Starship Troopers [UMD for PSP]

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Johnny Rico being a blonde, blue-eyed Aryan. While Van Dien's abilities as an actor are frequently ridiculed at there's no doubt that he is perfect for this movie's take on the character. He *looks* like an actor straight from WWII German and Soviet propaganda films and indeed that is exactly what he's supposed to appear like.

Ok let's clear up some other points:-

BAD ACTING:-

It's not bad acting. Bad acting implies that the actor does not bring fully to life the character he/she is playing or overplays the part ect ect. The characters in ST are supposed to be parodies, tongue-in-check cardboard cutouts. Given that all the actors in ST play their roles pretty well. That they are all very pretty (especially Dina Meyer) is the intention. Like any good propaganda it shows people whom we'd like to be or be with trying to become citizens and succeeding, whilst following the 'state line'. The love triangle is thrown in there for entertainment value and it works in a cheesy way.

DIALOGUE:-

I fail to see how intelligent people can so miss the point of the dialogue. It's cheesy because it's parody, because it apes political propaganda and laughs at it. The dialogue is perfectly suited to the mood of the film as a whole. There are very few wasted lines in this movie and I won't waste *my* time trying to point them out to you if you didn't 'get' them.

STUPID PLOT:-

Guess what? Yep here comes the parody bit again. People point out that the military tactics in this movie are laughable and they are perfectly correct. But... Don't you think the military tactics are just too stupid to be there as a result of incompetence or sloppiness on the part of Verhoeven - I mean it doesn't take a budding Guderian, Napoleon or a Sun Tze to know that just using machine guns when you have orbital nukes, cluster bombs, mines, armor ect is just plain stupid. But the whole point of the film is self-parody at governments, who see the people as their tool, to be manipulated and scarified for the 'greater good' of the nation, or in this case the species.

LACK OF RESPECT FOR ROBERT HEINLEIN'S BOOK:-

I feel many distracters of the film simply do so because they expected a faithful recreation of the book. While that's disappointing for you try and see the film for its merits. It really only borrows from Heinlien's book in superficial terms; to set the scene, the basic plot and basic outlines of the characters. Surely you can see that it never was an attempt to seriously follow the book. Instead Verhoeven chose to follow his own path and make his own movie. Try and see it for that...

Anyway to sum up; the movie is loud, entertaining, gory, packed full of good looking leads and sci-fi fx, but also very subtle and clever. People who dismiss this movie out of hand as mindless nonsense completely miss the point. Godzilla is mindless nonsense. Independence Day is mindless nonsense.

Starship Troopers instead is a very well-made, clever movie, which has a tongue-in-cheek gibe at the way governments can and will manipulate their populace for the 'good of the state'. I wonder whether any American hollywood director would have had the balls to make it this way.


Buff Bods, Big Guns, & Bugs: Friendly Fascism in Troopers   January 5, 2000
S. Hall (NW Ohio, USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

No stranger to the nuances of speculative fiction as seen through the camera lens, Paul Verhoeven throws controversy into most of his productions, including the increased violence of Robocop and the continually questioned reality of Total Recall. Starship Troopers is no exception to this trend, creating a very distinctive schism in film criticism between those who saw it as an endorsement of a pro-military stance and those who consider it to be a wry attack on the ideas it purports. Both groups keyed in on the visual appeal of the film and formed their opinions based on their perceptions of audience reaction. In choosing to adapt Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel, Verhoeven creates a film which manages to simultaneously negotiate the controversy and add to it. Verhoeven concentrates on the visual pleasures inherent in this future of killing, raiding the casts of various soap operas (and linking the thrill of viewed combat with the voyeurism of attractive people) for his characters to exemplify the portrayal of killing the enemy as a glamorous occupation in most war films. As an intelligent satire of war films, the dialogue is filled with ironic machismo that implicates media from WWII era recruitment films (both US and German) to coverage by CNN. Through the "breaking news" appearing in the film, Verhoeven plays with the societal changes as speculated by Heinlein, or what Heinlein called "a democracy in which the poll tax is putting in a term of voluntary service--which could be as a garbage collector." While the troopers are out there cleaning up the galaxy, Verhoeven deliberately invokes Nazi imagery - including copying shot compositions from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of Will and World War II newsreels like Prelude to War - as an integrated part of the film's microcosm; the attainment of this bright future is not without a hidden cost. Verhoeven throws the audience headfirst into Starship Troopers without defusing any of the controversial landmines which pepper the different layers of this seductive dystopia.

