OFF: Starship Troopers (was Classic Rock)

[Andy Gilham]

Latest post to the movie and comics list...  I'll try and get back on topic
after this!

>
> As above!   This captures accurately my reservations.   For a while at
> the start I felt that there was an intelligent movie trying to be made
> but the characterisation became submerged beneath the action, the
> pacifist character never emerged - at best he was a confused simpleton
> drifting where the current action was strongest and his promotion was not
> on any intrinsic military merits but solely because everyone else got
> crunched.  No great leadership qualities here.

Yes, absolutely, Rico got promoted firstly due to the actions of others
(Dizzy should have made squad leader instead, back in boot camp), and then
through a piece of foolhardy desperation.  That's a fair observation, but
surely not a criticism?  In Heinlein's source text, as I recall, the
pacifist comes of age by becoming a professional soldier.  Verhoeven
actually subverts that, at least to an extent, by showing his career as
being haphazard.

And it's quite deliberate (I believe) that the individuals' character does
become submerged!  To the extent that the romance, so important when
they're still at school, is almost an irrelevance at the end, even to them.
 What he's suggesting is that to defeat the bugs, it's necessary to take on
certain of their traits - including "self-sacrifice for the body politic".
 Which may be a wind-up, but Verhoeven obviously enjoys winding people up.
:)

> On the plus side the action sequences were VERY impressive and the
> presentation of the film through a visual information screen was neat -
> I liked that.

Whatever reservations you might have about Verhoeven, you have to admit he
has few rivals when it comes to action!

The propaganda newsreels also gave him an opportunity to make an unusually
explicit statement about glorification of war compared to the horror of the
actual thing - although he also suggests it's a necessary evil.

>
> > It's also possibly the most violent movie I've ever seen!
>
> Yes, tho' the new Bond movie I feel was even more so - a lot
> of people died in that one!!
>

Now Bond's a great one for glorifying violence, and treating it as a big
joke.  Incidentally, the Royal Navy recruitment ads with Bond ("trained by
the Navy") have been wildly successful!  Life imitating art again...

-Andy

--
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