Starship Troopers

[TheGreatWasabi]

Good movie, but unfaithful to the novel, which was very good.  I agree that the movie should have had considerably more military units.  Some heavy assualt tanks, more nukes, mabye some king-sized starships with planetary bombardment capabilities...the computer game of Starship Troopers seem to have it all...

[Viseus]

Are you people crazy? Of course the tactics are non-existent! It's satire! I can't understand how anybody can take this movie seriously. Why don't you criticize the tactical stupidity and unrealiztic depiction of Wile E. Coyote's road-runner hunting while you're at it? Come ON. This is a very funny movie which not only ridicules patriotic-militaristic-fascistic jerks, it also pokes fun of YOU audience who take it seriously.

[Drew]

The controversy over the book is if Heinlein really believed the society in it was a good one, or if he was making a point about how on the surface the society looks functional but in reality it is near facist and the populace just accepts it as a blessing.  Or is it a combination of the two?

Verhoven, in the movie, basically took the basic plot idea, but made it into an anti-facist satire.  Because of the realities of translating a book to film, and the fact that he set out to satire the society, he had to change the concept of the infantry from the powered armor that replaced tanks/artillary in the book to a more WWII infantry (Nazi parallel.)  Also, he showed that the individual soldiers acted  because of common, personal feelings that anyone in any society would have.  Meanwhile, the government misused or misdirected the outputs of these soldiers.  That is why a lot of the strategy sucks.  Earth was pompous and stupid at first.

[Martin Back]

I totally agree with Viseus - the soldiers, the millitary tactics are supposed to be dumb- This is a classic piece of cheese and it is great!! lots of gore - HILLARIOUS lines, bad acting - what more can you possibly want????

[Colin]

As a huge REH fan i went to see this knowing allready that it was going to be a satire of the novel, and on that level it probably failed as the the book isnt that well known amongst the target audience of the movie. However it succeed by hitting so many other targets it had me laughing for ages. The entire idea of the a bunch of kids straight from the set of 90210 being horribly mutilated by large space monsters is very appealing.
Add Doogie Howser in full nazi regalia ( now I understand why that show allways disturbed me ), shameless msnbc ( would you like to know more? ) references, the almost word for word remakes of 40's propoganda films and the ever present bodycount-o-meter and the whole experience was worth every cent.
My only problem was that they had a perfectly good opportunity to kill of the extremely and deliberately annoying Jonny Rico halfway through the movie but let him come back to life... could have been the first movie without a main protagonist for the second half and therefore quite original.

[Michael Fallon Alberson]

I loved the movie, even before I realized it was satire. However, I would really like
to see a serious movie made of Robert Heinlein's masterpiece.

[S. Schafer]

Yeah, this is a ridiculous piece of work from start to finish. It can't even rightfully be called a satire. A satire assumes you're smarter than the material being satirizes, this assumes that you either REALLY like bad movies or you think professional wrestling is real.

My favorite moment was around 1:30, where the grunts have formed a circle with the bugs in the center, and are firing into the center of the circle. I'll repeat that: they are in a circle and are firing into the center.

Oof, but pretty much every minute of this movie is stupider than any other. That shouldn't even be possible, yet somehow is.

Fun, though.

[Flangepart]

Are you people crazy? Of course the tactics are non-existent! It's satire! I can't understand how anybody can take this movie seriously. Why don't you criticize the tactical stupidity and unrealiztic depiction of Wile E. Coyote's road-runner hunting while you're at it? Come ON. This is a very funny movie which not only ridicules patriotic-militaristic-fascistic jerks, it also pokes fun of YOU audience who take it seriously.

Sure, if you take the MOVIE seriously...the book, which I recently re-read...yeah, its a thinking persons concept. Different things indeed. Heinlin's comments about how the north American (That means U.S., folks)  continent fell into chaos are more true today then I want to admit.
The movie is a riff fest though...

[Jurrasic]

Needs a 'Clancy Brown!' beside Sgt. Zim's name in the cast list. Guy is a kickass character actor, among many roles he also played The Kurgan in Highlander, (which is balls-awesome enough to get a star on the walk of fame, I say!) and is better recognized then Casper Van Dien by a long shot.

[Parralax view]

I read the book long ago, I saw the film as the usual watered down misconceived mess that it was.  90210 with no exterminators...  And why on god's green do you send a million troops to some god forsaken planet to get chewed up, when a massive nuclear bombardment would have done Orkin's work for them??