Starship Troopers (film)

Starship Troopers is a 1997 sci-fi-action 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 controversial novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein.

Synopsis

Starship Troopers is presented to the viewer as a mix of traditional scenes interspersed with simulated interactive televised broadcasts providing brief news reports, asking the viewer "Would you like to know more?" after each segment.

In the far future, with interstellar travel and a wide-spreading galactic government known as the Federation, humanity has found themselves at war with an alien race from the planet Klendathu named the Arachnids, or "Bugs" for short. John D. "Johnny" Rico, his girlfriend Carmen, and best friend Carl are all graduating from high school in Buenos Aires; Carmen and Carl both plan to enlist in the military service to become upper-class "citizens" after their tenure. Johnny, wanting to follow Carmen, goes against his parents' demands and enlists himself. However, he finds that his grades are too low to join Carmen in Flight School, and is instead assigned to the Mobile Infantry. There, Johnny shows himself to be an outstanding leader, and is assigned head of his squad. He also meets an old high school classmate, "Dizzy" Flores, who specifically requested transfer to Johnny's division, as she is infatuated with Johnny. Johnny comes to learn that Carmen is happy with her training and has met up with an old high school rival of Johnny named Zander who is helping her learn the ropes, but that she will likely make the fleet her career, dashing Johnny's dreams. After a training incident in which one of his squad is killed, Johnny is demoted from squad leader and publicly flogged. As Johnny is preparing to quit the Infantry, a huge asteroid launched from Klendathu strikes Earth, destroying Buenos Aires and killing his parents. As invasion plans are made, Johnny stays with the Infantry.

The Federation's forces attempt a full-out invasion of Klendathu, critically underestimating the Bugs' abilities, as both forces on the ground and numerous Fleet ships are brought down, killing 300,000 troops. Johnny's squad is nearly decimated, Johnny himself requiring several days of treatment to recover. Johnny, Dizzy, and fellow squad member Ace are brought into the "Roughnecks", led by Johnny's old high-school teacher, Lt. Rasczak. The military intelligence replan their attack, using strategic strikes on other planets in the Arachnid system to learn more about them, recognizing that the Bugs likely have some form of central intelligence in the form of a leadership caste. The Roughnecks participate in such a mission, with Johnny's leadership abilities earning him a field promotion to Corporal. That night, Lt. Raszcak grants the squad rest and relaxation, during which Johnny and Dizzy romantically couple. The Roughnecks are assigned the next day to investigate a nearby outpost where they find the Bugs have sucked out the humans' brains. The outpost is quickly ambushed by thousands of Bugs, killing much of the squad including Lt. Rasczak. Johnny takes command, and orders an evacuation ship, which happens to be flown by Carmen and Zander. As they are about to board, Dizzy is stabbed by a Bug, and though Johnny attempts to treat her on the ship, she dies. Johnny and Carmen are joined by Carl, now a member of the military intelligence division, for Dizzy's funeral. Carl admits that the Roughnecks were used as bait to test out a theory, which enrages Johnny, but that theory has proven correct, that there exists a single "brain bug" that controls much of the Arachnids' behavior. Carl assigns the Roughnecks to search for this Bug on their next assignment.

As the Roughnecks, infused with fresh but young troops, explore the surface of Planet P looking for the brain bug, Carmen's ship is hit by Arachnid fire, and Carmen and Zander are forced to flee in an escape pod that lands on Planet P, deep inside a Bug nest. Johnny learns of Carmen's flight, and tells the rest of the squad to keep searching, while he, Ace, and squadmember Watkins search for Carmen. They come across Carmen and Zander just as Zander's brain is sucked out by the brain bug; Carmen is able to save herself by injuring the bug with a knife. Watkins, injured by a Bug, gives the others cover, while holding onto a nuclear detonator, sacrificing himself to wipe out the nest. Johnny, Ace, and Carmen escape the blast, and learn that the brain bug also attempted to flee, but was caught by the Infantry. As everyone celebrates, Carl joins Johnny and Carmen on the surface, explaining that now with the brain bug, they will be able to learn how the Bugs think and can turn the tide on the war. Johnny, Ace and Carmen continue on in their service to the military as heroes and prime examples to incoming recruits.

Cast

Filming location

Badlands of Hell's Half-Acre, Natrona County, Wyoming, where parts of Starship Troopers were filmed.

The "bug planet" scenes were filmed in the badlands of Hell's Half-Acre in Natrona County, Wyoming.^[1]

Reception

This movie polarized both popular audiences and critics, as did the original book. A prominent theme of the film is the human practice of senseless violence without reflection or empathy, which parallels the senseless aggression of the "Bugs". As such, the movie attracted widely divergent responses. This is reflected by a mixed critical response, receiving a 62% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[2]

One reviewer derisively referred to the film as "90210 in Space," presumably because cast members Casper Van Dien and Dina Meyer had actually appeared on the show.

Starship Troopers was nominated for a number of awards in 1998 and won Saturn Awards for Best Costumes and Best Special Effects at the 1998 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, USA Awards.^[3] The movie earned over $22 million on its opening weekend.

