STARSHIP TROOPERS review: would you like to know more?

If you’ve only seen Starship Troopers on DVD or standard-def TV, and you have an HDTV, do yourself a favour and rent it on Blu-Ray. The beauty of 1080p immediately transforms the film from looking dull, flat and dated, to being one of the single best special effects movies of all time: shot in 1997, it was right on the cusp of the digital revolution, the last of the model spaceship movies, and, therefore, the best-looking of them all. Support the pinnacle of an era and immerse yourself in these gorgeous effects, if you’re technologically able.

And it’s not just the special effects that pop on Blu: the CGI is detailed, realistic and ahead of its time, blending seamlessly with the special effects; the gung-ho militaristic macho landing scenes are even more intense in HD; and the cringe-inducing violence throughout the film really hits home on the format.

If you’re unfamiliar with Paul Verhoeven’s militaristic sci-fi space opera, the year is two-thousand-and-something: Mormon extremists invoke the wrath of an extra-terrestrial, intelligent insect civilisation by trying to spread their Truth (and copies of Mormon Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight books?), and a group of young high-school graduates answer the call of duty when Earth is attacked by our new interstellar enemies. Remember that religion is mentioned early on–I’ll come back to it later.

Impossibly beautiful and improbably named, we meet Johnny Rico and Carmen Ibanez just before their graduation. Sure, they look ten years older than every other kid in their school, but the whole film is presented with such enthusiasm and comes off as so surreal that we barely question this typical movie cliché. Petty love triangles and goofy sports matches serve as a prism through which we are introduced to Verhoeven’s future world: humans have evolved beyond obesity and ugliness, and our heroes are smarter, faster, and stronger than us mere modern day folk.

Unfortunately, philosophy hasn’t evolved with humanity–”might is right” is a popular social ideology, and only those who serve in the armed forces have the right to earn Citizenship and vote for their nation’s leaders. Johnny Rico is keen to serve–his pals are all enrolling, and he doesn’t want to get left behind. His parents (here representing our more liberal society) want him to go uni instead of army camp, but you know parents and their children, right?

So we follow Rico as he makes friends, enemies, and a few mistakes on the way to the bloodbath awaiting him and his fellow troopers on bug home-world Klendathu. Rico screws a lot of things up, and, like most of us would, considers quitting. Handsome, strapping lads like Rico don’t normally fail tests in movies, and this is a clever trick Verhoeven uses to pull us heart-first into his universe–jocks relate to Rico’s physical characteristics, while awkward teens relate to Rico’s ample failings.

Rico lands on the bug planet, violence ensues, humanity waits to be saved by our heroes, and so on. The structure of the movie is sublime. Act-changes are disguised by false-culminations and unforeseen turning-points, and are sometimes spread over several scenes (in most movies, you can almost feel the gears grind as a montage or slow fade signals a new direction when an act-change occurs). The film’s plentiful action scenes steadily get bigger, longer and more violent, starting with the opening hook where we watch through the lens of a news camera a reporter being torn apart by an alien bug, and leading to hand-held nuclear devices being used to take out hundreds of creepy ETs (this escalating action is, by the way, the remedy to Star Trek’s top-heaviness). The result is that Starship Troopers feels organic and fresh, unpredictable and alive–a masterpiece of editing and screenwriting.

We get the idea early on that this film is at least partly satirical because of the regular newsreel faux propaganda pieces that pop up–support your country, become a Citizen, kill the bugs!, etc. My favourite is a short piece in which the news camera pans from a dead dog, crushed beneath rubble dislodged in an alien attack, to the angry face of a citizen who says “the only good bug is a dead bug.” The image of the dog fresh in our minds compels us to agree–but should we? From this point forth we know Verhoeven is playing with us, toying with our expectations and emotions like a virtuoso musician. “The only good Nazi/terrorist/Jew/infidel/homosexual …” can be justified just as easily, so do we accept it this time because the bugs are so alien?

Mmm, destruction!

