A quick bit of relaxation. Best space-military portrayal?

Finally got a few minutes to sit down and watch a little tv… and what should be on, but Aliens… and it got me thinking. This is an 18 year old movie (1986! Can you believe it?) and to me it’s still one of the best portrayals of a future military. Equipment, personnel, and everything, it’s something I can actually watch and go “Yeah, I could see that.” This is as opposed to garbage like Starship Troopers which had me rolling my eyes every 5 minutes with “Oh PLEASE!”. (Planetary drop operation – why is every carrier within a few hundred feet of the other? Where, oh, if one drifts off line just a bit, it’ll smash into the next ship over… sheesh.)
So, what do you think? Movies that even come close to being believable about a future military. Marines in space, if you will.

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A wandering geek. Toys, shiny things, pursuits and distractions.

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6 thoughts on “A quick bit of relaxation. Best space-military portrayal?”

  1. Current military operations are a lot more like what was depicted in that movie than they are like what they were in 1986. The main difference is that flying troop carrier video control vehicles have service ceilings of 10,000 feet rather than being able to make orbit.

  2. Hey do you remember going to see Aliens with me and Ted when we came home for dad’s 60th?
    We went to some theater near New Hope…
    That wasn’t THAT long ago, eh?

  3. I can’t think of any other movies that emulate what the future military is likely to be like from an SF perspective.
    But I can tell you that Starship Troopers was a heck of a propaganda film. Before we did the live fire exercise I went on, they made everyone watch THe Sands of Iwo Jima, and no one was all that thrilled: I remember cries of “f*** you, John Wayne” echoing in the compartment.
    But we got HBO on satellite feed through means I did not enquire into too closely, and they showed Starship Troopers later that night. EVERYONE watched it, and it made people super-duper pumped up.
    There is also one part of that movie that is not too unrealistic: when they are in the fort on that one planet. But that whole bit was ripped off almost scene for scene from Zulu, a much better movie.

  4. The military of the future is best predicted by Stripes. RVs man – they’re the next wave. Oh – you mean more in the future, eh? Sorry.

  5. The military of the future is best predicted by Stripes.
    That movie is still one of my favorites. Course, the Newsweek mockup at the end tells it all, with Bill Murray pointing at the camera. “The new army! Will America survive?”
    But yeah, RV’s with rocket launchers and armor. Mmmm.

  6. There is also one part of that movie that is not too unrealistic: when they are in the fort on that one planet. But that whole bit was ripped off almost scene for scene from Zulu, a much better movie.
    What’s funny is that scene is duplicated, again almost scene for scene, in the book Armor by John Steakley, including the underground tunnelling of the big bad aliens and everything.
    Apparently folks are out of movie plots that include insectoid aliens, and there’s only so much you can do.

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