Starship Troopers (film)

Starship Troopers is a 1997 film directed by Paul Verhoeven, written by Edward Neumeier, and starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer and Denise Richards. The movie is loosely based on the novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.

Cast

Actor/Actress	Role
Casper Van Dien	Johnny Rico
Dina Meyer	Dizzy Flores
Denise Richards	Carmen Ibanez
Jake Busey	Private Ace Levy
Neil Patrick Harris	Colonel Carl Jenkins
Clancy Brown	Career Sergeant Zim
Seth Gilliam	Private Sugar Watkins
Patrick Muldoon	Zander Barcalow
Michael Ironside	Lieutenant Jean Rasczak
Marshall Bell	General Owen

Plot

Set in the 23rd century, Starship Troopers follows a period of approximately two years after the graduation from high school of a young man named Juan "Johnnie" Rico (Van Dien). After much mulling over his future, and disagreements with his parents on the issue, Rico follows his girlfriend Carmen (Richards) and best friend Carl (Harris) into the military service in the hopes of becoming a citizen, a privilege afforded only those who serve the military government ("The Federation"). Rico, however, is assigned to Mobile Infantry, as opposed to officer school, like his two friends.

Rico soon finds the gruelling boot camp training program more difficult than anticipated, with terrible injuries being inflicted by the officers in an effort to teach the new soldiers. Johnny also finds that "Dizzy" (Meyers), a girl from high school who is clearly enamored with him, has joined the service as well and requested to train at the same boot camp as he. While Rico rebels against Dizzy's attention, he soon finds her a talented and useful friend. With success in leadership during training, he is promoted to a squad leader, but soon after is disciplined for indirectly causing the death of one of his squad during a training exercise. He resigns and intends to return home.

As he leaves camp, a newsreel shows the destruction of Rico's home city, Buenos Aires, from a meteor impact. War is declared against a race of giant insects (called "the Bugs," by the humans) living in a distant solar system on a planet called "Klendathu" who directed the meteor at Earth. Rico requests, and is granted, reinstatement and is then sent off to fight in this new war.

His first engagement, fighting the bugs on one their planets, is a complete disaster, with over 80% of the soldiers being wounded or killed. Rico is wounded, but recovers. Meanwhile, his relationship with Dizzy grows as his relationship with Carmen ends. While Rico continues to scorn Dizzy's romantic advances, they are assigned to another ground attack on the Bugs. This time more successful, Rico is chided by his high school history teacher, now his commanding officer, Jean Rasczak (Ironside), for passing up a good thing with Dizzy. Rico takes his advice and consumates the relationship with her.

Soon, though, a mission takes them into a trap as they are assigned to investigate the silence of an outpost on one of the bug worlds. They discover, via General Owen (Bell), that the bugs have intelligence and are "sucking" the brains out of humans to learn more about them. As the troopers realize their situation, an attack breaks out. Both Rasczak and Dizzy are killed. Help arrives when Carmen, flying a support shuttle, picks up the squadron and air lifts them out.

With a huge offensive planned by the military for Klendathu, Rico takes command of his platoon, the "Roughnecks." As the battle begins, Rico's squad on the ground, they receive a distress signal from Carmen's escape pod -- their ship has been destroyed. Rico mounts a search party, going off mission despite the likelihood that Carmen has been killed by the bugs. Much to his surprise, he rescues her from a violent gaggle of bugs, including a huge "Brain Bug." As they escape certain death, they find that the other platoons have captured the Brain Bug. Carl, now a telepathic intelligence officer, ascertains that the bug is scared, drawing cheers of joy from the jubilant crowd of military infantry.

