January 20, 2003
Starship Troopers (1997)
[3 - Enjoyed it]Many fans of the Heinlein books complained about the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers. What the fans miss is that what you get is not a Heinlein book, but a Paul Verhoeven movie, and as a Verhoeven vehicle it is not that bad.
Verhoeven treats Starship Troopers with the same twisted sense of humor that made RoboCop and Total Recall new and interesting. In what is now a trademark joke, he sprinkles Troopers with tongue-firmly-in-cheek commercials crafted for a future society that revels in a new line of ultra violent consumer products. Verhoeven plays with the concept of violence being sold as a media commodity even as he finds new and creative ways to disembowel actors using superb CG monsters. Troopers is foremost a fun ride and a demonstration of how to properly use special effects to impress and amuse an audience.
Having stated the futility of dwelling in differences between the movie and book I must now ignore my own advice and bring up a personal gripe. Starship Troopers, the book, is a great read for a number of reasons. One detail that Heinlein describes in great and memorable detail is the battle armor and weapons the Roughnecks carry. In the book, each Roughneck is a planet-hopping arsenal of mass destruction, delivering tactical nukes that wipe out acres of enemy forces while jumping in power suits from drop to drop. In the movie, these future marines seem to have completely forgotten the concept of an area effect weapon as simple as a hand grenade. Yes, I know that Johnny and Dizzy each get a tank bug with hand grenades, but that begs the question: what were they doing during the half an hour before as they faced an onslaught of mass-vermin with machine guns? One-on-one fighting calls for a rifle. A few thousand enemy troops all neatly lined up outside your fort calls for mortars.
That gripe out of the way, I am glad that Verhoeven kept one of my favorite quotes from the book in the movie:
Dizzy : My mother always told me that violence doesn't solve anything.
Jean Rasczak : Really. I wonder what the city founders of Hiroshima would have to say about that. You.
Carmen : They wouldn't say anything. Hiroshima was destroyed.
Jean Rasczak : Correct. Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn't solve anything is merely wishful thinking at its worst!
I agree, and place Starship Troopers near the top of my all time faves. Mostly because of the CG effects. The bugs were created (I believe) in a little studio in Berkeley, Ca. I've only seen it from the outside, but man did the effects look real. Jurassic Park is the only other movie which convincingly portrays non-living creatures running amok. My gripe with JP is the "bodies getting torn apart" still looks fairly cheesy, while ST realistically created every aspect of the barrage of carnage the director intended. The casting was slightly sub-par (Look in Denise Richards direction and say eye-candy) but who gives a crap, it was a beautifully violent look into futuristic warfare. My brother and myself looked at it from this viewpoint:
The bugs invaded, humans are beginning their fight and are woefully unprepared. They toss a bunch of young grunts out planetside and they get slaughtered...again and again. A leader rises finding better ways to dispatch the bugs. The military wises up and (at the end) dispatches better trained men with more powerful weapons. It's kind of like stepping into Viet Nam with a p-shooter and learning the hard way. Yeah, this may not be how the book goes, but I read it and was mildly impressed. It's no Ender's Game, and it was packed with fluff. No disrespect to Heinlein, I enjoyed it very much.
BTW, who watched the Starship Troopers CG television show? That was one of the greatest shows ever, it even had the Skinnys from the book!!! Somebody finally got a brain down at the TV studios and made a kick-butt series.
Posted by: Flava on February 12, 2003 09:24 AMU hit the nail on the head man.
Starship troopers is a future world of co-ed showers, hot guys and gals getting it on, govenment stupidity (whats new there?) and large aliens trying to disnbowl hotties. Yep its the future to look foward to!!!
the troopers are such DUMBASSES i swear why would you run up to a deadly,11-12 foot tall bug with little tonka toy guns and expect to kill it?!?!?!?!
if that was how my military really was i tell ya
i'd be that guy that stayed kinda towards the middle so when the bugs attack i can outrun my buddies (if you catch my drift)^_^!!!!!
