NOTE: This review is for the newly released (Summer 2002) Special Edition Starship Troopers DVD, not the 1998 release. Got it? Good. Take my hand.

Bugs. Who but bugologists* could love them? They're ooky. All crawly and gross. And buglike. Thppft. We blast them with Ortho and Raid and Black Flag and D-Con (remember Ali's head in the bathroom wall? heh heh.) and we zap them with zappers and swat them with swatters and beat them with newspapers and many different magazines (Newsweek, Low Rider, Highlights for Children, Guns and Weapons for Law Enforcement, etc,.) but still they sting and bite and crawl and annoy and (in the Amazon) devour entire rubber plantations.
The situation is bad.
My friends, it just got worse.
Boy oh boy . . . did it get worse .

*Literally, "one who studies bugs".


You're pretty. So am I. Let's be pretty together.
Welcome to Buenos Aires. Well, not the Buenos Aires you know of, choked with currency riots and inflation, but a different one. This is Buenos Aires under the world-governing Citizen Federation which is a fascist world government. The Citizen Federation has apparently decided to make Buenos Aires the main distribution center for beautiful vapid people. This means that we're introduced to our three heroes while they're attending a political science class being taught by that stalwart Canadian treasure, Michael Ironside. One of his arms is missing below the elbow. He tells them that fascism rules and democracy drools. He calls them stupid. This proves tragically prophetic. Our heroes are named Johnny Rico, Carmen Ibanez, and Dizzy Flores. They are all played by aggressively Caucasian actors. They speak English with American accents. Johnny and Carmen are hot for one another. Dizzy wants Johnny. Aie. Conflict! Now my brain hurts!


Destinies are sorted or, Screw Harvard!

In this fascist world, there are two classes of people: civilians and citizens. The difference between the two is that a citizen is someone who's done military service and is thus given the franchise. Civilians are a bit looked down upon. Johnny Rico wants to be a by-God citizen. His parents, who are civilians, are dead-set against it. "You're going to Harvard and that's it!" bellows Dad Rico, clearly unaware that Johnny managed to wrangle a 35% on the math final. Yes, Johnny is in fact in that nebulous area between civilian and citizen known as moron. However, Carmen is joining up. She wants to be a pilot. Their affable friend Carl, who wields sinister psychic powers, is going into Military Intelligence. Well, because he loves Carmen so, so much, Johnny enlists. However, being a moron Johnny is basically qualified for one thing: Infantry. Or rather, the Terran Mobile Infantry. Johnny will be on the very front lines. On the very tip of humanity's spear. Johnny will learn a thing or two in basic training. And I'll tell you the first lesson: It ain't Harvard. So with nary time for even a dryhump at the airport, Johnny and Carmen are whisked away from one another.


Buenas dias, Basic Training! or, Adios, Buenos Aires.

Johnny arrives at the oddly-named Camp Cronkite to commence his basic training. Well, upon arrival he discovers a few things: his Training Sergeant is named Zimm and he's played by Clancy Brown and boy does that make him a jerk! He also learns that Dizzy, the chick from school with a whopper of a crush on him, will be training right alongside him! Quick, flashback to the second paragraph of this review! Conflict, remember? Johnny loves CARMEN, but Dizzy loves JOHNNY! Thankfully, bugs will help sort this out later.
So Johnny commences his training with a motley crew of cadets. He proves adept at both leading and doing and is promoted to squad leader! Well done, Squad Leader Rico!
Meanwhile, Carmen is zooming around humanity's lunar outposts and piloting giant wallowing troop transports. Oh, did I mention that she's been teamed with Xander, a hunky pilot? Well, since Xander is portrayed by daytime television icon Patrick Muldoon he's also a bit greasy and unpleasant-seeming as well as hunky. Anyway, since they met at a futuristic football game and made eyes at one another somewhere back around Paragraph Two, we know that not all is Kosher in the Kockpit.
It's a big day! Johnny and his squad have been issued real bullets and are being sent out on the range! At long last, it's time to strut their stuff! Oh, no! An accident! One of Johnny's guys gets his head blown clean off! You're relieved of squad command, Johnny! And you get ten lashes. Ouch!
Well while Johnny's been botching things on Earth, Carmen and Xander are aboard the Rodger Young, a pretty impressive-looking piece of special effectery. It's very large and very impressive and very ABOUT TO GET HIT BY AN ASTEROID/METEOR/SPACE ROCK!!! Carmen manages to avoid the rock, losing only the ship's communications tower and the 43,000 people in it to the asteroid. Uh oh. That asteroid is headed for Earth! The bugs sent it! Heeeeelp!
Johnny quits. He can't hack it. The Mobile Infantry isn't for him. Carmen sent him a Dear John spacegram and he just has nothing left to give. But as he's walking out, something happens.
Remember the rock? Well it pretty much wipes Buenos Aires, the Latin Paradise, right off the face of the Earth. Good bye, Mr. and Mrs. Rico. Good bye everything. This is new incentive for Johnny to stay in the Mobile Infantry, but he's already signed his 1248 form, quitting the unit! Well Sergeant Zimm shows himself to be not a jerk when he rips up the papers. Johnny is allowed to proceed to war. But war with whom? Read on, slick.


