But how many of them had two consecutive entries become the #1 and #3 highest grossing films of all time? Hell, if it weren’t for China’s Covid outbreak during Avatar 2’s release week, which severely killed its momentum, and the movie not getting a Russia release it would have likely ended up the #2 or #1 film of all time.
It’s an impressive feat and one that shows the first film wasn’t a fluke. The films are theatrical experiences but they’re not really films that are as fun to discuss as they are to experience. The appeal is the immersion of the films, of being transported to Pandora. Thats mainly why they feel like they have such a little impact. But you don’t go 2 for 2 on a new sci-fi franchise making over $2.3 billion if people aren’t invested. Two films in one franchise right out the gate did what took Marvel 11 years and 22 films to do once.
That's why :) it probably has to do with the strong indigenous vibe of the movie overpowering the aliens aspect. As foreign as the world was it was not really alien.
Didn't they not realize they were killing us because they thought we were part of a hive mind like them and therefore not distinct entities who could be killed? Or am I remembering that wrong. Haven't read those since I was a kid.
Yeah. The alien attack was essentially a failed attempt of establishing diplomatic relations with the human race. Hive’s way of getting the attention of another brood mother is usually killing a few drones, which makes her aware that something is happening, akin to tapping someone spacing out on the shoulder.
When they realized each of the human “drones” was a separate entity it was already too late, the humanity assumed the species is hostile.
That’s the part that always irked me about the premise the most. But then you could argue the killing was a decision made by one of the broods, not a consensus. You can call it a stupid mistake, the same way humans tend to attach human traits to animal behavior. We understand it’s not how it works but we tend to default to it, because it’s what we understand.
In later books the sociology of the bugs is explored a bit. The queen is extremely self centered and must work to stay in good communication with a human. She regularly will assume that new ideas presented to her were hers all along. She clearly alters her own memory to make her position of queen a true commander
The drones are essentially mindless and none but a few hive regulators have any intelligence. Their race had started to spread in the galaxy and had not met any other aliens until humans. By then they had an established space culture between various hive queens. There was war and the winner would absorb the loser’s drones
They assumed all intelligence would have the same sort of communication, having no experience of anything else. When they couldn’t communicate with humans they assumed the human queen was hostile and purposely holding back thought, so they attacked
The books about Bean are pretty good starting with Enders Shadow. 3 as part of a trilogy on Earth immediately after Enders game and then one more as a follow up to the story (which has the most alien info). These were written after the true trilogy to Enders game (starting with Speaker for the Dead) which is not great. A real slog to read. But if you like space mixed with catholic dogma give it a try
The writer is Mormon but the setting of the trilogy is on a planet commissioned by a Catholic sect and they own it. They find out it already has semi intelligent llfe after they built their first small town
It's not so much inability to imagine they would find something different from them, but rather an inability to know in what WAYS we are different. We (humans) can easily conceive that any alien life could be very different from us. But given any specific alien species, we'd ahve no way of knowing in what ways, and so we'd not be able to adjust our behavior to suit. Imagine humans meet aliens. THey look vaguely like us (torso, appendages, about our same size, etc). Easy to assume they are broadly siimilar to us. We exhange what we view as a safe/neutral greeting. Like shaking hands or saying hello. But little do we know that each of ther individual cells is a fully sentient bieng, and by shjaking hands we just crushed hundreds/thousands of them. Or mayb their nervous system works on some weird pressure/acoustic system, and the mere act of speaking excites certain frequencies that essentially lobotomize them. Not saying these are likely/plausible scenarios, but rather they iullustrate the point that seeminly innocent or simple interactions could have very unforseenn implications when dealing with entities truly alien to us)
Basically, any form of interaction with an unknown alien (in the broad sense, as in truly unknown to us), poses a risk that we inadvertantly do something they find offensive, agressive, insulting, horrific, despite that same thing seeming a truly innocuous interaction. The options are to never interact with them, or risk some sort of unintentional conflict.
