BBS Revisited: Starship Troopers

Upholding my promise to Pearce, I watched this for the first time since ’97 the other day. I did my best to approach it with an open mind and to set previous feelings aside. Sorry, dude, but my opinions are essentially unchanged. Some of this stuff brings serious deja vu from BBS discussions in ’97.
It still doesn’t work for me as satire. It’s a big, tongue-in-cheek over-the-top war movie and the subversive elements (the media guy who suggests the bugs are only attacking because we’re colonising their territory, the Nazi costume designs of the Military Intelligence dudes, the way all the characters come to believe in the transcendent power of warmaking, the celebration at the bugs’ fear) just don’t add up to much. You have to do far too much joining-the-dots in order to find an anti-war movie in SS Troopers; it’s much easier to find a (tongue-in-cheek) pro-war movie in there, the kind of ‘gentle mockery’ that actually reinforces the legitimacy of its target.
I was, at least, thoroughly entertained by the first half of the film – the kids in school, the boot camp sequences, even Carmen’s training – all of that was gripping. Once the film actually goes to war, though, it seems to run out of ideas, substituting ‘new bug threat’ for any meaningful character crises. Even the action sequences left me pretty cold. It goes through four (I think) iterations of Carmen/Rico thinking the other is dead; it has about eight instances of important secondary characters dying in Carmen’s/Rico’s arms imparting final words of wisdom. It’s par for the OTT course, but it didn’t keep me interested.
The effects are still amazing. The bugs hold up incredibly well, with the sole exception the big fire-spitting dudes, who look a bit too CGI – otherwise, the mix of CG and physical effects is astounding.
And Dizzy is still waaay hotter than Carmen.

10 thoughts on “BBS Revisited: Starship Troopers”

  2. In an effort to avoid yet again rehashing the huge arguments on the SCFBBS of 1997-98, all I’ll say in reply to this post is;
    “You’re still wrong, Morgue.”
    And I’ll say no more.

  5. Loved it, cause you don’t need to think. If you think too much about it your brain hurts. Just look at dizzy getting semi-nude and enjoy some bad acting and shooting.
    I actually went to the “special showing” with Peter K (what happened to him) and there was meant to be “effects”. These consisted of some weak strobe when they shot their guns. Yeah for half assed attempts to improve things.

  7. I still love it, but I ranted about it not too long ago already.
    I agree about Dizzy though.
    I served as movies moderator longer than you if you want to play the rank game. ;P
    That’s a weird thing to remember. I also had movies (with Mu) and… something else.
    Who else reading this was a scfbbs moderator?

  8. I think the only thing the entire BBS community agreed on was that Dizzy was hotter than Carmen.
    (Except maybe that rascal Teclis, he might have been a Carmen-lover. Execute him!)

  9. Oh, watch the sweeping generalisations! I’m most certainly of the opinion that Carmen was FAR hotter than Dizzy!
    (Though neither turned me on as much as Lieutenant Rasczak – Michael Ironside all the way!)

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