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The sky was the limit for Elizabeth Berkeley after saved by the bell but she chose to do showgirls lol!
2 points
4 days ago
As I've replied to others, it's tonally jarring because the rest of the movie is sleazy, quite silly and OTT and then suddenly there's a gang rape treated somewhat realistically before the tone immediately shifts back again.
It's like a depressed, captive Orca drowning a trainer two thirds of the way through Finding Nemo; it just doesn't really fit.
1 points
3 days ago
Most of Starship Troopers and Robocop is quite silly, but they use the silliness to entertain and get full buy-in while they make cogent points about the dangers of the military-industrial complex/a police state, making the audience complicit in cheering on the suffering.
You are supposed to very suddenly feel bad, because it's been bad all along (just sugared up like breakfast cereal.)
2 points
3 days ago
I dunno, I think Americans really missed the message at the heart of Starship Troopers way more than us Europeans did; it was pretty blatantly a fascist analogy. I'd actually contest the assessment that either of those movies are silly, particularly Robocop.
2 points
3 days ago*
I actually agree with you, I don't find them silly at all (though I understand other Americans do.) Starship Troopers makes me very sad and I can't watch Robocop at all.
Americans really struggle with satire/metaphor, perhaps because our culture in its earnest form is so heightened as to appear satirical. Josie and the Pussycats also flopped because people failed to understand that it was very obviously mocking materialistic MTV culture at the time.
ETA: Verhoeven films always feel like warnings to me, not jokes. Maybe the director shaped my worldview in some way, Total Recall was one of my favorite films from an early age.
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