6 Mind Blowing Ways 'Starship Troopers' Predicted the Future
We really hope the war ends soon. For one, we want our troops home and safe, as soon as possible. But, as an on-the-side benefit, we'd really like to put an end to those damn war movies that keep coming out. From dramas like Lions For Lambs and The Hurt Locker, to gritty documentaries like Restrepo and No End In Sight, to savagely critical works like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Starship Troopers, it seems like more and more sandy and depressing war movies are taking over our cine-
What?
Yes, Starship Troopers. The campy anti-war satire about a race from a distant, desert land, who out of nowhere strikes a civilian target in a way we didn't think was possible, leading to heavy-handed patriotic propaganda, and a headlong rush into a war with a poorly thought-out strategy that results in a quagmire. You don't have to agree with the message to get that it's clearly a satirical send-up of the War on Terror. If anything, it's too on-the-nose.
What's that, you say? The movie was made in 1997, four years before 9/11? Hmmm. That is a problem. We mean, we're not saying Paul Verhoeven traveled forward in time and then traveled back to film a commentary on a future war (because that would be an absolutely HORRIBLE waste of time travel), but... well, yeah, maybe we're saying he did that. Look how they line up:
In The Film:
The movie follows Johnny Rico, a dumb jock from a weirdly Aryan-looking Buenos Aires of the future, as he signs up for the Mobile Infantry to protect the human race from the Arachnids, hive-minded, insectoid aliens. The war Johnny is training for is purely theoretical for the first 50 minutes of the film and then, suddenly, war is declared. What's the trigger? An asteroid strike on Johnny's home city of Bueno Aires, which destroys the city and kills over eight and a half million people. This, for the humans, is an absolute shock to the system, a blow made all the more devastating by the fact that the Arachnids don't have a colony within fifty thousand light years of Earth.
In space terms, that's this much.
That they shot an asteroid from halfway across the galaxy and managed to hit, not only another planet, but the planet they actually aimed at, is not just impressive, its goddamned miraculous. Especially considering that the Arachnids don't seem to have much knowledge of math and interstellar travel -- their species spreads to other planets by shooting their spores into space and hoping for the best. In fact it's so amazing that it's either a plot hole or a surprisingly subtle plot point- there's a theory among Starship Troopers fans that the attack was either a random collision that the government used as an excuse for war, or a deliberate attack by the government on its own people to justify attacking the bugs.
Either way, humanity promptly loses its shit and declares war on all bugs everywhere.
"Well this seems easy enough."
In Real Life:
You can see right away how the plot mimics real events. Before 9/11, the threat of Islamic terror was lingering out there, but wasn't immediate -- just like the bugs in the movie. Then there's an attack on a civilian target that comes as just as much a shock to the system, as it demonstrated a capability no one thought the terrorists had. The US promptly lost its shit and declared war on the very notion of terrorism, entering into an armed conflict against an abstract concept like only America can.
"And after we beat Terrorism, we're gonna beat Drugs! Then we're going to take on Sadness!"
There are some crucial differences between the movie and real life. For one thing, plus, in war time here on Real Earth, Denise Richards is probably the last person we'd call for support, (assuming the war was not being fought by boners).
"We need at least six more boners to the frontline. Richards, get out there!"
Also, 9/11 was obviously not some random coincidence or inside job. Sure, in a shitty movie, fans will wildly speculate all the time and talk about how the government attacked Buenos Aires on purpose and blamed the bugs, but no one in real life would look at 9/11 and whip up a bunch of crazy, nonsensical, conspiracy theories about "what really happened, right?
In The Film:
The humans quickly mobilize to destroy the Arachnids, sending their space fleet to the Arachnid homeworld of Klendathu. They recklessly charge in, with little thought given to tactics or battle plans. And so what? The enemy is bugs. Who needs tactics?
"I need a really big magnifying glass, stat!"
Well, the bugs have other ideas. Turns out there is one breed of Arachnid that can unload a huge, steaming pile of blue plasma right on into space. Though they don't have sophisticated aiming capabilities, just squirting plasma upwards makes short work of a few human spaceships, while the Arachnid foot soldiers for the Mobile Infantry to retreat in panic from an enemy who was better prepared, better armed and in greater numbers than they expected.
"The giant, armored bugs are defending themselves somehow!"
But this movie is crazy, it was directed by the guy who directed Showgirls. No real military would be as misinformed and unprepared as the military in a move about fighting massive, shrieking bug-monsters, right?
In Real Life:
Operation Anaconda was the first major engagement of the War On Terror. The idea was to attack a force of around 200 Al Qaeda soldiers in the Shahi-Kot Valley from the west, causing them to flee into the waiting arms of more US soldiers in the east, in what's known as a "Hammer and Anvil" strategy.
