Flaws in a very good film

[WyreWizard]

Yes, I'm back.  Yesterday was my 36th biirthday.  I got a few presents and one of them was a DVD for the movie that I am talking about in this message.  This movie was made 10 years ago and was based on the novel by Robert Heinlein.  It was a very good sci fi flick.  Yes, I am talking about none other than Starship Troopers.  Although I liked the film, it wasn't without its flaws.  And those flaws were:

Nuclear bazooka:  In the first opening battle in the film, we see the main character along with his unit looking at a couple giant bugs shooting plasma out their butts.  One soldier grabs a bazooka and fires it at the bugs.  The bugs are destroyed in a nuclear explosion.  The projectiles are even called nukes.  Something like this is impossible and ridiculous.  For one thing, it doesn't matter how advanced your technology is.  A nuclear warhead cannot be packed into something that small.  The core of a nuclear warhead is highly radioactive.  why do you think they are so big?  Most of the material is lead to keep the radiation of the plutonium inside.  If that little missile was really a nuke, everyone near it would be poisoned by the radiation.  Another problem is that they were able to nuke the bugs and be only yards from the explosion.  A nuclear explosion has a 30-mile blast radius.  If that was really a nuke, it wouldn't be just those bugs getting nuked, but the entire mobile infantry squad.

Giant Bugs:  Ah yes Giant Insects, an old B movie staple.  I have told you before why Giant Insects are impossible.  Yes, I know they are on another planet, another planet very similar to earth.  Not just similar atmosphere and weather patterns but similar gravity too.  In reality, these bugs would be crushed to death by their own weight.  Its not just their size that makes them ridiculous and unrealistic, but what they can do.  One bug is able to shoot plasma bursts from its butt.  Another bug is able to breathe fire.  For those bugs to shoot plasma out of their butts, their bodies would have to have 120 million terawatts running through them.  Do you know what 120 million terawatts is?  A terawatt is 1 trillion watts, about the same power as 1,000 lightning bolts.  120 million terawatts is the same amount of electricity generated by the whole earth in a millennium.  No living organism can handle having 120 million terawatts running through it.  That would incinerate the organism.  And that giant bug that exhales fire?  Hyperridiculous.  If there was really a living creature that could breathe fire, someone would have seen it by now.  A creature that could breathe fire would burn the inside of its mouth and would starve to death as a result.

All in all, Starship Troopers was a good film.  But its reality flaws were a laugh riot.

[Him]

A nuclear explosion has a 30-mile blast radius.  If that was really a nuke, it wouldn't be just those bugs getting nuked, but the entire mobile infantry squad.

Nuclear explosions can vary in size. The Blast radius of the Hiroshima bomb was only 4 miles. And Nuclear warheads aren't really all that big anymore. I don't think they are any bigger than a microwave oven.

But on that note, I doubt they were really using nukes. It's probably just slang for blowing something up.

My only problem with the film was the endless scenes of shooting giant bugs. Marines shooting giant bugs is cool at first, but after the first 2 it gets monotonous.

[Menard]

I want to know who the hell voted WireWillie up in karma.

Don't ya know he loves getting negative votes?

[raj]

A travesty visited upon a good Heinlein book.  I don't have a problem with Marines vs. Giant Bugs, but title your movie that, don't steal Heinlein's title and slap it on something that has nothing to do with RAH's writing.

[daveblackeye15]

A pity Heinlein's thoughtful book is assosiated with this movie.

Sure it's cool but I can't fully enjoy it when I know the director only read the first few chapters and decided it was boring. Instead of calling the movie "Space Marines" he had to re-do the story into "Starship Troopers" the movie.

[Shadow]

What I thought was goofy was how this bug butt plasma was able to knock an asteroid from the Klendathu system to Earth. Considering that it had to travel at sublight speeds and taking into account the distance between the two star systems (as represented by an onscreen map), the bugs must have launched that rock before man even began using tools.

[Yaddo 42]

We got through this a lot in WW's topics, they aren't documentaries, you've got to let some things slide.

