Starship Troopers (film)

Starship Troopers is a 1997 American military science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier, based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel of the same name. The story follows a young soldier named Johnny Rico and his exploits in the Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military unit. Rico's military career progresses from recruit, to non-commissioned officer, and finally to officer, against the backdrop of an interstellar war between mankind and an insectoid species known as Arachnids.

Starship Troopers
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPaul Verhoeven
Produced by
Screenplay byEdward Neumeier
Based onStarship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein
Starring
Music byBasil Poledouris
CinematographyJost Vacano
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed by
Release date
  • November 7, 1997 (1997-11-07)
Running time
129 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$105 million[1]
Box office$121.2 million[1]

The only theatrically released film in the Starship Troopers film series, it received mostly negative reviews from critics upon release; however, it has received a more positive reception in retrospect, with many critics highlighting the film's political satire.[2] It grossed $54.5 million in the U.S., and a total of $121.2 million worldwide, against a budget of $105 million.[1] In 1998, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 70th Academy Awards. In 2012, Slant Magazine ranked the film #20 on its list of "The 100 Best Films of the 1990s".[3]

The film has spawned several sequels - two live-action films, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008), and two computer-animated films, Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017).

Plot

In the 23rd century, while colonizing new planets, humans have encountered a hostile non-technological insectoid species known as Arachnids, but commonly referred to as "Bugs". The Bugs appear to be little more than savage, unrelenting killing machines, though there are suggestions that they were provoked by the intrusion of humans into their habitats.

In the United Citizen Federation, citizenship is earned by performing activities such as military service, which grants individuals opportunities prohibited to basic civilians. After graduating from high school in Buenos Aires, John "Johnny" Rico, his girlfriend Carmen Ibanez, and psychic best friend Carl Jenkins enlist in the Federal Service, despite Rico's parents' disapproval of military service. Carmen becomes a spaceship pilot, while Carl joins Military Intelligence. Rico enlists in the Mobile Infantry and is surprised to find Isabelle "Dizzy" Flores, his fellow ex-student, has deliberately transferred to his squad.

In Mobile Infantry basic training, Career Sergeant Zim ruthlessly trains the recruits. Rico befriends fellow cadet Ace Levy and is later promoted to squad leader. He subsequently receives a Dear John letter from Carmen, as she desires a career with the fleet and now serves under Rico's high-school sports rival, Zander Barcalow. Following a live-fire training incident that kills one of Rico's squad members and causes another to quit out of guilt, Rico is demoted and flogged. He resigns and calls his parents to ask them if he can return home, but rescinds his resignation after an asteroid, reported to be launched by the Arachnids, obliterates Buenos Aires, killing his parents and millions of others.

An invasion force is deployed to Klendathu, the Arachnids' home planet, but the operation severely underestimates the Arachnids and is a total disaster. Rico is severely wounded and mistakenly reported KIA. After recovering, he, Ace, and Dizzy are reassigned to the "Roughnecks", an elite unit commanded by Lt. Jean Rasczak, Rico's former high-school teacher. He quickly gains the respect of his peers and is promoted to the rank of Corporal after taking out a tanker Bug. His relationship with Dizzy continues to grow, and they have sex during their night on Tango Urilla.

The Roughnecks respond to a distress call from Planet "P", where they reconnoiter an outpost that has been devastated by Bugs. They soon realize that the distress call was a trap, and the Arachnids swarm the outpost. Rico, now an acting sergeant, euthanizes a mortally wounded Rasczak after a buried tanker Bug bites off his legs. Dizzy is killed, but the surviving Roughnecks are rescued by Carmen and Zander. Rico and Carmen encounter Carl, now a high-ranking intelligence officer, at Dizzy's funeral. Carl reveals that there is reason to believe an intelligent "Brain Bug" is directing the other Bugs and has been learning how to fight humans. He field-promotes Rico to lieutenant and gives him command of the Roughnecks, ordering the Mobile Infantry units under his control to return to "P" in an attempt to capture the Brain Bug.

The fleet encounters unexpected heavy fire from the Bugs and Carmen's ship is destroyed. Carmen and Zander's escape pod crashes into a Bug tunnel system near Rico. They are surrounded by Bugs, and a Brain Bug uses its proboscis to pierce Zander's skull and eat his brain. As it is about to do the same to Carmen, she cuts off its proboscis with a knife. Rico, Watkins and Ace arrive and threaten the Bugs with a small nuclear bomb, which the Brain Bug recognizes. They flee while the Brain Bug makes its escape. Arachnids pursue them and Watkins, mortally wounded, sacrifices himself by detonating the bomb to enable the others to escape.

