Reviewed by Ed Thommes
As luck would have it, I re-read the book by Robert Heinlein upon which this movie is based not too long ago. The back of my copy proclaims this book to be "The controversial classic of military SF!" Why controversial? Well, the lesson the book tries to teach is that nothing builds character and morality like brutal discipline, and it paints a picture of a "utopia" where democracy has failed and the planet is ruled by a military-established government which only grants citizen status after one performs "Federal Service" (anything from government R&D to soldiering...the final decision is made by the government). In other words, the book has what can only be called strong fascist overtones.
This angle is played up quite a bit in the movie. But in contrast to Heinlein's book, which tried to sell this ominous political order to the reader, the movie takes a decidedly tongue-in-cheek approach. It has a lot of dark, twisted fun, for instance, with recruitment commercials that are part Uncle Sam Wants You, part Leni Riefenstahl. And then there's the snortingly hilarious moment when Doogie Howser--uh, I mean Neil Patrick Harris--strides in wearing his Military Intelligence outfit, which just happens to look exactly like an SS uniform.
So how good an action movie is this? Pretty good, in many ways. The bug computer effects are well-done and appropriately imposing, especially the really big flame-throwing critters. The spaceships are all highly detailed; in a scene where one breaks in half, one can actually see the individual decks inside. And as one can infer from the trailers, all the action stuff is very visceral, with loads of muzzle flashes and spraying bug juice and troopers getting gored, torn limb from limb, cut in half, set on fire...
However, gaps in logic are all over the place, and while this movie is basically meant to be enjoyed at the level of a live-action cartoon, why go out of the way to strain the suspension of disbelief? Here's one problem: You don't have to be a master tactician to realize that if you've got firearms and most of the bad guys just have big nasty pincers and mandibles, you want to be shooting them from afar as much as possible, and avoid going toe-to-toe with them at all costs. But no, the troopers have other ideas. Every time a bug rears up next to them they actually ADVANCE as they shoot, until they're practically underfoot of the alien. And when the bugs come charging, the humans never open fire until they can see their foes' beady little eyes. It's basically World War I trench warfare without the trenches. No wonder the human casualties are so staggering.
In its depiction of combat the movie is almost the exact opposite of the book which, being military SF, payed a lot of attention to things like tactics. Also, the powered armor suits which played such a central role in the book are completely absent in the film. An odd decision from a merchandising point of view...they would've made the perfect action figure.
Also, we've got the usual sci-fi movie space-time problems. The asteroids launched by the bugs come from their home system, which is on the other side of the Galaxy from Earth. We're about 25 000 lightyears from the Galactic center, so that makes the distance to the bug homeworld something on the order of 50 000 lightyears. Unless these asteroids are self-guiding, that's pretty amazing aim. OK, fine, but then there's the little matter of travel time. The asteroids are going along at sublight speed, at least the one that hits a spaceship and later splatters Buenes Aires is, and in any case the aliens don't appear to possess any faster-than-light technology (or any technology, period; they seem do it all with excreted "bug plasma"). So those asteroids have been in the mail longer than 50 000 years. The bugs must really plan ahead.
The acting? Well, the acting is quite bad, as is the writing, but it seems like this is intentional, in keeping with the cartoonish tone of the movie. Troopers die screaming by the thousands, but as soon as a battle is over, the survivors continue unconcernedly exchanging inane dialogoue. The whole effect is dehumanizing in the extreme, but that, too, is probably intentional.
So, in summary, provided you're in the right frame of mind for a violent science fiction action movie, you'll probably enjoy yourself while watching Starship Troopers. If you read the book and shook your head in disgust at the ideology it espouses, you'll probably have a good laugh at the (heavy-handed) satire. If you're looking for an SF movie with intelligence or originality, then you've clearly wandered into the wrong theatre.
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