Starship Troopers (1997)
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Starship Troopers Movie Review
Starship Troopers is a 1997 military science fiction film directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Casper van Dien. It’s a somewhat dumb, but immensely entertaining flick.
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“Funny how they always want to be friends
after they rip your guts out“
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Based on the titular 1959 Robert A. Heinlein’s novel, the movie is about humans in a fascist, militaristic future who wage war against giant alien bugs. There is a lot to talk about the stupid points of this storyline, but let’s first state the sophisticated themes that resonate to this day. Yes, the movie is actually a very smart metaphor for the American way of handling foreign policy, which basically constitutes starting aggressive wars, xenophobia, nationalism and the typically American machismo.
The letters that appear on screen stand for a stupendous satire for the various propaganda pieces of the 40s while the military in the movie is over-the-top in the best way possible. The film makes fun of everything that makes the US horrible to other nations, and by doing that, it has achieved a sophisticated, honest status that needs to be appreciated.
But switching back to the dumb elements, this story is full of plot holes. Yes, the creature feature elements of the fifties are wonderful as the movie truly looked and felt like a 50s flick in that genre, but it requires so many leaps of logic that it became laughable following it through. How would these arachnids and insects arrive on Earth if they were so primitive in their IQ? Why do they have just one very intelligent member of their society? And why would it prove so hard for the humans to defeat these unarmed bugs with so many weapons at their disposal? All of these questions made for a pretty ludicrous, but admittedly very fun movie.
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Yes, Starship Troopers is immensely entertaining. It’s an action film set in a SF world first and foremost, but that action is so much fun despite being overwhelming. The entire second half is action throughout, and yet I was still not bored. Why is that? That’s because the execution of said action was brilliant and simply following the various arthropods and humans get decapitated in the progressively more gruesome ways was a lot of fun. The biology of the creatures was down to earth, the various species made for intricate world building and the shootout sequences are just ripe for a third person shooter video game adaptation.
The acting wasn’t the greatest, but the character dynamics were so good that I ultimately didn’t mind the weaker performances and individual characterizations. Casper van Dien was the typically boring good-looking hero, but Neil Patrick Harris was quite memorable in a lesser early role for him. Denise Richards and Dina Meyer were also very good.
For a nineties blockbuster movie, Starship Troopers is surprisingly progressive in multiple areas. It’s diverse in cast, very feminist, but also highly sexualized with a couple of nude shots at both men and women. That made for a sexy watch as the entire cast is super hot here. Technically speaking, the movie is well directed by Verhoeven and I liked the structure of military training in the first half and getting to know the characters and full-on action in the second one. The VFX were terrific for its time with superb-looking alien creatures while the sound was also great. But the violence was excessively gory and brutal, which made for an interesting watch for sure.
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