Starship Troopers (film): Difference between revisions

The Paul Verhoeven film is generally considered to be the biggest [[Flipping the Bird|middle finger]] the [[Starship Troopers (novel)|novel]] will ever receive, and that is no accident. It's a satire of militarism, the Cold War, dehumanization of the enemy, war movies, propaganda and military sci-fi in general. It originally started out as an unrelated script called ''Bug Hunt'', before the studio acquired the rights to the novel and rewrote the script to accommodate it. The film was intentionally designed as the polar opposite of the book in terms of message, characterization, and theme --antheme—an attack on the "pro-war fascist dogma" detractors of the novel attribute to it. A fairly detailed exploration of the film's themes can be found on [http://www.avclub.com/articles/starship-troopers,41966/ The AV Club].

* [[Abandon Ship]]: Occurs in both the first and third movies. The third movie proceeds on to the main plot, a group of survivors making their way across the planet while defending themselves against the bugs until they can regroup with a squad of Marines from their ship. {{spoiler|They find the Marines, still in their dropship, dead as soon as they left their home ship due to an [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|air leak.]]}}

* [[Ascended Extra]]: Male!Dizzy was a [[Sacrificial Lamb]] for the first scene of the novel; Carl was killed offscreen -- eroffscreen—er, off-page. Both have more important roles in the movie.

* [[Belief Makes You Stupid]]: As subtle as a Morita Assault Rifle to the face in "Marauders". The [[Magnificent Bitch]] Admiral Enolo Phid begins to use religion as part of the Federation's propaganda after witnessing in the video records traitor Sky Marshall Omar Anoke communicating with the Brain Bug from the first movie that was being contained for interrogation in almost [[Religious Ecstasy]]. Seeing the most powerful man in the galaxy do exactly as told without thought or protest convinces her to adopt a Christian-esque religion to render the people servile. In Anoke's case, he orchestrates a massacre on Roku San on behalf of the "God Bug" Behemecoatl and manipulates fellow religiously devout assistant, Holly, into falling for his eloquent religious words before she learns who his "god" really during his betrayal, casually suggesting killing him as he's worshippingworshiping "The Wrong god". Amidst all the bashing, former atheist [[Action Girl]] Lola's religious awakening appears to be the only instance where religion is not associated with mind control.

** And in the third the only major black character not only makes it to the end of the movie but gets a massive promotion {{spoiler|and the girl}}.

* [[Composite Character]]: In the novel, Carl is Rico's childhood friend who dies offscreen, the only psychic is an unnnamedunnamed "sensitive" who makes one brief appearance (and Rico suspects his talent is really just very good hearing), and Jenkins is one of Rico's later squadmates. Also in the novel, Colonel DuBois, Rico's teacher, and Lt. Rasczak are separate characters, but [[Michael Ironside]] pulls double duty when the two are combined.

* [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]]: Played with. The exciting battle scenes seem to undermine Verhoeven's supposed message, but most of the soldiers still die agonizingly horrible deaths. But the trope itself is also a large part of the message, the unsavory elements of the war and its reasons are referenced by people trying to downplay or or distract from those elements. It combines [[War Is Glorious]] with [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]].

'''Zander:''' Three weeks on a starship and you think you can lick my Navs? }}

* [[Dropped a Bridge on Him]]: In ''Marauder'', a squad of Marines are introduced, their leader gets a few [[Badass]] moments by way of an introduction, and then {{spoiler|The entire squad dies off-screen as soon as their dropship launches because it wasn't properly sealed to keep the atmosphere in. We don't even learn of their fates until the final act.}}

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: {{spoiler|Behemecoatyl}} from the third film.

* [[Face Heel Turn]]: In the third movie, {{spoiler|Sky Marshal Anoke}}.

* [[Famed in Story]]: {{spoiler|Dax}}, at the end of ''Hero Of The Federation''. Played for irony, as the Federation trumpets him as the champion of the very ideals he was shown to be very cynical towards in life.

* [[Field Promotion]]: Taken to extreme levels with Rico once they end up in the Roughnecks. After taking out a tanker in an extremely reckless move, he was elevated to corporal. After the {{spoiler|Lieutenant Rasczak dies?}} You're now acting {{spoiler|Lieutenant}}. And when they go back to HQ, instead of assigning another one they just make the promotion permanent. Not that he did nothing that ever warranted those promotions.

* [[Good Is Not Nice]]: The Federation.

* [[Hollywood Tactics]]: The tactics and military conduct in this movie are ''so'' bad that it makes you think they're deliberately trying to lose,<ref>[[Wild Mass Guessing|some theorize that this is indeed the case]]</ref>, and would probably need an entire essay dedicated to it to do it justice. However, the film is a subversion; unlike most films all of their incredibly bad ideas ''don't actually work'', and by and large the human troops are completely slaughtered. The writers’ intent seems to have been to use the enormous casualty rate resulting from them as a way to emphasize that [[War Is Hell]], but the human characters just come across as idiots who don’t know how to conduct warfare instead (especially circumspect because the entire culture is built around militarism). Notably, the Bugs actually do use decent tactics and combined arms given their limitations. They routinely stage ambushes and the basic drones soak up a lot of casualties, but they were literally born to be cannon fodder.

** When the people on the ship notice the giant asteroid heading toward Earth, rather than firing their rockets immediately to get out of the way, they wait until the last possible second to dodge out of the way of the giant, seemingly unguided asteroid, which clips off a large part of the ship. Despite this, the captain of the ship compliments the pilot as the best damn pilot in the fleet, instead of telling her she's an incompetent screwupscrew-up and a showoff that got a bunch of people needlessly killed. She's also never court-martialed, demoted, or even reprimanded for nearly killing hundreds of people and causing millions in damage by recklessly flying out an interstellar spaceship from spacedock in ''her first ever piloting duty'', an action she even has the nerve to laugh off right afterwards.

