Subject: Review: Starship Troopers (1998)

From: [email-masked] (Rudiger Landmann)
Date: 1 Mar 1998 19:08:26 GMT

/Starship Troopers/ hovers somewhere between a spoof of 1950s American
propaganda films and a tongue-in-cheek action movie, and probably would
have benefitted from being one or the other rather than not quite either.
The film falls short of being true satire, but although /Dr Strangelove/
it ain't, it nevertheless has an idiosyncratic appeal.

One of the most prized videos in my collection is a documentary called
/Atomic Cafe/, a collage of early nuclear-age American propaganda films:
clumsy, jingoistic, and riddled with half-truths, they are the chilling
testimonies of a government hoping desperately to appear in control of a
situation which it is not. The opening scenes of /Starship Troopers/ are
clearly drawing on the language of these films, but sadly, this "frame" 
for the story is largely lost, recurring only intermittently throughout
the film. When it comes back right at the very end, with the on-screen
reminder to the audience that the fight against the bugs is continuing and
that the Troopers are going to WIN!, the effect has been undermined to the
point where it really doesn't hold any more meaning. This is a pity, as
with a more consistent push in this direction, /Starship Troopers/ might
have been a much more blackly humourous piece.

On the other hand, this "frame" may have been discarded completely, making
/Starship Troopers/ comparable to such films as the /Evil Dead/ series, or
Peter Jackson's efforts such as /Bad Taste/ and /Brain Dead/, or director
Paul Verhoeven's own /The Running Man/. The over-the-top, excessive
violence of the boot camp scenes early in the film seems to point in
this direction, but its sheer gratuitousness is not followed through in
the rest of the movie. Similarly, if it is to be read in this light, the
ending is left very weak indeed, and on this count alone, the movie
doesn't really work as an action film, tongue-in-cheek or not.

Leaving generic considerations aside, perhaps the greatest strengths of
the film are in its imagery and visual language. The use of the Nazi-
(even Gestapo-) style uniforms for the Troopers is predictable, but
noteworthy for the way in which they send dissonant visual cues to the
audience. Since this style of uniform is meant to say "evil", the fact
that the protagonists are shown wearing them signals that something is
very much amiss in the society being portrayed. The impossibly flawless 
looks of the main cast, especially when juxtaposed with the Ms and Mr
Average looks of the rest of the soldiers, are another sign to the viewer
that this is supposed to be caricature, not realism. Another interesting
piece of imagery is the design of the major evil in the film - the "Brain
Bug" revealed close to the end of the movie. Like all war films, /Starship
Troopers/ is packed with phallic imagery, in this case mostly belonging to
the protagonists in the form of their weaponry. In contrast, then, the
sinister intelligence behind their enemies is soft and rounded, with mouth
parts that resemble labia within which nestles a "sting" that can suck a
man's brain out, recalling the mythological succubus, or perhaps Lilith's
"vagina dentata".

Comparisons of the film's imagery to James Cameron's /Aliens/ is
inevitable, and this introduces some interesting intertextualities, since
/Aliens/ seems to have been inspired in some ways by Heinlein's original
/Starship Troopers/ novel. The Troopers wear very similar helmets and
armour to the Marines in /Alien/, and the aliens in the two films move and
behave in the same insect-like fashion. Indeed, one of the Marines in
/Aliens/ asks whether the mission they are on is going to be "just another
bug hunt". The scenes in /Starship Troopers/ where the subterranean
tunnels are being explored bear a strong resemblance to Cameron's film,
even to the point of a wounded soldier being left behind by his companions
with a live grenade in order to take some of the enemy out with him when 
it goes off. The soft sponginess of the brain-bug also echoes the spongy
egg-laying apparatus of the alien queen in /Aliens/. There are other
equally loose similarities to be found in the way in which the soldiers
are strapped into their "drop ships" (called the same in both films) and
in the soldiers' explorations of a human "last stand" against the aliens
in both films (incidentally, both films also have powers-that-be
deliberately exposing humans to the alien menace for the sake of
scientific research). 

Dismemberment also provides strong images in both films, with /Starship
Troopers'/ bugs literally tearing humans limb from limb in the same way
that the Alien Queen dismembers Bishop near the end of /Aliens/. Many of
the older characters in /Starship Troopers/ also have missing limbs which
serve as a permanent reminder of their encounters with the bugs, as the
dismembered doll's head that Newt carries around with her reminds her of
hers.

Really, there's not much more to say about this film. Being as
tongue-in-cheek and caricaturish as it is, there is little in the way of
script, acting, or direction that can be discussed in any depth. Suffice
to say, then, that /Starship Troopers/ is an enjoyable, although
predictable, film that doesn't take itself too seriously. If you're
looking for serious drama, clever satire, or light entertainment, this
isn't the place to look, but if you enjoy B-grade sci-fi action laced with
traces of political cynicism, this is definitely worth a look. 

Ruediger Landmann
http://student.uq.edu.au/~s302728