After returning to the surface, they find that former Sergeant Zim, who had requested a demotion to private so that he could serve at the front, has captured the Brain Bug. Carl tells Rico and Carmen that the humans will soon be victorious now that Military Intelligence can study the Brain Bug. Carl mentally scans the Bug and reveals that it is afraid, to the cheers of the troops. A propaganda clip shows Carmen, Ace, and Rico as model servicemen, encouraging viewers to enlist in the armed forces.

Cast

Production

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

Script writer Ed Neumeier had been a fan of the novel since his childhood.[4] Paul Verhoeven on the other hand had never read the book and attempted to read it for the film but it made him "bored and depressed", so he read only a few chapters:

I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring … It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book.[5]

Neumeier had previously worked with Verhoeven as a writer on RoboCop (1987).

During production the film had the working title Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine.[6] The "Bug planet" scenes were filmed in the badlands of Hell's Half Acre in Natrona County, Wyoming.[7][8]

Two nude scenes were kept in the original version (the co-ed shower and a bedroom scene with Rico and Dizzy), although these were modified in the broadcast version. The cast agreed to do the co-ed shower scene only if Verhoeven agreed to direct the scene naked, which he did.[7][9] Verhoeven found it strange "Americans get more upset about nudity than ultra-violence. I am constantly amazed about that. I mean, I haven't seen any sex scenes in American film that are anything other than completely boring. A bare breast is more difficult to get through the censors than a body riddled with bullets."[5]

In the audio commentary on the DVD or Blu-ray release, Verhoeven remarks that he had hoped to cast actors whose age more closely matched that of the characters, but that the producers felt such actors would look too young. The teacher and leader of the "Roughnecks" in the novel are combined into one role played by Ironside.[7]

Test audience reactions led to several minor changes before the film was released. Originally, it was clear that Carmen was torn between Rico and 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, in so doing, Carmen should have been the one to die instead of Dizzy. While admitting it may have been a bad commercial decision not to change the film to accommodate this, the producer and director did cut a scene from after Zander's death in which Carmen and Rico kiss, which the audience believed made the previous betrayal even more immoral.[7]

Relationship to novel

There are many differences between the film and Heinlein's 1959 novel.[10] While the novel has been accused of promoting militarism, fascism, and military rule, the film satirizes these concepts by featuring bombastic displays of nationalism as well as news reports that are intensely xenophobic and propagandistic.[11][12][10]

Verhoeven stated in 1997 that the first scene of the film—an advertisement for the Mobile Infantry—was adapted shot-for-shot from a scene in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), specifically an outdoor rally for the Reich Labour Service. Other references to Nazism in the movie include the Wehrmacht-inspired uniforms and insignia of field grade officers, M.I. working uniforms reminiscent of Mussolini's Blackshirts, Albert Speer's style of architecture and its propagandistic dialogue ("Violence is the supreme authority!").[13]

In a 2014 interview on The Adam Carolla Show, the actor Michael Ironside, who read the novel as a youth, said that he asked Verhoeven, who grew up in the German-occupied Netherlands, "Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?" Verhoeven replied, "If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships but it's only good for killing fucking Bugs!"[14]

Themes

The film includes visual allusions to propaganda films such as Why We Fight, Triumph of the Will and wartime newsreels, and the symbols and certain clothing styles of the Federation are modeled on those of the Nazis (e.g., windbreakers, suits, caps, etc. Furthermore, the military intelligence officer's uniforms bear a striking similarity to those of the Allgemeine-SS).[10][15][16] The use of Nazi imagery for the film's Americanized heroes occasioned comment. At the time of the film's theatrical release, the filmmakers did not explain their reasons for this choice. Some viewers interpreted it as a satirical takedown of fascism, while others saw a celebration of it.[7]

In his DVD commentary, Verhoeven said that the film's message is that "War makes fascists of us all". He evoked Nazi Germany's fashion, iconography and propaganda because he saw it as a natural evolution of the United States after World War II and especially after the Korean War. "I've heard this film nicknamed All Quiet on the Final Frontier", he said, "which is actually not far from the truth." Screenwriter Edward Neumeier broadly concurs, although he sees a satire on human history rather than solely the United States.[7] Verhoeven says his satirical use of irony and hyperbole is "playing with fascism or fascist imagery to point out certain aspects of American society... of course, the movie is about 'Let's all go to war and let's all die.'"[17]

