Rebel Moon Part 1: Child Of Fire

[Setanta]

300 is like Starship Troopers in that it's jingoistic to the point of self-parody.  In the case of 300 it's not nearly as obvious and it's debatable whether the parody aspect is even intentional (although it's certainly there if you look for it).  In the Starship Troopers case it's blindingly obvious and that still doesn't stop chuds from loving it for exactly the wrong reasons.

I'm honestly struggling to see what 300 is even parodying.

I'm with you on this. Not the 1998 graphic novel, not the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, or the novel based on the film, or the 1963 comic book, certainly not the writings of Herodotus. The 1962 film was seen by some as commentary on the cold war, but even that is a stretch.

[Samwise]

I'm reminded of the Best of the Worst video where they watched the Star Wars Holiday Special and then spent most of the episode talking about Ishtar.

These men are pawns!

[Tale]

I just watched the rest of Rebel Moon (fell asleep on first attempt).

The movie finishes with the line "If you cannot bring her to me, then the one whose public execution will send shivers down the spines of the senators, and whose screams will echo down its marbled halls will be yours."

Which is nonsense. The final word should be "you" not "yours"!

The literal meaning of that sentence is that if you cannot bring her to me, I will give you the one I kill.

[Velorath]

I liked 300. I thought the Dawn of the Dead remake was better than it had any right to be. Watchmen was fine. I'm not going to act like I don't like his early stuff just because everything after was a mess. He's very much a music video director though, much like Michael Bay. A lot of guys who get their start there seem to develop a style, but never quite learn how to tell a story. Snyder was fortunate in that two of his first three movies were pretty much storyboarded in comic book form.

[Johny Cee]

I just watched the rest of Rebel Moon (fell asleep on first attempt).

The movie finishes with the line "If you cannot bring her to me, then the one whose public execution will send shivers down the spines of the senators, and whose screams will echo down its marbled halls will be yours."

Which is nonsense. The final word should be "you" not "yours"!

The literal meaning of that sentence is that if you cannot bring her to me, I will give you the one I kill.

Yours refers to execution, though?  It sounds like an awkward sentence anyway due to too many added phrases, but "execution" is the subject?  "if you cannot bring her to me, then the public execution that will send shivers down the spines of the senators will be yours"

Thank god I don't have this problem because I ain't going to watch this motherfucker.    


Although, I did make the mistake of watching the John Wick movies and those are in the same realm of dumb as Snyder movies.  First movie was pretty good!  Second movie was decent but self-indulgent, you could see the wheels wobble.  Third movie was incoherent plot/story trying to tie together a bunch of action set pieces, and it made zero sense.  Fourth was 3 hours of over-the-top nonsense so lost in style it loses sight of why the first movie was a nice return to form for action flicks.

[Johny Cee]

Starship Troopers just isn't very good satire, partly from poor execution and partly because its not sure what it is satirizing.  (Even at the time, people pegged the satire)

Regardless of personal opinions on Verhoeven's movies in general (I like some, dislike others, mostly his sci-fi. I mean, Robocop is just a fun movie damn it and so is Total Recall!) I have to disagree with this statement. Starship Troopers is 100% sure what it is satirizing and it isn't at all subtle about it. I mean, by the end of the movie they have Neil Patrick Harris walking around in essentially an SS uniform. It is 100% satirizing jingoism, nationalism and fascism. I don't think it's directed at any one country or culture in particular despite the obvious references which I think were there just to hammer home the fascism angle so people had no chance of missing it.

So Doogie Howser is in an SS Uniform.  What is it satirizing? 

- Not Nationalism.  You don't have any clear nation portrayed, whether by geography or culture or ethnostate.  There are some bland "citizenship blah blah" but the movie never bothers to identify a coherent culture or nationality or belief set.  Is it just calling anyone that isn't a cool Left-Anarchist "I don't believe in government" a nationalist pig?  Plenty of liberal democracies have required military service.

- Not Jingoism.  The Earthican (I am literally using the Futurama term because I have no idea who the Earth Government was supposed to be) government was attacked and Buenos Aires?? (who knows! Felt like downtown LA) was wiped out.  In what world would we condemn a military response to a military attack targeting civilians.

