I feel like this gets all the ideas about a Helldivers movie together in once place.
Starship Troopers is an amazing template for a game, but once you make a slapstick shooter out of it it’s hard to imagine it surviving the return trip. The Galactic War is an eternal thing, perfect for an endless, ironic campaign against foes that Super Earth either manufactured, goaded, or worsened respectively. It’s hard to imagine being able to tell a story inside the 1984-style “endless present” that it uses to maintain a consistent tone even as things shift around on the map. Also, taken straight, without the benefit of its ironic lozenge, it’s… gruesome. Actual soul poison. It seems like it would have to touch down at some point in its presentation and I’m not a hundred percent sure what that looks like.
That said, hm.
At first, we made the observation in the strip about them announcing a Helldivers 2 movie just because it’s sort of funny to start there. But they actually should start there. We did the same thing with Paint The Line, that is, starting with the sequel. Are you familiar with The Lonely Island? Almost certainly, if you’re accessing the same international data network you’d use to read what I’m writing now. My favorite song by them is Stork Patrol. It sounds like this:
At around 1:40, there’s a sample which implies the existence of an entire subgenre of rap dedicated exclusively to stork-fucking. It doesn’t exist, unfortunately – but here, it situates this song in an ongoing “oral tradition.” You do that here, referencing things that never happened. The fear above was that it might have to touch down and sully the whole thing, perforate the meme. But the other way is to go twice as hard. In the same way that Marvel Rivals had the temerity to render almost supernaturally attractive, aspirational characters, and Warhammer 40,000 can tell tales of profound heroism even though it’s supposed to be a “satire,” you can enunciate a full-throated paean to martial prowess that is meaningful and true in a cosmic sense with a dark nimbus creeping in around the edge. No, I take it back. This is kick ass.
(CW)TB out.