Starship Troopers Reviewed by Michael A. Turton (turton@cc.fy.edu.tw)
_Starship Troopers_ proves once again that nothing debases good sci-fi faster than contact with a Hollywood director. The merest glance at this multimillion-dollar clunker shows that the reasons for Hollywood's inability to do science fiction are not technical. Rather, they lie in the impoverished vision and formulaic storytelling that have come to dominate filmmaking in Southern California.
Inspired by Robert Heinlein's classic adolescent sci-fi novel, _Starship Troopers_ tells the story of a group of young men and women who volunteer to fight the Bugs, aliens who have taken to launching meteors full of their spores into human space to colonize human worlds. On this absurd premise (not Heinlein's; he had a much richer storytelling gift) is hung a predictable storyline and buckets of expensive but unimaginative special effects, as well as some gratuitous breasts.
There's no denying that the combat scenes are graphic, with people ripped in half, limbs chopped off and blood everywhere, yet one cannot help but feel that the gore is there to shock, and not out of some commitment to artistic integrity, however hollow. This is because the combat itself is so unbelievable. Although the humans have warp drive, they have no artillery. In fact, they appear to have forgotten a couple of thousand years of military tactics and technology, for they have no area weapons, indirect fire weapons, small arms larger than an automatic rifle, guided missiles, flamethrowers, delayed action bombs or tactical air support, never mind biological and chemical weapons. Tactical communications are limited to a shouted voice. Yet during training they practice with energy weapons that are capable of blowing off heads. Why aren't they used in combat? Instead, the soldiers of the future face their enemies with grenades, automatic rifles, and miniature nuclear weapons (from which they are not shielded), as well as some gratuitous breasts.
There are numerous other problems as well. Ships in space in formation are much too close and it is clear from the positions of ships in the fleet and the controls of individual ships that the designers never learned to think in three dimensions (contrast the level flight of the ships with the far more realistic space combat scenes in _Babylon 5_). All planets have blue skies and ecologies which consist of only two species, humans and bugs, both colonizers from elsewhere. A meteor launched from the other side of the galaxy zeroes in on a city on earth. In reality, any such object would have had to have been launched when our ancestors had not yet become Homo Sapiens. The human political situation is vague at best. How many colonies are there? Where are they? We are told only that democracy failed and the military took over to stabilize society. There are some glimpses of the government, particular of savage punishments, but Heinlein's vision of a society based on individual responsibility is recast as a quasifacist police state. The violence sadly remains true to its Hollywood roots, with guns that never jam or need ammunition, main characters who have a superhuman ability to function regardless of injury. and acting that would shame the homecoming play at high school. Fortunately there is a varied collection of gratuitous breasts.
The Bugs themselves are visually interesting, but they suffer from the same kinds of inconsistencies which plague the movie in general. Although we are told that they are not individuals as we are, they bicker and snarl amongst themselves like mammalian predators jockeying for position in the pride. The "Brain" bug eats human brains by sucking them from the skull, presumably to find out what we think. How it gets any information from crushed and mangled alien proteins is a mystery. Perhaps it should have tried the gratuitous breasts.
The storyline, which tracks the volunteers from high school to through training into combat, eliminates the sentimental masculine melodrama that makes the original novel such a favorite of young males. It too lives in the eternal Now. One recruit says he joined to go career and become and officer; later he turns down a leadership position on the grounds that he just wants to fight; later still he shows up as an NCO. The characters are almost totally inhuman in their response to the death around them. They seem to feel neither sadness, relief nor anger. Rico is never shown having any serious emotional reaction to the death of his parents. Heinlein's original story is underpinned by a complex web of relationships among the military officers who dominate Rico's career, but these are gone from the film, as is his vision of an ethnically-mixed society, for everyone in _Starship Troopers_ is either white or black (this being Hollywood, the hero is a blue-eyed blond). The boy-has-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-finds-girl plot that stitches the story together is advanced by the too-convenient death of romantic distractions, as well as some gratuitous breasts.
New faces give the movie whatever appeal it may have. The actress playing Carmen Ibanez has the loveliest smile to grace the big screen in ages. And of course Disi twice bares a pair of fine gratuitous breasts.
Both as a movie and as an SF story, _Starship Troopers_ is an offensive failure. I give it 1 star out of 5. Not worth renting, even for the gratuitous breasts.
Copyright 1998 Michael A. Turton turton@cc.fy.edu.tw
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