When I was still in junior high school, back in 1978, I checked out a copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers from Riviera Jr. High School’s library.

At the time, I was very gung ho about science fiction, especially futuristic war science fiction; Star Wars (it was still known simply as Star Wars, with no Episode IV or A New Hope attached) was still In first-run at some theaters in those pre-videocassette recorder days and it had gotten me interested in the genre. I also had had a fascination for real-life space exploration and all things military, so when I saw the title Starship Troopers and saw its cover art of heavily armored space soldiers dangling from parachutes, I thought I’d found something to read that was up my alley.

In some ways, I was right; Heinlein’s vision of a future Earth ruled by a global government (the Federation) which is an amalgam of ancient Sparta with some vestiges of an America as viewed by 1950s-era conservatives, i.e., a post-World War Three world in which the veterans of many advanced and non-Communist countries rose up and created a meritocracy in which there are some fundamental freedoms left but the suffrage – the right to vote – is given only to those who serve in the military for a term of two years during peacetime.

And while the basic story of Filipino/Argentine high school grad Juan Rico’s transformation from wide-eyed innocent recruit to battle-hardened junior officer in the Mobile Infantry was in some ways The Sands of Iwo Jima in Space, Heinlein’s novel was more philosophical/political essay than straight-out adventure, and although I did finish the book by the time the two-week check-out period was up, I have to confess that I did so by skimming through much of it.

Thus I can understand director Paul Verhoven’s confession on the DVD’s audio commentary track that he’d only read part of the often-controversial novel while preparing for the 1997 film version of Starship Troopers, which is a dark, violent, and often sarcastic satirical take on Heinlein’s “rah rah, might-is-right” vision of a war between humanity and a race of intelligent, space-faring arachnids.

Starring Casper Van Dien (Tarzan), Denise Richards (Wild Things), Dina Meyers (Saw) and Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother) and written by Ed Neumeier (Robocop), the movie takes some of the elements of the 1959 novel and – as is often the case when Hollywood adapts books for the silver screen – reconfigures characters, situations, and even the settings and themes to fit the filmmakers’ vision.

Although the basic plot still follows Heinlein’s novel. Neumeier and Verhoven (who was a child during the Nazi occupation of Holland during World War II) transform
Starship Troopers’ futuristic America-blended-with-Sparta society into a more fascist-like uber-state that rules the world.

The movie starts off with a futuristic newsreel/Web cast-like propaganda feed shot by Federation combat cameramen during an Ill-fated and ill-advised assault on the Bugs’ home world of Klendathu; it’s a gory little clip of human starship troopers being overwhelmed by thousands of arachnid warriors, and in a touch out of the then still new Internet, it ends with an off-screen narrator asking, “Would you like to know more?”

At first, we don’t “get” all the Nazi-era references, and certainly not while we are still in the exposition that introduces Johnny Rico (Van Dien), Carmen Ibanez (Richards), Carl Jenkins (Harris), and Dizzy Flores (Meyer) shortly before they graduate from high school.

Instead, what we see is an Argentina which has become more Americanized than anything else. Johnny looks like the perfect all-American (or even all-German) poster boy, while Carmen looks, well, like the sexy girl next door most guys dream of but won’t get to date. Everything, at least in the classroom scene that also introduces the one-armed social studies teacher Jean Rasczak (Michael Ironside), seems to point to Heinlein’s vision of the future.

Eventually, though, we see that Neumeier and Verhoven want us to be torn between be following a traditional war movie story arc and disliking the human society in which the “heroes” live.

The old-fashioned war movie bit starts on a familiar note as Johnny, in a desperate bid to impress a military-bound Carmen, joins the Mobile Infantry for a two-year peacetime hitch that, if he survives the brutal boot camp and tour of duty, will end with his earning his status of citizenship and Carmen’s undying love.

It’s at this juncture of Starship Troopers that we start noticing the small details of the fascist nature of the Federation. Everything seems orderly on Earth, the streets are clean, the music is positively white-bread pop and bland, and the military, while sounding typically American, is disconcertingly garbed in Nazi-inspired hues of field-gray and black, reminiscent of the SS uniforms so familiar to viewers of World War II movies.

The sequences of Johnny’s basic training are also more brutal than any in your garden variety war movie (except maybe those in Full Metal Jacket); some, such as when Johnny befriends Ace Levy (Jake Busey) and meets Career Sergeant Zim (Clancy Brown), could fit into any similar movie starring John Wayne and John Agar, but others are cruel and violent, especially the part where Rico, now a squad leader in his training platoon (and despondent over a breakup with the career-minded Carmen), loses a man during a live-fire exercise and faces disciplinary action.

Rico, reeling from the loss of his girlfriend and his failure as a squad leader, quits the Army and is about to return home to Buenos Aires, but even as he phones home to tell his mom and dad of his decision, the Bugs attack Earth by sending a meteor through hyperspace and bashing Johnny’s home town to smithereens. Homeless and without a family, Rico reconsiders his decision, and off to war he goes with the Mobile Infantry.

As in Robocop and Total Recall, Verhoven isn’t shy about depicting violence on screen. Perhaps it’s because as a child he saw more corpses and destruction during World War II than the average movie-goer now living sees in the present time, but not only do we see Bugs blown apart and dissected, but we also see humans being impaled, torn in two, and even get their brains sucked out by their insect-like enemies.

While this in itself is disturbing – this is why this movie isn’t as much fun to watch as any of the Star Wars Episodes – the notion of the humans not being the good guys is even more bothersome. Because the film is being told from the Federation’s slanted point of view, the casus belli is revealed very subtly, and the Bugs’ motivations are very clear once the audience gets the point that the “Do You Want to Know More” clips are as honest as a certain Administrations reasons for waging a war of choice in Iraq.

The quality of the acting is all right, I suppose; everyone seems to be rather chilly and distant, and although most of the major cast is attractive, none of the characters is really likable or engaging the way James T. Kirk is in the Star Trek films or Luke Skywalker in the Classic Star Wars Trilogy. The emphasis, as is often the case in movies of the genre, is on the action, the effects, and the setting, as well as the Neumeier/Verhoven touch of biting satire.

Whether Starship Troopers deserves to be considered a classic or even a good sample of the sci-fi/future war genre depends on the viewer’s tastes and sensibilities. I thought it was nicely paced and not boring, but did it leave me with that “Man! That was good!” vibe that I crave from such films? Not really. Did I appreciate the satire? Yes, and I also liked some touches not in the book, such as the unisex units and communal showers (I’m a sucker for good looking female actresses in showers), but at the same time I felt like the filmmakers had bashed me on the head with a two-by-four, which is not always a good feeling.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age