Starship Troopers: Crap Satire or Just a Crap Movie?

[RoninFox]

And why couldn't a country with an intergalactic spaceforce blow up an asteroid headed for Earth before it hits?

Hey, if we use our space ships to blow up asteroids what will all of our precocious teenagers drive?

Not sure I buy into idea that the whole movie is supposed to be a "propaganda film" as I'm not sure that holds up. I only really latched onto the "Would You Like to Know More?" segments as the "propaganda."  Verhoven is a decent film maker (well, sorta) so if this was his idea I suspect it would have came across better.  If it WAS his plan, yeesh, he fumbled that space football big-time.

And, Arena Football, future. Really?!

No kidding, if we haven't moved on to Rollerball by then, what's the point of the future?

[Raven]

Verhoven is a decent film maker (well, sorta) so if this was his idea I suspect it would have came across better.  If it WAS his plan, yeesh, he fumbled that space football big-time.

He still thinks Showgirls is some kind of greek masterpiece that works on a multi-level show within a show kinda thing too.   His visions don't line up with his final products.

[Cilliandrew]

Eh, Starship Troopers is one of my favourites...  I was in college back in 97 when it first came out.. Was on the fence on whether i should waste my money, so i waited for it to come out on video.. Rented it when it came out, watched it...and immediately re-wound it and watched it again... the only other movie i ever did that with was "ALIENS"..

Over the years i have heard SO many stories about the making of this movie.. That Verhoeven was striving to make a serious WWII movie while the screen writer Ed Neumeier was always gunning for satire, that Neumeier originally wrote the script with NO thought of STARSHIP TROOPERS in mind, but that a producer somewhere, upon reading it, said "hey, this kinda sounds like STARSHIP TROOPERS, i wonder if anyone has bought up those rights yet..." ... That Verhoeven only read the first couple of chapters of Heinlein's book and then quit because of boredom and depression.

Reading up on the movie on Wikipedia there's a quote attributed to verhoeven where he says the ultimate message of the film is that" War makes fascists of us all", and that the intention is to lace WWII era Nazism onto modern day American life. 

I have actually always found this movie to be exceedingly clever, and the third in Verhoeven's trilogy of satirical scifi (Robocop and Total Recall being the other members, all among my favourites.)

I have never been able to bring myself to watch SHOWGIRLS, based on the exceedingly scathing reception it gets, but based on my love for Verhoeven's other projects....SOME day i'm going to watch Showgirls because... I just have a feeling that there is something there that the masses at large are missing..

I have to admit i avoided seeing the riff on this because i felt like trying to riff a satirical masterpiece of this calibre was just defeating the purpose, and actually made the riffers look a bit silly. 

However, if there really is going to be a replay, i may take the time to check it out.

[Darth Geek]

Over the years i have heard SO many stories about the making of this movie.. That Verhoeven was striving to make a serious WWII movie while the screen writer Ed Neumeier was always gunning for satire, that Neumeier originally wrote the script with NO thought of STARSHIP TROOPERS in mind, but that a producer somewhere, upon reading it, said "hey, this kinda sounds like STARSHIP TROOPERS, i wonder if anyone has bought up those rights yet..." ... That Verhoeven only read the first couple of chapters of Heinlein's book and then quit because of boredom and depression.

All of this makes a lot of sense, given how the movie turned out.

[Raven]

I have never been able to bring myself to watch SHOWGIRLS, based on the exceedingly scathing reception it gets, but based on my love for Verhoeven's other projects....SOME day i'm going to watch Showgirls because... I just have a feeling that there is something there that the masses at large are missing..

I recommend tracking down a copy of the VIP edition.  There's a commentary track on there that's really funny. 

[RandyMistie]

OK, movie shmovie, let's talk the book. Now, ST was the very first Heinlein book I ever read. Then came "Stranger in a Strange Land" yadda yadda, I liked "Robo-Cop", I liked "Total Recall" ("liked" not loved, All Phillip K. Dick's BOOKS, I loved, naturally), so when I heard Paul was doing Troopers with a big budget, I thought, cool!

Then I saw the Starship Troopers in the movie. I can forgive a lot, (except for Denise Richards who is one of the stupidest pretty girls on the planet, although, stupid girls are not attractive to me...), but in the book, The Starship Troopers were basically, "Iron-Man" from the comics, (many have suggested over the years that they may have been his inspiration for Stan Lee).

They were battle exo-skeletons able to drop from orbit, leap over mountain ranges... each piece of battle-armor was like a personal starship. They had shoulder mounted laser cannons, grenade launchers in their wrists, and nukes on their backs, (which they could survive because of the aforementioned battle suits! They didn't wear short-sleeves into a nuke fight! Plus, none of the planets they landed on had a human-breathable atmosphere!)

When I saw the Troopers in the movie, I was immediately un-impressed. Although the underlying themes of the story were fairly well captured, (are we the good guys are we the bad guys?), the acting, the dialogue, and all other aspects of the art of the novel (and good movie-making) were lost.

Although the make-up and computer effects were quite good. Just wasted.