Considering how over the top the film was, I had to excuse the lapses in logic, military tactics and strategy, the laws of science, principles of good acting, etc. I still liked it in spite of the disregard of the book. It was a satire of gung-ho war films, propaganda, and certain political and military mindsets and philosophies. Not an entirely successful one, I thought it was heavy handed at times, the amputee saying "Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today," among other things.

[sideorderofninjas]

Being that Starship Troopers is set in the future, the possibility of developing either cleaner and smaller nuclear weapons is a lot easier to grasp than bugs farting plasma over light years...

Though with the director, Paul Verhoeven, I wouldn't  doubt he'd have portrayed the Mobile Infantry calculating there's a larger chance of any troops who fired "nukes" going to be killed by the bugs before any chance of radiation poisoning would decrease their combat performance...

Well's, there's also the computer animated series, Starship Troopers: Roughneck Chronicles that was closer to Heinlein's book even including power armor...

[Jim H]

What I thought was goofy was how this bug butt plasma was able to knock an asteroid from the Klendathu system to Earth. Considering that it had to travel at sublight speeds and taking into account the distance between the two star systems (as represented by an onscreen map), the bugs must have launched that rock before man even began using tools.

Considering how ludicrous it is, I assumed the human government in that was simply corrupt and using it as an excuse to attack the bugs.

[Joe]

Giant Bugs:  Ah yes Giant Insects, an old B movie staple.  I have told you before why Giant Insects are impossible.  Yes, I know they are on another planet, another planet very similar to earth.  Not just similar atmosphere and weather patterns but similar gravity too.  In reality, these bugs would be crushed to death by their own weight.  Its not just their size that makes them ridiculous and unrealistic, but what they can do.  One bug is able to shoot plasma bursts from its butt.  Another bug is able to breathe fire.  For those bugs to shoot plasma out of their butts, their bodies would have to have 120 million terawatts running through them.  Do you know what 120 million terawatts is?  A terawatt is 1 trillion watts, about the same power as 1,000 lightning bolts.  120 million terawatts is the same amount of electricity generated by the whole earth in a millennium.  No living organism can handle having 120 million terawatts running through it.  That would incinerate the organism.  And that giant bug that exhales fire?  Hyperridiculous.  If there was really a living creature that could breathe fire, someone would have seen it by now.  A creature that could breathe fire would burn the inside of its mouth and would starve to death as a result.

and i was accused of being anal. sheesh 


but really, i like this movie alot, im not quie sure why but i do. havent had a chance to see the second one, and apparently there is a third one in production.

[Rombles]

I reckon that if we fed Wyre Wizard some LSD and made him watch some Monty Python, we could make him shoot plasma out of his butt.


Prove me wrong.

[Jack]

I think the nukes are at least plausible.  Back in the Cold War days they had nuclear artillery shells, fired from a great big howitzer dubbed "Atomic Annie".  So I don't find it too unbelievable that in the distant future we could have bazooka nukes. 

Don't know about the bug plasma.  "Plasma" may have just been a slang word used to describe it.  I suppose it's possible it was some extremely explosive substance that also had bioluminescent properties.  It must have been pretty lightweight as well, considering they fired it into orbit at a pretty low velocity.  Heck I don't know, it looked pretty cool though!

Shadowfyre has a good point about the bug asteroid fired at Earth.  According to the onscreen map, it was launched from the other side of the galaxy.  The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter.  Even dividing that number in two, and giving the bug asteroid a speed of 1/10th the speed of light (which is still pretty darned unbelievable considering the bugs certainly didn't seem to have any asteroid launching technology), it would have had to have been fired a half million years ago. 

[Menard]

and i was accused of being anal. sheesh 

Being anal is a characteristic; being WireWillie is a character flaw.

[Doc Daneeka]

Yesterday was my 36th biirthday.  I got a few presents and one of them was a DVD for the movie that I am talking about in this message.  This movie was made 10 years ago and was based on the novel by Robert Heinlein.

Friday?

[Automan2000]

About the nukes. They were also featured in the book. The book was written at a time when it was believed that we would eventually develop nukes like that. Since then we have learned that its highly improbable that we could ever use a weapon like that in the battlefield but the movie makers still hung on to it 'cause its cool.