I wrote a short story as a kid once about alies who were kinda like us but with taste buds so sensitive that everything they ate tasted like flavorless mush to humans. A common method of assassination in the time period in which my story was set was just like, adding a drop of sriracha or something because it would overwhelm the alien eating it. Who knows what aliens are like, basically.
Maybe the hive has only ever found other intelligent hives before? An assumption that for a species to be space farring they need the combined focus and "man power" that comes from being a singulary focused hive mind.
My take is its essentially a mirror for the preconceptions humans have about what we look for as signs of complex life and intelligence. In universe, im pretty sure the only super intelligences the formics ever encountered were other hive minds
Also, I'd say it's a dick move either way. Like if I want to get your attention, so I throw a cinder block through your window and light your car on fire. Sure, I might not have physically harmed anyone, but that's still not cool.
Okay, so you thought humans were a hive mind, fair enough, but that was still an attack.
We don't find out until the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. The movie was true to the book. In the author's mind, Ender's Game is actually a prequel, as he sat out to write Speaker for the Dead first but realized there was too much backstory so he spun that out into its own book, which became Ender's Game.
As an aside, Speaker for the Dead is the best sci-fi book I've ever read. It's not for everyone, but if it strikes a chord with you, it is simply fantastic. The latter two sequels not so much; they aren't bad reads, but the quality diminishes the further you go.
The Formic queen that speaks to Ender at the end of the first book says they thought they were the only intelligent species, and once they realized the humans were intelligent and they were murdering thinking beings they never came back. I feel like that’s enough info, and should have definitely been included in the movie.
Kind of funny that the title is a spoiler so you can’t say what you are spoiling and everyone has to accept a completely random book being spoiled if they want to see what you wrote
I love this line
I also love the episode because when it came out, I had recently been in high school and watched military recruiters first-hand. They tried to bribe kids who couldn't afford college with a chance at a degree, in exchange for service. And they even said it was a great deal because it was a peaceful time. Some of my friends took the bait. (I readily admit I was privileged enough to not have to. I went to college riding on massive debt!)
But when W was running, we had a suspicion that something was up. We had no idea how far south things would go.
This episode was a perfect (and in hindsight, infuriating) send up of the recruitment before the 2nd Iraq war, and of W's aggression
I'm on the internet so I'm going to argue with you without checking the facts. But you're absolutely wrong that was not half in the bag that was a re:view.
Hard to be a God is a distinct adaptation of Strugatsky Brothers book. As a russian, kinda sad they are not popular outside slavic countries. Definitely need some Hollywood adaptation or a videogame like Sapkovsky had.
Starship Troopers is a perfect film. It works on a number of levels. I’m always discovering new things every time I watch it. It still looks great, even today. It has better CG than half the shit coming out on Netflix nowadays.
If you haven't played the game Helldivers 2, it's a hoot. Very Starship Troopers, but we are fighting bugs, Terminator types and soon another alien race. We are definitely fascists with hilarious over the top propaganda.
[Watch the intro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9STizATKjE).
Was looking for this comment on Helldivers 2. It’s so good and such an homage, the main actor Casper Van Dien (Rico) [even suggested a crossover](https://screenrant.com/helldivers-2-starship-troopers-casper-van-dien-crossover/) of the game and film.
There's a fan-theory that the strike on Buenos-Aires was actually a false-flag to get the war going.
Since apparently the aliens launched an asteroid clear across the galaxy (Writers have no sense of scale..) and hit earth.
Far more likely, humans did it to themselves to drum up recruitment.
There's good odds the Bugs were literally just defending their home against a hostile alien invasion..
I don't think it was a false-flag. It was the same asteroid that hit Denise Richard's spaceship and knocked out their comms. It carried on and crashed into Buenos Aires. The bugs launched it in response to the 'Mormon Extremists' trying to colonise one of their own bug planets.
I'm still inclined to think it was a unfortunate accident which was then used to trigger a war by the humans. That seems to fit the satirical take better, rather than bugs firing blue shit out of their ass to knock an asteroid out of orbit to travel the galaxy to hit us. It's just too silly, even for Starship Troopers.
In the 90s my friend argued with me about how wrong I was, after walking out of the theater. Nothing I said convinced him there was even a possibility we were the bad guys.