Verhoeven also compared the film to previous creature features from the 1950s, such as Them! (1954) and The Deadly Mantis (1957). Speaking about these films, he said they "expressed the fear about the nuclear threat at the time and the feelings of helplessness and despair it caused", while Starship Troopers (which was filmed in a post-Cold War United States) was about "having no more enemies." He also discussed how making movies of the sort are difficult due to political correctness but "if it's big insects that you can shoot to pieces, nobody cares." Tying this into the theme of the film, he said the statement of the film is that "we like enemies."[18]

Reception

Critical response

On release, Starship Troopers received negative reviews from American critics.[2] In a 2017 retrospective round-up of the best films of 1997, The A.V. Club critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky called the film "too damn well-made for its own good" and said that it confused audiences and critics.[19] On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, which collects both contemporaneous and modern reviews, it has a 65% approval rating based on 65 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's consensus is: "A fun movie...if you can accept the excessive gore and wooden acting."[20] On Metacritic, it has a rating of 51 out of 100 based on 20 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews.[21] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[22][23]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times panned the "crazed, lurid spectacle,".[2][24] Jeff Vice of the Deseret News called it "a nonstop splatterfest so devoid of taste and logic that it makes even the most brainless summer blockbuster look intelligent."[2][25] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, also called it shallow and oriented toward teenage, male science fiction fans but nonetheless said Verhoeven managed some "sly satire" by maintaining a visual style reminiscent of the 1950s when the book was first published: "the sets and costumes look like a cross between Buck Rogers and the Archie comic books".[26] In his 2013 retrospective Calum Marsh of The Atlantic disagreed with those critics, and called the film a "...satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism...[that] critiques the military–industrial complex, the jingoism of American foreign policy, and a culture that privileges reactionary violence over sensitivity and reason."[2] Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called it "A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun."[27] In a 2015 article for Salon, comedian and writer Aasif Mandvi criticized Casper Van Dien's casting as an example of whitewashing compared to the character's Filipino origins in the book.[28]

Accolades

Starship Troopers was nominated for a number of awards in 1998, including the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects; the film won Saturn Awards for Best Costumes and Best Special Effects at the 1998 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, USA Awards. It was also nominated for Worst Picture at the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards but lost to Batman and Robin.[29]

Other media

Sequels

The film has spawned four sequels, including two live-action films, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) and Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008), as well as two animated films, Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017).

There was also a 1999 spin-off CGI animated half-hour television series entitled Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, which ran for eight-story arcs and ended on an unresolved cliffhanger.

Merchandise
Main article: Starship Troopers, influence

In 1997 Avalon Hill released Starship Troopers: Prepare for Battle!, a board game based on the film version rather than Heinlein's book. Its gameplay focused on limited skirmishes rather than larger battles. Avalon Hill had previously released a game called Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers in 1976.[30]

A real-time tactics video game titled Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy was released in 2000. 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.

A first-person shooter game also titled Starship Troopers was released November 15, 2005. This version was developed by Strangelite Studios and published by Empire Interactive. Set five years after the events of the film, the game also featured Van Dien voicing the in-game version of Johnny Rico.

Sega Pinball released a pinball machine based on the film.[31]

Proposed remake

In December 2011, film producer Neal Moritz announced plans to remake the film.[32] In November 2016, Columbia and Moritz announced the writing team of Mark Swift and Damian Shannon had been signed to pen the screenplay.[33] Verhoeven has expressed skepticism at the proposed remake, citing reports that it draws heavily from the original "fascistic and militaristic" 1959 novel.[34]

