Starship Troopers was a story about people. Robert Heinlein (one of my favorite authors) wrote a story that does not play well with the Hollywood crowd. It was about self sacrifice and duty and in a similar vein to Superman - the people making the film hate the All American hero story. The values on some people have changed and not for the better and that is why movies like American Sniper don't win awards very often. In the box office they are huge hits but the crowd in Hollywood can't stand them. While a non-christian the Christian Bale Moses story was the warped and twisted Hollywood version on an Old Testament tale.
I am seriously thinking of trying something myself after playing with UnReal 4 engine - an animated film instead of a game. It has all the tools you should need to tell some of the stories I would like to see.
Red Nails - Robert E. Howard (a Conan story)
Legend - David Gemmel (a Druss story)
A few others that would be awesome to frame right out of the book.
Aye, thats kind of what I was trying to say about starship troopers as a book. In that it wasn't about the battle with the arachnids but more about Rico's life in a military state.
Eh, you should try playing spec ops the line, you'll end up hating those kinds of stories to
(actually more end up liking stories that aren't that even more, as it's anything but an "America saves the day" story). I don't think though it's that people hate the "All american hero" stories but more they don't like stories where it's very very clear who'll win long beforehand. They tend to be very predictable, and often tend to ignore the kinds of problems with the character and most frequently in movies lack character development, hastily leading towards the dreaded "mary sue" story.
Ahem
Non-american badguy shows up, does something bad without any remorse to show how bad the non-american badguy is.
American steps up to eventually challenge badguy, they may include some journey in there to prolong the story of american killing non-american badguys. Non-amerian badguys also commit atrocities but never, ever the american good guy.
Non-american badguy henchmen can't hit the broad side of the barn(especially vs main hero). Standard for other action movies to.
American hero finally has some struggle against badguy, but he comes out scott-free without any character development because he's the hero, and he'll win no trouble.
Mary sue stories are often the same. And people are not generally jingoistic, only a small number tend to be anymore.
It's predictable. And it's been deconstructed, see the movie Apocalypse now. We saw it in video games to alot, leading to the creation of the game Spec Ops: The Line, specifically to deconstruct the many pro-war, jingoistic modern military shooters out there such as modern COD, Battlefield and Medal of honor games.
As for values changing, actually it's more people are aware of the kind of atrocities that can actually happen in war and that realistically they are always committed by both sides. Even people in the military know that. People aren't all "Go to war so we can kill non americans!" like the guy below.
Such as this jerk I saw on dateline murder mystery. The guy was a generic "I want to be a hero by killing someone that isn't perfectly matched to my views of the world". He believed everyone not only has to follow his religion in the country but they had to be the same race as him and was generally a psychopath. He joined the military but was dishonorably discharged for pretending to be a ranger, and had very, very unhealthy hero fantasies of killing non-americans as a ranger.
When a few young adults decided to play a prank on his property for his especially aggressive sign, he went out, chased them while shooting at them. He killed one of them, then tried to make it look like they shot at him. Course, his lack of ballistics knowledge lead to a critical mistake, considering he'd never killed anyone in the military or saw any actual combat it would have been easy for him to make such a stupid mistake as simply dropping the casings in the same spot, not to mention there was no gun anywhere in the possession of the people he shot at.
He was charged with murder and sentenced to 50 years to life. Because he wanted to feel like something he wasn't nore will ever be; a hero.
Most people are not like that. Because most people are realistic about war and the nasty things that can happen in it. And they know that people are people regardless of their nationality. We may have been that in the 1950s in the McCarthy days, but people have gotten smarter.
Human beings of the 21st century.