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: Starship Troopers - review (only 10 years late)
I missed Starship Troopers when it came out, because it sounded like the kind of bug-ugly movie I prefer to ignore. But I've read the book, and read Joe Haldeman's fictional reversal of the book, and I spotted it on the shelf at The Forest, and thought, in a guilt-free way, I can pick it up, watch it, and return it.
So I did.
What most of the reviews miss (all the ones I've read so far, except those written by SF fans for fans) is that the movie itself is a conscious narrative. It takes the events of Heinlein's novel, more or less, and condenses them into a military recruitment film for the Federation described in Heinlein's novel. That recruitment film is the movie Starship Troopers.
You get hints at this at the beginning, and it's definitely spelled out by the voiceover at the end. Too, if you know Heinlein's novel, you can see the changes the Federation made: Juan Rico's name was kept but he was cast as six-foot-plus soldier type, who barely says an unpatriotic word. (In fact, all of the male soldiers are big-and-hunky-and-handsome, and all of the female soldiers are small-cute-busty. Of course they are: the Federation, making a propaganda movie, isn't going to cast realistic soldiers in the roles.) Ther are clues all through the film - clips from news programmes, the constantly re-iterated "Do you want to know more?" that should hint you're not watching the usual kind of movie.
It is hard to explain, but obvious once you see it - if you see it from beginning to end, and if your mind is open to the idea.
But not one of the professional movie critics I read saw it (or if they did, were not prepared to go out on a limb and say they'd seen it). Given they're writing to an audience that finds The Truman Show a difficult movie to follow, and Bladerunner impossible unless Harrison Ford is telling them what they're seeing, is it a wonder? But then - were they meant to? At least one fannish critic (who, I can't remember now) said back then in a review I then didn't understand, that they thought the director was trying to have it both ways - do a blood-and-schlock movie that any gamesplayer would understand, like, and want to buy the videogame - with a narrative framing device that turns it into an ironic comment on the blood-and-patriotism thinking that's broadcast in the movie.
Kenneth Turan in the LA Times: "But it certainly is a jaw-dropping experience, so rigorously one-dimensional and free from even the pretense of intelligence it's hard not to be astonished and even mesmerized by what is on the screen." (The IMDB, however, does have a synopsis "In a sardonic use of war-effort propaganda vernacular, wholesome young Earth people are drafted by their government's media machine into a jingoistic invasion of a neighboring planetary system. Genocide is their response to the foreign life form's attempts at self-defense; the heroes' individuality is similarly wiped out as they are crushed by the grinding wheels of conformity. A love triangle, and the high school buddies' various paths toward violent glory and bloody tragedy, stitch together the tapestry of irony with grand-scale spectacle." - but this was written, most likely, by a fan ("rhinocerosfive-1") not by a pro critic.)
So what was going on? Did the critics just not spot it, or were they afraid to call it in case their readers didn't, or what?
Tags: films
I missed Starship Troopers when it came out, because it sounded like the kind of bug-ugly movie I prefer to ignore. But I've read the book, and read Joe Haldeman's fictional reversal of the book, and I spotted it on the shelf at The Forest, and thought, in a guilt-free way, I can pick it up, watch it, and return it.
So I did.
What most of the reviews miss (all the ones I've read so far, except those written by SF fans for fans) is that the movie itself is a conscious narrative. It takes the events of Heinlein's novel, more or less, and condenses them into a military recruitment film for the Federation described in Heinlein's novel. That recruitment film is the movie Starship Troopers.
You get hints at this at the beginning, and it's definitely spelled out by the voiceover at the end. Too, if you know Heinlein's novel, you can see the changes the Federation made: Juan Rico's name was kept but he was cast as six-foot-plus soldier type, who barely says an unpatriotic word. (In fact, all of the male soldiers are big-and-hunky-and-handsome, and all of the female soldiers are small-cute-busty. Of course they are: the Federation, making a propaganda movie, isn't going to cast realistic soldiers in the roles.) Ther are clues all through the film - clips from news programmes, the constantly re-iterated "Do you want to know more?" that should hint you're not watching the usual kind of movie.
It is hard to explain, but obvious once you see it - if you see it from beginning to end, and if your mind is open to the idea.
But not one of the professional movie critics I read saw it (or if they did, were not prepared to go out on a limb and say they'd seen it). Given they're writing to an audience that finds The Truman Show a difficult movie to follow, and Bladerunner impossible unless Harrison Ford is telling them what they're seeing, is it a wonder? But then - were they meant to? At least one fannish critic (who, I can't remember now) said back then in a review I then didn't understand, that they thought the director was trying to have it both ways - do a blood-and-schlock movie that any gamesplayer would understand, like, and want to buy the videogame - with a narrative framing device that turns it into an ironic comment on the blood-and-patriotism thinking that's broadcast in the movie.
Kenneth Turan in the LA Times: "But it certainly is a jaw-dropping experience, so rigorously one-dimensional and free from even the pretense of intelligence it's hard not to be astonished and even mesmerized by what is on the screen." (The IMDB, however, does have a synopsis "In a sardonic use of war-effort propaganda vernacular, wholesome young Earth people are drafted by their government's media machine into a jingoistic invasion of a neighboring planetary system. Genocide is their response to the foreign life form's attempts at self-defense; the heroes' individuality is similarly wiped out as they are crushed by the grinding wheels of conformity. A love triangle, and the high school buddies' various paths toward violent glory and bloody tragedy, stitch together the tapestry of irony with grand-scale spectacle." - but this was written, most likely, by a fan ("rhinocerosfive-1") not by a pro critic.)
So what was going on? Did the critics just not spot it, or were they afraid to call it in case their readers didn't, or what?
Tags: films