Sometimes I worry that I don't have what it takes to be a Citizen.

Throwing these advertisements/news/propaganda segments in his sci-fi movies was always Paul Verhoeven's signature move. Great!

Though I wouldn't mind an ACTUAL Starship Troopers adaptation someday.

the cow joke at the end of this was one of the best fuck-with-the-audience parts of the movie. in the theater, everyone was laughing at the cow slaughter and then immediately shut up at the dead bodies. I was laughing at the dead bodies part.

This movie only gets better with time

Man, this future kicks ass.

Wow, satire is easy!

I would like to know more.

Profound was my disappointment in Verhoeven's version of the mobile infantry

I liked how Rico went from a Filipino to Casper Van Diem.

BRING ON DOOGIE HIMMLER

This movie was pretty bad. Sure it had high spots, like this clip, but otherwise it was just buried under bad acting and bad writing.

Why does an execution get broadcast on 'all channels' but a cows evisceration get censored?

Here's a review I stole from somewhere:

Stunning, inexplicably overlooked monster movie that also happens to be among the year's most fascinating and subversive satires. It's hard to think of another movie (Leni Riefenstahl excepted) that uses Fascist imagery so blatantly - Nazi-style greatcoats and uniforms, soldiers standing in serried ranks bellowing in unison, recruitment ads in the style of the Hitlerjunge - and it doesn't even bother to camouflage its bloodlust with the soft-hearted trappings (parental bonding, filial reconciliation) of THE LOST WORLD or INDEPENDENCE DAY : this is an unabashedly militaristic future, where only soldiers have the right to vote and the Army makes a man of our callow hero - it's a clarion-call for violence, and it doesn't have a sentimental bone in its body. Yet - unlike the Robert Heinlein book on which it's (loosely) based - it's not (only?) a celebration of Fascist values : our heroes look almost reprehensibly Aryan (airbrushed teens, all teeth and cheekbones), at least till you realise they also look like the clean-cut kids on glossy TV shows like "Beverly Hills 90210" - and until it clicks that perhaps the "master race" isn't all that different from our capitalist glorification of the rich, the smooth and the shiny (it sounds simple, but if Gregg Araki was doing it every hipster on the planet would be salivating). Similarly, though the film's worldview seems politically incorrect to the point of barbarity, it's in fact based on the most ubiquitous shibboleths of 90s public life : men and women are entirely equal, racism is unheard-of, nobody smokes or does drugs, and, above all, uniformity (both cultural and, implicitly, political) has been imposed throughout the globe - in the film's slyest gag, these archetypally Californian teens are supposedly from Buenos Aires! It's just exhilarating to think of arch-joker Verhoeven enjoying his rich, multivalenced (if nihilistic) joke : on the right-wing redneck crowd who take the gung-ho aggression at face value, not realizing the military discipline is played so straight it's a hair's-breadth away from hilarity ("You kill anything that has more than two legs! You get me?" barks the sergeant ; "We-get- you-sir!" yell the recruits) ; on the weedy liberal types who find the whole thing objectionable, not getting the true message - that all attempts to substitute homogeneity for individual freedom are equally despicable, however "good" the cause ; and perhaps on the hapless studio that bankrolled the whole thing to the tune of 0 million, never realizing what they were in for. And the ultimate joke? All the above is just subtext, mere icing on the cake : the film is primarily a monster movie, and an outrageously exciting one, full of mind-boggling visual trickery and kinetic battle scenes - it's everything THE LOST WORLD should've been and more, the adventure movie as irreverent, in-your-face comic-book. Terrific stuff.

Mine: This movie is fucking awesome. The fact that people don't like it kinda weirds me out.

You're lying to yourself if you don't think this movie is Pretty Alright.

"The supposedly libertarian Heinlein practically enthroned military power in the original book, a paean to authoritarian politics managed by the rough wisdom of the soldier-citizen. But Verhoeven's (best) movie satirized it brilliantly and absurdly along with war propaganda. It's like a WWII propaganda flick of the future, complete with archetypical, eager, handsome young heroes straight off recruiting posters, and brazenly manipulative newsreels. What scared me was how few people picked up on this and instead took the film straight - distracted by the special effects and violence perhaps. How, when this movie presents the most over-the-top satire since Dr. Strangelove? Is that how far both dumb literalism and the rote acceptance of everything this film mocks have come?"

http://www.promethea.org/Misc_Compositions/RecommendedMedia.ht ml

Damn Mormons. They never listen.

Man it sure is great that chet added support for super-long comments!!

you're all faggots

While some of the action scenes to this flick are unitentionally hillarious, it adds weight to the case that science fiction is not art, but garbarge. If he were dead, Ray Bradbury would be rolling in his grave.

hey guys this movie was pretty alright and that redheaded chick had some nice ta-tas so i'm giving this one four stars okay?

Satire, subtext intentions... this just wasn't a good part of the movie.

I want a fully automatic burrito.

Takashi Miike said this is his favorite movie. That just makes me love him, and this movie, even more.