Starship Troopers Franchise

Greetings all!

Today, a good friend of mine suggested I post this review I wrote a while ago and I agreed that it was a good idea. So here it is, enjoy!

For those of you out there in internet land who are die hard Starship Troopers fans; regardless of how many of you there are, I suggest you stop reading this review right…now. I say this because I can guarantee that my next few comments will surely offend; but first, a brief history lesson.

The Starship Troopers franchise began as a sci-fi novel written by former Navy Officer, Robert A. Heinlein. The book was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the later months of 1959 and was soon after published as a hard cover novel the same year. The book is written in the first person narrative and follows the life and military career of Juan Rico, the blond-haired, blue-eyed (Hitler Youth anyone?) protagonist we know from the first and third films as Johnnie Rico. We are taken on an interstellar journey throughout mankind’s struggle against a species of large alien arachnoids known to most as “the Bugs”. With extreme overtones of what could only be called political and social abuse and violence being the solution to most if not all of life’s problems, the novel sparked much controversy among critics and readers alike. As of late last year, the franchise has warranted three films (only one of which I think actually deserves to be called a film), a CGI television series and two video games, both decent in their own right.

I recently re-watched the first Starship Troopers film directed by Paul Verhoeven and I must say it’s still as good as when I first saw the slightly boy band-ish Casper Van Dien jumping around in tight fitting pants and body armour that looks like it couldn’t stop a French fry. This movie begins by hitting viewers with a barrage of overzealous recruitment advertisements, shortly after which we are introduced to the dashing young college student, ‘Johnnie’ Rico, his somewhat frigid tease of a girlfriend, Carmen Ibanez, and his best friend and resident smart-arse respectively; ‘Dizzy’ Flores and Carl Jenkins. It’s always up for debate but from my perspective, each of the characters brought something useful and interesting to the table; however Carmen rather got on my nerves. What really annoyed me about this character was she was so smug about having Rico wrapped around her ring finger (Gumby himself would suffer serious spinal re-adjustments had he been in Johnnie’s place), that she barely showed even fake remorse for not returning his “I love you” as she was about to leave to join the Terran fleet. You see what you do to us, ladies? It’s always so push and pull with you lot. Although I can’t deny that women in cinema have had their fair share of being messed around. All the same, this particular big-lipped excuse for a woman is rather cruel in the way she treats our poor pretty boy protagonist

Can I just add as a side note; Denise Richards genuinely freaks me out. It’s like someone was working on a pair of teleportation pods and when testing it with a fish, Denise Richards accidentally got into the same pod as the fish and when they came out of the other pod, the two had switched lips. So remember this dear readers, somewhere out there is a trout with woman’s lips.

Anyway, getting back on topic; the other nerve-poking thing about the entire first half of the movie was Rico’s outright refusal to believe that his long time friend and admirer, Dizzy, was a much better option for him than the aforementioned ‘Fish-lips’. Not only was she beautiful, she was also tough, intelligent, and completely stark raving mad about ‘Johnnie’. On a more chauvinistic note she was even willing to put out for him. Surely this isn’t as important as her other qualities but at the same time it’s ridiculously annoying to get jerked around by the girl you think you love and one hell of a relief to finally get a girl who knows what she wants.

So by now, ‘Johnnie’ and ‘Dizzy’ have signed up for the Mobile Infantry, Carl has gone off to become an officer for the Earth’s psychic division and old ‘Fish-lips’ has gone off to become some form of metal space-birdie and eventually cheat on and leave ‘Johnnie’ Rico only to see her new ‘fly-boy’ boyfriend get his brains sucked out by a giant grub made almost entirely of stolen grey matter (And yes, I genuinely hate that girl). Despite my issues with Denise Richards’ existence, I would definitely rate this movie highly for not only its surprisingly decent acting but also incredible special effects for it’s time. Even the plot was much stronger than the franchise’s later instalments. But hey, I’m not here to review the good film of the three. I’m here to review the one that was quite horrible but strangely enough the nearest adaptation of the novel in terms of political and social themes. As I am quite conscious of length with all of my writing I will keep this next plot synopsis as short as possible. Mainly because I don’t remember much about the second film but also because I don’t particularly want to.

