Starship Troopers (1997)

Director: Paul Verhoeven Stars: Casper Van Dien, Jake Busey, Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown

Review:

Human versus alien bugs. That is basically it. I saw it when I was 13 or 14 and got my kicks of action out of it. Roger Ebert called it an bloody gory movie for kiddies, but as I re-watch it today in my 20s, I disagree. Starship Troopers (1997) is a much deeper than it appears to be.

Our hero joined to army for citizenship, and on his video call to his parents, his hown town, where his parent was, was hit by alien bug invasion. The video cut off due to supposedly weather, but as we see our hero walks away from the camp, we have the whole incidence known as an alien attack and casuality count. Our hero have walked for several steps and that would take no longer than a minute, and they got the whole truth and make a propaganda about it? It obviously symbolize the federal government have conspired it to gather the hatred for motivation of invasion.

Propaganda in minutes after millions have died, and they did not know about it beforehand?

The federal government sends infantry troops in to invade the planet. Why? As it happens the future I assume they got nuclear weapons, and with the strength of nuclear weapon we have now we could destroy a whole planet if we wanted to. We didnt for the modern wars since we still have to live on this planet and for humanity reasons. Well we do not live on the alien planet and they are bugs so humanity reasons does not count, why couldnt they just nuke the whole planet with automatic spaceship? Resources. Government sends living human for reasources. That's how cold humans are.

Infantry is necessary "because they cant push (the nuke) button if you disable your arm.". You believe that?

The hero's girl/slut got really high score in mathematics. She became a starfleet pilot, a real bad pilot. "Oh not Ibanez again. She's crazy.", a passenger of her flight exclaimed. But no she is not crazy, she is just a woman, and we all know woman cant drive. First she almost trashed her fleet into the docking bay on her way out for no reason, and got her fleet nearly in collision with a meteor since she changed the route. Okay the meteor was un-expected for everybody but it definitely is her fault for letting it getting so close when she was in space which the radar would have detected it from a thousands miles away, while she spending her time on flirting with her senor. Her senor said "You know what I want.", and they were almost kissing. Great. That's how she got her role as a pilot, as a whore. That's how corrupted the government is.

Couldnt you have seen it earlier, with nothing else in space....?

Later our hero's girlfriend died, and have a space funeral. Why would she have a space funeral when thousands and millions of people died and went into oblivious, since if they all have a funeral it would not be done until the next millennium. God this government is corrupted. And when our hero heard there is more casuality for victory (of resources), he welcomed it with comfort. That's an alarm of mass brainwash people!

Why does only she got a ceremony?

Ok so in case you havent got it I was kidding. This movie sucks. But it does have it's own good. As I have mentioned: Human vs Alien bugs. That's it. That's what you expected, and that's what you got. The special effects looks good and it's a good blend on minitures and CG. It gots some organic feeling that tells you there is some real things there, and got the CG on something hard to create in real life even in small size. It's quit un-necessary to show the things happened in the boot camp but it got some exciting action on the bug's planet.

Michael Ironside is in this movie, and I really like this actor. He is so exaggerated evil in the Scanners (1981), that it is hard not to love him. What a pity that his career was ruined by Highlander II (1991).

So it has a theme of violence philosphy going on, and does violence solve everything? Well it does solve something but not everything. Does the movie try to tell us anything? About violence? About our arrogance as the only being with vast intelligence? Well at least it tells us to save some blood for the brain, and not to lend your only source of defence towards a whore.

Why wouldnt you use the knife yourself rather than let the chick escape and get back to her ex-boyfriend?