Enter the Bugs or, Cain't we just squash 'em?

No, Cleve. You cannot just "squash 'em." Why? Well because they're gigantic freaking bugs, that's why. Gigantic could mean a lot of things, you say. I agree. Let me qualify it. The most numerous bugs, or Arachnids, as they're known, are the Warriors. These tend to move in tactical units of about eleventy billion bugs and they seem to be built entirely of stabbing appendages. And they're the size of a Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up truck. And the Warriors aren't the biggest bugs. Nossir, not by half. There are also Tanker bugs which are the size of eighteen wheelers and spew superheated plasma like flamethrowers that can vaporize a whole corpse faster than you can say Shake N Bake, for goodness' sake!. And then there are the REALLY big ones, the Plasma bugs. These are about the size of a small apartment building and fire huge blue bolts of energy into the skies to knock Terran spacecraft out of orbit in great flaming wrecks. They also can use this plasma to push meteors toward Earth. And then there are Hopper bugs. No, not Edward Hopper, though who doesn't love his sad painting Nighthawks? No, these are essentially Warrior bugs that can fly and thus, easily decapitate our soldiers. (This looks cool, by the way.) And last but not least, there is the BRAIN BUG which looks like anything from a bloated bratwurst to various parts of the female genitalia depending out how you look at it. (And that genitalia remark wasn't for fun. They mention that on the commentary track, as well. Withhold your outrage.)
So now, you Know your Foe. Back to the humans!


Welcome to Fleet Battlestation Ticonderoga! or, Bugs is tougher'n we'da thought! Nice tattoo though, friend.

Well, the leader of the Citizen Federation, one Sky Marshal Dienes, elects to launch an offensive against Klendathu, the Bugs' homeworld, as retaliation for the shifting of Buenos Aires into the past tense. Our ships and troops rendezvous (literally: "meet") at Ticonderoga to mount the assault. And who should walk in but Carmen! In her foxy grey fascist pilot outfit! With knee-high boots! (swoon) Johnny is cool toward her, however, still reeling from the pain of her Dear John spacegram. When Xander swaggers over and puts an arm around her, Johnny reads between the lines and he and Xander have a fistfight. This resolves nothing, so then Johnny and his squadmates get tattoos. Uncertain of what to do next, they join the assault on the planet Klendathu. Fiasco. Debacle. Underestimating the Bugs completely, our troops are slaughtered, Ginsu'd, Cuisinart'd, and generally cut into little tiny fondue-sized chunks. 100,000 human soldiers go down in one hour, and Johnny is badly wounded. Humanity withdraws to Ticonderoga to think things through. The Bugs gleefully devour 100,000 corpses and click their mandibles in an arrogant manner.


A new battleplan or, Something's different about you, sir.

