Starship Troopers (film)

This article is about the film. For the original novel, see Starship Troopers.

Starship Troopers
Directed by	Paul Verhoeven
Written by	Edward Neumeier, based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein
Produced by	Jon Davison, Alan Marshall
Starring	Casper Van Dien Denise Richards Dina Meyer Jake Busey Neil Patrick Harris Clancy Brown Patrick Muldoon Michael Ironside
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures Touchstone Pictures
Release dates	November 7, 1997 [1]
Running time	129 min
Language	English
Budget	$100,000,000 (estimated)

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. While it uses many of Heinlein's characters and settings, there are notable differences of plot and presentation. Some dialogue is straight out of the book, or some variation of it, while many of the characters and themes are not from Heinlein's story. Additionally, some of the characters have been significantly altered; one character 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, and so on. 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.

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 clever 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) greatly lacking in Western cinema. 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

File:Starship-Troopers---rico.jpg

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 to the U.S. The filmmakers did not make these statements at the time of the film's release, and viewers seeing the movie could 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, the Federation, that some interpret as broadly reminiscent of United States society, in that it 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.

On one level, the movie encourages us to identify with the gung-ho antics of the Earthlings as they destroy the bugs. However, their attitude, combined with the unsuccessful first attack on the bugs' homeworld, is intended to be similar to the Vietnam War, and there is considerable moral ambiguity, as it is never explicitly stated that the bugs started the war - indeed, it is implied that the bugs are reacting to human expansion into their system. Furthermore, there are several scenes that appear to be deliberately reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, and some of the military costumes resemble those of Nazi Germany, particularly Neil Patrick Harris's Colonel Carl Jenkins, whose costume apes that of the Gestapo. At the conclusion of the film, the main characters are depicted training new recruits barely in their teens, which may be a reference to the children and old men drafted for the Volkssturm as a last-ditch defence of Germany in the final days of the European theatre of World War II.

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, and Verhoeven himself witnessed Nazi atrocities as a child.

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 Fascism^[2]). Second, humanity's army consists of soldiers of all races, sexes, and religions. 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). However, these civilians are not allowed to vote.

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.

Parallels to the Vietnam War

As is mentioned in the plot, the initial attacks on Klendathu are quite unsuccessful, as paralleled in the Vietnam War. In addition to that there are many other similarities. For example, the bugs are technologically inferior to humans and live almost 75,000 light years away near the opposite side of the galaxy, similarly, in Vietnam, the enemy lived on the other side of the planet and did not have as advanced technology. The soldiers of mobile infantry are frequently exposed to nuclear radiation by their weapons and little attention is paid to whether or not this is safe, reminiscent of many unusual chemicals such as Agent Orange that were said to have harmed US veterans of Vietnam.

Also in one scene where a region of Klendathu is "glassed" (presumably meaning nuked) by Federation jets flying overhead the explosion looks very similar to that caused by napalm, which was commonly used in Vietnam. The enemy, the Klendathians, often traverse underground tunnels that allow them to enter and leave areas, similarly to the Vietcong's use of networks of hidden tunnels to provide strategic superiority.

However there are several substantantial differences to Vietnam. Federation forces are outnumbered and face huge losses, far greater in proportion than the U.S. did in Vietnam. There are no civilian "bugs", no privileged sanctuary, no spies, no ideology, no smuggled weapons.

There are close parallels to World War Two as well. The Japanese Imperial Army used a tunnel and cave network to defend islands in the Pacific against invading Marines. The tactic often used against tunnel and cave networks was the use of flame-throwers that used a gasoline mixture similar to Vietnam era napalm. In addition, war was only declared after a "sneak attack" on the city of Buenos Aires, that shocked the federation similarly to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Also, the full societal effort to win the war was more like the effort during World War Two than that of Vietnam.

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 novelization: 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.

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 Internet Movie Database, Paul Verhoeven has admitted to never even finishing the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both bored and depressed.[3] 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)

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. (Rumor has it that the special effects budget earmarked for the armor had to be diverted to improving the CGI aliens.)

