Starship Troopers

Bedtime story, from Papa Bush to his young 'uns: Once upon a time, a long time from now, there was a United Earth. A New World Order of peace, prosperity and freedom. Everyone was clean and pretty and healthy. Good genes, all around. Black people too. And the streets were clean, and the environment, and the trains ran on time. Then one day, bad monsters attacked Earth, because the monsters were evil and ugly, and looked like giant bugs (because they were giant bugs), and they hated anybody lucky enough to have so much peace, prosperity and freedom, and who were so good-looking.But luckily for the happy people of Earth, their world government had the bestest military in the universe, with lots of gnarly weapons and way cool uniforms. So everyone enlisted like crazy to fight the ultimate war between good and evil. The politicos and top brass called it the Bug War -- but for the young recruits, it was the kick-ass adventure of a lifetime!The bugs never had a chance. The end.No, not a bedtime story, but Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, a dead-on satire of post-9/11 war hysteria -- astonishing because it was released in 1997!The film's satire was originally aimed at its source material: Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel, Starship Troopers (condemned by some critics upon publication as "fascistic"). But like humor-impaired Trekies, many Heinlein fans remained clueless and unamused. They complained that the film had replaced Heinlein's socio-political military philosophy with mindless bug battles. Few realized the joke was on them. Verhoeven didn't so much ignore Heinlein's philosophizing as lampoon it.Heinlein's novel paints a future Earth in which everyone enjoys equal rights and liberties -- except to vote and hold office, which are reserved only to those who complete military service. Enlistment is voluntary and non-discriminatory; any sex, any age. Blue-haired grannies can sign up. But no special treatment. Many softies die in the sadistically brutal boot camps. (However, you can quit anytime, without reprisal). Another rule: everyone fights. Cooks, supply clerks, nurses, medics, privates, generals. No paper pushers or desk warmers in Heinlein's military.Verhoeven's Starship Troopers parodies Heinlein's romanticized military culture by trivializing and sanitizing war. Soldiers are sexy and clean even after battle, ready to party hardy. Ready to die. Dina Meyer's deathbed speech satirizes an old war film clich?: while reaffirming her love for her main squeeze, she nobly adds that she has "no regrets" about her sacrifice.For "red shirt" soldiers, death is less sentimental. Quick -- and quickly forgotten. After shooting a captured soldier (to prevent a painful bug death) Michael Ironside curtly informs his platoon: "I expect you to do the same for me." Which they do.Starship Troopers was no big hit in 1997, but it has its fans, many of whom -- judging by review postings on Amazon.com -- confuse the film for a serious sci-fi epic with a "war is hell" message. (Not surprisingly, post-9/11 postings are more likely to "get it".)Those who doubt the film's satirical intent should consider one hero's uniform, which can best be described as neo-Third Reich. Clearly, Verhoeven's film was not informed by Heinlein's libertarian fans, but by those critics who interpreted the novel as fascistic.Also noteworthy, the film's stars are all strikingly attractive with well-chiseled Aryan features.However, their SS physiques are not part of the plot, but merely a hint at the film's underlying satire. Plotwise, Federal Service (as it's called) is open to all, and the Aryan protagonists warmly welcome their sidekicks of color. In one brief scene, a dumpy black female is appointed as the new Sky Marshall, promising to "take the war to the bugs."However, because many moviegoers confuse fascism with racism, and because most of them were unfamiliar with the novel, the film's satire was lost on many. For most moviegoers, the film was just vapid soldiers shooting giant bugs. Further obscuring the satire, the soldiers were just too damn sexy, the bugs too mean and ugly. We humans are inclined to sympathize with attractive people, which is why satirists often paint their targets in hideous garb (communists as pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, and as grotesque vampires in my own Vampire Nation).Starship Troopers takes the opposite tact, painting globalist fascism as imagined by globalist fascists. Everyone is healthy and happy and sexy. The satire is in the exaggeration of fascist ideals (as in Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream). With unwavering fortitude and unshakable confidence in Earth's inevitable total victory, Denise Richards flashes her Pepsident smile throughout the film. In hairy battles, her mouth may turn sexily pouty, but her brilliant teeth soon return, vast and blinding, equally at home on a TV commercial and an SS recruiting poster.Want to laugh out loud? The funniest scenes are the recruiting ads and "news" propaganda bulletins. One "news" item features warmly grinning soldiers distributing bullets to the delighted squeal of eager schoolkids. (How clueless do you have to be to post reviews at Amazon praising the film's "war is hell" message?)But the clueless are out there. Unfamiliar with the book, smitten with the sexy stars and repelled by the bugs, many didn't "get" the jokes. In practical terms, until 9/11 Starship Troopers was a satire without a target. The war hysteria following 9/11 provided that, the players and events stepping tailor-made into the film's sites with amazing prescience, granting the film a powerful resonance that was lacking when it was first released.All the parallels are present. The enemy -- the Bugs -- are pure evil. The military, the news reports, the war, the government, are all beyond question. If they make a mistake, they can be trusted to correct it. United Earth we stand.The Bug War begins with a Bug attack on a city. In the film's eeriest scene, a burning building's framework resembles the Twin Towers. Also remarkable are the many random jokes that find a target post-9/11. In adapting a 1950s book to a 1990s sensibility, Verhoeven tossed in some contemporary satirical barbs unconnected to the book, or even to much of anything in 1997 -- but which eerily resonate with our post-9/11 war culture.There is the film's black female Sky Marshall, a kooky but satirically pointless joke in 1997. Yet it's a role tailor made for Condoleezza Rice. There are the TV war correspondents, absent in the book, but today stationed in Iraq. They pester the soldiers in battle, don't appreciate the threat, and are killed by the bugs. There are the TV pundits who would understand the bugs, woolly and ineffectual as seen through the film's fascist prism (the New World Order likes to see itself as tolerant).Starship Troopers is a penetrating satire of post-9/11 war hysteria as might be imagined by an idealistic New World Order fascist. It's hard to believe it was made pre-9/11; impossible to think it could be made post-9/11. Starring Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, and Michael Ironside.

