Starship Troopers (1997)
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Starship Troopers (1997)
In the plot, which takes place about 200 years in the future, the main character of Rico (Casper van Dien) is a young stud who joins the military in pursuit of a girl (played by Denise Richards, who joins to become a pilot). As it turns out, Rico soon is fighting for the ideals described above, though it seems more like simple retribution on his mind after humanity's foes, giant bugs, strike Earth with a meteor. The action is visceral, intense and bloody. It also confused some of the audience.
The director, Paul Verhoeven, has stated for the record that the depiction of this future military as fascistic was not intended to glorify it - that it was bad. But, as presented in the film, this unified military/humanity, with all its fascistic overtones, was beneficial to us - that it was the best way to defeat the scary enemy, the lethal alien bugs. Verhoeven did insert those darkly satiric commercials in-between the action, showing the insidious nature of propaganda, but out in the field, even with the sight of Doogie Howser (Neil Patrick Harris) in gestapo-type regalia, there was nothing but glory for the troops.
In any case, I expected this film to be one of the biggest hits of 1997 when I was waiting for it to arrive in theaters about 15 years ago. The trailers were fantastic. But, the big movie a little later was Titanic and another that year was Men in Black. Starship Troopers seemed to either scare off or repel a lot of its potential audience; or maybe they just weren't interested - in a war picture, even one in outer space. Or maybe they heard something about young Nazi soldiers in the future, fighting bugs. I think it ended up grossing a total of about $55 million in the USA or less than a quarter of Will Smith's sci-fi hit.
I was and still am a fan of Starship Troopers. It's continually entertaining, for pretty much every minute, either charged with adrenaline, spaceship FX or watchable over-the-top characters like Sgt. Zim (Clancy Brown) and that Lt. played by Michael Ironside. It was refreshingly straight-to-the-point, no unnecessary complexity - if you were a good soldier and a survivor, you tended to get promoted quickly; if not, or if you were a second too slow, you got your arm burned off or worse. No victims here - except the bugs.
In fact, after I watched this a 3rd or 4th time, I started to get a hint of some hidden agenda far behind the straightforward action - as if someone (s) was manipulating events towards a humans-only galaxy - even if it meant sacrificing a group of ships in orbit around a planet, or even a city on Earth. But...I must be imagining things. BoG's Score: 9 out of 10
Last edited by BoG on Mon Oct 14, 2013 7:13 pm; edited 2 times in total
S Troopers - behind the scenes
BEHIND THE SCENES of STARSHIP TROOPERS
Here are some pre-production paintings for Starship Troopers,
showing that someone had a somewhat grand,
even epic vision for the film:
The actual results: (not bad)
Here are some pre-production paintings for Starship Troopers,
showing that someone had a somewhat grand,
even epic vision for the film:
The actual results: (not bad)
BELOW: The hundreds of military helmets manufactured for the film:
BELOW: writer Edward Neumeier plays a condemned criminal in cameo
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