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Critics Reassess Starship Troopers As a Misunderstood Masterpiece
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Calum Marsh writes in The Atlantic that when Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers hit theaters 16 years ago today, American critics slammed it as a 'crazed, lurid spectacle' featuring 'raunchiness tailor-made for teen-age boys' and 'a nonstop splatterfest so devoid of taste and logic that it makes even the most brainless summer blockbuster look intelligent.' But now the reputation of the movie based on Robert Heinlein's Hugo award winning novel is beginning to improve as critics begin to recognize the film as a critique of the military-industrial complex, the jingoism of American foreign policy, and a culture that privileges reactionary violence over sensitivity and reason. 'Starship Troopers is satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism,' writes Marsh. 'The fact that it was and continues to be taken at face value speaks to the very vapidity the movie skewers.' The movie has rightfully come to be appreciated by some as an unsung masterpiece. Coming in at number 20 on Slant Magazine's list of the 100 best films of the 1990s last year, the site's Phil Coldiron described it as 'one of the greatest of all anti-imperialist films,' a parody of Hollywood form whose superficial 'badness' is central to its critique. 'That concept is stiob, which I'll crudely define as a form of parody requiring such a degree of over-identification with the subject being parodied that it becomes impossible to tell where the love for that subject ends and the parody begins,' writes Coldiron. 'If you're prepared for the rigor and intensity of Verhoeven's approach—you'll get the joke Starship Troopers is telling,' says Marsh. 'And you'll laugh.'"
I was surprised how well the movie tried to follow the plot of the book. But, flying across the galaxy to fight bugs with assault rifles at 10 feet? Everyone in the army looking like members of the fashion club? Where are the armored suits? Skydiving from space? Hand held nukes? (OK, they had a little bit of that). The basic training parts of the book were critical. And why did they include Doogie Howser, Gestapo? For all the teenage blood and gore in the movie, it did portray the concepts of the book fairly well.
It really took Americans 16 years to work this out? To me, the satire was brazenly obvious the moment I watched it for the first time all those years ago.
It's always a good thing by the governments to play the left against the right because in reality it has become more of a divide and conquer strategy to make people fight each other instead of fighting the government. Just look at what public officials can get away with these days.
making fun of Democrats in the US who are the only people in this country actually trying to save it
LOL wut?
Neither of the two major parties in the U.S. is trying to save the country. The OWS crowd is making a misguided effort who's goals would actually make thing worse - but they really do have the goal of fixing the joint, and the Tea Part "proper" is trying to fix a few things while ruining others. These are the major party people with their hearts in the right place.
There's two separate crowds in the country making an effort to save it that actually have the proper goals in mind - the Constitutionalist who want to fix our nation and bring it back to it's chartered place which is quite admirable, and the Libertarians who want to go a step further than the Constitutionalist with a fuck-all get rid of everything else while you're at it attitude.
Your beloved Democrats are making a very visible and direct effort to bankrupt the whole of the people and reduce freedom across the board while their at it.
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Though a far-Left Socialist in his pre-war youth, Heinlein moved firmly to the near-Libertarian right by the end of 1940-ies (he was a big proponent of government's sponsorship of space-exploration, which does not make him quite a Libertarian).
His novel asked the question, that bothered him for years — why do we bestow the franchise on every born American? His argument was that between the king having full power in a monarchy to the power being shared by all in a democracy there is a middle ground of voting rights being held only by those, who have demonstrated — through personal sacrifice — their willingness to serve the humanity (as a civil servant or a soldier). Under his plan, you'd only get to vote after retiring from the service — something the protagonist forgoes for many years by deciding to become a career officer...
Very little of this is in a movie — and it was justly derided for the omission.
But to find satire on "jingoism" and "American militarism" — however much the Atlantic's Illiberals may want to scratch that particular itch — in that movie is to give it way too much credit.
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I agree with you.
Left and right are mindsets - not political movements. Politicians have figured out how to harness the left and right mindsets to keep us arguing about time-wasting argument fodder to keep us from paying attention to the real problems.
I've given it a lot of thought.
Left wing mindset people drive progress, creativity, and our culture keeping us moving forward preventing cultural and stagnation.
Right wing mindset people harness the ideas often created by the left, make them work smoothly, effectively and keep the lefties from moving us forward over a cliff.
