The Carmen Theory That Rewrites Starship Troopers

When "Starship Troopers" was released in 1997, it didn't exactly set the box office on fire or win over critics. However, over time, the film has gained a cult following and is now seen as ahead of its time. It's considered relevant in today's cultural, social, and political landscape. Set several hundred years in the future, the story follows young recruits of the United Citizen Federation as they fight against a deadly species of arachnid aliens known as "Bugs." The main characters include Rico (Casper Van Dien), who joins the Mobile Infantry; Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris), who enters military intelligence; and Carmen Ibáñez (Denise Richards), who becomes a starship pilot. While the plot is straightforward, the movie's themes and subtext add layers of complexity. Initially criticized as a silly piece of escapism, "Starship Troopers" actually offers a sharp satire of U.S. militarism. This nuance has intrigued fans for years.

That means plenty of theories have emerged from the film's narrative. One particularly intriguing theory focuses on Carmen and how her actions might have changed the course of the story entirely.

From the beginning, it's clear that Carmen is destined for greatness. She's a strong student, which helps her achieve her dream of joining the training program for starship pilots. In one scene during her first tour, Carmen takes it upon herself to replot the course of the ship she's working on for efficiency. After her supervisor confirms that she has plotted an optimal course, the ship suddenly encounters a rogue asteroid. Carmen manages to avoid a full collision, but the top of the ship still hits the space-rock, causing it to lose its communications array. It turns out the asteroid came from Klendathu, the Bugs' home planet, and when it hits Earth, it kills millions of people in Buenos Aires, the hometown of the central characters. Following this event, Earth launches an all-out war against the Bugs.

A user on Reddit theorizes that the entire war may be Carmen's fault. "I'm no expert on physics in space, but I'll still bet that when the ship struck the meteor it changed the rock's trajectory," u/anthemlog posted. "On a small scale, this means nothing. But on a galactic scale, this little bump makes a huge difference. A difference so big that this rock was now sent straight to Earth just from this small bump. Had it not been touched it probably wouldn't even have gone anywhere near Earth."

If you've seen "Starship Troopers," you know that part of the film's brilliance lies in its ambiguity about who the good guys and bad guys are. It's even possible that the United Citizen Federation is the aggressor in the war, as the movie suggests that humans were the ones who first crossed into the arachnids' territory. There's also the question of whether the Bugs are intelligent beings, which adds to the idea that the asteroid wasn't an intentional attack, and that Carmen's actions may have caused it to strike Earth.

In a comment on u/anthemlog's original post, one Redditor took this theory further. "Buenos Aires was an inside job, AKA Carmen did it on purpose ... to justify an attack on the arachnids," posted u/Sarlax. "Maybe she can give us the odds that a meteor launched by mindless bugs would destroy her home town after she bumped into it. Bumped into it, that is, after altering the ship's course without notifying anyone, and also being the person who fired the emergency thrusters to 'avoid' hitting it," Sarlax continued. In their post, they noted Carmen's impeccable math skills, which could theoretically help her plan such a covert action, and theorized that she may be secretly working for a special-operations branch of the military. "Miraculously, Carmen saves the entire ship — except the communications tower. How unfortunate! Now there's no way to warn anyone ... Now the government has a nice big war to justify its military-industrial complex, and it has justification to invade and [colonize] arachnid worlds."

Okay, maybe that's stretching things a bit. Still, the whole thing sounds pretty suspicious.

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