Johnny comes out of his fugue and is assigned, along with Dizzy and his new friend Ace, to a different unit, Rasczak's Roughnecks, a tough group of hardened veterans. And zoiks! Their lieutenant is none other than Johnny's old political science teacher from the now-cratered Buenos Aires! Yes, Michael Ironside, now sporting a seriously tough-looking robot arm, is in command. Orders will be issued with a crisp Canadian accent, ("Spread oht! Move oht!") and discipline will be harsh.
He tells his Roughnecks that there's a new battleplan. Clear out the planets surrounding Klendathu first. So they head for Tango Urilla, a nearby planetoid. Fighting occurs, but the Roughnecks are more than up for it, blasting numerous Warriors to bits. Johnny himself rides a Tanker bug until he can toss a grenade into it. That night at bivouac, Johnny and Dizzy fool around and fall in love. Oh, you kids shouldn't oughtta done that.


Welcome to Planet P or, Heh heh . . . where's his BRAIN?

Well the Roughnecks land on the desolate (all planets in this movie are desolate) Planet P after their confidence-building experience on Tango Urilla. They're there to check out an outpost called Whiskey Outpost, with whom there's been no communication of late. Well, no worries. After the radioman gets snatched by a Hopper bug (not Dennis, you boobs), resulting in a spot promotion, the Roughnecks arrive at Whiskey Outpost. The entire garrison is dead, save for a screeching, hysterical General, who insists that they need to get out of there right now lest the Bugs return and suck their brains out. See, the Bugs suck our brains out and learn about us. And they've learned enough to set up an ambush, because the word comes from lookouts on the walls: BUGS! Our camera pans up to reveal THOUSANDS of Warriors surging toward the outpost in a truly staggering effects shot. The Roughnecks man the walls, much as their forefathers did in Fort Apache (the movie, not real life.) Eleventy billion rounds of ammunition are expended into the horde, which begins to climb a mountain of their own dead to scale the walls. Hoppers swoop in and slice off Mobile Infantry noggins left and right. A retreat is called! Fall back! As they're moving toward the evac rocket boat, Lt. Rasczak is hit from below and has his legs bitten off. He implores Rico to shoot him. Rico obeys. POW! Dizzy is hit from behind and stabbed at least a hundred times by a Warrior bug, but Johnny and the boys pull her aboard the boat as it lifts off, abandoning Whiskey Outpost to a sea of Bugs.
Aboard the evac boat, Carmen, who is piloting it, discovers that Johnny is not dead as previously thought. She gets misty eyed. But Johnny only weeps for his dead troopers. He is no longer a boy, but a Man.


Via con dios, Dizzy or, Doogie Howser, Gruppenfuhrer.

Aboard the Rodger Young, the Roughnecks consign Dizzy to space in a moving (cough) ceremony. As it finishes, who should walk in but their old friend Carl! His psychic gifts and smarts have made him a Colonel in Military Intelligence! And he looks like a Nazi! Wow! Well, he tells Johnny and Carmen (who's attending the funeral,) that the Bugs laid a trap for us at Whiskey Outpost, but that we have to go back, because they suspect that a Brain bug is on Planet P. He promotes Johnny to lieutenant. He leaves. Carmen looks like she still aches for Johnny, but Johnny is calm and cool toward her.


So this is a Brain bug or, Supporting Cast, it's your time to die

Planet P is assaulted with fury, but the Bugs are ready. As the Roughnecks head out, high above them in orbit, the Rodger Young is rent in twain by Bug plasma, Xander and Carmen managing to leave their dying captain and get to an escape pod, which slams down on Planet P a mere two kilometers from the Roughnecks and is promptly surrounded in a cave by Warriors, who capture them. The Roughnecks head out on their mission, but Johnny, Ace, and the film's token black man head out to rescue his ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend. Unfortunately, the Brain bug gets to them first and, after some trashtalking from Xander, stabs him through the fontanelle and sucks that guy DRY! Johnny and Ace and Corporal Token arrive just in time to save Carmen, bluffing the intelligent Brain bug with a miniature nuclear anti-bug rocket warhead so they can make their way down the tunnel. Corporal Token is wounded and holds off the Bugs with his gun, while clutching the nuke to his chest. Fwa-booooosh. He blows, wiping out hunnerds of Warriors. Johnny and Carmen and Ace emerge into daylight to discover Mobile Infantry has captured the Brain bug! Carl, the Nazified psychic, touches the cowering, oozing Brain bug and announces "It's afraid!" Machine guns are shot into the air like New Year's in Beirut, and the man who captured the Brain is revealed to be none other than Sergeant Zimm, Johnny's old instructor from basic training! Only now it's Private Zimm, as he busted himself down to Private in order to get into the fight. Carmen, Carl, and Johnny agree to always be friends.
They'll Keep Fighting! And They'll Win!


