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ElTerprise: What's with the german version?
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jdsgn: The voicing perfectly underlines the whole awfulness :'D
Basically it's the pinnacle of german dubbing, right? :P
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darthspudius: I didn't say it wasn't enjoyable but you re-watch that and see how low budget that shit was lol.
I have rewatched it and I still believe it's not a bad movie. The sequel, though? Now, that was a bad movie (though some might claim an exaggerated word for crap, instead of merely bad).
Post edited March 28, 2015 by Grargar
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jdsgn: The voicing perfectly underlines the whole awfulness :'D
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ElTerprise: Basically it's the pinnacle of german dubbing, right? :P
That might be a bit exaggerated :b
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darthspudius: I didn't say it wasn't enjoyable but you re-watch that and see how low budget that shit was lol.
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Grargar: I have rewatched it and I still believe it's not a bad movie. The sequel, though? Now, that was a bad movie (though some might claim an exaggerated word for crap, instead of merely bad).
The sequel was absolutely fuckin shite lol. Not a redeemable quality at all.
Anyone ever see "Dollman"?

I still remember a one-liner: description of a dimension bomb that will "rip your dimension a new asshole"
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chadjenofsky: Anyone ever see "Dollman"?
Which one? :P

And yes I have.
Tremors

Puppet Master

Sharknado

Sharktopus
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awalterj:
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Telika: To be honest i think it's very much on the tightrope. It's more ambiguous than mere satire, it's more like high self-awareness, almost a hommage to heroic war movies but without their naivety and 'innocence'. Like, "we want to do a badass heroic war movie but we are too intelligent to have the required beliefs for that, so, let's be transparent about the silliness that the codes imply".

In other words, i find it closer to WH40000 than to a pure satire. Satire focuses on "it's dumb". WH40000 and Starship Trooper sound more like "dumbness is the door to coolness, let's not hide that".
Pure satire is ambiguous to some viewers because it's so unapologetic, never breaking character or the 4th wall. The satire here is so blatantly obvious and in your face that it hides in plain sight, interestingly the most effective kind of stealth.
Your comparison between Starship Troopers and WH 40K is quite fitting because WH 40K was never meant to be serious either and both are entirely over-the-top, and yet both have plenty of fans who take it very seriously with no hint of irony. Some 40K fans might claim it's just a game and nothing more but whenever they hear "For the Emperor" they get all jazzed up and ready to ejaculate.
Paul Verhoeven can make anything stylish and the danger of style is that when you have so much of it, it overrides substance - again, not for all viewers but for many. Which means that many viewers get all mesmerized by the stylishness and then transfer that attitude into the substance part of the movie. Parody can never achieve that because awareness is never challenged but satire can, when it's as well done as in Starship Troopers.
Again, I have no numbers for proof but I guarantee that plenty of young people ran to sign up for Army/Air Force service after watching Starship Troopers with its flawlessly attractive main actors and the heroics and comradery and spiffy uniforms and co ed showering and all. And that scene where everyone is galvanized to run to war is eerily reminiscent of what happened after 9/11 when young people at heightened emotional levels ran to sign up for service to strike back at the enemy and charge into battle regardless of how sound or unsound the strategy or absence thereof.
The awkward acting of the main cast didn't even matter because the movie starts in true soap opera fashion so there is no disconnect as would happen in a typical A movie. Denise Richards in particular couldn't act her way out of a shoe box but it fits perfectly into this movie because they are representing Aryan Übermensch 90210 types so you don't expect them to show much of a convincing range of emotion. What would appear cheesy and cheap works just fine in this movie. Same for the plot which is the cheesiest B movie material imaginable (alien bugs fart into space, humanity in danger). The A movie presentation overrides the B movie premise and subliminally renders people unable to laugh it off as satire because it's so easy to get into the movie and just enjoy it with the characters rather than laughing about them.
Deathstalker 2!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCt-dVFQBnk
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Soccorro: Tremors

Puppet Master

Sharknado

Sharktopus
Damn you! Tremors is an outstanding film!
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Soccorro: Sharknado

Sharktopus
When it comes to bad but enjoyable shark movies one have to mention Supershark. I had so much fun watching it an in my eyes it's much better than Sharknado.
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F4LL0UT: In my opinion it's a brilliant but almost universally misunderstood film. It physically hurts me when I see people mistake its clearly intentional trashiness and cheesiness for regular movie badness.
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awalterj: My sentiment exactly, Starship Troopers is satire of the finest. The problem with satire of the finest is that it's so unflinchingly straightforward that many will miss out on it being satire entirely - because satire doesn't try to be funny. I don't know how many young people joined the military after seeing that movie but I'm quite sure the number is high.

On the technical side, the movie is just as excellent. The CGI effects are convincing and still look better than most films released today. Soundtrack, costumes, props, design, everything is top notch.
Yes, really a great great film. Paul Verhoeven is a great director.
Post edited March 28, 2015 by drealmer7
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Telika: To be honest i think it's very much on the tightrope. It's more ambiguous than mere satire, it's more like high self-awareness, almost a hommage to heroic war movies but without their naivety and 'innocence'. Like, "we want to do a badass heroic war movie but we are too intelligent to have the required beliefs for that, so, let's be transparent about the silliness that the codes imply".

