theory about TEAM AMERICA (War on Terror puppet movie)

[troublemaker]

Background: STARSHIP TROOPERS is the most important political film of the last decade, F9/11 included. (rent it tonight if you've never seen it.) During production it was promoted as a straightforward rah-rah-rah action flick because if the studio had understood it was an anti-fascist movie about America it would not have been released. (Sadly, many left-wing types were taken in by the stealth production and were so incredibly, mind-bogglingly self-absorbed they couldn't figure it out on their own and condemned it as PRO-fascist.)

Fast forward to today: TEAM AMERICA is the new movie (Oct 15 release) from the SOUTH PARK guys. It is about the war on terror as prosecuted by marionettes.

There have been leaks to DRUDGE and other places that TEAM AMERICA will really lower the boom on Michael Moore and other lefty blow-hards. And it will. Count on it. Matt Stone and Trey Parker have always trashed the doctrinaire left. But there has been zero publicity about how the movie treats the Bush administration. There are no photos of the Bush puppet, for instance. There is a lot of promotional material avaiable on the internet promting it as if it was a pro-American action film that makes fun of Michael Moore and Kim Jong Il and Arabs.

Fact to consider: As of a day or two ago TEAM AMERICA is now being advertised all over left-wing blogs right now. How odd... why would you advertise an anti-Michael Moore movie on LW blogs?

I suspect that TEAM AMERICA is going to be VERY controversial and very cruel to Mister Bush, and that release of anti-Bush material will be timed so the inevitable cries for boycotts will help develop buzz for the movie. Until then they are flying under the radar. I expect DRUDGE will be reporting next week on calls to block the film's release. Just one man's guess...

[rumguy]

1. I think you're right

[vi5]

2. Wasn't one of those South Park dudes in a Moore movie?

Didn't he interview one of them in Bowling For Columbine? The dude with the big white guy afro?

They seemed pretty friendly. Who knows.

[lefador]

3. Dude...

Robert Heinlein, the author of the original Starship Troopers, was a well known right wing extremist wacko. How you see it as some sort of stealth anti-fascist work is beyond me, have you actually read the original book?

People still try to make the SouthPark guys as some sort of political figures when they are not, they have been labeled everything from greens all the way to right-liberarians. They just like ot make fun of everybody, is that so hard to get?

As for drudge et al claiming that this is an anti-Michael Moore movie, well they need to be hit by a clue stick, since both of the authors have appeared in several MM's works.

[renegade000]

5. dude...

have you seen the movie?

its a total satire/parody of Heinlein's book.

[FlashHarry]

7. Exactly. The director's family fled the Nazis when he was a child

Paul Verhooven. The whole opening sequence is a riff on The Triumph of the Will.

Personally, I find the movie hilarious!

[lefador]

9. yes I did...

.... and making a crappy movie adaptation of an already bad book a satire makes not.

The movie was just bad, doubt the people making it were attempting any subtle dis to the original work. The book was god awful to begin with....

[krkaufman]

14. Did you *watch* it?

One of the best lines...

Recruitment officer sitting behind a desk: "Mobile infantry made me the man I am today."

And then he pushes his roller chair back from the desk to reach for some papers, and you see he's lost both legs.

Not exactly a rah-rah pro-war movie.

[sonicx]

6. They give liberals a little more ribbing IMO, but yeah

they make fun of everyone. But South Park is just a cool, funny show period. Being offended by it is silly.

btw, one of the guys is a registered Libertarian (trey i think). The other might be too.

[ReadTomPaine]

10. The movie was also critical of Heinlein's view...

... and wasn't a literal adaption. Verhoeven saw Nazism firsthand, and didn't buy into Heinlein's worldview. It upset a lot of his fans when the movie came out. Starship Troopers is a lot like Robocop - social satire designed to appeal to the people it ridicules while informing those who grasp its deeper meaning.

Hearing the action film zombies in the theater cheer for the neo-fascist earth government at the end of the film was very creepy to those of us in the audience who understood what was happening onscreen. This is exactly what Verhoeven intended. The film esp. relevant and sharp since 2000.

RTP

[troublemaker]

11. I think you are serious, so I'll respond

I am well familiar with Heinlein's politics. I am also aware that Robert Heinlein did not make the movie.