Picture this: you invite someone into your home for dinner, and instead of being gracious, they spend the entire evening openly insulting you. They mock your cooking, laugh at your choice of furnishings, deride your values, all while helping themselves to your booze. I’m sure we can all agree that that’s no ones idea of a good time, and yet that is almost exactly what Dutch director Paul Verhoeven did back in 1997 when he directed Starship Troopers. Perhaps that goes someway to explaining why the film was almost universally panned by US critics of the day, whom to a man refused to acknowledge the film’s explicitly satirical execution and, in the critical equivalent of who smelt it dealt it, instead decided to accuse Verhoeven of making a piece of fascist propaganda. But while the movie’s reputation in the US remains in the gutter, everywhere else in the world this film is seen as a classic, with many considering it to be Verhoeven’s most accomplished American film: it’s more polished than Robocop, not as silly as Hollow Man or Total Recall, nor as vapid as Basic Instinct or Showgirls. Plus the satire is razor sharp.The story is fairly simple: in the distant future, some space Mormons from a now fascist America set up a mission on an Alien planet. The Aliens, construing the outpost as an advance on their home world, retaliate by massacring the Mormons and firing asteroids on earth. Meanwhile in a colonized Argentina, Barbie and Ken are graduating high school where they’ve been educated on a diet of nazi propaganda by the maimed and limbless survivors of some previous, unmentioned conflict. Barbie makes plans to enlist as it’s the only pathway to citizenship and by extension access to higher education or the right to start a family, while idealist Ken follows her for more goofy teen reasons. When an Alien asteroid strikes their city and obliterates their Dreamhouses, Barbie and Ken slowly lose whatever modicum of humanity they had and turn into space nazis. It’s the age old story.From the opening scenes -a shot for shot recreation of Leni Riefenstahl’s work in Triumph of the Will disguised as a mock PSA for army recruitment- through to the astonishingly fascist civics lesson where we’re introduced to our protagonists and their world, Verhoeven’s intentions are clear. By placing the action in a post liberal, right wing dystopia, he avoids the lecturing preachiness of It Happened Here, and focuses his attention squarely on showing us just how merciless and horrifying such a dystopia would be. Concepts like social justice, personal liberty, even love are dismissed in favour of the becoming a citizen: a person who is willing to sacrifice anything -including their life- for the preservation of the body politic. To those unsure which side of the argument Verhoeven himself lands on, he draws a direct parallel between that ideology and the mindless obedience of the icky arachnids, a trait which as far as Rue McClanahan’s scarred biology teacher is concerned, trumps our individualism and superior intellect, and which makes them superior to us.But Verhoeven knows that fascism cannot take hold without the approval -however tacit- of the broader population, so he cannily utilizes the template of the hyper militarized action films of the day, using the audience’s hunger for that type of violent wish fulfillment to point the finger at us. What the critics of the day called propaganda, is actually an indictment on our complicity in the seemingly inexorable march towards totalitarianism. Sure, he thumbs the scale by making the alien arachnids some of the most frightening, least sympathetic antagonists ever committed to film, but by hiding the origins of the conflict in a flawless takedown of the type jingoistic news reporting de rigueur on American networks, he’s encouraging us to look at how easy it is to manipulate us. And funny as it is watching a wild-eyed and hysterical Donna Reed type encouraging her kids to squish bugs, Verhoeven is asking us to recognize that by priming people from birth to accept the use of force as some sort of virtue, it’s all too easy to convince people that war and its attendant atrocities are justified and justifiable. The human wreckage this ideology has wrought is seen everywhere, from Micheal Ironside’s missing arm and Rue McClanahan’s disfigured face, to a quadriplegic recruitment officer unironically exclaiming that “the mobile infantry made me the man I am today” Verhoeven is asking us to question how we’re being manipulated, because pursuing this type of ideology is like wielding a knife without a hilt- just as likely to hurt you as it is your enemy.But this is a Paul Verhoeven movie, so all this satire is dressed up in some of the most exciting and explicitly violent action ever put in a mainstream Hollywood movie. The grotesque and terrifying effects by legendary effects artist Phil Tippit (who’s work includes the Raptors in JP and the AT-AT walkers in ESB) are astonishing even by today’s standards, and would give any modern MCU cartoon a run for their money. This truly is a fantastic film, get it in the best format you can and strap in, it’s one hell of a ride!