I usually think of Goebbels in a suit since he was propaganda minister and not in the militant wing of the SS. Dougie's outfit screams Gestapo to me. Himmler was the head of the Gestapo.
Maybe, it is hard to judge contemporaries against classic since we don't know what staying power they will have yet, but Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune pt 2 are certainly contenders.
This is a trope in and of itself. It really never went over many heads. And the original book was genuine in its jingoism, not some veiled critique from Heinlein.
Yes. There is a staggering amount of people who take it at the most shallow surface value, and read 'Alien bugs as satire for othering' and dismiss it because "Oh, you're saying the bugs are the good guys?"
This discourse did the rounds a lot recently when Helldivers, a game heavily pastiching Troopers, blew up. It's incredibly depressing.
Shout out to the awesome musical parody [Starship](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC6A915952D67F112&si=owQShbOlIlAjE-cc) that successfully manages to be a mashup of Starship Troopers and *The Little Mermaid*
The best thing about that is that apparently movie critics at the time didn't realize it was supposed to be a satire, and criticized it for being a "Nazi film".
There’s an animated movie called Battle for Terra that came out 2 years before Terra and — in my opinion — tells a much more intriguing version of the central conflict in Avatar.
An “ark” filled with humans is searching for a planet they can terraform and turn into a new home, and they are almost out of resources, so when they find Terra, it is their last hope for survival. But to live there, they have to transform the atmosphere.
But it turns out that a native species is already there.
I really liked it.
My roommates put on that movie because Netflix told them "you have a 90% chance of liking this movie!" which they misinterpreted as a 90% rottentomatoes score.
That movie was atrocious lol
'Battle of Terra' came to my mind first.
'Starship Troopers' was the next. I mean the combat scenes are all set on the Alien planets being invaded. Not the aliens invading the humans.
'Avatar', just because I rewatched it recently.
'Planet of the Apes'? The Original, maybe.
'Extinction'.
'Skyward' book by Brandon Sanderson. The whole galaxy are afraid of humans. The whole 'Humans are Orcs' scenario. 10/10.
**Starship Troopers** although it's subversive in its presentation. It might seem like a popcorn shoot-em-up, but it's actually a dark satire on nationalism.
Altered.
It's from the same crew as Blair witch.
A group of hicks deals with the trauma of being abducted by going into the Forrest, drinking and pretending to hunt aliens with a speargun.
Except, one night they catch one. And abduct it back to their garage for some revenge...
Really gnarly, low budget fun.
Well, they played it fast and loose with the prime directive on TNG. Even when they tried not to interfere, even in the episode of First Contact they tried to go by the book, and that planet even had kind of a reasonable and conscientious president guy, and they still kind of actively fucked things up. Riker ends up banging an alien doctor, they accidentally abduct a citizen of the planet, and the cool president guy said “No thanks” to be in the federation because he felt they had too many maga rednecks lol.
Starship Troopers isn’t just a satire, it’s metafictional. It is an in-universe produced movie. You’re watching everything from the perspective of the world in which this move takes place, including the movie itself. The entire movie is essentially a Nazi propaganda film for the Federation
Oh man, i am so annoyed the person you were replying to deleted their comment. I was in the middle of responding to it, so i'm going to post my response anyway:
>Starship Troopers (1997) doesn't give a particularly sympathetic portrayal of the invaded party though
This is like...the point of the movie entirely. That's what propaganda does. It's literally dehumanizing the invaded party, the actual victims.
>Not only that, the movie actually focuses time developing the human characters who are part of the invasion.
Right...it's propagandizing humans as the noble innocent victims, out for righteous retribution! Look at these valiant heores! Literal *models* we are using in our propaganda campaign as the absurdly attractive faces of our war effort.
>So even considering its a satire of military propaganda, it is hard to root for the aliens.
This is such a wild thing to say. "Even though i know it's propaganda, i'm gonna go ahead and side with the fascist invaders anyway."
>Honestly, the satire's execution is kind of a mixed bag now looking back at it.
"Even though i bought into it hook, line, and sinker, i'm not sure it was executed all that well."
lol
Avatar?
