Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

“Starship Troopers” (1997)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Satisfaction:Thrilled Tags: Sci-Fi, Satire, Violence

In the hands of Verhoeven, the mammoth sci-fi battle flick is one of the most astonishingly bad films ever made, a monument to inept filmmaking on a colossal scale.

Paul Verhoeven is exactly the wrong man to have made Starship Troopers.

The acting by all concerned makes the cast of Melrose Place look like the Royal Shakespeare Company, as statuesque model-types bark out lines like ‘Everyone fights, no one quits!’ and ‘Kill ’em! Kill ’em all!’ with clueless conviction.

Maybe the filmmakers are so lost in their slumbering visual effects that they don’t give a hoot about the movie’s scariest implications.

Lacks the courage of the book’s fascist conclusions.

It turns out that the backlash towards Starship Troopers wasn’t nearly as big as I initially thought. Nevertheless, the film was divisive; the geeks loved it, everyone else hated it, and unfortunately, both groups missed the real point. Paul Verhoeven’s satire creates a modern propaganda film, much like the kind that emerged from the World Wars, complete with notions of mind-reading, patriotic commercials, and the call to obliterate an entire “alien” race; everything from the ultra violence to the cheesy performances on some actor’s parts is calculated to serve the purpose of the satire. The frightening part is how relevant the film is in our 21st century USA.

Meet Johnny Rico, a recent high school graduate who decides to enlist in the mobile infantry of the future to do his part and become a “citizen.” Or so he tells himself. Johnny really joins because his best friend Karl, and more importantly his girlfriend Carmen are enlisting. He soon finds that being a jarhead isn’t as neat as he originally thought; death surrounds him as the federation wages war on a race of giant bugs. Much more violence ensues as the film progresses.

It’s been said that Starship Troopers misses the real point, which is that war makes fascists of all of us. I would argue that that’s exactly the point of Starship Troopers! Look at Karl, Rico’s best friend: he’d always been a little cocky and dangerous, but as the movie progressed, he became darker in his thinking (represented by the dark clothing he begins to wear). His thoughts are no longer about people, but about numbers: how many we lose versus how many we kill. This cold distance is actually making him more insect-like, and soon, a Nazi-resembling Karl has become the leader of the fascist regime—a leader who’s willing to sacrifice for a war that may not have been necessary to begin with.

The change in Rico himself is apparent as well. Life in the infantry was too rough, and he was ready to stroll down “washed-out lane” until the war dealt him a huge blow: his family was killed by a bug attack. All of a sudden, the “live and let live” policy seems ridiculous to the new-and-improved Fascist Rico as he roars, “I say we kill ‘em all!” When you think about it, the older, experienced teachers and professors, the ones who have previously experienced war, have been pushing fascism and the “insect-think” mentality since the film started, but their students either resisted or blindly accepted.

(What I find interesting is that while the humans are becoming more bug-like in their thinking, they keep discovering that the bugs are more human than anyone had ever realized.)

There are at least three occasions in the film in which Rico regurgitates a line or philosophy that was expressed by his hero, and the troop’s own demagogue, Mr. Rasczak. I’m reminded of Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct when Michael Douglas recites, “You going to charge me for smoking?” Each time, and in both Verhoeven films, the repetition marks a change in the character, but perhaps the critic was right: perhaps the lines are being spoken with “clueless conviction.” But maybe that’s the point; Rico and his friends are fighting a war that they don’t understand. Half the time that Rico tries to say anything of significance, he merely repeats what he heard before, because he knows nothing else, only that this is how he’s supposed to feel. But you know how Rico knows that Rasczak has true conviction? Because when Rasczak says, “If you don’t do your job, I’ll shoot you myself,” he points with the metallic arm that replaces his lost one.

A mark of a great movie is longevity and relevance. Being nearly 10 years old, even on the surface, Starship Troopershas aged well. The visual effects are still among the best of today’s crop, if not better. Just like great visual feasts such as The Fellowship of the Ring, Starship Troopers, made in 1997, uses a variety of techniques, from models to matte paintings to CG, in order to create a believable yet fantastical world of the future. In addition, the violent world depicted in the film requires a lot of blood and gore, so Verhoeven uses make-up, CG, and real life amputees to convincingly show humans being massacred by giant insects (yes, that’s a funny sentence to write). What’s noteworthy is that amidst all of these spectacles and visual effects smorgasbords, I never felt the boredom that comes from an empty demo reel of a film (you know, the feeling you got when watching the T-Rex fight in Peter Jackson’s King Kong). All of the effects are here for a purpose, and every fight serves that purpose, pushing the notion of desensitization that comes from war, and the simultaneous glorification of its violence.

(I also must add somewhere that Basil Poledouris’s score is rich and classic; the main theme will stay in my head for weeks at a time.)

But more importantly, the themes of the film are even more relevant now than they were in 1997; in a post-9/11 America, the implications of this film can be disturbing. Here we have a film about a cocky empire that is dealt a critical blow through an unforeseen attack (though the keen observer will note that the attack did not come unprovoked). After the destruction of Buenos Aires in the film, propaganda commercials display the devastation in graphic detail, with angry citizens spouting out phrases like “the only good bug is a dead bug!” Soon, kids are stomping on helpless bugs on the sidewalk as their parents squeal with glee. Does this not remind anyone of ignorant Americans demeaning any person who could pass for Middle Eastern? The federation, in classic knee-jerk style, decides to invade, but soon suffers another blow; their invasion was based on false information and underestimation (“Someone made a big goddamn mistake!”). The federation does finally strike back, taking down the enemy’s city, and finally capturing the “brain bug” behind it all. It shivers pathetically and the leaders proclaim, “He’s afraid!” Isn’t that what we were all thinking and cheering when we saw a pathetic, shaggy-haired Saddam pasted on every channel?

The most unnerving part of the metaphor comes at the very end of the film, when the rejuvenated federation proudly displays the captive “brain bug.” The fleet prepares for another invasion as title cards hopefully proclaim, “They’ll Keep Fighting, And They’ll Win!”

Starship Troopers has not been given the credit that it deserves; in typical Verhoeven fashion, its pertinent message is shown through violence and spectacle. It’s what you’d expect from the man, yet based on some people’s reactions, you’d think they’d never seen Robocop before.