Elon Musk is being accused of completely missing the point of the satirical 1997 sci-fi action movie Starship Troopers after referencing it when celebrating his new role in Donald Trump’s administration.
Musk then shared an image from a climactic scene in Starship Troopers where Neil Patrick Harris’s character, Carl Jenkins, triumphantly claims victory over their alien bug enemies.
On the surface, this is a fairly common cinematic trope but Starship Troopers, made by Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven and adapted from a novel by Robert A Heinlein, has a very obvious twist that Musk appears to have missed.
It’s not a hard message to miss as numerous military propaganda videos, emulating scenes from The Triumph of the Will, are played throughout the film, with the humans even wearing uniforms inspired by those worn by the Nazis and Italy’s National Fascist Party.
Therefore, Musk comparing himself to the bad guys in Starship Troopers is perhaps not the message that the 53-year-old was hoping to convey.
A third added: “Please never stop right-wingers missing that Starship Troopers was satire.”