My statements about the film STARSHIP TROOPERS are factual, not interpretive. They are based on what every person involved in making the film has said on the topic. It was conceived and executed as a stealth anti-fascist film. They were afraid it wouldn't be released.
They undertook a conscious deception of the financial backers of the film.

Really.

re: Parker and Stone. Of course they are all over the map politically. It's weird to take from that that they are not political. They deal with politics more than any working artists I can name--just outside the framework of partisan dogma.

Making fun of Rob Reiner will not get a movie picketed but making fun of Bush will. The current promo campaign is avoiding all controversy. That is not what you do to sell tickets, so it is reasonable to assume that they are timing inevitable outrage for maximum commercial benefit. Hence, expect this to blow up next week into a big political controversy.

[lefador]

15. It is Paul Verhoeven we are talking about...

... so what? He also claims Showgirls was a social commentary. He is just trying to add depth to his other ways bland filmography. Just because he says so doesn't it make it so. Again, it is a crappy movie based on a crappy book... trying to make it anything else is just typical film boy fantasy, where the lighting in the movie is a way for the director to express his anguish with the depletion of the wild Moroccan hermit crab's sanctuaries.

The guy got laughed out of Europe, he made another god awful movie called "flesh and bone" (I think that is how the title was translated). Again he tried to sell it like some sort of "epoch" film with complex interactions between the characters... the end result: a medieval soft-core porn.

blah...

[ReadTomPaine]

17. First you say he wasn't doing satire, then you change your arguement...

.. and claim it's bad social satire. Which is it? Incidentally, he has won over a dozen awards both here and in Europe for his work and lifetime achievements.

Here's an excerpt from an interview he did recently, that discusses the satire in Starship Troopers.

<snip>

Interviewer: With Starship Troopers and Robocop, you’re dealing in media satire. Now we’re perhaps seeing the satire become reality, post September 11th. Do you watch CNN and think ‘I made that 15 years ago?’

Verhoeven: "Other people say that. It’s more Starship Troopers than Robocop. With Robocop the ironies are about urban situations, Starship Troopers is more to do with foreign politics. It’s about propaganda, and the function of propaganda versus reality, and how it spins reality, and et cetera. Robocop is mostly about the idiocy of American television. These kind of people that flip-flop between extreme sadness, and fun, and a commercial. I always thought that Robocop was my reaction to being thrown into American society, and looking around with wide eyes, thinking ‘this is completely crazy’."

"That’s all in Robocop. A lot of what we could call the ‘sociology’ was already in the script – this was something that the American writers have brought in. Starship Troopers was more more me reflecting on American politics – to a certain degree, domestic American politics. There’s a lot of parallels with what happened after September 11, of course – not just in the obvious way of shooting rockets in tunnels at the Taliban, or the ‘arachnids’ in the movie – but also in the function of propaganda and spinning. In some ways it’s a pleasure that it all became true, but on the other hand there’s not much pleasure that it came true…"

<snip>

Incidentally, Showgirls was indeed horrible and earned him a well deserved Razzie; every director has a bad day! Flesh and *Blood* however, won several awards and is critically acclaimed.

RTP

[sonicx]

4. Matt and Trey always make fun of hollywood liberals and

I often find it funny, so i don't really care if they do it in TA too. If that's the only attack against "us," I don't see why libs wouldn't see it and enjoy it.

I have read, however, that some RWers are mad because "we shouldn't make fun of the war on terror." oh brother...it just looks like a fun action movie parody. It's probably not as controversal as people think.

[newscaster]

8. Er....its a puppet movie.

I am not too concerned about the action of any adult who sits thru that crap. Just watching those inane puppets will detract from any message the movie might contain. Can you take seriously a guy with a wooden head who hippity hops around because he is on strings. Hell, most of the administration now are controlled by strings from Rove's office.

[Dufaeth]

13. Most hollywood movies are puppet movies

eom

[tridim]

12. Have you all seen the F-911 parody commercial for the movie?

It uses the same music as the F911 ads and even shows a brief clip of Michael Moore as one of the puppet characters. It looks like it might be a wicked satire film.

[TheDonkey]

16. Theyare egotistic idiots with too much money and celebrity

or as someone mentioned, Libertarian.

Sometimes they can be funny, but usually it's desperate political propoganda of the extreme those two guys push.

[thebigidea]

18. it looks like a great idea for a skit or 23 minute tv episode, tops

I dunno about a feature length puppet movie, though. Calling International Box Office Rescue!