Starship Troopers (Film)

A much maligned film, Starship Troopers is a movie about going to war in the 90's just as Hienlen's book was about going to war in the 50's. Society has changed a little in the intervening 40 years and so there's a different tale to tell.

Watch the opening sequences. Earth is a happy, productive but hideously overcrowded place. People are swarming everywhere. The solution, a good war to thin out the ranks a bit.

The movie makes more sense once you recognise the propaganda pieces for what they are: propaganda. And like all good propaganda, they have some really big lies like the bug meteors coming from the other side of the galaxy. B.A. is glassed by the Feds to give a casus beli and big bloody shirt to rally every man, woman and dog into the war effort.

The poor intelligence, god-awful tactics and pop gun weaponry are also designed with this purpose in mind. To keep up the casualty lists against a not too dangerous alien species. To lengthen a war.

Added to this is our hero Johnny Rico who looks like he stepped out of Melrose Place. Like any all-american teen hero he's basically pulled arround by his gonads. Except, in this movie such reactions utterly shit on him. Constantly. He joins the armed forces and due to his lack of brains gets sent to the MI, whose purpose is to die like flies. Meanwhile, best buddy Doogie Howser joins the Psi cops/Gestappo and gains a clue as to what's going on. we quickly see him in the propaganda pieces lying his face off to get more cannon fodder. A nice dark satire with blood and gore and occasional boobie shot.

So, it's not a copy of the book. Instead it's a satire on modern military propaganda and how war is not a place for cute heroes.

Record 833 - film - Last update 28 Jul 2007, 19:48:29

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