Just one problem: Al Qaeda did not flee, but stood their ground.
Just one other problem: There were not 200 enemy soldiers in the valley; there were up to five times that amount.
Just one further other problem: the US military planners had assumed the enemy were armed with machine guns; they actually had mortars, rifles and rockets, and the planners assumed that Al Qaeda were in the valley, (they were in caves in the mountains surrounding the valley), and a convoy broke off from the main "TF Hammer" force to reach an observation point they'd been assigned to. And an AC-130, which was supposed to be providing firing and recon support during the battle thought they were an Al Qaeda convoy and attacked them. This friendly fire battle resulted in the first casualty of the operation.
The rest of TF Hammer came under heavy mortar fire from the prepared and entrenched Al Qaeda, and their air support turned out to consist of six bombs, and their attack didn't actually make it into the valley, meaning that TF Anvil, arriving via helicopter, did not close the trap as had been intended, but instead found a trap closing around them, as they were attacked by an enemy who was better prepared, better armed, in greater numbers, and from a better-fortified position than they expected.
No word on whether they had massive pincers and exoskeletons.
In The Film:
After being unpleasantly surprised by the Arachnids' willingness to fight back and defend their home, the human military in Starship Troopers come up with a new battle plan: "Fleet glasses the planet, MI mops up." Basically, rather than wading in and fighting whatever they find, they first bombard the planet with explosives, making it easier for the Mobile Infantry to take out the survivors. We see one of these aerial bombardments in action, not on the planet they invaded originally, but on a completely different planet called Tango Urilla. The jet fighters fly overhead and drop bombs, the bugs scream in terror and try to run away, but get blown to pieces in their thousands.
Space travel has obviously not yet equipped them with super-nukes.
Johnny and his squad then walk in and successfully wipe out the remnants, before being sent off to yet another planet called Planet P, where the rest of the film takes place.
In Real Life:
Oh come on. You already know the real-life version of this, it's part of America's national language by now. Basically, after being unpleasantly surprised by the enemy's willingness to fight back in Afghanistan, the American military came up with a new battle plan for their invasion of Iraq: Shock and Awe. Essentially, they bombarded Baghdad with explosives, with the intention of demoralizing Saddam Hussein's military out of actually fighting.
In both cases, that's a disastrous first engagement as a result of underestimating the enemy, and an attempt to compensate next time around with heavy aerial bombardment.
Also? Here are those planets the military attacked in Troopers...
...aaand here we are...
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man, Starship troopers was a great movie
Reply....or it would have been had it had absolutely anything but a few names in common with the book
Most mind-blowing article ever!
ReplyFun fact here, it turns out that this movie didn't only have the director of Robocop, in fact most of the crew of that movie worked on this one too, including the producer, the writer, the two special effects guys, AND the music composer.
ReplyAlso since they made a movie satirizing the war one terror before it even started does this mean robot police officers are going to be patrolling Detroit in the next few years.
Fun Fact 2: the writer for this movie also wrote the sequels and directed the third move.
Fun Fact 3: You know that naked shower scene in the movie. The crew really didn't want to do it and said they only would if he directed the scene naked along with them...He did and marriment was had.
Where it gets even weirder: The US didn't have a clear battle plan until after we got a new general and he laid out a clear and precise battle plan (sort of). In one of the propaganda reels they make mention of this strategy and the characters act as if it happened.
ReplySweet article. I really love that movie, even though it is in fact a bit shitty. By the way have you seen that show that was kind of based on both the book and the movie, I think I was called "Roughneck Chronicles" or something like that. It's really good in its own way, especially for a computer generated show from the 90s.
ReplyThe best part of the movie was that the original author, Heinlein, was an ACTUAL Fascist assfucking dildo. The movie takes his bullshit and makes a brilliant satire out of it. Amazing.
ReplyUmmm . . . No. The entire society Heinlien wrote about was based on Switzerland.
Heinlein was hardly a fascist, and in fact was more of a libertarian if anything. As Larry Niven once said " there is a scientific term for people who assume a writer has the same motivation and thoughts as their characters. It's called 'Idiot'"
Great article and very sharp observations about Iraq and the movie, eerie as they are. Well done.
ReplyJust watching it today during the shower scene they discusss why they joined up. Some kids say to pay for college. Idk if that was how it was back in the 70s when heinlen wrote the book but with the huge cost of tuition nowadays alot of kids are joining the military for other reasons then purely out of patriotism
ReplyThe book was written in the 50's and the premise was that people that earn the right to vote exercise that right better than people that are just given it.
And predicted that the end of corporal punishment of children will result in a generation that doesn't understand that there are consequences for their actions.