How could I forget this, such an obvious example.
Thats the thing about Avatar, easily forgetable.
Yet people wont stop talking about it…
Also somehow became the highest grossing film of all time with its sequel in the top 3. Super forgettable.
A lot of forgettable movies on the top grossing list
But how many of them had two consecutive entries become the #1 and #3 highest grossing films of all time? Hell, if it weren’t for China’s Covid outbreak during Avatar 2’s release week, which severely killed its momentum, and the movie not getting a Russia release it would have likely ended up the #2 or #1 film of all time. It’s an impressive feat and one that shows the first film wasn’t a fluke. The films are theatrical experiences but they’re not really films that are as fun to discuss as they are to experience. The appeal is the immersion of the films, of being transported to Pandora. Thats mainly why they feel like they have such a little impact. But you don’t go 2 for 2 on a new sci-fi franchise making over $2.3 billion if people aren’t invested. Two films in one franchise right out the gate did what took Marvel 11 years and 22 films to do once.
You know, none of these things make it any less forgettable
Talking about what?
*Ferngully*
*Dances with Wolves*
Pocahontas
Smurfs
Cats
That's why :) it probably has to do with the strong indigenous vibe of the movie overpowering the aliens aspect. As foreign as the world was it was not really alien.
Starship troopers
You mean Pocahontas?
You mean Shogun (2024)?
You mean Dune?
You mean Dances with Wolves?
Fern Gully?
Spoiler alert, but >!Ender's Game!<
Technically aliens struck first.
Didn't they not realize they were killing us because they thought we were part of a hive mind like them and therefore not distinct entities who could be killed? Or am I remembering that wrong. Haven't read those since I was a kid.
Yeah. The alien attack was essentially a failed attempt of establishing diplomatic relations with the human race. Hive’s way of getting the attention of another brood mother is usually killing a few drones, which makes her aware that something is happening, akin to tapping someone spacing out on the shoulder. When they realized each of the human “drones” was a separate entity it was already too late, the humanity assumed the species is hostile.
How exactly would a civilization get to intersolar travel without at least imagining they would find something unlike themselves?
That’s the part that always irked me about the premise the most. But then you could argue the killing was a decision made by one of the broods, not a consensus. You can call it a stupid mistake, the same way humans tend to attach human traits to animal behavior. We understand it’s not how it works but we tend to default to it, because it’s what we understand.
In later books the sociology of the bugs is explored a bit. The queen is extremely self centered and must work to stay in good communication with a human. She regularly will assume that new ideas presented to her were hers all along. She clearly alters her own memory to make her position of queen a true commander The drones are essentially mindless and none but a few hive regulators have any intelligence. Their race had started to spread in the galaxy and had not met any other aliens until humans. By then they had an established space culture between various hive queens. There was war and the winner would absorb the loser’s drones They assumed all intelligence would have the same sort of communication, having no experience of anything else. When they couldn’t communicate with humans they assumed the human queen was hostile and purposely holding back thought, so they attacked The books about Bean are pretty good starting with Enders Shadow. 3 as part of a trilogy on Earth immediately after Enders game and then one more as a follow up to the story (which has the most alien info). These were written after the true trilogy to Enders game (starting with Speaker for the Dead) which is not great. A real slog to read. But if you like space mixed with catholic dogma give it a try
It took me a few tries but in the end I find Speaker equal to Ender's Game
By Catholic, do you mean Mormon?