Great RiffTrax, though! All of the sound problems from Birdemic (in my theater, anyway), were completely solved, I could hear all the Riffs even over the action scenes and they were very good.  Not my favorite RiffTrax, but that's like saying The Mona Lisa is not my favorite Da Vinci work... At this point, it's like, major and lesser masterpieces... for me...

REV RANDY!

[RandyMistie]

Oh, it is interesting to note that Robert Heinlein was an ultra-conservative, Republican ex-marine who, after "Starship Troopers" and "Stanger in a Strange Land" ("I Grok Spock"), had flower-children coming up to him on the street offering him flowers and words of praise, that he rejected. In fact he wrote, "I hate hippies!" and basically walled off his house to keep the hippies away.

ST seemed to many to be an indictment of Vietnam and "Stranger..." seemed to embody the alienation that the alternative movements of the time embraced. Unwittingly, he had tapped into this and became a hippie icon...

I think that is very interesting and telling of the best writers. As writers we must be dichotomous, in that we must see every side of all arguments in order to make realistic characters and situations that we may, as people find offensive.

A good example of this is in George R. R. Martin's work, in which even those that we might call "evil" characters can be sympathized with, and those that we might identify as "good" can do bad things... shades of grey.

NOT "50 Shades of Gray" ladies, that's just gross!

You ladies!  With your lady things... Crazy people...!

[MSTJedi]

Oh, it is interesting to note that Robert Heinlein was an ultra-conservative, Republican ex-marine who, after "Starship Troopers" and "Stanger in a Strange Land" ("I Grok Spock"), had flower-children coming up to him on the street offering him flowers and words of praise, that he rejected. In fact he wrote, "I hate hippies!" and basically walled off his house to keep the hippies away.

I haven't read many Heinlein books, but the first I read was The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. I picked it up from the library on a whim since I love SF novels, but I was surprised by the politics of the book. Instead of Star Trek's socialist utopia, capitalism is king and when the two main characters meet a young man with socialist ideas, they treat him like he's mentally ill. I read most of Starship Troopers, but had to return it before I finished the last couple of chapters. I don't remember a lot, but I did like the exo-suit aspect over the blindly running in with a helmet and useless chest armor.

[losingmydignity]

So the insects are like the vermin fascists want to eradicate....

Oh, I give up. I'm handing back in my MFA.

[Johnny Unusual]

The aesthetic of fascism is one that makes a fetish of war, pageantry, corporal punishment (Hitler would have loved Casper's whipping scene), etc. Susan Sontag wrote that this aesthetic also contains: "the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)" not to mention propaganda as mentioned by someone in an earlier post.
The film does contain all these elements (in fact sounds like some contemporary Hollywood films I could think of) but to what affect?

Well, the effect is (unlike, say 300, which I also enjoyed, but it's much more of a guilty pleasure that seems to genuinely believe that fascism is super-great) to recreate this in the modern action movie, which disturbingly fits seamlessly.  And while it is an action movie, it is also an exploration of a fascist society where, as Raven mentioned, it assumes that you are already a pro-fascist viewer, and the film is preaching to the choir, but the irony the audience (I pray) finds their values rather upsetting (You're only a citizen if you fight, for example).  So basically the cause is to show how propaganda can make a horrible belief system seem appealing and seductive.

Has anyone read the original novel?  I've been led to understand that it was a great example of satire, and considering what I know of Robert Heinlein I don't doubt it.  This could just be filmmakers failing to deliver on the message that was already there.

I heard the very opposite, that it is a very unironic war story, not unlike the Green Berets.

So the insects are like the vermin fascists want to eradicate....

Oh, I give up. I'm handing back in my MFA.

No, the humans are fascist.  The were fascist long before the start of the film and will be long after.  And they are the heroes.  What the insects represent is simply "the enemy", as monsters (think Invasion USA or Rocket Attack USA) which we MUST hate.  The catch is, like Inglorious Basterds, is that there is a hint that there should be sympathy for them ("They're afraid!") which is quickly snuffed out (Yay!), but propaganda never has sympathy for the outsider.

[RandyMistie]

I don't actually think you ladies are Crazy People and I love your lady things! Although, the book "50 Shades of Gray" completely confused me. Just when I thought I had studied all of your psychology and your lady things... this book threw me for a loop. I understood that I will never understand you ladies!

And I have been married for almost 30 years, now. Please have mercy on us stupid men-folk, you ladies!

I thought, you liked men to be your slaves, but then, this HUGELY popular book seems to want the ladies to be slaves to men? That's not right. And a BIG step backwards... Hell, I enjoy the whole, I cook and clean and sleep at your feet and being a man-slave.  That's fun for me, (men, don't mock me! Being raped by a woman is like... awesome? I can't find the words...).

Anyways, my wife hated the book, I read it, because I want to be "tuned in" to whatever women like and I read the original "Twilight" fan/fic that the book is based on, and I just shook my head.

I was confuzzled by women, yet again! You are all a wonderful mystery to me, (and I believe you are a mystery for all of us with testicles).