Criticisms of the Military Tactics

The MI's onscreen military tactics were also found questionable, if not incompetent.

As depicted in the film, the Bugs could not have challenged a 20th century mechanized army. While the majority of the bugs could only pose a threat to infantry at extremely close range (a limitation most assuredly not shared by the humans), the movie's troopers invariably tried to get as close as possible to the bugs, for no apparent reason other than to allow the bugs to kill them. The troopers lacked appropriate weapons — the bugs could not have fought an army equipped with tanks, flame throwers, napalm, land mines, or rapid-fire chain guns. In fact, a bombing raid of the bugs by a squadron of planes shows great success in the movie, and one must wonder why this tactic was not continued. Moreover they did not make effective use of the weapons they did have, since they could easily have wiped out entire attacking forces of bugs with a single fuel-air explosive bomb while they were massing.

Troop movement was completely disorganized — soldiers moved as a loose crowd, failed to form defensive lines, and ran at the first anonymous cry of retreat. When attacking bugs, soldiers didn't kneel or go prone for greater stability when firing, nor did they ever seem to aim before shooting, possibly because sights were conspicuously absent from their rifles. Overall military discipline was not in evidence. In most scenes, ground forces were completely superfluous, as the Federation could do more damage at far less cost of life from the air.

Criticisms of the Bugs

The Bugs in the movie appear to violate known physical laws. They are shown to be a type of arthropod covered by a thick, heavy, exoskeleton. On Earth, any creature using a hard external skeleton to support its weight could not grow larger than a few pounds without consuming vast amounts of energy to move itself. An arthropod of the size and shape as the Bugs of the film would require so much energy that it could only be fueled by gasoline or a similar, high energy combustible liquid.

The bugs were also altered to be less an alien civilization and more "monsters". Fans of the book were deeply offended by these changes; indeed, they were on the whole deeply offended by the entire movie. This was probably because fans either did not realize Verhoeven's alleged intentions (to parody the society of the story), or, in other cases realized his intentions and were infuriated by them.

Video games

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. The "Zergling" Zerg unit bears a close resemblance to the "Bug Warrior" of Verhoeven's movie, and Zerg Cerebrates are sort of a Brain Bug equivalent. In addition to this, the human units in the Starcraft series are called "Terrans", similar to Earth's "Terran Federation" in Heinlein's novel, and deploy infantry clad in powered armor. One unit, the "Firebat," even utilizes a flamethrower highly reminiscent of the 'hand flamers' used in the book. The species known as the Protoss resemble Starship Troopers' "skinnies", who are described as tall, slim, humanoid creatures. However, the Protoss are displayed as very technologically advanced in the game, as opposed to the Skinnies in the book, whose technology was inferior to that of the humans. The similarities were more pronounced in an add-on pack to Starcraft, Starcraft: Brood War (the original contained Episodes 1–3 of the story, while the add-on contained episodes 4—6). A new faction was revealed when the lost colonies of the first game reestablished contact with Earth: the United Earth Directorate, which acted much like the United Citizen Federation in the movie version. UED officers dressed like the intelligence officers of Verhoeven's movie, and repeated semi-patriotic mantras such as "Serve the Directorate! Serve Humanity!". Most striking was a computer-generated in-game movie that runs after successfully completing the UED campaign, which essentially copies the "wartime news broadcasts" seen in Verhoeven's film. On Battle.net, Starship Trooper 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 amount of oncoming Zerg and challenges the players to survive as long as possible.

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. [4]

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.

Sequel

The film was followed by a direct-to-video sequel, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, in 2004, along with Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles in 1999.

Trivia

The Trooper's combat uniforms (shown in the movie poster above) were later reused on the Power Rangers 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.

Footnotes

1. ^ Fascinating Fascism by Susan Sontag.

External links

• Starship Troopers at IMDb
• Starship Troopers at Rotten Tomatoes