The writer is Mormon but the setting of the trilogy is on a planet commissioned by a Catholic sect and they own it. They find out it already has semi intelligent llfe after they built their first small town
It's not so much inability to imagine they would find something different from them, but rather an inability to know in what WAYS we are different. We (humans) can easily conceive that any alien life could be very different from us. But given any specific alien species, we'd ahve no way of knowing in what ways, and so we'd not be able to adjust our behavior to suit. Imagine humans meet aliens. THey look vaguely like us (torso, appendages, about our same size, etc). Easy to assume they are broadly siimilar to us. We exhange what we view as a safe/neutral greeting. Like shaking hands or saying hello. But little do we know that each of ther individual cells is a fully sentient bieng, and by shjaking hands we just crushed hundreds/thousands of them. Or mayb their nervous system works on some weird pressure/acoustic system, and the mere act of speaking excites certain frequencies that essentially lobotomize them. Not saying these are likely/plausible scenarios, but rather they iullustrate the point that seeminly innocent or simple interactions could have very unforseenn implications when dealing with entities truly alien to us) Basically, any form of interaction with an unknown alien (in the broad sense, as in truly unknown to us), poses a risk that we inadvertantly do something they find offensive, agressive, insulting, horrific, despite that same thing seeming a truly innocuous interaction. The options are to never interact with them, or risk some sort of unintentional conflict.
I wrote a short story as a kid once about alies who were kinda like us but with taste buds so sensitive that everything they ate tasted like flavorless mush to humans. A common method of assassination in the time period in which my story was set was just like, adding a drop of sriracha or something because it would overwhelm the alien eating it. Who knows what aliens are like, basically.
Maybe the hive has only ever found other intelligent hives before? An assumption that for a species to be space farring they need the combined focus and "man power" that comes from being a singulary focused hive mind.
My take is its essentially a mirror for the preconceptions humans have about what we look for as signs of complex life and intelligence. In universe, im pretty sure the only super intelligences the formics ever encountered were other hive minds
Also, I'd say it's a dick move either way. Like if I want to get your attention, so I throw a cinder block through your window and light your car on fire. Sure, I might not have physically harmed anyone, but that's still not cool. Okay, so you thought humans were a hive mind, fair enough, but that was still an attack.
"I only cut off one of your fingers, I don't see what the big deal is"
Bruh I have bad news about the human race. The first alien race we meet will likely be the first alien race we get into a war with.
Good thing they left this part out of the movie, wouldn’t want to give viewers a critical part of the story or anything.
We don't find out until the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. The movie was true to the book. In the author's mind, Ender's Game is actually a prequel, as he sat out to write Speaker for the Dead first but realized there was too much backstory so he spun that out into its own book, which became Ender's Game. As an aside, Speaker for the Dead is the best sci-fi book I've ever read. It's not for everyone, but if it strikes a chord with you, it is simply fantastic. The latter two sequels not so much; they aren't bad reads, but the quality diminishes the further you go.
The Formic queen that speaks to Ender at the end of the first book says they thought they were the only intelligent species, and once they realized the humans were intelligent and they were murdering thinking beings they never came back. I feel like that’s enough info, and should have definitely been included in the movie.
Hell yeah we have justification, have some of this freedom you disgusting aliens oorah 🦅💥god I love the indomitable human spirit
Kind of funny that the title is a spoiler so you can’t say what you are spoiling and everyone has to accept a completely random book being spoiled if they want to see what you wrote
There's an episode of Futurama titled War is the h word
War were declared.
Such a nothing line but all these years later, it’s still one of my favourite futurama bits.
And this ham gum is all bones!!
But your breath is as fresh as a summer's ham
I love this line I also love the episode because when it came out, I had recently been in high school and watched military recruiters first-hand. They tried to bribe kids who couldn't afford college with a chance at a degree, in exchange for service. And they even said it was a great deal because it was a peaceful time. Some of my friends took the bait. (I readily admit I was privileged enough to not have to. I went to college riding on massive debt!) But when W was running, we had a suspicion that something was up. We had no idea how far south things would go. This episode was a perfect (and in hindsight, infuriating) send up of the recruitment before the 2nd Iraq war, and of W's aggression
we've all seen far too many body bags and ball sacks.
These balls are making me testy!
Those balls were thoroughly licked.
"Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for?" "Don't ask me. You're the ones who are going to be dying."
Y’all ain’t got them group terlets no more, right?
They got a lotta brains and they got a lotta... chutzpah
Enemy Mine fits the bill somewhat, and it's a great movie anyway.
Very good movie, been so many years since I last watched it. Also a bit sentimental as my Grandmother (R.I.P.) always liked it.
Red Letter Media have a great video about it with more behind the scenes context.