You need both left and right wing people to make the world work properly - as well as a few of us rare "mid minded" people that qualify as both and neither at the same time to patch together the differences.
Politicians have turned it into a cultural war where "both sides" are the same and "either" side winning gets us about the same results, and by keeping the war going and amplifying the differences between the "two sides" they keep those who are fighting from seeing there's really more than two ways to look at it and the very act of fighting this war ensures the wrong side wins.
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Heinlein's Starship Troopers is a masterful morality play. The movie can only be seen as such by someone desperately searching for meaning that isn't really there. The fun technical wizardry of the jump suits was written out of it so the obvious CG element was lost..
So why did they bother to call it Starship Troopers? A fun movie but no trace of what was special in the original remains.
Also, the whole "misunderstood masterpiece" bit is absurd. What little satire exists was recognized by Roger Ebert
I had just finished reading that review and no, Ebert really missed the boat. Yes he recognized some of the message, but then says this without a hint of irony:
We smile at the satirical asides, but where's the warmth of human nature? The spark of genius or rebellion? If "Star Wars'' is humanist, "Starship Troopers'' is totalitarian.
He got it on the nose, Starship Troopers is the embodiment of totalitarianism -- that's why there is no "spark of rebellion" no "warmth of human nature" its a totalitarian society that has squashed human nature -- and yet he didn't realize it even as he was writing it.
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+1 insightful
There are just so many clueless monkeys out there. Maybe some of them will read your words, and give them a thought or two. I don't hold out much hope, but maybe.
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ugh... who DIDN'T recognize that that was what verhoeven was going for?
but it's all so FACILE and obvious and redundant. his satire had the depth of insight attained by lampooning the fact that the sun is hot. :P
yes, it's satirical... but so on the nose and idiotically shallow that it gains no mileage from it. it could only be admired for "insight" (for fuck's sake) by children or imbecile.
i should sue the guy for my eye injury sustained when his film forced me to attempt eyerolling at speeds beyond which is possible for average human beings.
the critique of the movie back then was that it was stupid. and that's still goddamn right.
robocop - brilliant
total recall - awesome
but starship troopers is fucking garbage.
Maybe you too should watch the movie again then, because this point clearly open to discussion. One of the subtleties of the movie is that it doesn't directly criticize the idea of a democracy where only people who do service get to vote. If it had simply painted this system as a "bad bad dystopian" one the movie would have been a lot more black and white, and a lot more movie critics would have understood it.
Instead the authors do not make a judgement on the political system they depict. Sure there are some more or less fascist like images here and there, maybe in an effort to confuse the critics. But the system seems to work. The people who don't vote (Rico's parents) look quite well off, happy and not especially oppressed. The character who embodies the system the most - Racszak (Michael Ironside) - is arguably one of the most human and likable.
Instead the real human failure in the story is that first we start the war with the "bugs" (it's a shot that only lasts a few seconds so you have to watch carefully, when religious extremists cross the border and colonize a planet in their territory), and then we paint them as the bad guys anyway. And from the moment we are at war with them, we totally "de-humanize" them and act towards them in a quite psychopathic and sadistic way. I'd argue it would happen the exact same way in a nice non-fascist non-military-dominated universal suffrage democracy like we are supposed to have currently.
Mobile infantry made me the man I am today,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoPTPe33PQY
You cannot understand the Starship Troopers movie until you realise it is all a propaganda piece.
If you think the Bugs are a threat, you have missed everything.
To understand the movie Starship Troopers it is crucial that you realise the _entire_ movie is propaganda for the Earth's military government. It is clear at the start, and the finish, but it never stops being that a propaganda show.
So nothing can be accepted at face value. Here's what we know:
1. Earth is under control of a military government (a junta)
2. Life is tough: food is rationed, the world is overpopulated
3. You can't have children (or vote) without serving in the military
4. There are dissidents / rebels / those who oppose the one-world order
To keep the population under control, the military leaders need a war. The population will accept hardships, and the excess population can be whittled down. People can be kept busy with work creating disposable goods (bombs, spaceships, uniforms), so they don't have time to think or rebel.
The Bugs are not a threat to humans. They defend themselves. They have no space flight capability. They have no means of attacking Earth. They are a manufactured threat.
Their purpose is to kill as many young people as possible. Young people are a threat to the established order (notice how _old_ the military leaders are). That is why the military strategy is so stupid. The purpose is to get people killed. Population control.