* [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]]: Although the later movies seem to indicate that the bugs are pretty big bastards too. Indeed, it's never made clear just who started the fighting. The Federation already has space stations inside Arachnid territory, ''before'' Buenos Aires gets taken out.

** Its worse than that. The beams the pop-up targets fire can and do, cause involuntary muscle spasms in humans. Which of course, is how Breckenridge is killed. Why no one ever noticed that before or thought it might be tad unsafe during live-fire practice is anyonesanyone's guess. But as bad as all this is, if you look in the background you can CLEARLY see other people marching and walking about, to the sides and probably in BACK of the range. Wow...

* [[Mercy Kill]]: Lt. Rasczak snipes one of his own men who has been carried to a distant ridge by a flying bug and tells his troops, "I'd expect any of you to do the same for me." {{spoiler|And of course, Rico has to do so later.}}

* [[New Meat]]: Used quite a bit. A common phrase used to refer to new recruits is "fresh meat for the grinder". Quite funny, in a horrible sort of way. In the sequel a soldier says "Grow up big and strong, we need fresh meat for the grinder" to a newly-born child ''in the arms of its mother''. Upon receiving new arrivals at the end of the first one (earilyearly reminiscent of [[World War II]] footage of the Nazis throwing in [[Child Soldiers]] by the end of the war), Rico asks "Who are all these kids?", the reply being "we just got 'reinforced'". Upon this he quips that they ([[Dawson Casting|20-year old soldiers]]) are the "old men" now before proceeding to give them the exact same speech the unit commander he replaced did when he, Ace, and Dizzy joined the unit.

* [[Nuke'Em]]: the MI seem to have only two weapons-- assaultweapons—assault rifles, and tactical mini-nuke grenades.

** This troper imagines the fine print on these grenades somewhere along the lines of.

** [[Played With]] in the second film. A group of troopers are couped up in an abandoned outpost waiting for rescue, and a comely female trooper<ref> who is possessed by a [[Puppeteer Parasite]] that she is trying to spread</ref> makes a pass at Captain Dax, claiming that she needs to burn off "excess energy". So he decides to help her out by having her do a hundred pushups [[Not Distracted by the Sexy|as he walks off]].

** In the third movie, Sky Marshal Anoke is a psychic. {{spoiler|This turns out to be a case of being [[Blessed with Suck]], as it's his telepathic sensitivity that allows the Brain Bug to [[Face Heel Turn|turn him to their side]].}}

** Played straight in the second film: when the [[Puppeteer Parasite|Puppeteer Parasites]]s take over a new host, they become much harder to kill.

* [[Putting on the Reich]]: Taken to extremes. It is impossible to look at a dress or officer's uniform and not think "How very German." Given the film's send up of militarism and the fact that Verhoeven grew up in the Netherlands during World War II, it's not exacting surprising. But note how they are ''never portrayed as anything but good'', even while ''saying and doing horrible things'' -- thus—thus reinforcing the film's take on propaganda.

* [[Rule of Drama]]: A starship's emergency thruster control (presumably some sort of overclocking feature... we hope) is placed under a glass cover that must be smashed before use. (Notnot to mention waiting until the last second instead of firing it immediately, but that's a failure of another kind.).

* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Scary Dogmatic]] [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|Humans]]: Humanity is fascist in the first two movies, and by the end of the third movie, on the fast track to becoming a race of religious fanatics.

* [[She's a Man In Japan]]: Dizzy is male -- andmale—and a minor, short-lived character -- incharacter—in the novel.

* [[Stealth Parody]]: Minus the "stealth". Though to the film's credit, it doesn't start trowellingtroweling on the parody until the actual war breaks out (except for the propaganda videos). Up until then it could be mistaken for an actual vapid teen drama.

* [[That's an Order]]: Rasczak says this after telling his troops to have fun during their party celebrating their vcitoryvictory.

*** The aforementioned expert asks, rhetorically, if "have you ever met one" when the idea of an intelligent bug is brought up. Well, let's see, here on Earth, there's the assassin bug, that uses camouflage and stealthy tactics to infiltrate ant hills in order to kill and eat it's inhabitants, or the portia spider, a spider that hunts other spiders, and displays more intelligence than any other arachnid in catching it's prey. Experiments have shown that any insect, even cockroaches, can learn, given time. There's plenty of bugs that demonstrate more intelligence than most humans would give them credit for. Or many of the humans in the command structure in this movie. The aforementioned astroidasteroid drop? The bugs use a similar method to colonize other planets, seeding astroidsasteroids with their young then launching them to other planets to colonize. There's a high school teacher near the opening that is more knowledgeable about the bugs abilities and gives the bugs more respect as to what they are capable of than any other character in the series. Maybe she should have been put in charge of combat strategy...

* [[Video Phone]]: Johnny Rico is talking to his parents in Buenos Aires via [[Video Phone]] {{spoiler|when the Bug asteroid hits the city.}}

* [[We Will Wear Armor in the Future]]: Rather noticeably by fans, not [[Powered Armour]]. Here the armourarmor is more like modern GI flak armourarmor in terms of bulk and coverage.

* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: Inverted. A character prays, in conjunction with obviously [[Doing inIn the Wizard|non-supernatural stuff]] happening around them. "Lord, send us an [[Humongous Mecha|army of angels]]. And arm them with [[Kill It with Fire|your fire]], and [[More Dakka|your sword]], that they may smite the evil around us."