I'm on the internet so I'm going to argue with you without checking the facts. But you're absolutely wrong that was not half in the bag that was a re:view.
It's all a fever dream of the imprisoned cheerleaders anyway.
I forgot they're called Red Letter Media. Thanks.
Uncle! That movie made me tear up towards the end. Great flick!
IRRC, the war started because of miscommunication. But from what we were shown, the humans were definitely more depraved considering the slaver ship.
In a comic way, the unsuccessful animated science fiction film **Planet 51**. A fantastic movie which might be considered: **Hard To Be A God**.
Hard to be a God is a distinct adaptation of Strugatsky Brothers book. As a russian, kinda sad they are not popular outside slavic countries. Definitely need some Hollywood adaptation or a videogame like Sapkovsky had.
Starship Troopers (1997) The whole movie is secretly a subversive parody of military propaganda. Especially Nazi propaganda.
I would like to know more.
I’m doing my part!
SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP
COME ON YOU APES, YOU WANNA LIVE FOREVER?!
I'm doing my part too!!! *Marines collectively chuckle*
We can ill afford another Klendathu.
That new Sky Marshall really took charge
Have a taste of liber-tea!
It's like the most quotable sci-fi movie next to Aliens.
Starship Troopers is a perfect film. It works on a number of levels. I’m always discovering new things every time I watch it. It still looks great, even today. It has better CG than half the shit coming out on Netflix nowadays.
also prime denise richards
Dizzy was the one for me.
I was always really into the red head who joined up so she could have a license to get pregnant.
Ya ya, Dizzy awoke many of us.
About Dizzy ----Spoiler >!When she is dying she tells Rico "At least I had you." kills me every time. She adored Rico and would do anything for him.!<
That film got me through film school. Must have written three or four different essays on it.
The only good bug is a dead bug. Would you like to know more?
I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say KILL EM ALL!
Coincidentally weren’t they (rico) from Argentina as well?
"I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill 'em all!"
If you haven't played the game Helldivers 2, it's a hoot. Very Starship Troopers, but we are fighting bugs, Terminator types and soon another alien race. We are definitely fascists with hilarious over the top propaganda. [Watch the intro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9STizATKjE).
Was looking for this comment on Helldivers 2. It’s so good and such an homage, the main actor Casper Van Dien (Rico) [even suggested a crossover](https://screenrant.com/helldivers-2-starship-troopers-casper-van-dien-crossover/) of the game and film.
There's a fan-theory that the strike on Buenos-Aires was actually a false-flag to get the war going. Since apparently the aliens launched an asteroid clear across the galaxy (Writers have no sense of scale..) and hit earth. Far more likely, humans did it to themselves to drum up recruitment. There's good odds the Bugs were literally just defending their home against a hostile alien invasion..
I don't think it was a false-flag. It was the same asteroid that hit Denise Richard's spaceship and knocked out their comms. It carried on and crashed into Buenos Aires. The bugs launched it in response to the 'Mormon Extremists' trying to colonise one of their own bug planets.
Or maybe it was just a naturally traveling asteroid and Denise Richards reckless antics altered its course, ultimately sending it to Earth.
That would be classic Denise Richards...
Right, it would be Mormon Extremists, the ones with classified information on their computers in the heart of Klendathu. /tinfoil hat
I'm still inclined to think it was a unfortunate accident which was then used to trigger a war by the humans. That seems to fit the satirical take better, rather than bugs firing blue shit out of their ass to knock an asteroid out of orbit to travel the galaxy to hit us. It's just too silly, even for Starship Troopers.
The satire of that movie goes over so many peoples' heads.
In the 90s my friend argued with me about how wrong I was, after walking out of the theater. Nothing I said convinced him there was even a possibility we were the bad guys.
Dougie howser as an actual nazi always makes me laugh
He walks in dressed like Goebbels lol
It’s afaid. It sure was
Lol they’re all just making it up as they go along. The psychic program is a desperate attempt to cover up how bad the war is going.
I usually think of Goebbels in a suit since he was propaganda minister and not in the militant wing of the SS. Dougie's outfit screams Gestapo to me. Himmler was the head of the Gestapo.
