Starship Troopers
by Alan Wendt
Just saw it yesterday. It was obviously done by the same group that did Robocop, and it seems to be set in about the same future, except that they've invented web browsing since Robocop. I got really tired of seeing smarmy TV newscasters, TV ads, etc. Apparently this director thinks a story is more real viewed through a small screen.
Most points in the story were undermined by cheap jokes, such as the "You are Here" caption pointing at Earth in the (TV) picture of the galaxy. How are the bugs shipping asteriods halfway across the galaxy from their home planet to Earth? And why, for Gods sake?
I expected some violence in Starship Troopers, but the director has gone out of his way to add slime and guts. With so much of Heinlein's original book cut out, the director added a gratuitous high-school dissection scene so that he could show more slime, offal, and vomit. He also added an extra scene in which Zim throws a knife through a private's hand to make a point.
None of the training or tactics seem very realistic. The drill instructor Zim looks and acts like Goofy in a uniform, except of course that he throws knives at his privates. :) Carmen takes a spaceship off without reading word one of a checklist, and takes gratuitous risks with her billion-dollar ship that should have her discharged or grounded. Drop-ships congregate like confused cattle above the planet, crowded together but out of formation, easy targets with no room to manuever. Rico is allowed an extra 10 minutes for a roll in the hay while another outpost is being dismembered by a bug attack. Carmen's ship is tooling around the galaxy and has a midair collision with an asteroid in interstellar space. Fires burn in vacuum. Etc, etc.
I hope that Virginia Heinlein got a lot of money for the rights.
To summarize: This is a combination of "An Officer and a Gentleman" and "Zulu", except that those movies had plots, dialog, and characters that you cared about. All this movie has is special effects and chiseled cheekbones.
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