REV RANDY!

[RandyMistie]

Johnny Unusual makes all excellent points, as do many others. But, I believe, that Verhoven's vision of Nazis and the State Propaganda, is a little "left" of Heinlein's message, which is, in fact more like "300" which Johnny rightly points to.

However, Heinlein's genius was that he rattled his saber for Colonial, Empirical Capitalism and yet made a poignant argument for the self determination of another species/race (Native Americans/Africans, etc... pick your favorite target for European, Whitey, expansionism, with our tiny penis behavior...), in that the "bugs" thought that we were a threat to their territory.

In the book, The psychic doctor, played by Doogie Howzer, makes contact with a Queen and he does indeed, sense that She is afraid, and the Queen in turn senses that HE is afraid. They were alone in the book... And She says telepathically, (paraphrased from memory, as I read it over 35 years ago...) "This war hatches from fear. If we did not fear each other... we could co-exist, the galaxy is a vast place..."

And he kills Her. And then keeps the message to himself, because he is ruled by a military-industrial complex that wants a victory and you can guess the rest.

It was a very good book, I'm jus' sayin', not a good movie, Verhoven just missed the ideas and was buried in the past...

Now, Heinlein, died of a brain tumor and his last book, "The Number of the Beast"  was a bizarre trip that I think was actually written by the tumor... No disrespect intended, but if you read it, you might feel the same way... I think he was hallucinating badly, for like, 800 pages...

When the ship full of naked people, (because nudity is GOOD), go through some event horizon to an alternate reality and meet The Wizard of Oz, and then another reality where they meet the "Lensmen of Gor" (From which the classic MST3K movie "Outlaw of Gor" is derived, a series of sadomasochistic-bondage fantasy novels)  I just put the book down and said to myself... he's not long for this world, now...

But he was a great writer who, like myself, poked himself right in the eye and was at constant war with himself and his beliefs or non-beliefs and I think we should all live in that place.

[RoninFox]

Has anyone read the original novel?  I've been led to understand that it was a great example of satire, and considering what I know of Robert Heinlein I don't doubt it.  This could just be filmmakers failing to deliver on the message that was already there.

I heard the very opposite, that it is a very unironic war story, not unlike the Green Berets.

The more I hear now, both here and looking elsewhere, yeah that seems like the case.  I'm sure plenty of people saw the satire just because they disagreed with the intended tone and message and figured the author felt the same.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

They were battle exo-skeletons able to drop from orbit, leap over mountain ranges... each piece of battle-armor was like a personal starship. They had shoulder mounted laser cannons, grenade launchers in their wrists, and nukes on their backs, (which they could survive because of the aforementioned battle suits! They didn't wear short-sleeves into a nuke fight! Plus, none of the planets they landed on had a human-breathable atmosphere!)

Can't help but think there were production meetings where they said stuff like:

Those nukes are cool.
The suits will not let us see the actors faces.
All that laser CGI will be too expensive in post.
OK, dump the suits and the lasers, go with regular bullet effects.
What about the nukes?
Yeah, we gotta keep the nukes, just have them duck and cover after firing one, no one will notice....

[losingmydignity]

The aesthetic of fascism is one that makes a fetish of war, pageantry, corporal punishment (Hitler would have loved Casper's whipping scene), etc. Susan Sontag wrote that this aesthetic also contains: "the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)" not to mention propaganda as mentioned by someone in an earlier post.
The film does contain all these elements (in fact sounds like some contemporary Hollywood films I could think of) but to what affect?

Well, the effect is (unlike, say 300, which I also enjoyed, but it's much more of a guilty pleasure that seems to genuinely believe that fascism is super-great) to recreate this in the modern action movie, which disturbingly fits seamlessly.  And while it is an action movie, it is also an exploration of a fascist society where, as Raven mentioned, it assumes that you are already a pro-fascist viewer, and the film is preaching to the choir, but the irony the audience (I pray) finds their values rather upsetting (You're only a citizen if you fight, for example).  So basically the cause is to show how propaganda can make a horrible belief system seem appealing and seductive.

Has anyone read the original novel?  I've been led to understand that it was a great example of satire, and considering what I know of Robert Heinlein I don't doubt it.  This could just be filmmakers failing to deliver on the message that was already there.

I heard the very opposite, that it is a very unironic war story, not unlike the Green Berets.

So the insects are like the vermin fascists want to eradicate....

Oh, I give up. I'm handing back in my MFA.

No, the humans are fascist.  The were fascist long before the start of the film and will be long after.  And they are the heroes.  What the insects represent is simply "the enemy", as monsters (think Invasion USA or Rocket Attack USA) which we MUST hate.  The catch is, like Inglorious Basterds, is that there is a hint that there should be sympathy for them ("They're afraid!") which is quickly snuffed out (Yay!), but propaganda never has sympathy for the outsider.

My bad...I meant to say the humans are fascist and the bugs the stand in for the dehumanized victims of fascist terror. What I"m still confused about is whether or not the bugs were a real threat....but honestly I'm ready to move on the October show and the politics of consumption.