The film included visual allusions to propaganda films, such as Why We Fight, Triumph of the Will, The Battleship Potemkin, and wartime news broadcasts. However, this satire was embedded in slickly produced action sequences with clever special effects.^[4][5]

Test audience reactions led to several minor changes before the film was released. Originally it was clear that Carmen was torn between Rico and Lt. Zander. Test audiences, regardless of gender, strongly felt that a woman could not love two men at once so scenes which portrayed this were cut. These audiences also felt it was immoral for Carmen to choose a career ahead of being loyal to Rico to the extent that many commented that for choosing the career Carmen should have died instead of Dizzy. While admitting it may have been a bad commercial decision not to change the film to accommodate this, the directors did cut a scene from after Zander's death where Carmen and Rico kiss, which the audience believed made the previous betrayal even more immoral.

Comparison with the novel

There is a vast divergence between the original book and film. A report in an American Cinematographer article around the same time as the film's release states 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 DVD commentary, Paul Verhoeven never finished reading the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both "bored and depressed."^[6]

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 army gear. Their weaponry was somewhat advanced, having the use of small tactical nukes which could be fired as a projectile. The MI fought as light infantry for most of the movie being able to call on air support (such as when Lt. Jean Rasczak stated that they would be landing only after air support had "glassed the planet"). Due to the rocky canyon-like terrain, the MI was forced to move mainly under their own motive power (i.e. no vehicles, tanks etc.). Because the Bugs were so strong and lethal, a substantial portion of the soldiers' anatomy was left unprotected, as it was better for them to be lighter and more agile instead. Towards the end of the film, the infantry is sent towards the bugs, when the human race obviously presided over aircraft capable of taking out the same bugs with far fewer casualties - but this would have prevented them from being able to capture the "brain bug", a risky mission which ultimately turned the tide in the war.

While some of the dialogue comes straight from the book, or variation of it, much of the dialogue and many of the themes are not from Heinlein's story. Additionally, most of the characters have been significantly altered. In the novel the lead character's name is Juan Rico, and he speaks Tagalog at home and does not originate from Buenos Aires. Flores is female in the movie in order to add a love interest sub-plot. In the book, Dizzy Flores is male, has no relation to Rico save the fact they were soldiers in the same platoon, and is only mentioned in the first chapter, due to the fact that he dies at its conclusion. Additionally, "Carl Jenkins" of the movie did not even exist in the book. Carl and Jenkins are completely different people, with Carl being Rico's best friend, and Jenkins simply being another soldier.

Further, the movie was criticized in that many of the characters are described as just graduating high school, despite the fact that the actors who played them were in their late twenties or early thirties at the time the movie was filmed. (In the commentary track of the DVD release of the film, Verhoeven remarks that he had hoped to cast actors whose age more closely matched that of the characters -- and indeed of real-world soldiers -- but that the producers felt such actors would look too young.) The professor and leader of the "Roughnecks" in the novel are combined into one role played by Michael Ironside.

Militarism vs. satire on militarism

Heinlein's original novel depicted a strong, orderly interstellar community, in which crime is rare and punished harshly, and completing a term of civil service is a prerequisite for full citizenship rights. Little else about the government is described in the novel, with no discussion of what those full rights might, in fact, be, aside from access to certain 'reserved jobs', such as policeman, and the rights to vote and to be elected. It is implied at several points in the novel that full citizenship is not a prerequisite to economic success, nor is it universally respected, but Heinlein avoids any significant discussion of the details of the political system's functioning, reserving his attention, instead, for questions of why someone might choose to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The novel implies, but does not state, that the government is not fascist in nature, as characters do not attribute any special authority or respect to it beyond stating that, up until that point, it has worked satisfactorily, and inadequate data is presented as to whether the government can be considered as militaristic.

The arachnids are presented as extremely alien, with their own goals and objectives, which are mutually exclusive with humanity's. An additional alien species not seen in the film, the Skinnies, are mentioned as having communication with the arachnids, but how this communication is achieved is not described, and at several points it is questioned as to whether humanity could ever communicate directly with the arachnids. It is possible that the arachnids are a metaphor for the communist nations that were seen as a significant threat when the book was written. It is deliberately not stated whether the bugs or the humans initiated the war, with the unspoken suggestion being that it is utterly unimportant from Juan Rico's point of view; he and his fellow soldiers are neither politicians nor sadists, merely honor-bound and dedicated professionals whose duty is to kill bugs. While the greater socio-political aims of the war are discussed to some extent, little effort is made to attempt to humanize the bugs or even detail their appearances beyond fragmentary descriptions. Throughout the book, however, the arachnids are explicitly not vilified: they are either dismissed by the civilian population as unimportant, or seen as a job at hand by the serving military. Even after the destruction of a Terran city, the single described reaction of a character was not to grow outraged at the arachnids, but, rather, to join up.

