Word: starships
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...future, humankind must defend itself against a terrifying race of insects--hordes and hordes of incredibly tough and resilient bugs. The brave and fearless men and women of the Mobile Infantry, the awe-inspiring Starship Troopers, must make it their singular goal to destroy every last one of these hideous threats to humanity...
...that half a dozen troopers are required to fire for fully a minute and a half into just one of these creatures to kill it--never mind that there are literally thousands more swarming behind it. Imagine the audacity, then, the presumption, the unmitigated gall, for the movie Starship Troopers to expect the audience to be stunned, shocked, dismayed, titillated at the notion that these guys are going to eaten by the bugs. "See, look," the movie seems to say to you, "they're being eaten by bugs. Aren't you horrified...
...know: people don't go to see movies like Starship Troopers to be intellectually stimulated. They don't go for profundity, for acting, or for socio-political commentary. They go to see special effects, explosions, action, and carnage. And although this movie does deliver these things with not insubstantial proficiency, it also lays bare the dangers of separating these pursuits from simple quality movie-making and of relying completely on effects to stimulate audiences. Even with the advent of computer graphics and more impressive special effects than ever--indeed, because of such advances--such an approach is bound to backfire...
Essentially, however, it's business as usual in Starship Troopers. Basic training is still brutal. The platoon we follow from the first day of enlistment to battlefield apotheosis contains many familiar types--supermacho drill sergeant, dopey yokel and, at its center, Johnny (Casper Van Dien, a newcomer with a useful, uncanny resemblance to the old B-picture star John Agar), who is the traditional spoiled and aimless kid. He has--need one say?--joined up for the wrong, selfish reasons, but when his hometown is destroyed, Pearl Harbor-style, he embraces the right, vengeful-idealistic rationales for merciless slaughter...
Pretty funny. But not always very funny. For Starship Troopers contains an unexplored premise. There are two classes in this futureworld: civilians, who have sacrificed voting privileges for material ease, and warriors, who earn the right to rule by their willingness to die for the state. In short, we're looking at a happily fascist world. Maybe that's the movie's final, deadpan joke. Maybe it's saying that war inevitably makes fascists of us all. Or--best guess--maybe the filmmakers are so lost in their slambang visual effects that they don't give a hoot about...