Criticisms of the adaptation

A report in an American Cinematographer article contemporaneous with the film's release stated that the Heinlein novel was optioned well into the pre-production period of the film, which had a working title of Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine; most of the writing team reportedly were unaware of the novel at the time. According to the DVD commentary, Paul Verhoeven has admitted to never even finishing the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both bored and depressed. This explains both the vast divergence between the two, and the volume of the uproar amongst Heinlein's fans (on Usenet and in other places) when the movie was released. Many fans of the book gave it derisive nicknames like "Head of the Class Goes to War" and "Doogie Himmler." (In reference to Neil Patrick Harris)http://www.badmovies.org/othermovies/startroopers/

The film was also characterized by a conspicuous absence of anything resembling Heinlein's mechanized Mobile Infantry; troopers wore an unpowered ensemble which seemed to differ only slightly from modern-day SWAT gear. A substantial portion of the soldiers' anatomy was left unprotected, and what little armor was present seemed to be of little use. Reportedly, it was for budget reasons.

Some dialogue is straight out of the book, or some variation of it, while many of the dialogue and themes are not from Heinlein's story. Additionally, some of the characters have been significantly altered. Flores, who was male in the book, is female in the movie in order to add a love interest sub-plot, while another character who dies halfway through the novel survives to the end of the movie.

This movie polarised both popular audiences and critics, as did the original book. On one level, the movie tells a straightforward action-adventure science fiction story, with attractive stars, innovative computer-generated imagery, and an entertaining but -- as some people interpreted it -- clichéd and often ludicrous plot. A prominent theme of the film is the practice by humans of senseless violence without reflection or empathy. As such, it attracted widely divergent responses.

Fans of the novel often regarded it as a shallow insult to a great work. Others regarded it as a satire of American gung-ho attitudes and what they saw as the book's endorsement of militarism. Some even considered it an artistic experiment in evoking certain emotions (such as sadism, militarism, and patriotism). Meanwhile, many simply assumed that the movie was endorsing fascism and responded to this negatively or positively depending on their political beliefs.

Politics of Starship Troopers

In his commentary on the DVD edition of the film, director Paul Verhoeven states unambiguously that the movie's message is "War makes fascists of us all", and that he sees the movie as a satire of American militarism. On the same commentary, the screenwriter broadly concurs, although he sees the satire as applying to the whole of human history, rather than solely to the U.S.

Since the filmmakers did not make these statements at the time of the film's release, viewers have interpreted it variously: as a satire, as a celebration of fascism, or as a simple action film.

Satire on militarism

The film depicts a future state that is extremely militaristic and uncompromisingly warlike in its attitude toward a race of bugs that inhabits a distant planetary system. The military training is cruel: officers purposely wound recruits, and flogging is a mode of punishment. Furthermore, the humans fight the bugs with inadequate weaponry and tactics (e.g., the Mobile Infantry and their assault rifles) and by doing so, it feeds the war machine.

Verhoeven's use of fascist emblems to imply criticism of the Federation may be related to his background. He and some of his crew come from the Netherlands, which suffered heavily in World War II. Verhoeven himself never witnessed Nazi atrocities as a child, but his home was close to the German rocket base and frequently bombed by allied airforce, hence the pervasive feel of moral equivalence between a victim and a culprit in all his movies, not only in this one.

Complications

Despite its militarism and xenophobia, the society depicted in the film also contains notable differences from fascist ideology, and at times seems more reminiscent of liberal politics. For one, the society depicted in the film is very open about sex and sexuality. Men and women bathe together, and they appear to feel natural about it. (This, however, may also reflect the desexualized valorization of the body articulated in, for example, Susan Sontag's essay, Fascinating FascismFascinating Fascism by Susan Sontag.). Second, humanity's army consists of soldiers of all races and sexes. Third, military service is not obligatory, and some civilians that have not served in the military are well respected (as evident by the high-society status of Rico's parents). It is often believed that only citizens with military service are allowed to vote, however, the book explains that Federal Service is required to vote, and that there are other options besides the military. The film also explicitly uses the term Federal Service rather than Military Service. Also, if you are in military service, they will pay your university fee's, as exemplified by one character wanting to go to Harvard.