Even while dehumanising the enemy like this (de-alienising?), opposing forces sometimes take on characteristics of the other side. The bugs are smart, but they get smarter as they fight us; we react to them by becoming more single-minded and vicious–a lot like they seemed to be to begin with. We are different physically and socially from the bugs of Klendathu, but doesn’t being the only two sentient races in the galaxy count for anything any more?

I mentioned earlier the brutal violence pervading this film: it is frequent, realistic and sustained. This is easily one of the most violent films of all time, not because of the sheer amount of gore, but because of the emotional impact it comes along with: because of the situation, shooting style and performance you feel it every time an alien mandible pierces a soldier’s flesh and her screams pierce the air. It adds weight to the action and ramps up the stakes considerably. If we lose, we don’t just go home sore; we get slashed and sliced and ripped screaming limb from limb.

But the violence serves also to make a point. We subconsciously build routines for our brains and organise our lives to be as dull as possible. We go to work, pay bills, and watch TV. But from the minute we come under physical attack (from, say, giant insects with ten-foot mandibles), adrenaline kicks in and we come alive. We fight for our lives, and as we are about to die we value our lives in a new and profound way. By showing death as being so brutal and violent, and by putting our heroes as close to it as often as possible, Verhoeven is telling us–don’t wait till the end of your life to start living it! Or is he just making a more thrilling action movie? Again the presence of the propaganda is a clue–it’s so tongue-in-cheek, it gives the flattering impression that Verhoeven wants you to delve deeper into his film.

Making random connections to support this theory, the opening sequences in Buenos Aires are bright and cartoony, full of pastel pinks, blues and greens–normal, ‘happy’ life. As Rico’s training commences, things get a bit greyer–guns, uniforms, prefab grey buildings, but still retain a bit of colour. By the time we land on the bug planet, everything is grey, brown and dull–except for the blood. We get vivid green and orange (and red) splashes during the hectic violence, super-bright reminders of the happy, dull colours of pre-war life–there is a kind of life in death.

Happily, women are treated as equal to men in the Starship Troopers universe. In fact, Rico is the dumbest, most useless person in his group of friends (but also the bravest and most sincere.) His erstwhile girlfriend Carmen Ibanez is a maths whiz (it’s nice to see a girl pummel a guy’s maths score and not get all smug and bitchy about it for once), and the infatuated Dizzy Flores is cunning, quick and smart, as well as physically capable, while psychic Carl Jenkins is cold, calculating and distant (and can communicate silently with ferrets, which is creepy). It’s nice to see a woman burdened with the unrequited love subplot for once, and to see Rico’s brutal denial of Dizzy’s advances, rather than the typical awkward-guy-trying-desperately-to-win-the-heart-of-some-hyper-sexualised-goddess. Which is not to say Rico isn’t beautiful–everyone in the film is improbably styled and toned: like I said above, it’s part and parcel of the vision of the future we’re living in for two hours, and it all works on a fundamental, emotional level: we connect with these improbable characters, and feel for them as the plot rages around them, tearing some apart (literally) while bringing others together in touching ways (again, literally).

Sure, the acting is hit and miss, and the casting is a little uninspired (Denise Richards’ face resembles too closely that of a chipmunk for me to keep a straight face); it’s all a bit surreal and you feel like Verhoeven’s talking over your head; but Starship Troopers is a uniquely cinematic interpretation of classic science fiction ideas, an instant classic of the genre. It looks and sounds spectacular over a decade later, but more importantly, it’s even more relevant today than it was pre-9/11.

Think on it: an act of terror lays waste to a populous city, catalysing the world to raise arms against a foreign foe. Substitute fundamentalist faith for brainwashed, mindlessly obedient, violent insects, and you’re on the right track. Or are you? Religion starts the conflict–remember the Mormons from the top of the article? But it’s one of ‘the good’ religions, an American one, derived from vanilla Christianity. The Mormons who kick the whole thing off were just doing what they thought was right, spreading the ‘Truth’ to any and everyone. If you can convince someone a religion like that is correct, you can probably convince someone else that fundamentalist Islam is correct, and that violence solves all disputes–and this is definitely a future I want to avoid, but as Starship Troopers slyly implies, it’s the present I find myself in right now.

97/100