Subject: Review: Starship Troopers (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Michael Turton)
Date: 8 Oct 1998 05:13:34 GMT

Starship Troopers
Reviewed by Michael A. Turton ([email-masked])

_Starship Troopers_ proves once again that nothing debases good sci-fi faster
than contact with a Hollywood director. The merest glance at this
multimillion-dollar clunker shows that the reasons for Hollywood's inability
to do science fiction are not technical.  Rather, they lie in the
impoverished vision and formulaic storytelling that have come to dominate
filmmaking in Southern California.

Inspired by Robert Heinlein's classic adolescent sci-fi novel, _Starship
Troopers_ tells the story of a group of young men and women who volunteer to
fight the Bugs, aliens who have taken to launching meteors full of their
spores into human space to colonize human worlds.  On this absurd premise
(not Heinlein's; he had a much richer storytelling gift) is hung a
predictable storyline and buckets of expensive but unimaginative special
effects, as well as some gratuitous breasts.

There's no denying that the combat scenes are graphic, with people ripped in
half, limbs chopped off and blood everywhere, yet one cannot help but feel
that the gore is there to shock, and not out of some commitment to artistic
integrity, however hollow.  This is because the combat itself is so
unbelievable.  Although the humans have warp drive, they have no artillery. 
In fact, they appear to have forgotten a couple of thousand years of military
tactics and technology, for they have no area weapons, indirect fire weapons,
small arms larger than an automatic rifle, guided missiles, flamethrowers,
delayed action bombs or tactical air support, never mind biological and
chemical weapons.  Tactical communications are limited to a shouted voice. 
Yet during training they practice with energy weapons that are capable of
blowing off heads.  Why aren't they used in combat? Instead, the soldiers of
the future face their enemies with grenades, automatic rifles, and miniature
nuclear weapons (from which they are not shielded), as well as some
gratuitous breasts.

There are numerous other problems as well.  Ships in space in formation are
much too close and it is clear from the positions of ships in the fleet and
the controls of individual ships that the designers never learned to think in
three dimensions (contrast the level flight of the ships with the far more
realistic space combat scenes in _Babylon 5_).	All planets have blue skies
and ecologies which consist of only two species, humans and bugs, both
colonizers from elsewhere.  A meteor launched from the other side of the
galaxy zeroes in on a city on earth.  In reality, any such object would have
had to have been launched when our ancestors had not yet become Homo Sapiens.
The human political situation is vague at best.  How many colonies are there?
Where are they?  We are told only that democracy failed and the military took
over to stabilize society. There are some glimpses of the government,
particular of savage punishments, but Heinlein's vision of a society based on
individual responsibility is recast as a quasifacist police state. The
violence sadly remains true to its Hollywood roots, with guns that never jam
or need ammunition, main characters who have a superhuman ability to function
regardless of injury. and acting that would shame the homecoming play at high
school. Fortunately there is a varied collection of gratuitous breasts.

The Bugs themselves are visually interesting, but they suffer from the same
kinds of inconsistencies which plague the movie in general.  Although we are
told that they are not individuals as we are, they bicker and snarl amongst
themselves like mammalian predators jockeying for position in the pride.  The
"Brain" bug eats human brains by sucking them from the skull, presumably to
find out what we think.  How it gets any information from crushed and mangled
alien proteins is a mystery.  Perhaps it should have tried the gratuitous
breasts.

The storyline, which tracks the volunteers from high school to through
training into combat, eliminates the sentimental masculine melodrama that
makes the original novel such a favorite of young males.  It too lives in the
eternal Now.  One recruit says he joined to go career and become and officer;
later he turns down a leadership position on the grounds that he just wants
to fight; later still he shows up as an NCO.  The characters are almost
totally inhuman in their response to the death around them.  They seem to
feel neither sadness, relief nor anger.  Rico is never shown having any
serious emotional reaction to the death of his parents.  Heinlein's original
story is underpinned by a complex web of relationships among the military
officers who dominate Rico's career, but these are gone from the film, as is
his vision of an ethnically-mixed society, for everyone in _Starship
Troopers_ is either white or black (this being Hollywood, the hero is a
blue-eyed blond). The boy-has-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-finds-girl plot that
stitches the story together is advanced by the too-convenient death of
romantic distractions, as well as some gratuitous breasts.

New faces give the movie whatever appeal it may have.   The actress playing
Carmen Ibanez has the loveliest smile to grace the big screen in ages.  And of
course  Disi twice bares a pair of fine gratuitous breasts.

Both as a movie and as an SF story, _Starship Troopers_ is an offensive
failure.  I give it 1 star out of 5.  Not worth renting, even for the
gratuitous breasts.

Copyright 1998 Michael A. Turton
[email-masked]

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