h ok. So the people in Starship Troopers weren't fighting for the right thing? I don't know what movie you were watching but the bugs dropped a nuclear bomb on some South American country. Sure Rico also went to war to get chicks but maybe, just maybe he also joined because the bugs vaporized his parents. I suppose the right thing to do was to organize a peace march, yeah will show those giant space bugs not mess with da humans.
Now maybe if I'm on crack I could see the moral lessons between the bug war and the Vietnam war. Don't mess around in space because you'll into run bugs with hive like mind bent on destroying man kind. On yeah, thats exactly like Vienam LOL :0
It's sort of left ambigious as to whether that asteroid (not a nuclear bomb) actually came from the bugs or not (oh, and it was the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina). As the intro sequence shows a defence network capable of destroying asteroids easily, it adds to the ambiguity. (bearing in mind that little propaganda bit of the intro is set quite soon after the destruction of Buenos Aires, it's unlikely to be a new defensive grid).
The original book (I'll admit to not having read it; my understanding is that the movie is regarded as satirising more than adapting it) had a society often compared to Nazi Germany. If Verhoeven was satirising that, then it's not unlikely IMO he'd be referencing the way the Germans faked Polish attacks on their country in order to justify attacking said country.
As everyone knows, a good dictatorship likes a war to mobilise the people, and a random meteor strike is as good a pretext as possible.
It's not a brilliantly executed (in fact IMO it's a bit ham-fisted, possibly because it needed to be a popcorn movie) piece of satire, but it is there; humanity is (in the movie) essentially a facistic society which only allows breeding, writing, etc after indoctrination within a fairly brutal military service, and one which also practices a degree of eugenics (dumb kids are suitable for cannon fodder in the military, for example) and obvious rampant propaganda. (Such as demonstrating the execution of an enemy POW - a bug - on TV prior to the actual invasion of Klendathu; we also have the end segment where they're cheerfully torturing an obviously intelligent brain bug- one which is known to feel fear, pain, etc)
(If you were to take the bugs out and replace them with an.other human colony or side, then it'd become a really ambigious movie)
The common way for justifying a war is to paint the enemy as being 'bad' in some way - i.e. alien values. The bugs are simply playing the literal extension of that principle applied to another race.
EDIT; I'm not implying it's an exception piece of satire or anything, of course. It's an average movie with decent action fodder IMO; but it does have some intent to bring in more subtle satirical themes to it. It just isn't too good at handling them.
Freespace 2: Lost Souls
http://www.sectorgame.com/aldo/ This comment was edited on Aug 11, 09:06.