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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Starship Troopers

14:29 / 14.11.06

Humans of a fascistic, militaristic future do battle with giant alien bugs in a fight for survival
imdb entry

Opinions seem polarised on this film. From the Aliens thread;
'It is possible to have an action movie that isn't dumb just look at Starship troopers. ' (michelle gale)
'Can we stop talking about Starship Troopers before I vomit on my desk?' (Elijah)

See? So I'm starting this thread. Firstly, cards on the table, I love the Heinlein story and have since I was a boy (power armour! Alien menace! w00t!). When I heard there was going to be a film I naturally assumed it would be like Warhammer 40k Space Marines on film, and so was pretty disappointed at the lack of flying power suits. But it has it's good points, the media, the look of the thing, not bad SFX, Dina Meyer (mmmm...) and fighting cool looking aliens to save the world. You can read a lot into it if you try (What Verhoeven is putting across in this film is not a polemic against Nazi ideology, but an attack upon American Imperialism in the latter part of the last century from the imdb review) but the two main leads are appalling and there's a lot of criticism that can be levelled at it. Whaddya reckon?

I was going to start with a possible reading of the film as a response to 9/11, invading hostile desert planet with massive air and tech superiority, going to war after a terror attack (Buenos Aries/WTC) enemies represented as evil monsters etc. but then I remembered it was made in 1997. So never mind.

17:19 / 14.11.06

It does have one of the best, deadpan, straightfaced but absolutely absurd lines in the world, as uttered by Doogie Howser, M.D.

"We're going back to P..."

which is always a plus in my book. Made I lol, anyway. Then again, I am a six year-old at heart.

17:59 / 14.11.06

I am continually amazed at people who don't realize that there's a subtext to the movie version of Starship Troopers. I mean its not exactly subtle, is it? But I keep meeting people who read it as a straight-up action film. At one point Verhoeven actually had to go on record as saying that his movie was about imperialism.

As an adaptation of a previous work I have mixed feelings. I remember Heinlein's book as actually putting the militocracy forward as a viable social model, his own private Leapocracy. While I personally find Verhoeven's subversion of Heinlein's motif delightful, it's not exactly faithful.

Plus it has some of the worst acting performances ever.

I love it though, and I think I'm going to have to watch it again soon.

18:42 / 14.11.06

I half have a feeling that the bad acting is intentional, actually—if you read STARSHIP TROOPERS as a meta-movie, which is tempting.

I'll give you an example: Quentin Tarantino claimed, in an interview, that KILL BILL is supposed to be a movie that the characters from PULP FICTION might go to see; it's a fiction that characters in another fictional context would recognize as fictional. (For more, see here.)

Just so, I think that STARSHIP TROOPERS the film may be what successful commercial filmmaking looks like in the STARSHIP TROOPERS universe. This is their CASABLANCA, their SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, their A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

So of course it's a hacky, lurid, senselessly violent, appallingly acted glorification of the State. Look at the culture that spawned it.

Do you want to know more?

18:47 / 14.11.06

I just found it tedious because of the actors. Tedious. Because of their complete lack of interest or charisma, I couldn't pay attention to this subtext that people rave about. Never found it, never looked for it. But based on these recommendations, perhaps I'll give it another go.

19:04 / 14.11.06

Subtext? Who needs subtext when there are millions of bugs to be quished and shot at with lovely guns?

Seriously, I think the 'subtext' is a little hammered home and 'LOOKATME!!', but the actual action scenes and shooty-splodery bits are some of the finest ever put to film, IMO. This really is a sci-fi Saving Private Ryan. It just has so many memorable and still fairly amazing scenes in it. The massive starships being rent in half (with the bodies floating into space), the attack on the compound (with the dude with his brains sucked out to match), the massive beetle-thing being blown up. Boobies. Awesome awesome guns. Doogie Howser in sexy SS gear. Jake Busey- fullfuckingstop.

There's some message about war being not good? What? I can't hear you over my boyhood space-war fantasies come to life on the screen...

19:26 / 14.11.06

I know a guy who cried at the end of Starship Troopers, which is possibly the most beutiful thing I can think of.

I wasn't there so it may be a lie but knowing this person its not much of a stretch, the scary thing is he didn't get that there was any subtext it was a completely honest emotional reaction. He is a Kent spawned dyslexic god.

