From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 06:31:30 GMT
Subject: Starship Troopers Review--game stuff added to keep it on topic
This is going to the SF Con Sim list and the FT list. Apologies if you get this twice. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 SPOILER SPACE 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To understand the film you have to understand the two most important men in its production: Paul Verhoven and Robert Heinlein. Verhoven grew up in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation and apparently saw some pretty bad stuff. This has coloured most of his film work, most obviously--and first--noticed in the film _Robocop_. Apparently Verhoven doesn't like Americans much, or at least American culture. He certainly has a major hate on for fascism, wherever he thinks he sees it. Heinlein, on the other hand, had what could be considered "a good war." A weakened heart due to pneumonia during the '30s had him cashiered out of the US Navy. While his military fiction tended towards the gung ho, death-before-dishonour style of the '40s and '50s, he had some rather important things to say about personal responsibility and he had a knack for predicting future American society (such as the rise of the religious right and the "no-go" zones in American inner cities). The movie _Starship Troopers_ is an adaptation of Heinlein's book. A peculiar adaptation. For Verhoven has taken Heinlein's allegory on the island war against the Japanese and sets it up as an anti-war parody. The plot, in a nutshell: humans settling outlying worlds encounter big mindless bugs. The bugs attack the Earth, precipitating a war. The humans attack the bugs but are gorily repulsed. They attack again, only to fall into a bug trap that suggests that the bugs are controlled by an intelligent "brain bug." The Mobile Infantry are sent in one more time to capture one of these bugs. Meanwhile, the hero of the story, who joined up because his girlfriend wanted to be a pilot, wrestles with his reasons for going to war. You've heard that the script is wooden, much like the acting. I agree, but I think this is deliberate. The dialog is reminiscent of Frank Capra's WW2 films. In fact, Verhoven throws in Capra-esque "newsreels" throught the film (one of which even uses a line from Capra's own War Dept. newsreels). Yes, the Filipino Rico is blonde haired and blue eyed (green eyed, actually). Again, this is deliberate. Rico is the All-American soldier, joining up to impress his girl only later to recognize that the war has a "higher purpose." If you doubt the deliberateness of the parody, you only have to look at the symbology of the Federation flag, and "Doogie Howser's" Gestapo-inspired officer's uniform. You've also heard that the film has little of the book in it. In this I disagree. There is a fair bit of the book in the film. Gone is the powered armour of the MI, the Y racks, and the Skinnies. Added are the love interests, the gore, and the weird forms of bugs. Still, most of the characters are there from the book. So is the Roger Young, the destruction of Buenos Aries, Rico's flogging, the brain bug, Planet P, and most of Heinlein's civics lesson. The dialog is very similar to Heinlein's own (and in some cases verbatim). I personally feel that the lack of powered armour was deliberate (though Verhoven claims it was for technical reasons). The film is VIOLENT, which would be diminished if the dead were encased in armoured suits. Bits of humans get thrown around like cow parts at a meat packing plant. In this the film is fairly realistic. One of the things that most writers ignore when dealing with war is the sheer amount of dismemberment that goes on. Not Verhoven. He delights in ripping off limbs and chopping off heads. There's a point where all but the most sociopathic in the audience stop cheering for the action. If you have a weak constitution, you may want to skip supper until after the movie. As a counterpoint to the carnage, the actors continue to shoot merrily at the bugs. Hardly anyone flinches, or runs away, no one even really swears. Instead, they do their duty like a good Capra film star while their buddies are torn limb-from-limb. The only ones to "bug out" in dishonour are quickly, and messily, dispatched. This is a propoganda film intercut with a slasher flick. This is WHOLLY intentional. The soldiers are straight out of the '40s but the gore is most definitely a product of the '90s. While it remains as faithful to the technical details of the book as is humanly possible in Hollywood these days, it fails in that it not only doesn't respect the source material, it takes it upstairs, sodomises it the entire night, and calls it a whore the next morning. Okay, so _Starship Troopers_ (the novel) was a civics lesson wrapped around American jingoism and an old fashioned war story. Heinlein was a product of his times, and so was his book. Verhoven doesn't seem to understand this, preferring instead to show Heinlein as some sort of elderly fascist. Okay, so REAL war isn't as sanitary as Heinlein tended to suggest. Did Mr. Verhoven have to beat us over the head with this fact for 2 hours? I wanted a serious combat SF story. I would have lived with a cheesy sci-fi bug hunt, ala _Independance Day_. What I got was something altogether different and harder to watch. As a parody of WW2 propoganda films and 1950s style military science fiction _Starship Troopers_ is an interesting film, but I can't honestly say that I liked it. Funny, though, but I can't really say that I disliked it either. The bugs WERE a lot of fun... Now that the "serious" review is done, some observations: The special effects were very good. I liked the various bugs and I loved the starship sequences. This is a good film for eye-candy. I also got some good belly laughs early on when I thought Verhoven was trying for a funny parody. By the end of the movie I'd stopped laughing. From a gaming point of view, there isn't much to recommend it. The humans don't use much in the way of tactics. They don't have artillery or mortars, nor do they have heavy weapon, tank, or air support. The bugs, on the other hand, display a reasonable sense of combined arms doctrine even though their main tactic is to attack as a wave. I've seen the Micromachines toy line for ST, and the bugs look pretty good. Anyone doing a 15mm to 25mm version of ST could do worse than pick up these bugs. Unfortunately, they sell for about C$10 (and come with three 20mm figures), so you'd need to shell out a fair amount of cash to get enough bugs. The space battle scenes are very good, but since they are based on orbital drops on the planet there isn't much to model for a Full Thrust or Starfire type game. The ship designs are interesting, so I hope someone models them for use in Full Thrust or something. If anyone is interested in doing a Starship Troopers, Kryomek, or Tyranid style game, this movie should give you some ideas.