So just briefly, the second movie, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation was really nothing special. I was also slightly disturbed when I saw an actress who had played the captain of a ship in the previous film and who was crushed to death by a giant steel door, now playing a completely different character. Aside from the fact that this film had nothing to do with the story or characters of the first one, it was still bearable to watch. This sequel is set on some barren wasteland of a planet abandoned by the Terran Forces long ago because of a devastating infestation of Bugs. We follow a group of soldiers, pilots and technicians as they attempt to get one of the planet’s research stations up and running in order to find out what really happened at the time of the Bug invasion. The one thing that caught my eye about this film was the introduction of the Mind Control Bugs only ever seen (to the best of my recollection) in the 1999 CGI television series. Anyway, the Arachnid menace attempts to take the base back by first sending wave after wave of Warrior Bugs at the humans. When this fails they resort to ninja-like tactics, sending in the Mind Control Bugs to go to work on their unsuspecting victims. Those who are ‘mind-jacked’ by these nasty little critters turn black at the fingertips and take an extreme liking to sugar cubes and sex. You would think this kind of behavioural alteration would be easily noticeable but maybe this particular party undertakes rituals during which people dip their fingers in dry ice and have sweet, sugary orgies and all of this is seen as common behaviour. More or less all of the characters die save the protagonist and some tough guy who was locked up for killing his entire unit when they were stationed at the research centre before the first Bug attack. Regardless of all his efforts to survive, he ends up sacrificing himself to allow the protagonist time to escape on a drop ship conveniently only spacious enough for one more passenger.

The third instalment in this series, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder is a completely different batch of Bug droppings and I mean this in the most literal way. The film seems in some respects to carry on from the first film. It is something like 15-20 years later and ‘Johnnie’ Rico has now worked his way up to being a General. The movie doesn’t put so much focus into having a solid plot as it does emphasising that the human race is now a bunch of morally retarded, suicidal, serial fascists to say the least. Said ‘lack of plot’ also saves me from ranting on about how predictable yet shockingly unexpected the various plot developments are. All I’ll say is that if you’re merely a casual Starship Troopers fan, then you may want to stay away from this film (unless you like being bible bashed). However, die-hard fans of the series may enjoy it quite a bit considering its similarity to the original novel.

Unfortunately it’s much less provocative than the book, mostly thanks to the obviously minuscule budget and fatal deficiency of support from the film industry and its public. There are some things I would like to make clear regarding a couple of the themes of this film. Point number one; this movie was so sickeningly filled with religious content that the pope himself would sooner slit his wrists and send himself to H.E double hockey sticks than grant it a second viewing. Punto número dos; this movie was so sickeningly filled with extreme American patriotism in a kind of “we’ll hang you on national television if you protest our God-given right to blow shit up” kind of way that Dick Cheney would sooner move to fund Al Qaeda than…never mind.

In summary, let me again mention that the first film still remains at the top of the pile for special effects, acting quality and consistency of plot. I must admit that there were some interesting aspects to the third film such as the introduction of the new breeds of bugs and the use of the hardly-touched-on marauder suits. Unfortunately for this film’s reputation (non-existent though it seemed being a straight-to-DVD release) there were some rather morale-breaking properties within that made me want to track down the people who made it, break into their rooms in the middle of the night and proceed to rape their brains out through their eye sockets with a rusty blade screaming “what the hell were you thinking?” over and over. This film is by far the worst of the three (and that includes the television series which was actually pretty decent) and deserves a one out of five for making me laugh so hard I jarred my knees when I fell to the floor in an uncontrollable seizure.

Yours sincerely,

Riddick-ulous.