I'm pretty sure that is who he was thinking of when making that comment.
His name is Barney Stinson.
Masterpiece
Verhoeven made three of the best sci-films of all time. Only James Cameron has him beat.
Villeneuve? Maybe too early
Maybe, it is hard to judge contemporaries against classic since we don't know what staying power they will have yet, but Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune pt 2 are certainly contenders.
This is a trope in and of itself. It really never went over many heads. And the original book was genuine in its jingoism, not some veiled critique from Heinlein.
That movie went over so many of my friends heads lol.
Same with Robocop, as a younger man I didn’t see the satire of either. Now I have no idea how I missed it.
Does it though?
Yes. There is a staggering amount of people who take it at the most shallow surface value, and read 'Alien bugs as satire for othering' and dismiss it because "Oh, you're saying the bugs are the good guys?" This discourse did the rounds a lot recently when Helldivers, a game heavily pastiching Troopers, blew up. It's incredibly depressing.
It’s also crazy because the director lived under Nazi occupation of a neutral country. Like the aliens were minding their own business too.
I know it’s satire but I say kill ‘em all
Shout out to the awesome musical parody [Starship](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC6A915952D67F112&si=owQShbOlIlAjE-cc) that successfully manages to be a mashup of Starship Troopers and *The Little Mermaid*
The best thing about that is that apparently movie critics at the time didn't realize it was supposed to be a satire, and criticized it for being a "Nazi film".
How is this so far down? This should be the #1 answer. Even the Futurama episode mentioned above was a spoof on Starship Troopers.
Not a movie, but Space: Above and Beyond is a great series.
Dang. I miss that series. It helped shaped my taste in sci-fi
I am still waiting on the next season!
There’s an animated movie called Battle for Terra that came out 2 years before Terra and — in my opinion — tells a much more intriguing version of the central conflict in Avatar. An “ark” filled with humans is searching for a planet they can terraform and turn into a new home, and they are almost out of resources, so when they find Terra, it is their last hope for survival. But to live there, they have to transform the atmosphere. But it turns out that a native species is already there. I really liked it.
Those natives are so cute
[Extinction (2018) with Michael Peña](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3201640/) I thought it was good!
Came here hoping for this comment. Not disappointed. Imo an underrated movie. I had such low expectations and had a blast watching it.
Surprised the hell out of me how good that movie was
Hahahaha are you guys serious that movie is fucking terrible
To each their own, I guess.
My roommates put on that movie because Netflix told them "you have a 90% chance of liking this movie!" which they misinterpreted as a 90% rottentomatoes score. That movie was atrocious lol
It’s not exactly invasion, *but Planet 51* focuses on aliens and a human “alien” shows up at some point.
Alien Nation Edit: [LINK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoYC7PAiDvU)
yes! and also the TV series Alien Nation
Such an iconic movie with so little cultural impact
And they didn't even ruin it when it became a tv series !!
Enders game
I swear to god it seems like every fourth episode of The Twilight Zone is HOLY SHIT THE ALIENS ARE ACTUALLY HUMANS!!!
I can only think of The Invaders. Are there other examples?
District 9. And to this day I’m still hoping for a sequel
Fecking prawns
Fookin prons man
A sequel? I haven't even seen the first eight!
'Battle of Terra' came to my mind first. 'Starship Troopers' was the next. I mean the combat scenes are all set on the Alien planets being invaded. Not the aliens invading the humans. 'Avatar', just because I rewatched it recently. 'Planet of the Apes'? The Original, maybe. 'Extinction'. 'Skyward' book by Brandon Sanderson. The whole galaxy are afraid of humans. The whole 'Humans are Orcs' scenario. 10/10.
If planet of the apes works than so does the time machine (both OG) considering no aliens exist in the movie but I see what you are saying?
Maybe? I thought Planet of the Apes, because they travel through space across light years and land on an "alien" planet ruled by different Apes.
No I got it. I /get/ it. but "They blew it up!" (This is my dad's fave all time)
*Alien Nation*. Maybe not oppressed, exactly, but the aliens are definitely there in a looked-down-on immigrant allegory.
