Title: Starship Troopers
Rating: 4 Stars
After Robocop and Total Recall, Starship Troopers is the last of the three Verhoeven films set in the near future that I planned to watch.
Starship Troopers is a remake of Robert Heinlein’s novel. I read it a couple of years ago. I titled it Sparta in Space and the link is here. To recap, the plot was fast paced and exciting. The politics of the novel is problematic, but considering the time in which it was written (1959, at the height of the Cold War where it seemed to many that we were fighting for our way of life, if not existence), I was able to at least feel some empathy for it.
Apparently, Verhoeven did not. The story is that he read the first several chapters of Heinlein’s novel but could not finish it. He had others summarize it for him. He then proceeded to create a film that makes a mockery of it.
Let’s get right to the plot. Set in the 23rd century, Earth is now under one quasi-fascist government. It has separated its people into citizens and civilians. Citizens are those that have volunteered for military duty and have served their government. They are an exalted people that embody the loyalty and duty that the government requires. Only citizens are allowed to vote and to enter politics and, apparently are more likely to be given permission to bear children.
Civilians are everybody else. They’re not overtly discriminated against, but, to citizens, civilians are leaches that reap the benefits but are unwilling to shoulder the burdens of the state.
Johnny Rico is a handsome young man who’s just a bit feckless. Rico has no great desire to be a citizen. His parents, civilians both, encourage him not to enlist. However, his girlfriend and best friend plan to become citizens, so he pretty much spontaneously decides to enlist. While his much smarter and talented friends land plum careers, his middling test scores and aptitude tests lands him straight into mobile infantry.
Here, we see the brutality of war. The human race is in a deadly fight against an alien force that resemble large insects. Training for the infantry is brutal. The leaders are pitiless. Infantry soldiers are dropped into alien worlds where they are overwhelmed by the insect attackers. Rico gets seriously injured. Friends, lovers, and mentors drop like flies.
Through it all, Rico continues to get promoted. By the end of the film, he’s the acknowledged leader of his unit and he’s a battle hardened, brutally effective clone of the men before him.
He is now worthy of the title citizen.
This film reminds me a bit of Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove. Based upon a thriller novel, apparently Kubrick first tried to make a serious film but the absurdity of nuclear war eventually led him to making a great comedy instead.
Make no doubt about it, Heinlein’s novel is not in any way ironic. He is absolutely earnest in his future world of duty / loyalty and the benefits of those who make the sacrifice to become a citizen.
Verhoeven’s film is quite different. The world government has pretty overt Nazi style elements. The film features state propaganda that appears Stalinist in its subtlety. Dehumanizing the opponent is the first step taken in a total war. Here, it’s explicit because the opponent aren’t human but are grotesque insects. There is propaganda footage encouraging children to stomp cockroaches dead so that even the youngest can feel part of the total war effort.
It’s not clear if it was intentional or not, but the acting, with only a couple of exceptions, is pretty uniformly wooden. Now, you wouldn’t expect a great performance from someone like a Denise Richards, but so many of the other actors appear nearly without affect that it certainly seems possible that it was intentional. In a fascist, propaganda-full world where the individual is nothing more than cannon fodder for the state, having people essentially be vacuous blank slates does not seem unreasonable.
As with the other Verhoeven films I’ve watched, the violence is extreme. Since this is a war film, the violence is even more explicit and graphic. Soldiers are torn apart on screen. In the aftermath of a battle, body pieces are strewn throughout the field. Again, I have no idea if it was intentional, but many of the battle scenes seem reminiscent of actual battles. The military infantry landing on the alien planet looked like D-Day. When the soldiers were trapped at a remote outpost, the insect attack reminded me of legends surrounding the Alamo. Finally, walking the battlefield littered with the dead reminded me of Mathew Brady’s Civil War pictures.
From what I remember when it was released (1997), it was pretty controversial for its nudity and its violence. I remember that people were upset at the glorification of pitiless war. If so, it’s pretty clear to me with the hindsight of some 25 years that those people were really missing the point.
Verhoeven was lampooning the idea of total war by a totalitarian, fascist world government. If you have a stomach for the extreme violence, then there’s a good chance that you’ll find the film caustically amusing. It certainly is no Dr Strangelove, but I did find it entertaining.
Now that I’ve completed my little Verhoeven film festival, where do they rank? Robocop is pretty clearly on top, followed by Starship Troopers, and lagging far back in the rear, Total Recall.
dorkenstein 