Quote Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover View Post
I really don't think it was an accident that the movie was satirizing the book. The book is apparently a lot of nationalist/quasi-fascist stuff while the movie is parodying that to high heaven.

I seriously don't see how anyone can take the 1950s style TV guy for example as anything but blatant satire. "This guy was convicted and will be executed live on TV all in the span of 24 hours. Stay tuned!"
The movie is definitely satire. The marines were stylized after Nazis. The opening of the movie was a visual reference to "Triumph of the Will", a Nazi propaganda movie. There's info about it on wikipedia: Starship Troopers (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Verhoeven didn't like the novel and stated that he didn't finish reading it because it was boring and depressing. The novel has a drastically different tone and message than the movie.

The movie also works on the level of being a dumb action movie, so it can be easy not to see the satire. The same is true of other Paul Verhoeven movies. Robocop for example.