He didn't miss the point of the book, he got it and completely ignored it.
Anyway, Sargon thought the humans were the good guys in the movie, not at all questioning the official story of aliens somehow shooting an entire asteroid all the way across a goddamn GALAXY with enough pinpoint accuracy to not only nail Earth, but bull's-eye a major city.
Complete Gulf of Tonkin bullshit. Excuse to send the non-elites off to die while the rich sit comfy and unchallenged. Just like real life.
He didn't miss the point of the book, he got it and completely ignored it.
Verhoeven self admittedly didn't read the book and instead had an assistant give him the cliff notes.
Regardless, the asteroid is not a government false flag - it's a bug attack. We are very obviously supposed to suspend our disbelief for the narrative convenience of the asteroid. How can I say this with certainty? Because it would have to be FTL to reach earth in an even remotely timely fashion.
FTL travel exists in this universe, but there is no mention of the asteroid being FTL, and an FTL asteroid impact would do a lot more than annihilate Buenos Aires. It's a world where space pilot is a common job, yet nobody asks 'how the hell did this asteroid go FTL, and why did it stop being FTL when it reached earth?' That's inconceivable, and because it's inconceivable, we can conclude that this is a narrative convenience, not some silent nudge-nudge wink-wink read-between-the-lines 'it was a false flag for the war economy!' boondoggle.
So we're accepting diabolus-ex-machinas as normal now.
How long was humanity at war with these damn bugs? Why would the bugs have any reason whatsoever to launch a rock at Earth?
Besides, I fully admitted in another comment that Verhoeven was ignoring the book. He intended the movie to be the biggest middle-finger possible to the book, in order to mock us.
And just like with Rorschach, it became beloved by the very people it was meant to mock. Which is totally fine.
Obviously Buenos Aires was destroyed. I'm saying the official in-universe news story doesn't fucking work. It would've been MORE believable had it just been a tragic coincidence.
Humans are also fucking idiots in this movie, without the epic writing of 40K to make up for it. Why fragile mobile infantry instead of bombarding the planet from orbit?
Also note the "We need soldiers!" PSA at the very end. Why do they suddenly have to say they need more soldiers? Because the humans are losing. Because they're idiots. It's spin-doctor crap. And Sargon completely missed it.
...What am I doing? Nobody's reading this far into the thread. It's just me at this point. This ain't worth it at all.
No?
I remember when Paul Verhoeven completely missed the point of the book, though.
Precisely this.
Also, here
He didn't miss the point of the book, he got it and completely ignored it.
Anyway, Sargon thought the humans were the good guys in the movie, not at all questioning the official story of aliens somehow shooting an entire asteroid all the way across a goddamn GALAXY with enough pinpoint accuracy to not only nail Earth, but bull's-eye a major city.
Complete Gulf of Tonkin bullshit. Excuse to send the non-elites off to die while the rich sit comfy and unchallenged. Just like real life.
And Sargon completely missed it.
Except the elite don't run the world in starship troopers. (the book, granted I haven't seen much of the movie)
And a spacefaring race on that degree managing to throw a rock is not all that different than ICBMs nowadays.
An ICBM is guided. A rock is a rock.
Throw a piece of driveway gravel the length of a football field to bisect an ant when it lands. That's what they claim the bugs did.
In the movie. The movie is completely different from the book, on purpose.
Lead and copper are just metals, but we can get pretty precise with those. It's even easier in the vacuum of space.
Verhoeven self admittedly didn't read the book and instead had an assistant give him the cliff notes.
Regardless, the asteroid is not a government false flag - it's a bug attack. We are very obviously supposed to suspend our disbelief for the narrative convenience of the asteroid. How can I say this with certainty? Because it would have to be FTL to reach earth in an even remotely timely fashion.
FTL travel exists in this universe, but there is no mention of the asteroid being FTL, and an FTL asteroid impact would do a lot more than annihilate Buenos Aires. It's a world where space pilot is a common job, yet nobody asks 'how the hell did this asteroid go FTL, and why did it stop being FTL when it reached earth?' That's inconceivable, and because it's inconceivable, we can conclude that this is a narrative convenience, not some silent nudge-nudge wink-wink read-between-the-lines 'it was a false flag for the war economy!' boondoggle.
So we're accepting diabolus-ex-machinas as normal now.
How long was humanity at war with these damn bugs? Why would the bugs have any reason whatsoever to launch a rock at Earth?
Besides, I fully admitted in another comment that Verhoeven was ignoring the book. He intended the movie to be the biggest middle-finger possible to the book, in order to mock us.
And just like with Rorschach, it became beloved by the very people it was meant to mock. Which is totally fine.
Obviously Buenos Aires was destroyed. I'm saying the official in-universe news story doesn't fucking work. It would've been MORE believable had it just been a tragic coincidence.
Humans are also fucking idiots in this movie, without the epic writing of 40K to make up for it. Why fragile mobile infantry instead of bombarding the planet from orbit?
Also note the "We need soldiers!" PSA at the very end. Why do they suddenly have to say they need more soldiers? Because the humans are losing. Because they're idiots. It's spin-doctor crap. And Sargon completely missed it.
...What am I doing? Nobody's reading this far into the thread. It's just me at this point. This ain't worth it at all.