Starship Troopers (film)

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Template:Otheruses4 Template:Infobox Film Starship Troopers is a 1997 film directed by Paul Verhoeven, written by Edward Neumeier, and starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer and Denise Richards. The movie is partially based on the novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. While it uses many of Heinlein's characters and settings, both the plot and presentation differ enough that the movie is described only as "based on the book by Robert Heinlein." However, some dialogue is straight out of the book, or some variation of it. A report in an American Cinematographer article contemporaneous with the film's release stated that 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. This explains both the vast divergence between the two, and the volume of the uproar amongst Heinlein's fans (on Usenet and elsewhere) when the movie was released.

This movie polarised both popular audiences and critics, as did the original book. On one level, the movie tells a straightforward action-adventure science fiction story, with attractive stars, innovative computer-generated imagery, and an entertaining but - as some people interpreted it - clichéd and often ludicrous plot. A prominent theme of the film is the practice by humans of senseless violence without reflection or empathy. As such, it attracted widely divergent responses. Fans of the novel often regarded it as a shallow insult to a great work. Others regarded it as a clever satire of American gung-ho attitudes and what they saw as the book's endorsement of militarism. Some even considered it an artistic experiment in evoking certain emotions (such as sadism, militarism, and patriotism) greatly lacking in Western cinema. Meanwhile, many simply assumed that the movie was endorsing fascism and responded to this negatively or positively depending on their political beliefs.

1 Politics of Starship Troopers
2 Parallels to the Vietnam War
3 Arena football
4 Criticisms of the adaptation
5 Video games
6 Comic books
7 Sequel
8 Footnotes
9 External links

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Politics of Starship Troopers

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Image:Starship-Troopers---rico.jpg In his commentary on the DVD edition of the film, director Paul Verhoeven states unambiguously that the movie's message is "War makes fascists of us all", and that he sees the movie as a satire of American militarism. On the same commentary, the screenwriter broadly concurs, although he sees the satire as applying to the whole of human history, rather than to the U.S.

The filmmakers did not make these statements at the time of the film's release, and viewers seeing the movie could have interpreted it variously as a satire, as a celebration of fascism, or as a simple action film.

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Satire on militarism

The film depicts a future state, the Federation, that some interpret as broadly reminiscent of United States society, except that it is extremely militaristic and uncompromisingly warlike in its attitude toward a race of bugs that inhabits a distant planetary system. The military training is modeled after that of the U.S., but is more cruel: officers purposely wound recruits, and flogging is a mode of punishment.

On one level, the movie encourages us to identify with the gung-ho antics of the Earthlings as they destroy the bugs. However, their attitude, combined with the unsuccessful first attack on the bugs' homeworld, is similar to the Vietnam War, and there is considerable moral ambiguity, as it is never explicitly stated that the bugs started the war - indeed, it is implied that the bugs are reacting to human expansion into their system. Furthermore, there are several scenes that appear to be deliberately reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, and some of the military costumes resemble those of Nazi Germany, particularly Neil Patrick Harris's Colonel Carl Jenkins, whose costume apes that of the Gestapo. At the conclusion of the film, the main characters are depicted training new recruits barely in their teens, which may be a reference to the children and old men drafted for the Volkssturm as a last-ditch defence of Germany in the final days of the European theatre of World War II.

Verhoeven's use of fascist emblems to imply criticism of the Federation may be related to his background. He and some of his crew come from the Netherlands, which suffered heavily in World War II, and Verhoeven himself witnessed Nazi atrocities as a child. Dutch society has had an anti-militaristic attitude ever since.

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Complications

Despite its militarism and xenophobia, the society depicted in the film also contains notable differences from fascist ideology, and at times seems more reminiscent of liberal politics. For one, the society depicted in the film is very open about sex and sexuality. Men and women bathe together, and they appear to feel natural about it. (This, however, may also reflect the desexualized valorization of the body articulated in, for example, Susan Sontag's essay, Fascinating FascismTemplate:Ref). However, as is par with fascist socities, homosexuality, remains a forbidden liasion, as is shown a scene where a man is initially thought to sleep with a man. Second, humanity's army consists of soldiers of all races, sexes, and religions. These two points combine to demonstrate that traditional gender roles are absent: men and women live and work together in ground infantry combat assignments and co-ed showers; while the male lead, Johnny Rico, is captain of the football team, female lead Dizzy Flores is quarterback and calls the winning plays. Third, military service is not obligatory, and civilians that have not served in the military are well respected (as evident by the high-society status of Rico's parents). However, these civilians are not allowed to vote.

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Censorship

In 1999, the video release was banned in Germany for teenagers under the age of 18 due to excessive brutality, glorifying militarism, xenophobic tendencies and an overall nationalistic attitude. However, a version cut by 16 minutes is still shown on German television.

