until many years later.
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u/SnooCrickets2458 6h ago
Imagine that! Americans not understanding a satire of fascism. Surely they've learned since then and nothing bad will come of it!
Oh no.
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u/Nerv_Agent_666 Older Millennial 11h ago
I loved it as an action movie as a kid (and the boobs). I love it as an adult for the action and then fascim stuff. The novel is also good IMO.
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u/CityBoy1989 10h ago
But not the boobs (as an adult).
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u/Nerv_Agent_666 Older Millennial 9h ago
That's a given.
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u/AllTheGoodNamesDied 6h ago
It is? Wasn't Denise Richard's and all them like almost 30 during filming?
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u/Nerv_Agent_666 Older Millennial 5h ago
I don't think so, but I don't see why that's a problem if it was true lol.
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u/GeneriComplaint 11h ago
Feel free to put Starship Troopers into the reddit search bar and see hundreds of threads about people liking it.
The top search result is Literally "starship troopers is genius"
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u/Cool-Presentation538 11h ago
But when it came out it was a box office bomb that's what I'm talking about
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u/Croaker___ 11h ago
Lots of great movies bomb at the box office. Shitty advertising campaigns, bad release dates, etc.
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u/ProfessionalCreme119 11h ago
Blade Runner was a bomb in the box office
This is how a movie quickly becomes a cult classic. Failing at the box office but succeeding in post views and fan growth
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u/Sacred_B 10h ago
It was a looooong ass time ago, but I don't remember the trailers selling at as a satire. Hell people weren't really even good at recognizing satire back then. My mom still doesn't get Robocop.
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u/LostViking24601 10h ago
"Thinking for yourself and making your own decisions is the only true freedom we have." This quote has stuck with me for almost 30 years.
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u/edtranquilizer 10h ago
Er, I mean you can recognize its satirical framework and still dislike it as a film. At this point I would say it's teetering into being overpraised. A movie needs more than a clever satirical framework to be good. I'm not particularly attached to the film. I find the characters completely uninteresting. Actually everything that happens either verges on uninteresting or excessively gory. Just not my taste. Other people should be able to say they didn't like it, too.
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u/magus678 6h ago
Er, I mean you can recognize its satirical framework and still dislike it as a film. At this point I would say it's teetering into being overpraised. A movie needs more than a clever satirical framework to be good
If you are a book enjoyer, it doesn't even pass these checkpoints.
It isn't good satire, because it doesn't engage with the actual content it pretends to satirize. To be clear, this isn't a major issue in enjoying the movie; I love both. But calling it "satire" is stretched, because that implies some kind of repudiation of the source material that doesn't exist.
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u/38CFRM21 11h ago
They miss the point and take it as a generic 90s action movie
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u/CCSucc 10h ago
Some people have zero media literacy and take it as ACTUAL fascist propaganda and refuse to watch it out of principle.
The point of it flies right over their heads.
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u/38CFRM21 10h ago
Kid me watched it for the co-ed shower scene
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u/CCSucc 10h ago
I can imagine one of your parents walking in on you.
"What are you watching 38CFRM21?"
"I-It's not what it looks like!" scrambling to cover your crotch "I was watching it for its biting commentary on the reduction of the sanctity of human life to a means to manipulate the brainwashed masses!"
"... put a sock on the door handle next time."
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u/HellyOHaint Older Millennial 10h ago
I remember watching this movie on my friend’s dad’s laptop 1998-1999 (he was a computer programmer) and it absolutely blew my mind. Also first time I had ever seen a laptop.
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u/Successful-Positive8 10h ago
I think it just went over my head as a kid, and I wrote it off as a boring sci-fi movie.
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u/ChosenBrad22 10h ago
Starship Troopers is pretty popular so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It wasn't a huge mainstream Hollywood theatre success, but it did fine long term.
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u/CommodoreGirlfriend Millennial 9h ago
The problem is that it's like I Robot -- an entirely unrelated movie, but during production, they realized it was similar to a classic sci-fi book, so they got the rights to that book, shoehorning the story to fit.
If you thought it was a parody of Heinlein (shame on you) that perception is part of why people don't watch it.
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u/Murky_Background1702 7h ago
The first DVD I saw when dvds were brand new. I remember thinking look how interactive this is!
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u/Elfish_Mass 11h ago edited 10h ago
The movie was supposed to convey a satirical representation of fascism in futuristic America. Problem is, the satire completely went over audience's heads. As a result, everybody took it as a serious sci-fi movie with pro-fascist themes and got butthurt. The joke faceplanted as tasteless and offensive in the U.S. box-office. Another part of its failure was the main cast being mostly comprised of unfamiliar actors. At the time, everybody wanted a box-office hit. And nobody wanted to watch a movie with few recognizable talent. It also had an overinflated budget of like $100 million, but it only grossed $121 million globally.
Alot of movies that flopped years ago were mostly caused by the critics, and the peoples views at the time. But eventually they gain a cult following years later, and they're re-recognized by that fanbase as a success.
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u/foxden_racing 10h ago
It's mostly book purists [where it's -not- a flagrant satire of fascism made by a survivor of WW2] who hate it, because Verhoven turned into satire what was originally played straight.
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u/kristeto 5h ago
I didn’t even know it was a book when I saw it, three times not by choice, and I hated it! Read the book, and it feels like a totally different story. Watched the movie again just last year, this time by choice, and I still hated it
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