The book limits service in the Mobile Infantry to males, and explicitly states that this branch of the overall government service is arguably the smallest in proportion to overall population in history. Women, on the other hand, apparently enter the Navy, and very frequently rise to command of starships. (Interestingly, overall command is apparently restricted to men, as the route to the status of Sky Marshal is via training in both the Mobile Infantry and the Navy. Whether this was Heinlein's intent or not is unclear.) Training in the Mobile Infantry is roughly comparable in severity and intensity to current-day special forces training, with an explicitly stated purpose of being as hard as possible to persuade those who are capable of resigning to do so. Although the recruits are intended to undergo severe stress, intentional pain is not a standard part of the program, and violence on the part of instructors is generally limited to the use of a baton.

The film, by contrast, depicts a state which explicitly evokes Nazi Germany, through fashion, use of propaganda, and iconography; Verhoeven's Earth is dystopic: jingoistic and militaristic in nature which he sees as a natural evolution of post WW2 America. The military training is intentionally cruel: officers purposely wound recruits, and flogging is a form of punishment, which is somewhat mitigated by the fact that existing technology can heal such wounds immediately. The overall level of military training presented is, oddly, not as intense as that described in the book in other details.

Gender differences are portrayed as having become less important: Dizzy, who is female in the film, is the accomplished starting quarterback of Rico's high school football team. The military accepts both men and women to serve on the front lines. In addition, the film treats as unremarkable the fact that male and female soldiers share common barracks, including showers.

As both insect and human forces are slaughtered in high numbers, they are filmed and photographed by embedded television crews for the benefit of viewers at home, further illustrating the theatrical nature of the war. Also, as Verhoeven mentions in the DVD commentary, the humans are the aggressors and the bugs the victims: when the bugs bomb Buenos Aires, they are not attacking the human race, but reacting to human colonists encroaching on bug planets. This is in direct contrast to the book, in which the conflict between humanity and arachnid is explicitly described as inevitable, due to the conflicting goals of both species.

Style

Styles presented in the film include:

• Verhoeven's trademark use of simulated media coverage of the film's events.^[7]
• The symbols of the Federation and some of the clothing styles are greatly modeled on the Nazis' clothing styles (e.g., windbreaker, suits, cap, the military intelligence officer's uniforms bear a striking similarity to SS uniforms, though Navy officers shoulder boards resemble that of the Soviet Army). Surprisingly, the main symbol of the Federation, the eagle logo, drew the strongest objections from test audiences for being a fascist symbol when in fact it is an ancient Navajo design.

Spinoffs

Main article: Books, films, and games influenced by Starship Troopers

Games

• In 1997, Avalon Hill released Starship Troopers: Prepare For Battle!, a boardgame based on the film version rather than Heinlein's book. Its gameplay focused on limited skirmishes rather than larger battles. The "Skinnies" do not appear, nor is there a political element.^[8]
• Avalon Hill released a game called Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers in 1976.^[9]
• 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. The game is currently considered abandonware and as such can be found at numerous abandonware sites.
• 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.
• Sega Pinball released a pinball machine based on this movie.^[10]

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 Comics and Markosia.

Sequels

The film was followed by the CGI animated television series Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, which is loosely set inside the events of the movie just after Rico and Diz join the Roughnecks but before Rico gets promoted (though the events and tone of the show differ from those of the film), along with a direct-to-video sequel Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation in 2004. The sequel was not as popular as the first, mostly due to its low budget and the fact it was more in the horror genre than the sci-fi/action original.

In May 2006, MovieHole.net reported that Ed Neumeier returned to write the script for a second sequel, Starship Troopers 3, and also stated that original cast members would be returning, including Casper Van Dien.^[11]

It had been announced that Starship Troopers 3: Marauder was going to start filming in South Africa in March 2007 before being pushed back to May 2007. In February 2008, the trailer appeared online on YouTube, StarshipTroopers3.com, and on the official website.

Starship Troopers 3 Marauder takes place eleven years after the first movie. Johnny Rico, now Colonel, is defending a base on a new bug infested planet but the base soon is overrun by Aracnids and the MI troopers are forced to abandon the base. Later in the movie it is revealed that the Brain Bug from planet P is still in captivity and it allowed itself to be captured so it may be used as a link for a newly discovered Super Brain Bug to gain control of one of earths finest psychics. The Super Brain Bug is the Aracnoids god and is a quarter of the size of a planet. This Super Brain reveals that the whole purpose to the war is for information and wishes to learn everything it can from the humans and then exterminate them. The Marauder weapon is a mechanized battle suit that is joined with the operator's nervous system and turns the operator into a one man army. Johnny Rico and his new team become the first to use the Marauder weapons.

Costumes

• Much of the non-combat military dress seen in the film appears to be adapted from the designs of German Army uniforms of World War 2 and present, most prominently amongst the fleet personnel (like the character Ibanez) and the intelligence officers (like the character Carl). The use of the same grey color scheme, seen in almost all the uniforms, is also prominent.
• The Troopers' 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. The helmets were repainted again and used by the SWAT team at the end of the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. The uniforms, along with footage from numerous sci-fi films including Starship Troopers itself, were used in the sci-fi movie Impostor, starring Gary Sinise, and the live action Gundam film G-Saviour.

References

External links

• Starship Troopers at the Internet Movie Database
• Starship Troopers at Rotten Tomatoes
• Starship Troopers Audio Soundboard