Well I mean Robocop was a great movie.Starship Troopers is a wonderful parody action sci fi thriller with fun spazzes of comedy. WTF?!Yes, it is all of those things. But at its heart, it is a fast-paced satire. With fantastic special effects and bloody gore. But even the gore is satirical.This is one of those movies I could watch over and over and probably never tire of it. It's one of those classics.Ahead of its time, just like RoboCop was. They don't make movies like this anymore.Go watch it, if you want to know more.

This movie, when it came out back in the day, seeing it up on the big screen was something special.Watch it today on a 55" QLED HD 4K tv, well... you can really see the age of it & that's a shame.This movie, NEEDS a massive refresh, & retelling, cut out the sex scenes, & nudity and "Lovey doviness"..Don't get me wrong, a bit is ok, but if you read the book, vs this movie, you can really tell theirs an awesome story there, & it just needs a really good director to make it happen.I've read the book, & I liked it a million times more than this movie b/c you just get a deeper story & understand the importance of sacrifice, etc..

What a superb film! Very funny, with detailed world-building and worthy of multiple viewings. Let me try to dismiss some of the criticisms:(1) It endorses fascism. No, this film is a parody of fascism! Like all the best and cleverest satire it is sympathetic with its target. For instance it evinces a real warmth, pride and sense of belonging in Federation society. But let's not accuse 'Tom and Jerry' of promoting domestic violence.(2) It is cheesy. Yes, it takes plastic, shiny cheesiness to a whole new level. It's a work of haute fromage.(3) The acting is wooden. No, the acting is excellent. It's merely that the characters are two-dimensional. This is deliberate. However they remain exciting and watchable as they enthusiastically embrace their roles in the quest for citizenship.(4) It is disloyal to the book. OK, this one may be true. I haven't read Heinlein's book yet...Btw, anyone noticed a slight resemblance to Ender's Game? Militaristic society, young characters, 'buggers' --> 'bugs'

I hope this will save some people some cash. I have this on dvd but cos love the film and wanted blu ray version. Don't bother, as a blu ray fan I can tell you, there is no difference between dvd and uprated on blu ray player to playing this blu ray direct- none. Sold my copy. I give 5 stars because for me the special affects were ahead of their time. Have to admit, this is first time I watched thinking 'hmm looks a little tired and dated'.

I know it's cheesy, but I love this movie. Sadly, the sound is awful. The 5.1 mix is all over the place. Sometimes, the dialogue is so quiet you can't hear a thing. A few seconds later, it's rattling the windows. It's the same with the effects and music. Each element is independently wandering all over the place volume-wise. You have to sit there with the volume control all the way through the film, turning it up and down. Forget adjusting your surround sound speakers, because you end up having to change each area, constantly. There's an optional 5.1 uncompressed sound option, but it's not much better. It's very flat and loses any sense of a surround experience. Maybe the DVD is a better purchase?

Never has a film been made that is so tongue in cheek all the way, and with such violent and exciting action scenes and gory deaths that you keep coming back to it. It has elements of Aliens but Verhoeven shows you a world not far removed from a future started in his RoboCop and just after Total Recall. It's hinted that a group of army leaders have taken over the world and created what they think is a Utopian Society where to be anything in life (even having babies) means you have to join the military and do service. And as military leaders are apt to do, with no one left to fight on Earth, they start a war against a load of bugs across the galaxy.This, though, is the backstory to Carmen, Rico and Dizzy's love triangle that throws them all into the mix in the fight against the bugs. Drag in the never dull Jake Busey and you have a real roller coaster that showed early CGI should not be ignored, but when used properly creates a truly fantastic backdrop.Two scenes I immediately checked on Blu Ray. Rico's solo fight against one of the big bugs and the scenes in space when the ships are attacked. Quality in sound and vision is fantastic, well worth trading up your DVD.As well as the gore and violence there is some nudity but it is worth remembering that when Verhoeven got his young cast to film the shower scene, he stripped off as well to show them not to be embarrassed. Sad that most of the main cast never really got a kick start with this, but some people will love it and others hate it.I hate top ten lists but force my arm and this is on it.

As a fan of the movie and after reading the Blu-Ray.com review of it, I hit Buy. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to check if the apparently amazing extra features made it onto the UK release.No, it seems.It looks like the US is getting an Anniversary edition of it shortly, including 4K transfer. I wish I'd waited to see if it'll make it back over here. When they have access to a rich vein of feature material, including two good commentary tracks, it seems lazy to not put them on there.I'm pondering whether to send it back to Amazon, but it's not their fault I guess. Hngh.