The Important Stuff That You Ought To Know

Starship Troopers is a deeper movie than critics gave it credit for during initial release. Paul Verhoeven, the film's director, knows his way around scifi, having directed two modern genre classics in RoboCop and Total Recall. He also holds a PhD in mathematics. He's not a moron, nor the wildman that Hollywood legend makes him out to be. He's a skilled craftsman who can make a superb film when given the right script. While this film falls short of superb, it IS a marvelous satire.
Take the Federal Network. This is how everyone on Earth gets their news. That's right. A government propaganda broadcast. And with segment titles like Why We Fight and Countdown to Victory, it's extremely reminiscent of World War Two-era propaganda films such as the Why We Fight series of newsreels. The upbeat but often graphic message of the FedNet keeps people hooked with gore while it shoves hopeful war bulletins down their throat. Think of Orwell's 1984: "The war with East Asia is now within memorable distance of it's conclusion." The FedNet device helps us blend into Verhoeven's future, but it's also terribly funny, as when it shows a Warrior bug devouring a hapless cow as an upbeat voiceover announcer blares "Every schoolkid knows that Arachnids are dangerous."
The world is populated by incredibly attractive people who, for the most part, are not terribly bright. Johnny and Carmen are dimwitted ciphers, their romance is bland, their actions robotic. Yes, Carmen pilots half a million tons of starship, but spews wretched innuendos while engaging in banter with Xander, and seems aggressively unprepared for deep interpersonal relationships of any sort. Rico is proud, brave, and solid of jaw and action. He's a posterboy infantryman, reckless but obeying orders. Bellowing at his men but snapping when Raszcak gives an order. And dumb, dumb, dumb to have denied his attraction to Dizzy for so long.
The world of this film is a fascist world. Let's settle this right now. The franchise is given only to those who've served in Federal Service i.e. the military. People are lashed in public as a disciplinary measure. The government controls all media. Drill sergeants can throw knives into a recruit's hand for no other reason than to make a point to the rest of the squad. And the people in the film are cheerful drones. They swallow the propaganda, flock to the colors, and die by the hundreds. Verhoeven is careful with his satire here. Careful enough so that many people thought he was glorifying fascism. But how can there be glory in seeing Doogie Howser in a jet-black Nazi uniform? That's funny my friend. And if you don't get it, you'll only see this as a superb action movie.
Which it is. The special effects in the film are superb. Make no mistake on this. The effects, both in combating the Bugs on the ground and on the human fleets maneuvering in orbit, are spectacular and merit the price of rental on their own. Verhoeven depicts combat with the Bugs as a personal affair, with a dozen humans pouring hundreds of bullets into the seemingly unstoppable Warriors and Tankers. And those things, like a '78 Plymouth Duster, can take a lot of punishment before they die.

Yes, I recommend Starship Troopers wholeheartedly. It's deeper than you think, and the Special Edition is RICH with supplementary materials, from a superb commentary track to special effects stuff to insightful interviews with producer Davidson, writer Neumeier, and the man himself, Paul Verhoeven. They lament that the film's satire fell on a deaf American audience, and they point out things you probably wouldn't see on first viewing. So give it a shot. Come on, you ape! You wanna live forever?

PS It's very different from the book. Don't expect powered armor or gun-toting bugs or a Filipino Johnny.









Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older