- Not Fascism.  What was fascist about his society of beautiful ethnic and gender diverse people getting horribly murdered by bugs in between coed showering?  The characters were all volunteers, and generally in movie it was viewed as less than ideal to join. What even about this government was shown in movie?


It's paint by numbers "satire" of American movies and movie plots because American movies like violence/action and some people think violence = fascism.  It's vaguely gesturing in the direction of what it wants to satirize, without setting that up exactly.  Putting a character in a Nazi uniform is just like not wanting to set up the Big Bad so you just have him rape/try to rape a character.  It's an anti-violence message where our hero won't outright murder the Big Bad, but he sure as hell will murder the fuck out of his minions.  Or a Batman movie where no one is shot, but all those poor thugs at best have TBIs and month long recuperations from the awful beatings they receive.  "Captain America kicked those guys dozens of feet in the air and into the rough seas, but I'm sure they survived because we didn't see them 100% dead!" (Winter Soldier)


The commercials were great, and the closest thing to actual satire.  They were definitely too blunt and on the nose, and still didn't really say anything that anyone would object to.  Mindless violence is bad?  Sure.


Compare to Robocop!  The city government is falling apart.  OCP is careless and uncaring.  Dick Jones and Bottiker are the nasty Evil people who can flourish in an environment where Democracy is failing and the Private sector is indifferent to anything that does not rock the status quo too much.  At the end, the Old Man helps Robocop because Robocop had to pry a reaction out of him in a public manner while almost getting murdered.  He's not a bad man, he's just oblivious as long as it isn't too much of problem to him.  OCP simultaneously supports both the Dick Jones Ed 305 and the Robocop program because they don't care about the morals of either, they just care about the status quo/profitability.

The Old Man is a guy who would look at marketing surveys and decide they need a DEI department and to prominently add a rainbow flag to the logo in June.  As long as divisional profits look good he also isn't going to call up Dick Jones to ask about some of his line items and independent contractors....

It fits, and it points that out with a ton of exaggeration for comedic effect.  But we can see the building blocks for the Robocop society in daily life.


The Robocop commercials make fun of society, but they are also commentary on the citizens and voters.  Laughing at the "I'd buy that for a dollar!" guy and chasing ridiculous vehicles while civil government falls apart. 

[Johny Cee]

300 came from a very weird period in Frank Miller's work. It was before he lost his goddamn mind due to 9/11 and turned from a very libertarian sort of anti-fascist to a hardcore kill the Muslims type. He has always had characters who were very clearly written and drawn in an extremely exaggerated way not so much as satire on heroes like Dirty Harry and Bronson in Death Wish, more like a meta commentary on how much like superheroes those characters are. His Batman is almost openly fascist but in that weird ass libertarian way that tries to make him both an anti-establishment rebel while essentially violently punishing those who would transgress against his authoritarian moral code. 300 is similar in that the story is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator who is purposely exaggerating the heroism of the deeds of the 300 because he is a propagandist, preparing the troops for battle against the demonic enemy seeking to wipe out the perfect Spartan civilization. I've always viewed it as a kind of commentary on the dangers of making all conflicts an ideological war between the defenders of the greatest society on earth and the ultimate evil that seeks to destroy humanity.

The problem is that that message is unstated and a fairly subtle one at that, especially if you are easily distracted by great action set pieces. I'm honestly unsure if Snyder can even understand the message, much less convey its nuances. Nuance is not his style, but over the top action, he's all about that.

Partial credit.

300 is a propaganda story to rile up the troops...  but this is after the Persians burned Athens and conquered a hunk of Greece which is what they did after killing Leonidas.  Faramir is telling the story to get people hyped before the Battle of Plataea because the combined Greek armies are getting ready to toss out the Persian invader.  

More broadly, Persia was ticked off at the Greeks in general as they backed some of the rebellions of Greek peoples in Anatoli.  Classical empires of the time, even a relatively  laid back one like the Persian Empire, respond to that shit with crazy overreactions that include crucifications and salting the earth.  So Greece was next on the list.  This got delayed a couple times before the Hot Gates, etc.