In other words, i find it closer to WH40000 than to a pure satire. Satire focuses on "it's dumb". WH40000 and Starship Trooper sound more like "dumbness is the door to coolness, let's not hide that".
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awalterj: Pure satire is ambiguous to some viewers because it's so unapologetic, never breaking character or the 4th wall. The satire here is so blatantly obvious and in your face that it hides in plain sight, interestingly the most effective kind of stealth.
Your comparison between Starship Troopers and WH 40K is quite fitting because WH 40K was never meant to be serious either and both are entirely over-the-top, and yet both have plenty of fans who take it very seriously with no hint of irony. Some 40K fans might claim it's just a game and nothing more but whenever they hear "For the Emperor" they get all jazzed up and ready to ejaculate.
Paul Verhoeven can make anything stylish and the danger of style is that when you have so much of it, it overrides substance - again, not for all viewers but for many. Which means that many viewers get all mesmerized by the stylishness and then transfer that attitude into the substance part of the movie. Parody can never achieve that because awareness is never challenged but satire can, when it's as well done as in Starship Troopers.
Again, I have no numbers for proof but I guarantee that plenty of young people ran to sign up for Army/Air Force service after watching Starship Troopers with its flawlessly attractive main actors and the heroics and comradery and spiffy uniforms and co ed showering and all. And that scene where everyone is galvanized to run to war is eerily reminiscent of what happened after 9/11 when young people at heightened emotional levels ran to sign up for service to strike back at the enemy and charge into battle regardless of how sound or unsound the strategy or absence thereof.
The awkward acting of the main cast didn't even matter because the movie starts in true soap opera fashion so there is no disconnect as would happen in a typical A movie. Denise Richards in particular couldn't act her way out of a shoe box but it fits perfectly into this movie because they are representing Aryan Übermensch 90210 types so you don't expect them to show much of a convincing range of emotion. What would appear cheesy and cheap works just fine in this movie. Same for the plot which is the cheesiest B movie material imaginable (alien bugs fart into space, humanity in danger). The A movie presentation overrides the B movie premise and subliminally renders people unable to laugh it off as satire because it's so easy to get into the movie and just enjoy it with the characters rather than laughing about them.
The fact that Starship Trooper can accidentally work as an actual join-the-army propaganda makes no doubt : the same happens with yuppies actually having Wall Street's Gordon Gecko as a model, or thugs (or just cretins) inspired by Al Pacino's Scarface because he is sooo cool. In both cases, the film directors have been facedesking noisily in front of the medias, but, heck, that's how the public functions. I even have issues with fanboys considering that the retarded Marines from Aliens are the heroes of the movies, and with all the by-products (comics, etc) focusing on how super total badass they are. So, of course Starship Troopers would offer material for that.

But my point is, I don't think there's just a duality between "enjoy it with the characters" vs "laughing about them". I think that most of the WH40000 and Starship Trooper public (and I think it's the point) are in a third position, inbetween. Some sort of playing-along without being-fooled. Genuinely enjoying the over-the-top thrill for itself without discarding the 'meta' awareness of its dubious required premise.

Something like the self-aware rule-of-cool of a Dr McNinja comic or a Burrito Revenge flash game. Some way to conciliate both the will to live/re-live the thrill of old naive adventurous bombastic epics, and the loss of its required naivety (once you realised how much they depended on nationalist, sexist, militarist, colonialist, racialist, values and worldviews, for instance). In our postmodern world, some narratives don't function anymore (to many of us), because we lack the bliss of their required uncritical ignorance. It's a whole range of entertainment we have lost, because of the underlying ideology making us shake our heads. Fascism functions because fascism is cool, because there is an aesthetic of might, of clear-cut worldviews, of order and discipline, of unanimous collectivities, of trance-inducing rousing speeches and crowds feedback, etc. We know that these pleasures are nocive.

A certain brand of ironical distanciation allows us to have the cake and eat it too. To enjoy it with a "yeah yeah, I know, but, still...". And I think this is what WH40000 and Starship Troopers aim for (and achieve). Not simply denouncing one kind of narrative, but allowing us to indulge in it with an ironical dissociation. While poking fun at ourselves for enjoying it. I think that is the thin line, that makes it different from a production that divides the viewers between endorsement and chastizing. These secific products encourage some sort of "roleplayed endorsement" with over-the-top winks that keep our feet on the ground.

It is a subtle-ish position, and as such, I'm not sure I manage to express it clearly. Another way to describe it is maybe through the 'hommage' angle (hommage to a genre, or to an epoch in individual lives). It reminds me of a leftist friend who adores Conan the Barbarian, and describes it as an openly fascist pleasure, enjoyable precisely because of its clear shameless relaxing fascist undertones. Maybe the "meta" movies oif Tarantino play a bit with this too : is Kill Bill a parody of saber revenge flicks, or is it one itself, or is it both.

How would someone make an enjoyable cheezy spaggheti westen nowadays, without making it as accidentally bad as all these clumsy post-Leone copies, yet capturing their flavor and interest for people who outgrew them, that its, without turning them into a comedy ?
Post edited March 28, 2015 by Telika
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awalterj: Pure satire is ambiguous to some viewers because it's so unapologetic, never breaking character or the 4th wall. The satire here is so blatantly obvious and in your face that it hides in plain sight, interestingly the most effective kind of stealth.
Yes, it is blatantly obvious, but no, there is nothing stealthy about it, which is why I really don't like Starship Troopers and RoboCop. It's fun at the start, but then you realise this is all this movie is going to be. All the time, for the next hour+. There is nothing particularly clever or funny about it, it's just tiresome. Pretty much my only thought throughout those movies is "yes, I get it, MOVE ON".
Post edited March 28, 2015 by Breja
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Breja: Yes, it is blatantly obvious, but no, there is nothing stealthy about it, which is why I really don't like Starship Troopers and RoboCop.
Strangely, Starship Troopers bores me, but I adore Robocop. I don't think they belong to the same category, or try to achieve the same. Robocop has a real story for itself (a cop thriller with frankenstein themes, plus a vague reflexion on how-much-of-a-robot-should-an-ideal-cop-be), set in a society which is a mild caricature of our own. It's not an "exercise in style" (for its own sake) like Starship Trooper...
Post edited March 28, 2015 by Telika