this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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"The mobile infantry made me the man I am today" shows off two missing legs and one missing arm
All the teachers are injured and in need of prosthetics and assisting devices, all of them served.
As Rico's dad said, it should be illegal to use schools as recruiting centers.
And while they all need a prosthetic, none of them have one unless it specifically pertains to something that will benefit their military job.
The front desk guy needs 2 legs and an arm, but only has an arm and is in a wheel chair. The arm helps his job stamping new recruits in. The legs serve no purpose but to make his life better, but unnecessary for the job.
Ricos teacher needs an arm, but while he's teaching, he doesn't have one. Once he's back on active duty, he's allowed a prosthetic arm because it helps the Federation. He doesn't require an arm to teach.
If it's not required for your specific position, you don't deserve to be made whole. It's a pretty fucked up society overall, and not nearly enough people understand that the humans aren't the good guys.
Making the aliens actual bugs in the movie was a mistake and washes the rest of the critiques inside the movie away with it.
I really disagree. The aliens being insects is perfect because it provides a justaposition with the human characters. The idea is that the insects are a swarm of mindless drones. Meanwhile, the humans are...well, also a swarm of mindless drones. Which is sort of the point of the movie. The fascist society they inhabit actively dehumanizes them and robs them of their ability to think for themselves. The visuals of the film reinforce this in the larger fight scenes: the mass of gray bodies that constitute the human forces all blend together into a single swarm, much like that of the insects. And by the end of the movie Rico is completely hollowed out as a character: literally just inhabiting the same role as Rasczak, and even parroting all of his phrases from earlier in the film.
Thats actually a great point of view I hadn't thought of before with the visuals.
In the book there's an additional interesting scene with Rico and the recruiter: Rico runs in to the recruiter as he's leaving the office. The recruiter does actually have prosthetic legs, and he's walking out the door. Rico asks why he didn't have them on before. The recruiter explains that his job is actually to scare away recruits. He's supposed to show potential recruits his missing legs as a consequence of his service. That way those that aren't really serious about it, those who are doing it because it just seems like a cool idea, don't go through with signing up. He then explains that the government doesn't require him to be a living warning sign in his off-time, so he puts on his legs and goes about his life that way.
Yeah, but the film is a glaringly obvious satire of the society it depicts, the book isn't.
The film needed to be given how many missed the message.
Not only are they not the good guys, the military started a fight where none existed in order to justify its existence.
Buenos Aires was 100% a false flag, there's 0 chance bugs in any system other than this one could have, in less than ten thousand years, encountered humanity and started lobbing asteroids at them.
Even if they had the knowledge of where humanity is from, and the ability to target asteroids in order to reroute them, they simply don't have the technology to speed an asteroid enough to be a threat to another planetary system.
The military hauled an asteroid to hit a human population center. 100%.
Was Buenos Aires the first attack?
They knew OF the bugs before then, and although intent seemed clear, I don't believe they were at war before Buenos Aires.
It was definitely the attack that sparked the invasion and made Rico and friends give it 100% since their home was destroyed. Gotta get payback for that.
Weren't the previous marines harmed fighting the bugs?
If by "previous marines" you mean the news report at the beginning of the movie?
That's the invasion of Klendathu that Rico goes on after BA gets hit. We even see the reporter giving the report from a different angle later in the movie.
No I mean people like his instructor who was already missing a limb before BA gets attacked. There are a bunch of people missing limbs before any attack.
Ah. Presumably these were lost in some other conflict, probably against other humans. We don't know of any OTHER Aliens, and since the war hasn't started yet we don't know one way or another.
In the books it’s explained the man is missing his legs specifically to scare people away and show them the potential consequences of service, so people really understand what can and does happen and do not sign up just for fleeting glory or to look cool.
I really didn't feel like that needed to be more obvious than it was in the movie. Where would you even find trees to make even more massive clue-by-fours to hit people over the head with?