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Parallels to the Vietnam War

As is mentioned in the plot, the initial attacks on Klendathu are quite unsuccessful, as paralleled in the Vietnam War. In addition to that there are many other similarities. For example, the bugs are technologically inferior to humans and live almost 75,000 lightyears away near the opposite side of the galaxy, similarly in Vietnam the enemy lived on the other side of the planet and did not have as advanced technology. The soldiers of mobile infantry are frequently exposed to nuclear radiation by their weapons and little attention is payed to whether or not this is safe, similar to many unusual chemicals such as Agent Orange that have said to have infected US veterans of Vietnam. Also in one scene where a region of Klendathu is "glassed" (presumably meaning nuked) by Federation jets flying overhead the explosion looks very similar to that caused by Napalm, which was commonly used in Vietnam. The enemy, the Klendathians, often traverse underground tunnels that allow them to enter and leave areas, similarly the Vietcong oft times traveled by a network of hidden tunnels to provide strategic superiority.

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Arena football

In the movie, arena football is played at the high school level on Earth, referred to in the film as Jump Ball. One of the first scenes in the movie is an arena football game, and several of the main characters are players. In fact Rico is a star wide receiver for his team who scores the winning touchdown in the game. He uses some of his skills in his military career.

Arena football, like other elements of the film, does not appear in the original novelization: it was invented in 1982. The game depicted in the movie only closely resembles arena football, as it appears that touchdowns are worth 5 points instead of the traditional 6, and 7-man teams (instead of 8) play on a visibly wider field than the hockey rinks that arena football players work on.

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Criticisms of the adaptation

A report in an American Cinematographer article contemporaneous with the film's release stated that 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 Internet Movie Database, Paul Verhoeven has admitted to never even finishing the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both bored and depressed.[1] This explains both the vast divergence between the two, and the volume of the uproar amongst Heinlein's fans (on Usenet and in other places) when the movie was released. Many fans of the book gave it derisive nicknames like "Head of the Class Goes to War" and "Doogie Himmler." (In reference to Neil Patrick Harris)<ref>http://www.badmovies.org/othermovies/startroopers/</ref>

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 SWAT gear. A substantial portion of the soldiers' anatomy was left unprotected, and what little armor was present seemed to be of little use. (Rumor has it that the special effects budget earmarked for the armor had to be diverted to improving the CGI aliens.)

The MI's onscreen military tactics were also found questionable by many. While the majority of the bugs could only pose a threat at extremely close range (a limitation most assuredly not shared by the troopers), the movie's troopers invariably tried to get as close as possible to the bugs, for no other apparent purpose than to allow the bugs' jaws to kill them. The troopers lacked appropriate weapons: The bugs could not have fought an army equipped with tanks, flame throwers, napalm, land mines, or rapid-fire chain guns. Furthermore they did not make effective use of the weapons they did have, since they could easily have wiped out the bugs with a single mini-nuke, while they were massing. Troop movement was disorganized: soldiers ran as a loose crowd, failed to form defensive lines, and ran at the first anonymous cry of retreat. When attacking bugs, soldiers didn't kneel or go prone for greater stability when firing, nor did they ever seem to aim before shooting, possibly because sights were conspicuously absent on their rifles. Overall military discipline was not in evidence. The logical necessity of the Mobile Infantry in most of the movie's sequences is also questionable, since the Federation had the capability to strike without landing ground forces.

The bugs were also altered to be less an alien civilization and more "monsters". Fans of the book were deeply offended by these changes; indeed, they were on the whole deeply offended by the entire movie. This was probably because fans either did not realize Verhoeven's alleged intentions (to parody the society of the story), or, in other cases realized his intentions and were infuriated by them.

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Video games

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.

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.

Half-Life 2's Antlions have been compared by many to resemble Verhoeven's bugs. Mods have even been created by fans to reenact scenes from the movie.

The developers of the computer game StarCraft have openly stated that one of their inspirations was (mainly Verhoeven's) Starship Troopers. The "Zergling" Zerg unit bears a close resemblance to the "Bug Warrior" of Verhoeven's movie, and Zerg Cerebrates are sort of a Brain Bug equivalent. In addition to this, the human units in the Starcraft series are called "Terrans", similar to Earth's "Terran Federation" in Heinlein's novel, and deploy infantry clad in powered armor. One unit, the "Firebat," even utilizes a flamethrower highly reminiscent of the 'hand flamers' used in the book. The species known as the Protoss resemble Starship Troopers' "skinnies", who are described as tall, slim, humanoid creatures. However, the Protoss are displayed as very technologically advanced in the game, as opposed to the Skinnies in the book, whose technology was inferior to that of the humans. The similarities were more pronounced in an add-on pack to Starcraft, Starcraft: Brood War (the original contained Episodes 1–3 of the story, while the add-on contained episodes 4—6). A new faction was revealed when the lost colonies of the first game reestablished contact with Earth: the United Earth Directorate, which acted much like the United Citizen Federation in the movie version. UED officers dressed like the intelligence officers of Verhoeven's movie, and repeated semi-patriotic mantras such as "Serve the Directorate! Serve Humanity!". Most striking was a computer-generated in-game movie that runs after successfully completing the UED campaign, which essentially copies the "wartime news broadcasts" seen in Verhoeven's film. There is a specific kind of map called a "Starship troopers map" that generally pits a small group of well-armed terrans against a massive amount of oncoming Zerg and challenges the players to survive as long as possible.

In 1997, Avalon Hill released Starship Troopers: Prepare For Battle!, a boardgame based on the film version rather than Heinlein's book. Its beer and pretzel gameplay focused on limited skirmishes rather than larger battles. The "Skinnies" do not appear, nor is there a political element. [2]

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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 and Markosia.

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