Villains that Actually Make Sense, Part 1

First, and completely unrelated, but I was overjoyed to find out that this actually exists. It's Iron Maiden covering Thin Lizzy and is just as awesome as it sounds.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get on to today's lecture, which is Villains that Actually Make Sense.

Our first case study comes from a very controversial film called Starship Troopers. The director and the writer insist that the whole thing was a satire of militarism, and that their intention was never to be faithful to the book, etc, etc. Another faction claims that it's an absolute disgrace and an endorsement of Fascism. A third faction, the group that still is unable or unwilling to look for porn on the internet, remembers it primarily for its co-ed shower scene.

(No, there will not be pictures.)

Anyway, towards the end of the film, Neil Patrick Harris shows up in the most blatant example of a Nazi ripoff uniform ever in science fiction (and that includes Star Wars) and delivers the following gem:

"You don't approve? Well too bad. We're in this for the species, boys and girls; it's simple numbers. They have more. And every day, I have to make decisions that send hundreds of people like you to their deaths."

Now, the funny thing is, you're not supposed to agree with him. Verhoeven and Neumeier go out of their way in the commentary (which is pretty much split between them talking about how Fascism and war are bad, and Verhoeven yammering about which visual effects company made which particular effects shots) to point out that because Harris is in an faux-SS uniform, you're supposed to understand that he's not saying anything the filmmakers support. And that's fine, from a purely conceptual standpoint (if you can ignore the fact that, Nazi chic aside, the humans are unambiguously presented as the good guys throughout). But anyway, Harris is supposed to be a bad guy by this point, so we're not supposed to take what he says as a message.

And yet anyone who's played, say, StarCraft (a game that seems to owe equal parts of its design to Starship Troopers and to Aliens, which was also based on Heinlein's novel) can tell you, it is simple numbers. They have more? Arrange things so that you can replace your fallen units faster. Or attack their production facilities. If your enemy has more, well, get more. If your enemy has more and is breeding faster? Pray. Or resort to desperate measures.

I'm on the fence about Starship Troopers. On the one hand, guns and boobs; what's not to love? On the other hand, a somewhat mishandled (or outright hamfisted) approach to filmmaking and message-sending. Tomorrow I'll look at a similar example from a video game that I wholeheartedly adore. We'll exame the actions and words of Doctor Breen, the antagonist of Valve's critically acclaimed Half-Life 2.