"Its Scared!!!"

The book is fun stuff expecially as it invented the powered suit, which is GOOD.

20:09 / 14.11.06

Really? Starship Troopers is the first instance of the powered suit in science fiction? I've never really liked Heinlein, but I suppose he's left his mark in any number of ways. I just didn't realize this was one of them.

It really is a shame they didn't use the suits in the movie, isn't it?

20:54 / 14.11.06

As I mentioned in the Aliens thread, I love bad action movies. The badder the better, so of course, I love this movie.

I can understand how some people might ignore/overlook the satirical subtexts of the film. I mean, if you're not enjoying the film then you aren't going to start looking into it in any great detail.

I love the representation of the media, that 50s naivety of pre-semiotic propaganda, crossed with the media saturation/addiction that we all suffer from in the modern age.

Plus, it's got one of the greatest space battles in sci-fi history.

Steer clear of the thoroughly B-Grade sequel though. It's a rip-off of Alien and Screamers and it is terrible.

20:55 / 14.11.06

they're in the anime.

22:44 / 14.11.06

It really is a shame they didn't use the suits in the movie, isn't it?

Well, I think more precisely it really is a shame that a broader "they" have yet to really make a movie with suits like that.

Really subverting Heinlein's intended message more or less requires that the human soldiers be ants sent into battle to be crushed in the tens of thousands for a bloodied parcel of irrelevant ground, rather than expensively equipped techno-warriors ranging over great distances in loose, semi-autonomous formation, hot shot champions of space. It's a critique of his root assumptions, rather than the details he built upon them.

But yes, it's really time someone made a movie about big fuck-off powered suits armed with tactical nukes ranging over airless moons and alien cities, and the people insane enough to fly them.

10:58 / 15.11.06

I suppose he's left his mark in any number of ways.

Heinlein pre-invented the microwave you know.

Power suits you say? I want a decent Mechwarrior film*, the same but bigger.

*so not Robot Jox

11:42 / 15.11.06

They did use a kind of power suits in the CG spin-off "Roughnecks" which I recall seeing on Sky One some mornings aaages ago.

There's a pic of one of the suits halfeay down the page here

I may be making this shit up but I think I recall reading an article in SFX or somewhere about how the show orginally was going to be more adult in nature but got dumbed down for kids, but the wikipedia entry makes no reference to it and Holy Shit Verhoeven was a producer on the show!

I loved the movie, and have marveled every time Casper van Dien, one of the few men who can make Keanu look like Olivier, has managed to get another acting job.

17:36 / 15.11.06

If you're wanting a fix of live action giant robotic suits then hopefully Evangelion will be first off the starting block. There's rumours that it'll have an a-list director attached by the end of this year.

As for Starship Troopers, it's up there alongside Predator as one of my favourite brainless come home from the pub destructionathons.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

17:50 / 15.11.06

It should be noted that my threat to vomit wasn't meant to be a total slam on Starship Troopers, but just that comparing it and Aliens made me feel dirty.

As it is, I don't Hate SST with a capital H, but I would not call myself a fan. I REALLY wanted power armor, but I suppose if the budget for fx was power armor or bugs, I'll take the bugs.

The propaganda was probably my favorite bit of the film, because I think it was done well. The waves of incoming bugs were pretty cool, but I could never get over that it was (to use 40k terms) Tyranids versus a neutered Imperial Guard army when they should have been Space Marines.

I really liked Clancy Brown as the drill instructor too. All of the training scenes were so over the top, it was like watching Full Metal Jacket turned up to 11.

17:51 / 15.11.06

I may be making this up, but I vaguely remember something about the cast being deliberately picked for woodenness, something to do with making things look like a soap opera, and removed from reality. I hadn't heard the meta-movie thing before this thread, but that sounds similar.

Can't remember where I read it, probably in the Guardian back when the film was released. Useful, I know.

17:52 / 15.11.06

Oh, goodness, anything with Clancy Brown in it is worth a peek. His appearances in Lost filled me with glee.

18:01 / 15.11.06

Well they had some in Matrix 3;

..but they weren't all that.

19:08 / 15.11.06

Neither was Matrix 3