Even some of the side plots with McNulty and the Oracle are in line with the Persian diplomacy....  though I think that it was more a "join up voluntarily and things are good, don't and we make an example of you" type.  In later years thats basically how Persia handled Greece by paying off different factions to fight each other.  


It's fanciful/manufactured story that is on its face too kind to the awful Spartans (with the slavery, oligarchy, mistreatment of everyone, baby exposing, etc), but its definitely not jingoism as it is a direct response to a foreign invader who is STILL in your land trying to kill you and take your stuff.  Except Thebes.  They were sell outs.

Edit:

Ukrainians referring to Russians as "orcs" is obviously propaganda.  I wouldn't consider it to be jingoism as it is the direct result of the, you know, invasion and ongoing war.  Jingoism would be the equation of Ukrainian government and military as Nazis and the need for Russia to de-Nazify Ukraine, to justify and vindicate offensive action.

[Tale]

I just watched the rest of Rebel Moon (fell asleep on first attempt).

The movie finishes with the line "If you cannot bring her to me, then the one whose public execution will send shivers down the spines of the senators, and whose screams will echo down its marbled halls will be yours."

Which is nonsense. The final word should be "you" not "yours"!

The literal meaning of that sentence is that if you cannot bring her to me, I will give you the one I kill.

Yours refers to execution, though?  It sounds like an awkward sentence anyway due to too many added phrases, but "execution" is the subject?  "if you cannot bring her to me, then the public execution that will send shivers down the spines of the senators will be yours"

It doesn't. That's the error they've made. The subject of that sentence is "the one". The one whose screams echo will be you.

[Threash]

- Not Jingoism.  The Earthican (I am literally using the Futurama term because I have no idea who the Earth Government was supposed to be) government was attacked and Buenos Aires?? (who knows! Felt like downtown LA) was wiped out.  In what world would we condemn a military response to a military attack targeting civilians.

It's been a while but it was pretty clear in the movie that humans were the aggressors. The first victims of the bugs were literal colonizers. Then came the soldiers. The asteroid was the bugs fighting back.

[Riggswolfe]

- Not Jingoism.  The Earthican (I am literally using the Futurama term because I have no idea who the Earth Government was supposed to be) government was attacked and Buenos Aires?? (who knows! Felt like downtown LA) was wiped out.  In what world would we condemn a military response to a military attack targeting civilians.

It's been a while but it was pretty clear in the movie that humans were the aggressors. The first victims of the bugs were literal colonizers. Then came the soldiers. The asteroid was the bugs fighting back.

Well, like I said. If you pay attention there is literally nothing to indicate the bugs were even capable of that kind of attack and all we know about it comes from the government and is mostly in the form of "Look what they did! Sign up for the army now!" There isn't a thing in the movie to indicate the bugs have space travel at all, let alone the ability to hurl asteroids at Earth. I mean, perhaps I forgot a fairly major plot point of them finding an asteroid gun or something.

[Johny Cee]

- Not Jingoism.  The Earthican (I am literally using the Futurama term because I have no idea who the Earth Government was supposed to be) government was attacked and Buenos Aires?? (who knows! Felt like downtown LA) was wiped out.  In what world would we condemn a military response to a military attack targeting civilians.

It's been a while but it was pretty clear in the movie that humans were the aggressors. The first victims of the bugs were literal colonizers. Then came the soldiers. The asteroid was the bugs fighting back.

Well, like I said. If you pay attention there is literally nothing to indicate the bugs were even capable of that kind of attack and all we know about it comes from the government and is mostly in the form of "Look what they did! Sign up for the army now!" There isn't a thing in the movie to indicate the bugs have space travel at all, let alone the ability to hurl asteroids at Earth. I mean, perhaps I forgot a fairly major plot point of them finding an asteroid gun or something.

