Helldivers 2 gives Starship Troopers the revival they deserve

This story Originally appeared on Kotaku.

It's fair to say that Hell Divers 2 Have a good week. beating GTA VRecords of concurrent Steam playersThe shooter exceeds everyone's expectations, Including her ownIt seems that this success is starting to spread. Because if there was one source that Divers He owes him the most, it is Starship troopersAnd the 1997 film seems to be having a renaissance of its own. That's why you should watch it too.

As highlighted by Arrowhead Studios CEO, Johan Bilstedt (Thanks IGN), Starship troopersIts popularity has risen to become the 45th most popular movie on the Internet, according to classification TV statistics. While a chart on the site shows that number rising from No. 109 on February 15 to the new number the next day, it's incredibly unlikely that the 27-year-old film has ever held this high before. Hell Divers 2Initial release the previous week.

Hell Divers 2, like its original top-down predecessor, begins on Super Earth, where democracy has been upgraded to a managed form, allowing elections to be more predictable. You see, before, people could vote for whoever they wanted, but on Super-Earth democracy is widely spread through bombs and war. You're fighting the Terminids, an alien race of evil insectoid creatures that, well, are just, well, spreading their tyranny across the galaxy, actually fighting evil socialist cyborgs, and the mysterious Illuminati. Helldivers, as this video irrefutably points out, are the “last line of attack in the galaxy.”

Which if you see it Starship troopers, will look somewhat familiar. Although there were no robots or Squ'ith in disguise, it certainly had Bugs, and had the same attitude towards spreading the uniquely human approach to freedom across the galaxy. This is of course because Divers It took heavy influence from Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi epic. Except that when it was released, not many people seemed to understand what it was about.

Movie book

The confusion was at least justified. Starship troopers It is (very loosely) based on the novel of the same name, written by Robert A. Heinlein, and the politics of this book… are ambiguous. Heinlein himself shifted from liberal to libertarian over the course of his life, was a pioneer for racial equality, and a great admirer of Ayn Rand. The 1959 book seems to reflect some of his greatest work governor His tendencies, glorify the military, seem to support his arrogance that the right to vote can only be achieved through military service. At the time of its release, many critics described it as “fascist”, although it is fair to say that its precise political leanings were deliberately obscured.

Verhoeven certainly didn't have time for that. according to empire“I stopped after two chapters because it was too boring,” the director was quoted as saying. “It's a very right-wing book,” he adds, and that he asked the film's writer, Ed Neumeyer,Robocop), to summarize the story for him so that he can memorize reading through it. But apparently that was enough to pique the director's interest.

Previously, Neumeyer had been trying to develop a script with the startling title, Bug hunting in Outpost 7. Robocop Producer John Davison noticed how similar his idea was to Heinlein's book, and they eventually discovered that the film rights were available. It took years to develop, however Robocop The writer-producer-director team finally came together with all the pieces in place in 1996, with a plan to produce a film that would explore the innate fascism of the source material.

An immodest proposal

The result is extraordinary. Satire is always most successful when it is very precise. People were angry A modest proposal Because handing it into a dead end means they really believe Swift wanted the Irish to eat their children. Starship troopers She did something completely different: she was loud, stupid, and outrageously cheerful in her satirical commentary on the military and the United States' approach to democracy.

It was a story about a brutal future where citizenship and suffrage were attained only through federal service, and where humans launched brutal attacks on the planets of insectoid creatures called Bugs. This was sarcasm written on a sledgehammer, swung over and over on the screen. And it was amazing. Hilarious, acerbic, and wonderfully brilliant, it took eccentricity Robocop I turned it up to 11. Even then, no one understood it.

The negative response from Heinlein fans was understandable. For those who enjoyed it as an act of fascism, it was a film that directly contradicted that message. Boo hoo. To those who refuted this interpretation, the film had deviated so far from its source material that it would have come as an insult. But the broader monetary response remains quite puzzling. No matter how obvious it was, and how overtly overt it was in every aspect of satire, reviewers still thought it was a pro-fascist speech. It's very embarrassing.

Paul Verhoeven said AV Club In 2007 how the Washington Post He wrote an editorial calling it “fascist, and was written and directed by neo-Nazis.” Same paper Stephen Hunter wrote And that he was a “Nazi to the core,” adding: “He is a spiritual Nazi, a psychological Nazi. It comes directly from the Nazi imagination, and is set in the Nazi universe.” The cruel irony of this – indeed, the abject brutal stupidity – is that Verhoeven, born in 1938, growing up in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, he experienced the horror of the Nazis firsthand, and chose to do so Starship troopers This is partly due to his desire to criticize this fascist ideology based on his personal experience.

Do you want to know more?

It's a movie that really holds up. Hell, it's a film that has never lost its relevance since its release, and given what 2024 will look like, it's a film that may become very relevant soon enough. His depiction of both the military complex and the media response is perfect, and the stunning training camp scene will still shock anyone viewing it for the first time.

The special effects remain great as well. The Bugs are slick CGI, coupled with the practical effects, and don't look particularly dated. Do you also remember Denise Richards? She's great at this!

I highly recommend getting the movie. It's on Disney+which is quite the thing as well as available To buy On Prime, etc. It's an absolute classic — a great, over-the-top action movie combined with an anti-fascist satire, and you can promise you're smarter than this movie. And Abu Journalist when he doesn't go over your head.