Perhaps only echoes of the novel's controversial political subtext have survived, and yes, the film may occasionally falter as social satire as the "two parts ultra-violence" component of Verhoeven's film formula is overamped and coupled with the fascistic imagery; even one of the film's producers, Jon Davison, has referred to the veteranocracy of Starship Troopers as a "fascist utopia", which has to be one of the boldest representations of a future world ever filmed. As a cheeky futuristic hybrid of Saved by the Bell and The Green Berets, the snippets from the recruiting videos and news bulletins (deftly used in the previous film Robocop) show that Verhoeven has dished up a "really tasty" (in a Naked Lunch fashion) propaganda period piece for the American film system using many of its own World War II conceits. Taking a different turn from the "combat science fiction" so adroitly exemplified in Cameron's Aliens, Starship Troopers invites discussion of the imagery and military/political rhetoric laden in the film. Goebbel himself perceived the weakness of propaganda in the face of education, as evidenced through his speech at the Berlin Krolloper in 1937 where he said, "At the moment that propaganda is recognized as such it becomes ineffective."

As for the DVD treatment, this is a first-class disc, loaded to the brim with lots of amazing extras. Pay particular attention to Verhoeven's commentary as you watch the film. The additional materials will give you an interesting insight into the world of cinema. In terms of technical specifications, the 5.1 Dolby sound will rock the foundations of your house, and the quality of the transfer is one of the best I've seen (the CGI looks amazing). A superb film, both in terms of technical prowess and content.


Very Cool.   November 29, 2001
J. Bollen (Fort Plain, New York United States)
23 out of 29 found this review helpful

Yes, the film bears weak resemblance to the novel. Yes, the time it takes for an asteroid to travel across the galaxy is enough to allow our sun to collapse. Yes, asteroids cannot be simply taken care of with a couple missiles (because it creates many smaller asteroids that will probably not disintegrate in our atmosphere). But God, can't anyone just have fun with a film like this? I mean, even I, a hardcore sci-fi action buff, hated "Red Planet" and "Battlefield Earth." Let me tell you, "Starship Troopers" is infinitely more enjoyable. It features incredible battle sequences, outstanding special effects, and a somewhat disturbing but enlightening look at a Neo-Nazi Fascist society where violence does solve anything and everything.

The shower scene is not meant to exploit anyone. It's just a good metaphor for the belief that everyone is equal in every way during those times. Jesus, most everyone who writes a bad review of this film (not movie) merely says that it was stupid. They never say why, and these are the type of people (...) who don't like anything. Just kick back, watch several awesome fights, experience the incredible effects, and enjoy the cast, especially the veteran favorite of mine, Michael Ironside.


Nazis in space!   January 5, 2000
matthew h nothelfer (Grand Rapids, MI)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

Verhoven sure knows how to do camp. You got to give him credit for that. Nowhere in this movie are any of the scenes truly "serious," and yet the menancing attitudes that story's characters develop as the tale unfolds really give the whole production an edge that I found a welcome surprise. Pulp sci-fi with a dash of social commentary? Cool. Reminds me of the science fictions of the 50's. A fun, slick homage to the genre...

C'mon, our heroes wear nazi uniforms for goodness sakes! (The fact that the main characters are from Argentina made me laugh out loud; great touch) Wonderful layers of context that make this flick more than the sum of its (apparent) parts.