1.  What is a "literal colonizer"?  People who go to an uninhabited place and set up a settlement? Oh no!  This is using an implied connection to the tragedies of European colonization of the Americas to do some heavy lifting.  Any conflict between two civilizations is going to start on the periphery/border.  Star Trek had lots of "literal colonizers" as it had tons of colonies.  How fascist is the Federation?  You think Picard was delivering smallpox blankets along with humanitarian supplies?

To bring this back to 300, that whole thing was kicked off by Greek colonies in Asia Minor (as in Greeks migrated there) getting in shit with Persia, and Persia getting pissed because mainland Greek cities backed the Greek rebels.

2.  If they don't have space travel, how are the bugs on a bunch of different planets?  There are at least three planets are protagonists go to, which would indicate different solar systems and faster than light travel right?  Also, how did they naturally evolve some giant beetle/firefly artillery thing that can shoot spaceships out of orbit? 

Hell, why evolve a "brain bug" that can suck the intelligence out of massively different species unless they had encountered other species before and needed to war crime them?  Its not like that shit has any non-terrible use!

3.  "If the Earthicans are Fascist, the government obviously did the attack themselves" is not supported in any of the text.  I mean...  when has this ever been true?  A giant false flag self-target that kills millions? A major attack on a major city in your home region/planet would be such a terrible event its likely to cause at least your faction/party to lose control of government, and there is a danger that government itself collapses. 

The truth is:  Bugs are nasty and ugly and vicious and scary.  A fascist government that drums up a war just needs to, you know, show some videos of people being tossed around with their limbs torn off.  The Earth gov doesn't need to manufacture a major disaster that would be more harmful to social control.

Most typically, if you want to gin up a war?  You want to highlight the suffering of a people that are close enough to your citizenship to be sympathetic, but not close enough that your failure to act becomes a negative.  Whether this is early 20th century Russia and slavs, or Germany and ethnic Germans in other regions in WWII, or Christians and co-religionists in the Crusades.  Look at current Russia and their "concern" for the plight of ethnic Russians in border states. 


You people are really giving far too much credit to a movie that started out as the unrelated "Bug Hunt", was barely rewritten to give it some Heinlein "Troopers" stuff because the studio had the rights to the name, and finally was slathered with a veneer of Verhoeven dissatisfaction with American culture in some of its laziest forms.

[Threash]

1.  What is a "literal colonizer"?  People who go to an uninhabited place and set up a settlement? Oh no!  This is using an implied connection to the tragedies of European colonization of the Americas to do some heavy lifting. 

Or you know... people who move in to a place where other species are already living and call it uninhabited. The connection is blatant and explicit. Humans moved in to bug planets and started taking them over, bugs fought back.

[Setanta]

You people are really giving far too much credit to a movie that started out as the unrelated "Bug Hunt", was barely rewritten to give it some Heinlein "Troopers" stuff because the studio had the rights to the name, and finally was slathered with a veneer of Verhoeven dissatisfaction with American culture in some of its laziest forms.

This. The original "Bug Hunt on Outpost 9" studio pitch didn't work, so they went cap in hand to the Heinlein estate and then took the names of characters and places from the novel and not much else. Then there was hype that because Heinlein used satire in many of his adult texts (as opposed to the juvenile stories), that the film was satire. It just isn't, except in the crudest form, but with no particular focus. Unlink the film from the very thin veneer of Heinlein's novel and you are left with a sci-fi flick with pseudo-Nazi uniforms and a failure to do justice to the sophistication of the Robocop ads/social commentary.

My only conclusion to Rebel Moon is that it's trash, and poorly written trash, as people would rather discuss other movies. It did however, allow me to catch up on some sleep about 25 minutes in.

[Comstar]

Zack Snyder's STAR WARS: Part 1 - A New Hope


I trust that closes this argument. The mans trash and makes trash movies that are not even fun trash anymore.

[Riggswolfe]

This. The original "Bug Hunt on Outpost 9" studio pitch didn't work, so they went cap in hand to the Heinlein estate and then took the names of characters and places from the novel and not much else. Then there was hype that because Heinlein used satire in many of his adult texts (as opposed to the juvenile stories), that the film was satire. It just isn't, except in the crudest form, but with no particular focus. Unlink the film from the very thin veneer of Heinlein's novel and you are left with a sci-fi flick with pseudo-Nazi uniforms and a failure to do justice to the sophistication of the Robocop ads/social commentary.