See also

References
  1. "Starship Troopers". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  2. Marsh, Calum (November 7, 2013). "Starship Troopers: One of the Most Misunderstood Movies Ever". The Atlantic. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  3. "The 100 Best Films of the 1990s". Slant Magazine. November 5, 2012. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  4. Anders, Charlie Jane (February 23, 2008). "Starship Troopers III Actually Based On Heinlein Novel This Time". Gizmodo. Retrieved June 19, 2020. I adore the novel. I read it when i was 13.
  5. Smith, Adam; Williams, Owen (February 12, 2015). "Triple Dutch: Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi trilogy". Empire. Retrieved May 25, 2020. I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring," says Verhoeven of his attempts to read Heinlein's opus. "It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are these people crazy?'
  6. Smith, Adam; Williams, Owen (February 12, 2015). "Triple Dutch: Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi trilogy". Empire. Retrieved June 30, 2020. Verhoeven shot Bug Hunt At Outpost Nine (a working title) relatively uneventfully, working for the first time with a mixture of traditional miniatures and CGI (Phil Tippett, whose stop-motion animation had provided the iconic ED-209 sequence in RoboCop, had recently graduated to the technology and provided the herds of arachnids thundering over the desert landscape of Klendathu, in fact the badlands of Wyoming) while chasing his cast around the place with a broom, attempting to generate some of the fearsomeness of a 12-foot space ant.
  7. Verhoeven, Paul and Neumeier, Ed (1997). Audio Commentary for "Starship Troopers" (DVD). Buena Vista International.
  8. Robley, Les Paul (November 1997). "Interstellar Exterminators. Ornery insects threaten the galaxy in Starship Troopers". American Cinematographer. American Society of Cinematographers. 78 (11): 56–66. – via Questia Online Library (subscription required) Les Paul Robley (March 5, 2020). "Starship Troopers: Interstellar Exterminators - The American Society of Cinematographers". ascmag.com. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  9. Singer, Leigh (November 11, 2017). "Starship Troopers 20 years on: Verhoeven reveals all". Digital Spy.
  10. Podgorski, Daniel (February 4, 2016). "Poking Fun at Militarism: How Paul Verhoeven's Cult Classic Starship Troopers Wilfully Discards Robert Heinlein's Novel". The Gemsbok. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  11. Godwin, Mike (October 1, 1994). "Meme, Counter-meme". Wired. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  12. Gifford, James (2011) [1986]. "The Nature of "Federal Service" in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers" (PDF). Nitrosyncretic Press. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  13. Svetkey, Benjamin (November 21, 1997). "Starship Troopers relys on Nazi imagery". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  14. Laxamana, Chris (November 13, 2014). "Michael Ironside and Kristin Chenoweth". The Adam Carolla Show. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  15. Tobias, Scott (October 19, 2005). "A Decade Of Underrated Movies: Who Will Love The Brown Bunny?". The A.V. Club. Onion Inc. Retrieved July 9, 2008.
  16. "Commentary Tracks Of The Blessed (1997 Starship Trooper)". A.V. Club. March 25, 2005. Archived from the original on December 1, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2008.
  17. Tobias, Scott (April 3, 2007). "Interview: Paul Verhoeven". The A.V. Club. Onion Inc. Retrieved March 24, 2011.
  18. Yakir, Dan (February 1996). "Starship Instincts". Starlog (223): 34–35 – via Internet Archive.
  19. Vishnevetsky, Ignatiy (August 10, 2017). "The best movies of 1997". The A.V. Club. Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  20. "Starship Troopers (1997)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
  21. "Starship Troopers (1997)". Metacritic. Retrieved March 22, 2013.
  22. "10 Action Movies From The '90s That Critics Hated (But Audiences Loved)". ScreenRant. April 29, 2020. The movie has a lukewarm 51 on Metacritic and received a C+ CinemaScore.
  23. "STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997) C+". CinemaScore. Archived from the original on December 20, 2018.
  24. Janet Maslin (November 7, 1997). "Review: 'Starship Troopers': No Bugs Too Large for This Swat Team". The New York Times. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  25. Vice, Jeff (November 7, 1997). "Film review: Starship Troopers". Deseret News.
  26. Ebert, Roger. "Starship Troopers movie review (1997)". Chicago Sun-Times.
  27. McCarthy, Todd (November 3, 1997). "Starship Troopers – F/X-Fueled 'Starship' a Rousing Ride". Variety (magazine).
  28. Mandvi, Aasif (May 13, 2012). "Whitewashing, a history". Salon. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  29. "The Stinkers 1997 Ballot". Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. Archived from the original on August 18, 2000.
  30. Keefer, John (May 30, 2014). "8 Avalon Hill Board Games That Deserve New Life". Escapist Magazine. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
  31. "Internet Pinball Machine Database: Sega 'Starship Troopers'". Internet Pinball Database. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
  32. White, James (December 4, 2011). "Starship Troopers Remake Planned". Empire. Bauer Media Group. Retrieved January 27, 2012.
  33. Kit, Borys (November 3, 2016). "'Starship Troopers' Reboot in the Works (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  34. Reed, Ryan (November 16, 2016). "Original 'Starship Troopers' Director: Remake Fits Trump Presidency". Rolling Stone. Retrieved December 20, 2017.
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