And then grieving relatives at home will continue to support the war.
Because the carnage is so great, people get promoted very quickly. Ignorant, naive young things in command, who will just follow orders.
Finally, we have the giant rocks hurled onto Earth. Bugs? Nah. That's the Earth government. Notice how the rock impacted _directly_ on to the area that was rising up against the military government on Earth?
Multiple birds killed with one (big) stone. Dissidents: vaporised. Support for war: raised amongst survivors. Population: culled. GDP boost: keep people busy rebuilding infrastructure
And THAT'S why the female 'heroine' got such a bollocking for changing course without orders. They nearly got in the way of the rock, and the ship sensors could (did!) log the source. Not the bugs. Humans.
So the sequel is the three friends: one a grunt, one an office, one an 'intellectual'. The first two miraculously survive to figure out what is really going on, go to scientist friend, who betrays them. They go on the run. Carbonite may be involved.
But in the third part, the scientist turns out to be working for them on the inside. he had to betray them to save them. But he's been collecting enough info to blow the whole conspiracy wide open.
And together the three of them overthrow the junta, bring peace and democracy, and an uneasy truce with the bugs. Maybe start some colonies. They all live happily ever after.
(Until the Bell Riots)
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Yes, because if the satire looks American, people complain and boycott. But if it makes fun of America a little less directly, nobody (in the US) gets it.
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Being a J1 and being a soldier and getting shot at are worlds apart when it comes to risk and sacrifice. Not in the same league in the slightest.
Being a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Afghanistan or Madagascar (I personally know people who have done both) where you are running around in places of extreme poverty and risking the potential to be shot simply by being an American.... and only armed with a stack of pamplets or the Voice of America radio broadcasts is definitely worlds apart from a soldier who has a bunch of people at his back and an arsenal of weapons at their disposal to be able to shoot back.
Which one risks their life more? Seriously?
Verhoven films usually are a social commentary embedded in a nice action flick - so you can enjoy it as a pure action movie, or analyze it for the subtext. Robocop is another one commenting about society and policing. And oddly, it seems we're definitely headed towards the world Robocop was set in. Only took nearly 30 years.
Anyhow, Starship Troopers, the book, was also designed to be a commentary about war and propaganda as well.
Of course, the problem is that Starship Troopers is much more complex than the film technology we had back in the day. Notably, power suits. Trivially done today with CG and costumes, but back then, technology wasn't robust enough.
Of course, the problem with remakes (like 2014's Robocop) is that they're likely to ignore the entire subtext, or make it so blindingly obvious that the message being communicated is lost.
This is an interesting change from the book, because the scene is almost exactly the same but the meaning is totally changed (once you get another chapter in they diverge to the extent that it's impossible to tell they they're even similar stories). In the book, he's in the recruiting office to discourage people from signing up with any rosy view of what they're getting in to. When he leaves, he puts on prosthetics that make him seem completely normal - the mutilated veteran appearance is just for show.
There's a good reason why the film diverged from the book - the book just isn't that good. The film is a satire of what Heinlein wrote in total seriousness. His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother[1]. It must be incredibly hard to write a screenplay based on his work that isn't satire, because there's no way you can take it seriously.
[1] Yes, he really did write two books about this.
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I'm not sure satire "works" if most of the people whose views are being satirized in the film like it and think it's cool. And if most other people with different views also like it and think it's cool. Doesn't this effect promote these views rather than being a 'funny critique' as was perhaps intended?
In the movie, the instructor throws a knife through the recruit's hand, and says, "Hard to push a button now, eh?"
I get that the movie is satire. I even get that there's a lot in the book that can be fairly satirized. The problem is, the movie is lazy, unfair, incompetent satire.
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I think you may be conflating a disdain with his ideology/politics from whether or not he's capable in the role of Senator. I can just as easily think of many more Senators with no record of military service that I wish were out of a job.
I also recall that in that particular book, you didn't have to be in the infantry to get those rights...you could be a cook or a pilot or a medic, etc. The idea of being willing to sacrifice as a litmus test for suitability as a government servant in another capacity isn't a bad one. We (in the US) only really have the military as a way to serve in that capacity...the peace corps would be a similar example that I think Heinlein would have seen as falling into this category.
It's not a bad idea...why trust someone with the responsibility to make decisions that will impact the lives of everyone when they never had any skin in the game?
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