My only conclusion to Rebel Moon is that it's trash, and poorly written trash, as people would rather discuss other movies. It did however, allow me to catch up on some sleep about 25 minutes in.

That's a pretty big misrepresentation of what really happened. They bought the novel but Verhoeven saw it as pretty boring right wing ultra military stuff so he never finished it. They actually filmed under the title Bug Hunt on Outpost 9 before changing it to Starship Troopers. You act like Starship Troopers was some massively popular novel that just having the name would get the movie attention. It was controversial even when it was released and in the 1980s it's doubtful people really paid much attention to a novel that was almost 30 years old by then. We're not talking Lord of the Rings here. They probably bought the rights because they were super cheap and it'd let them put something like "Based on the acclaimed sci-fi novel!" on the posters or something.

And Starship Troopers is easily the most satirical of any of his movies. It cracks me up though when people try to pretend like the satire in the movie isn't extremely pointed and fairly obvious.  Yes, in the U.S. especially, some people took it at face value. That's a pretty common thing with satire but even when I saw the movie as a young teenager I knew it wasn't meant to be what it looked like on the surface. I was too young to really be able to pinpoint it until the end of the movie when I basically went "Oh! The humans are the bad guys! Also, why did they kill Dizzy and let the stupid pilot woman live? Ugh..."

The movie can be knocked for being super over the top and for some stupid script issues and some bad casting (ok, mostly casting Denise Richards who brought down every movie she was ever in except Wild Things), but it wears its satire on its sleeve and it's easy to know exactly what it is satirizing. I mean, there's a reason the main character is the most Aryan man who ever Aryaned.

Edit: I should make clear I'm not defending Starship Troopers as a good movie. It's not and it still mystifies me that it has so many sequels. I just think it's silly when people try to pretend it's something its not just because they hate it and/or Verhoeven.

[Setanta]

Verhoeven didn't have a clue about the novel, correct. Neumeir wrote Bug Hunt and John Davison got him to align his script with Heinlein's book. FYI - Heinlein was pretty much the go to for Sci-Fi in the late 70s, along with Asimov, Le Guin, Niven, Clarke etc.

The film is not even close to Robocop in terms of Sci-Fi satire, unless you want to label it as satirising popular fascination with military firepower and glorification. If he'd wanted a proper source, he could have gone to The Forever War.

I'm the opposite to you - the film is enjoyable as it is, more theatre of the absurd done well than satire.

[Riggswolfe]

Verhoeven didn't have a clue about the novel, correct. Neumeir wrote Bug Hunt and John Davison got him to align his script with Heinlein's book. FYI - Heinlein was pretty much the go to for Sci-Fi in the late 70s, along with Asimov, Le Guin, Niven, Clarke etc.

The film is not even close to Robocop in terms of Sci-Fi satire, unless you want to label it as satirising popular fascination with military firepower and glorification. If he'd wanted a proper source, he could have gone to The Forever War.

I'm the opposite to you - the film is enjoyable as it is, more theatre of the absurd done well than satire.

You know, until this discussion I'd forgotten Starship Troopers came out in 1997. I have long thought of it as an 80s movie, probably because the 80s was when Verhoeven did his best work so I tend to think of him as an 80s director. This actually makes me believe even more that they didn't buy the title because of any fondness for the novel as the majority of the movie-going public probably had no clue what that book was about.

Anyway, he claims the movie is a satire of militarism and fascism and I think it's extremely clear that's what it is. It's also one reason I found it hilarious when Johnny Cee claimed it was some jab at the U.S. or Hollywood.  I also read recently that the film is intended to be essentially an in-universe propaganda film like the Nazis and others would make and that they purposefully cast people like Denise Richards because of it. If so, that actually is kind of genius though I don't know how much I believe it.

