Mr. Floppy 04.05.08: Starship Troopers

Posted by Peter Bielik on 04.05.2008

The only good bug is a dead bug.

At the end of my last column, I wrote that I'm going to write about another film by Paul Verhoeven. One that is a personal favorite of mine and also IMHO a very underrated film. I'm actually a bit surprised this movie still hasn't garnered the praise it deserves, but then again, there would be no underrated classics if every deserving film got it's fair share of respect.
Just like I write later in the article, sometimes there are films that are simply ahead of its time.



Year of the cock-up: 1997

Budget: $105,000,000

Domestic gross: $54,814,377

Foreign gross: $66,400,000

Worldwide gross: $121,214,377


Even though previous column's Showgirls performed way below expectations at the theatres, while also receiving heavy criticism, Verhoeven still remained in pretty high regards in Hollywood. After such a badly received film, it's quite uncommon to be given such a huge budget (and $100 million was a HUGE budget in 1997). A thing that helped Verhoeven the most was probably that his chosen next project was a return to the tried-and-true genre of science fiction in which he had two of his biggest hits, RoboCop and Total Recall.

Starship Troopers is based on the 1959 Hugo Award-winning novel by Robert A. Heinlein of the same name. The basic plot explanation would be—humans against extraterrestrial insects in an all-out war for survival. I haven't read the story, but from all available sources, one thing is really obvious- the film and the book don't have much in common. According to the DVD commentary, Paul Verhoeven never even finished reading the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both bored and depressed.
One of the biggest changes made by Verhoeven was that the bugs would be biologically realistic rather than anthropomorphic. The insects in Heinlein's novel stood upright, wore uniforms, and fired weapons, but Verhoeven wanted no shots of a giant cockroach holding a ray gun, or a man in a rubber suit sporting a crab claw. Instead, Verhoeven asked the designers to make the bugs both convincing as insects and also frightening. Verhoeven also came up with the idea that the bugs would use their own bodies as weapons and that they would be organized in a quasi-military hierarchy, with Warrior Bugs (ground troops) killing with their jaws and claws, Tanker Bugs (tanks, duh) spraying corrosive fire, Plasma Bugs (heavy artillery) ejecting plasma bursts at incoming spaceships, Hopper Bugs (air force) flying and swooping down to attack and a Brain Bug (military intelligence) controlling it all with its hive mind. Technically, the film was very ambitious as $40 million of the film's $100 million budget were devoted solely to special effects. Over 200 of the movie's 600 FX shots contain computer-generated bugs, which was a record setting number at the time.
To animate the bugs, Verhoeven chose Phil Tippet, with whom he worked previously on RoboCop. Since RoboCop, technology had come a long way and Tippet was now able to use a Digital Input Device that allowed stop-motion to move the limbs on scale models of the insects, and to have these movements linked to a computer which converted them directly into the digital environment. The on-screen result was digital bugs that moved with realistic weight and mass. When texture, sheen and shadowing were digitally added to the bugs, they looked completely photorealistic and lifelike. Since the bugs weren't added until post-production, the actors needed something to play off of. To help them, flags on poles were used to ensure correct eye-lines and Verhoeven himself jumped around off-camera and screamed like the bugs so that the actors had something to react to.
As with the insects, Verhoeven also insisted on similar realism when it came to the spaceships. Unlike the small, sleek fighters in Star Wars which zipped around the galaxy, the future spacecraft envisioned by Verhoeven were not streamlined because there is no air or water resistance in space.
The special effects for Starship Troopers were truly a collective effort, involving a half dozen different FX studios and hundreds of CG artists, animators, and compositors. The movie has one of the longest lists of closing credits in history. In terms of multitudes involved, no wonder Verhoeven has compared the making of this film to building the Notre-Dame cathedral.
While science fiction might have seemed a safe genre far from the risky and provocative subject matter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls, this movie about kids fighting bugs in outer space proved that Verhoeven can achieve being controversial with just about any subject matter.