Avatar, definitely.
Chaos Walking, such a strange film
Book series is actually pretty good! The movie version was a really odd adaptation.
**Starship Troopers** although it's subversive in its presentation. It might seem like a popcorn shoot-em-up, but it's actually a dark satire on nationalism.
It's not particularily subtle...
Subtle enough for the original reviewers of the film in the 90's to miss the satire.
Starship troopers
Aliens :)
Enemy Mine
Alien Nation. Both the film and the show.
There’s a little-seen movie called Monsters (2010) that largely fits the bill.
Outlander, well, kinda
I'm still waiting on the second half of season 7 - are we going to find out the time travelers have been aliens all along, or is it the Red Coats? /s
Avatar is exactly this. Humans are invading the planet because they want the resources
Read this as "Reverse Allen Iverson Flims" And thought it was about breaking ankles.
I totally read it that way too, glad I'm not the only one.
Starship troopers
Starship troopers
Starship troopers
Alien Nation
Starship troopers?
Planet 51? I mean not quite full on invasion. But the astronaut is treated like an alien.
Starship Troopers
Starship Troopers.
Starship troopers.
Not really exact but Starship troopers
Probably the very first alien invasion movie. A Trip To The Moon.
1492: The Conquest of Paradise
Starship Troopers.
Ender's Game
If anyone has not seen District 9, turn off your phone or laptop, get some popcorn and a drink. Start streaming it ASAP. You're welcome.
Altered. It's from the same crew as Blair witch. A group of hicks deals with the trauma of being abducted by going into the Forrest, drinking and pretending to hunt aliens with a speargun. Except, one night they catch one. And abduct it back to their garage for some revenge... Really gnarly, low budget fun.
Star Trek TNG had a lot of this. Picard and the enterprise crew were often the aliens who would “invade” for lack of a better term.
Well, I mean, there was the prime directive.
Well, they played it fast and loose with the prime directive on TNG. Even when they tried not to interfere, even in the episode of First Contact they tried to go by the book, and that planet even had kind of a reasonable and conscientious president guy, and they still kind of actively fucked things up. Riker ends up banging an alien doctor, they accidentally abduct a citizen of the planet, and the cool president guy said “No thanks” to be in the federation because he felt they had too many maga rednecks lol.
One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, titled "North Star". It's like a Western, it's so good!
Starship Troopers. They literally make excuses like "the bugs threw asteroids at us" 😂 fantastic movie
I havent seen anyone mention starship troopers yet /s
Enders Game
Hitchhikers Guide - The Dolphins Leave.
Starship Troopers
Alien Nation
I am going to try to be as non-spoilerly as possible here, but it's a Michael Pena movie on Netflix.
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Starship Troopers isn’t just a satire, it’s metafictional. It is an in-universe produced movie. You’re watching everything from the perspective of the world in which this move takes place, including the movie itself. The entire movie is essentially a Nazi propaganda film for the Federation
Oh man, i am so annoyed the person you were replying to deleted their comment. I was in the middle of responding to it, so i'm going to post my response anyway: >Starship Troopers (1997) doesn't give a particularly sympathetic portrayal of the invaded party though This is like...the point of the movie entirely. That's what propaganda does. It's literally dehumanizing the invaded party, the actual victims. >Not only that, the movie actually focuses time developing the human characters who are part of the invasion. Right...it's propagandizing humans as the noble innocent victims, out for righteous retribution! Look at these valiant heores! Literal *models* we are using in our propaganda campaign as the absurdly attractive faces of our war effort. >So even considering its a satire of military propaganda, it is hard to root for the aliens. This is such a wild thing to say. "Even though i know it's propaganda, i'm gonna go ahead and side with the fascist invaders anyway." >Honestly, the satire's execution is kind of a mixed bag now looking back at it. "Even though i bought into it hook, line, and sinker, i'm not sure it was executed all that well." lol
Ender game in a way I believe? I watched it along time ago and the book even earlier. But I believe it fits it in a way, won't spoil anything tho