I'd say it is about even with Robocop in satire, Robocop just has the advantage of being a genuinely good movie with a pretty good script and some good to great actors in it. And, for whatever reason, people picked up on the satire in Robocop more than they did with Starship Troopers.

So, anyway, Zach Snyder apparently made Star Wars but I still haven't gotten around to watching it and might never do so.

[Velorath]

Starship Troopers is great. It's satire. The development, production and themes of the movie are pretty extensively documented. Some of you guys are crazy.

[HaemishM]

And it's Verhooeven, which means the satire is often so over the top, it's almost clown-y.

[Velorath]

I mean that's movie satire in general unless someone here wants to argue that Dr. Strangelove or Spinal Tap are subtle.

[HaemishM]

With American audiences, it's kind of tricky. Fucking Wall Street and Gordon Gecko were pretty biting and obvious satire, IMO, but techbros and hedge funders saw him as the world's greatest role model.

[Riggswolfe]

With American audiences, it's kind of tricky. Fucking Wall Street and Gordon Gecko were pretty biting and obvious satire, IMO, but techbros and hedge funders saw him as the world's greatest role model.

I read an interview with Verhoeven where he was basically upset that a lot of American audiences and critics didn't get the satire but he said something along the lines of European audiences got the satire and enjoyed the movie for what it was meant to be. It wouldn't be the first time U.S. audiences didn't get it. Actually, Oliver Stone has at least 2 movies I can think of that audiences missed the point of, the other being Natural Born Killers. And that one is far from subtle itself.

[Threash]

Or Fight Club.

[Rendakor]

Or Fight Club.

That's a great example. It's one of my favorite movies (and books) but man, a ton of people do NOT fucking get it.

[Typhon]

I mean that's movie satire in general unless someone here wants to argue that Dr. Strangelove or Spinal Tap are subtle.

Starship Troopers wasn't either funny enough or absurd enough.  And the acting quality was ass.  So yeah, big difference.

[Samwise]

I'm sure that for every three people who watch The Producers, one's takeaway is that Hitler was underappreciated as a dancer.

[Riggswolfe]

Or Fight Club.

Yeah, it's kind of sad that I always forget Fight Club in that list but it's pretty much the prime example of the satire being missed. That said, Fight Club is so well made it falls victim to its own success and the wrong sorts get enamored with it.

Starship Troopers wasn't either funny enough or absurd enough.  And the acting quality was ass.  So yeah, big difference.

Starship Troopers was nothing but absurdity from start to finish. I mean, sure, it's not Peter Sellers level of absurdity but very little is. I won't argue the other two points though it does have some extremely funny moments like the often pointed out scene of the guy who is missed most of his limbs proudly talking about how the Mobile Infantry made him the man is he is today.

[Typhon]

Are there some flat moments in Dr. Strangelove and Spinal Tap?  Sure, I guess, maybe a few.  Are there a few funny moments in Troopers?  Sure, I guess.... maybe that one.  Do I care that much?  No, not really.  I'm feeling a little stupid for responding to this this conversation especially since it's in a thread about another crappy movie.  But putting Troopers and those two movies in the same sentence just pissed me off.

I feel like all the defenders of Troopers feel some sense of pride that they got the joke but others thought it was For Reals! HA!  Is that fair?  Probably not.  Personally,  I feel like Troopers needs to be take out the shed more often because if you make a parody/absurdist movie WITH THE SAME NAME AS A NOVEL that is NOT absurdist and you don't dial it up enough so that people don't get the joke, you failed and you deserve to be told that repeatedly.  I remember thinking at the time, "you're a smug, pretentious asshole and your movie isn't funny or entertaining but, yeah, Denise Richards is hot, so good on you for that, I guess (but that's not the reason she's in the movie!!1! oh please, guys look at hot girls no matter the reason).

[Velorath]

It wasn't a comparison of quality, it was a statement that satire in movies, including Starship Troopers isn't subtle. How you somehow pull out of your ass that people saying that the satire isn't very subtle are somehow also patting themselves on the back for getting the satire, I have no idea. Beyond that, you just seem like a miserable person to watch a movie with.