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.
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.