OFF: Starship Troopers (was Classic Rock)

[Jean Lansford]

On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Andy Gilham wrote:

>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.
>:)

Actually, Diz's funeral was one of the few scenes that felt like it
could have come stright from the book to me.  After all, the book was
primarily an exploration of the responsibilities of citizenship.

>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.

He has talked about drawing on his memories of living in WWII Denmark
(I think?) and the contrast between the reality of his childhood and
the war movies of the era for much of the movie.


Jean Lansford
lansford at vnet.net
http://users.vnet.net/lansford/