STARSHIP TROOPERS
ALDO BLOISE
Starship troopers – Would you like to know more?
Few years have flourished in the noble art of creating cult movies like my beloved 1997. Think
about this, other than major-production masterpieces like “Titanic” and “Good Will Hunting” or
“LA Confidential” and “Jurassic Park”, in the same year “Hercules” came out, my favorite disney
movie for so many reasons I would need an entire blog to explain, same year Tarantino gave us
“Jackie Brown” and PT Anderson blessed us all with the marvelous “Boogie Nights”. Then we
discovered Milla Jovovich being the “Fifth Element” and Keanu Reeves a “Devil's Advocate”.
Later that same year Vincent D'Onofrio looked a lot like an Edgar-suited alien in the first “Man in
Black” movie and John Who directed a crazy AF charismatic duel between crazy AF actors Nic
Cage and John Travolta in “Face Off”.
Oh, and “Gummo” and “Lost Highways” and the original “Funny Games” were released, three
gems for which I don't let a day pass by without thanking that giant spaghetti-monster we all call
God.
Last but not least, in 1997 director PWS Anderson gave us the unforgettable “Event Horizon”. This
picture is made more and more amazing by the fact that other than having a terrible director (we're
talking here about the guy who brought us “Mortal Kombat” and all the “Resident Evil” movies,
with zero plot whatsoever, zero pathos and sub-zero (ah!) respect of two cornerstone gaming
franchises), this claustrophobic sci-fi horror movie suffered several budget cuts and various
problems during production and post-production.
Anderson though actually pulled off a unique bunny out of his hat and would later go on marrying
the above cited Milla J., whom I still consider the most glorious woman I have ever seen, so
probably I'm the one who got it all wrong in the cornerstone game called life.
Anyway, we can all agree that 1997 was a blooming year for us, the silver screen aficionados.
Yet there's still one little masterpiece who hides itself in the blurry lines of time. I'm talking, of
course, about Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers.
Let's start from the very beginning: Starship Troopers is a movie based on a novel for young
american boys written by Robert A. Heinlein and published in 1959. It is a movie about a gang of
high school buddies who want to affirm themselves in a right wing, militarist society and find out
the only way to do so is to go to war with space-bugs. Throughout the plot we have our protagonist,
Jonny Rico, who's deeply succubus of his girlfriend Carmen. She likes his macho-don'tknowmath
approach to life and dreams of becoming a spaceship pilot. Useless to say that when she decides to
join, he does too. Unluckily for our hero, Carmen meets Zander, who's the macho-knowmath type
of guy and wants to become a pilot as well. So she decides to leave childhood behind having the
courtesy to give the carousel one last ride. Our hero finds himself heartbroken, fighting eight foot
tall arachnid aliens on foot, accompanied by his old stalker Dizzy and a joyous bandwagon of
redneck earthlings. At first they train, then they fight, then some of them die and some of them get
promoted. And the circle of life starts all over again.
Gotta be honest with you, if Starship Troopers was only this much, one could understand why
critics and public almost unanimously slammed this movie, back in his days. Everything already
seen, everything already told.
But i'm gonna tell you why, imho, this picture is a hidden gem of sci-fi cinema. I'm gonna tell you
what kept it together 20 years ago. And still does. The Attention to Details.
First of all, narration flows perfectly, paced and handled by a mashup of web and Tv war journal,
the federal network. The main story takes turns with newsflash and newsletters about government
related issues like children with huge guns, zero tolerance crime management and useful tips on
how to cripple giant bugs. Combine this with the interactive style in the editing, and you feel
thrown into the movie, you feel part of the Federation. Like in “Star Wars”.
Yes, I said it. I fuckin said it. You create a universe and by the power of your characterization, the
power of Details, you make me feel that universe, you make me care for that universe (no matter
how despicable it may be), you make me feel part of that universe. Like. The. Motherfuckin. Star.
Wars.
Then we have the special effects department, huge reason i consider this flick a masterpiece. Let's
remember, it's 1997, and everything still looks, 20 years gone by, super legit. Bugs, flying bugs,
gargantuan bugs, spaceships, post millennial technology, futuristic guns. The original concept and
artwork made for the movie are marvelous and they fall together as one with the computer
renderization. Aesthetically speaking, the bugs are incredible. You give them just a little glance and
you already know what ruthless killing machine they are. Everything makes you believe in what
you see, still today. Cgi and all the little animatronics are amazing and groundbreaking. And they
were, because of the wise use people made of them. All computer graphic is like a very good and
very expensive glue. Used in a reasonable and meaningful way, keeps a movie together like nothing
can. But you cannot make a picture out of sole adhesive, it will cost billions and will make no visual
sense. It'll just make people laugh in the worst of ways. Dark, dark days of Cgi abomination have
come in the early 2000 and luckily for all of us movies like “Conjuring” and “Mad Max: Fury
Road” have shone so bright recently that the path is clear, again.
But to whom, I ask you, we owe this spasmodic research for detail, and therefore, for greatness?
To his amazing director, I'd tell you, who like the movie itself was often undervalued and
misunderstood.
Paul Verhoeven, and his pal Edward Neumeier (who was the writer of both this screenplay and
another Verhoeven's masterpiece and personal favorite, “Robocop”), create a solid backbone plot,
in which the stereotypical characters grow emotionally as little as they want them to.And yet you do
care for them, because they are so excessively human.
The heroes are interchangeable, just like their spawn-up enemies, to validate the greater lesson this
movie wants to give. Starship Troopers is a Satire, a Farce. It mocks from the very beginning
everything it tries so vehemently to depict. All the fascist and Big Brotherist lectures we get are just
there to be made fun of, and the movie unravels this idea in a marvelous way. The way of the
Paradox. The movie starts with the paradox of aggression-aggressor. The Federation is founded on
the concept of justice and fairness where military law applies to every single felony. The whole
picture is full of these kind of antithetical contrasts and makes fun of them using an antithetic
contrast, one between thin, razor-sharp satire and the vulgar, rough and sketchy realization of
characters and texture.
Paradoxical is the idea a young boy could get reading this book in '59, as much as paradoxical was,
and still is, the american society back in 1959. Verhoeven understands this, and to validate his
criticism he uses an imagery full of macho-like replaceable troopers ready to die for a cause that
was never there, against aliens that bring no meaning to the movie, other than being cannon fodder,
and no rational explanations once you start interrogating yourself about them. This cinycal view of
a distopian future that culminates in a spiral of violence and satire, reconnects perfectly with two
other great pictures of the Dutch director, “Robocop” and “Total Recall” (inspired by a short novel
from our dear Philip K Dick).
In addition, the violence-sex-violence notion, is pivotal in this movie as it is in his remaining two
big-time features. In “Showgirls” there's raping, gelousy and girls pushed down a flight of stairs.
“Basic Instinct” gravitates around a murder that took place after a fire-like sexual intercourse.
For all this I'm convinced “Starship Troopers” could probably be Paul Verhoeven's manifesto. I've
always considered his whole career crystallized in the slogan “the only good bug is a dead bug”,
yelled by two young troopers, post-coital, who will never even get close to the realization that duty
only rimes with sacrifice. It's quite something, I believe.
But to conclude on a lighter note, there's Barney from How I Met Your Mother and he's all young
and psychic and stuff.