Starship Troopers were accused of being pro-fascist – a gung-ho recruitment film glorifying war. Critics even noted that the film had soldiers firing over 300,000 rounds of ammunition- more than any other movie in history. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post accused the film of being "spiritually Nazi, psychologically Nazi" and that "It comes directly out of the Nazi imagination, and is set in the Nazi universe…Unlike films from a civilized society that sees war as a debilitating, tragic necessity, this movie sees it as a profoundly moving experience." Verhoeven expected that maybe in Europe, the film would receive a more positive response, but to his surprise, the European press continued the attack on the movie. He remembers: "It was always about me trying to explain what we were trying to do and them saying, "You're a fucking fascist!" The more fascistic the country had been, the more pissed off they were about the movie." Critics were particularly concerned about how the film might affect the fragile minds of little innocent children. Even though the film was rated R, the film was marketed with tie-ins that included a TV cartoon series, a computer video game, comic books and toy action figures. The general idea of these fears was that the kids are going to take away from all this the impression that combat is something glamorous, sexy and rebellious. Given the violent nature of the very society we live in, I don't think that the critics were barking up the right tree with Verhoeven. It's always easy to put all the blame in the world on the filmmakers, musicians, etc., but they are not the ones forming the shape of the world we live in. They merely reflect it. I'm not saying Verhoeven was presenting us with an unpleasant reflection of our present world, but blasting his movie as a piece glorifying violence and promoting fascism is entirely missing the point.
Truth be told, the lead characters and their romantic relationships are something straight out of Beverly Hills 90210 and they are played by young handsome actors, who were cast on purpose because of their past participations in shows like Days of Our Lives, Melrose Place, etc. With this cast, it was inevitable that the film would be somewhat appealing to the audiences that watched said shows- i.e. young teenage viewers. In addition to the flawless faces and perfect bodies, the film's utopian world of racial and gender equality has a strong appeal. This is glaringly apparent in the group shower scene where male and female recruits are naked together without sexual harassment or even embarrassment. The shooting of that scene however wasn't very comfortable for many of the actors, so to ease the tension, Verhoeven and his cinematographer Joe Vacano also took their clothes off. Another interesting thing concerning the racial relations is the merry-making scene in which both black and white soldiers put the history of slavery behind them and dance to the tune of "I Wish I Was in Dixie".
These attractive stars and wonderful society are sort of a trap at the viewer however. Gradually, it becomes more and more apparent that all this harmony and equality come at the price of conformity to military dictatorship. As the teacher Rasczak (played by Michael Ironside) describes the failure of democracy and the way society was saved from chaos by military rule and as he goes on to assert that the only true citizens are soldiers, we realize that our young heroes are being seduced into a mindless patriotism. And when these idealistic innocents go to war, Verhoeven's trap is in full effect as they are viciously slaughtered. The war scenes are very explicit and graphic with the humans being stabbed, cut in half and ripped to shreds by the bugs. They are decapitated, dismembered and disemboweled in scenes that had to be trimmed in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. It's somewhat unsurprising that a movie like this was considered fascist and pro-war, but like I said earlier- that's just missing the point. One critic said: "It's exactly like Star Wars- if you substract a good story, sympathetic characters, intelligence, wit and moral purpose." I'm sorry, but what really is fascist? In Star Wars, war is treated as an exciting, fun adventure for the entire family. It's OK to wipe out entire planets, or to zap enemies from afar while trading wisecracks, but a violent and bloody war? That's immoral!!! Killing has to be shown in a fun way, otherwise it's just not right. Give me a break.

With the above mentioned features, it's not hard to understand the movie as satiric commentary of sorts on the growing militarism and authoritarianism of today's superpowers. When Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) is disciplined with a public flogging, the reference is to the American boy who was whipped in Singapore for a minor offence, and to those right-wingers who suggested that such canings should occur in America as a punishment for a petty crime. When Starship Troopers' writer appears in a cameo as a man arrested in the morning, judged in the afternoon and executed that same evening, he is not promoting swift justice or the death penalty. Rather, he is commenting on the dangers of summary judgment and quick consignment on the electric chair. And finally, when a producer Jon Davison appears to say "The only good bug is a dead bug.", he does it to remind us that the same kind of statement was made by US forces about the Japanese during WWII. You see, wartime propaganda always demonizes the enemies in order to justify destroying them. The funny web newscasts ("Countdown to victory", the mom applauding her kids stomping on bugs) are recalling CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. When that war started, there was a tremendous amount of propaganda in the American media to prepare the people for the war. And to get people behind this idea, the USA continuously vilified the other side.

And to add another bonus points to the film's message, the War in Afghanistan which began in October 2001 is very similar to Starship Troopers- the whole gung-ho mentality of bombing everything and blasting the Taliban-forces out of the caves. Vilifying an enormous group of people as if they all were just some mindless, crazy monsters.
Could a film like this be made today, in a media climate that is saturated by pro-war propaganda? What major studio would invest so much money into such a clear criticism of the government?
A pro-fascist film? Nope. Maybe the last big-studio movie that had the balls to throw a wrench into the US propaganda machine.

With the reaction towards the film being highly mixed, the audiences echoed the critics' sentiments and remained fairly indecisive. While it wasn't as big a financial disappointment as Showgirls, considering the budget, the worldwide earnings weren't enough.




Starship Troopers may be the prime example of an underrated movie that was ahead of its time. People always argue that this is not the case. Why? For a movie to be ahead of its time, it can not be universally praised at the time of its release. It can not have a huge following. Time will prove its qualities and then, many people who complained about the film will be proven wrong. Many of them are just too full of themselves to admit they were wrong.
Paul Verhoeven made a film that was too broad for a mainstream audience. They were expecting something entirely else and weren't given it. The lackluster reaction was adequate at the time, but hopefully today, people will be able to see this film and appreciate all the interesting points it is trying to make.

Paul Verhoeven, you receive this week's Mr. Floppy award, but damn, you should be proud of yourself.



I'm not sure how many of you readers have seen this film, but if you didn't, do so. And if you didn't like it first time, try giving it a second try. You may be surprised just how well has the content of this film aged.

- Peter