BTW and REAL Heinlein fan hates what they did with the movie.
True. As I commented earlier, the society in the book though it has many similarities with the movie is based entirely on Switzerland, a country that has *mandatory* Gun ownership laws among other things.
And what is so 'Fascist' about expecting people to know what they are voting about?
Personally, I think WW2 is a much better touchstone for both the book and the movie.
ReplyIndeed - Dunkirk is a better example of the Klendaathu attack for example. And can we say Pearl harbour? :)
THAT'S where my Tardis went!
ReplyI think the big picture you're missing is that the government used starship troopers as a template to plan their tactics for moving into the eastern territories.
ReplyTime Lord director... now i've seen everything!
ReplyTime Lord!
ReplyOh my God! There are POWs in the movie Starship Troopers AND in real life! What a twist! Honestly, none of this stuff is in any way mind blowing. Funny and well written, sure, but I'm not at all surprised that the reactions of people after the attack was to fight back. Isn't that how like... everyone reacts?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI love how you imply that PoW's being tortured is standard procedure...
Love the implication that PoW's being tortured is totally normal.
Gah, stupid cracked comment section...
Opened this up expecting some cool stuff, read part of the first section, lost hope in cracked. WHAT THE FUCK, SERIOUSLY.
ReplyMY VAGUE, UNDIRECTED ANGER SHALL REBUKE YOU, SIR!
I READ PART OF THE FIRST SECTION OF ONE ARTICLE AND THAT TELLS ME THAT THIS WHOLE SITE IS BULLSHIT. I AM A RETARDED PERSON.
This was so bad
ReplyHoly s**t
with 1300+ comments so far in this article i must not be the first to point this out but richard kelly clearly knew the significance of these (i guess) prophecies. in his film 'southland tales' he mimicked the propoganda shown in 'starship troopers' to criticize the same war on terror we're perhaps doomed to fight like the war on drugs. coincidentally, amy poehler was also featured in that film as a naive protester of american policy. i was a child of the 9/11 attacks in which i mean that i grew up in the wonders of 90's america only to have that safety and prosperity shattered as a kid hitting puberty and the first time i saw this movie i knew that there was much more going on than a ridiculous alien war picture. it's quite enlightening to see someone organize the details and illuminate the similarities of this alternate world to our own troubled times. yes, it's 'starship troopers' but like the article says, this is our sad and misguided world where we as the protagonists of a people fighting for what's right have in turn become the aggressors championing what is wrong. so troubling to see a film of this caliber providing more insight into our own faults and struggle than a peabody winner or palme d'or documentary. well now that i've typed my little comment let's get back to the lol'ing
ReplyCould someone hire an editor?
ReplyI think they need to hire a comment editor for people like you.
To be fair, in the novel the bugs have laser guns, ships, breeding and storage vats, and all that. And just because a bug can't operate a calculator, doesn't mean they can't count. Ants, for example, are quite good at doing math.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesAll we know of the movie bugs, is what the government propaganda tells us, and they don't tell us shit. Bugs are dumb, simple minded, disorganized and rely on spray and pray tactics in everything (be that warfare, breeding or interplanetary combat). For all we know, they could drop those rocks through artificial wormholes. Remember when the Roger Young encountered the asteroid that hit Buenos Aires. It appeared out of nowhere with a great gravitational warp/flux/whatever, causing the drink in the glass to tilt towards it, while it was far away. If that gravity was caused by just the mass of the thing, why didn't people (or even the drink) fly towards the ceiling of the ship as they passed under it, or anything? Seems like the force was just temporal, caused by the asteroid dropping our from some space warp.
As for Starship Troopers comparison the US politics, the similarities are intentional. Verhoeven makes several statements about the actions of the federation in regards to US foreign policy in the commentary of the movie. The whole movie is filled with foreshadowing, like the federation constantly barging into the Arachnid zone, and when s**t happens, blaming it on the bugs. And when the bugs finally strike back, they're all "WTF, dude?"
Ants can't do the arc physics necessary to navigate an asteroid shot through the galaxy to a pinpoint target. Stop being a nitpicky @$$hole.
@separis Theres nothing preventing some future bug race from developing intelligence to navigate an asteroid. Although i agree its completely unlikely.
@Serapis:
Or, you know, you could just look at the entire remainder of the guy's argument that specifically deals with the Arachnids and does not mention ants in any way except as an analogy. YOU stop being the nitpicky @$$hole.
f**k em bugs KILL THEM 6 LEGGERS WOOOO AMERICA!!!
@SerapisMetal
Neither can monkeys...
theres also a scene about an hour in where they have a very fox news-like debate, discussing the enemy's military strategy and intelligence.
ReplyI find the idea of an intelligent bug offensive!