Censorship

In 1999, the video release was banned in Germany for teenagers under the age of 18 due to excessive brutality, glorifying militarism, xenophobic tendencies and an overall nationalistic attitude. However, a version cut by 16 minutes is still shown on German television.

Spinoff media

Games

In 1997, Avalon Hill released Starship Troopers: Prepare For Battle!, a boardgame based on the film version rather than Heinlein's book. Its beer and pretzel gameplay focused on limited skirmishes rather than larger battles. The "Skinnies" do not appear, nor is there a political element. ^*

In 2000, a real-time tactics video game titled Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy was released. This game also incorporated the powered suits in Heinlein's novel into the Verhoeven version of the Mobile Infantry. It was developed by Australian software company Blue Tongue Entertainment.

A first-person shooter game also titled Starship Troopers was released 15 November 2005. This version was developed by Strangelite Studios and published by Empire Interactive. Set five years after the events of the movie, the game also featured Casper van Dien voicing the in-game version of Johnny Rico.

Half-Life 2's Antlions have been compared by many to resemble Verhoeven's bugs. Mods have even been created by fans to reenact scenes from the movie.

The developers of the computer game StarCraft have openly stated that one of their inspirations was (mainly Verhoeven's) Starship Troopers. On Battle.net, Starship Troopers battles are a popular type of custom scenario. Although there is a wide variation in the specific rules, they generally pit a small group of well-armed Terrans against a massive number of oncoming Zerg and challenges the players to survive as long as possible.

Comic books

The movie was released simultaneously with a graphic novelization, which retold events from the movie. There were also additional series that were released based in the Verhoeven universe, though not directly related to the movie. Further series were published by Dark Horse and Markosia.

Sequels

The film was followed by a direct-to-video sequel, Hero of the Federation, in 2004, along with the CGI animated television series Starship Troopers Chronicles in 1999.

In May 2006, MovieHole.net reported that Ed Neumeier returned to write the script for a second sequel, Starship Troopers 3,and also stated that original cast members would be returning including Casper Van Dien. Van Dien had this to say on the script, “The script is along the same line as the first. It is Awesome”.

Arena football

In the movie, arena football is played at the high school level on Earth, referred to in the film as Jump Ball. One of the first scenes in the movie is an arena football game, and several of the main characters are players. In fact Rico is a star wide receiver for his team who scores the winning touchdown in the game. He uses some of his skills in his military career.

Arena football, like other elements of the film, does not appear in the original novel: it was invented in 1982. The game depicted in the movie only closely resembles arena football, as it appears that touchdowns are worth 5 points instead of the traditional 6, and 7-man teams (instead of 8) play on a visibly wider field than the hockey rinks that arena football players work on.

Trivia

The Trooper's combat uniforms (shown in the movie poster above) were later reused on the Lost Galaxy series for military personnel aboard the colony ship Terra Venture. The uniforms were also repainted and reused in episodes of the TV series Firefly as Alliance soldiers' uniforms. The uniforms, along with footage from numerous sci-fi films including Starship Troopers itself, were used in the sci-fi flop Impostor, starring Gary Sinise.
The original soundtrack for the film was composed by Basil Poledouris. The soundtrack has been released on CD and is still available in online stores.
The quote "Come on, you apes, you want to live forever?", repeated by multiple characters in the film, is seen at the beginning of one of the chapters in the novel, and is quite similar to decorated Marine Daniel Daly's "Come on, you sons of bitches, you want to live forever?"
Several cameos in the film include producer Jon Davison as the angry Buenos Aires resident who says to the FedNet camera, "The only good Bug is a dead Bug!", and screenwriter Ed Neumeier as the quickly captured, convicted, and condemned murderer in another FedNet clip. Former US Marine Dale Dye, whose company Warriors, Inc. provided technical military advice on the film, appeared as a high-ranking officer following the capture of the Brain Bug ("What's it thinking, Colonel?").

Footnotes

External links

Starship Troopers | 1997 films | English-language films | Science fiction films | Films based on science fiction books

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