Starship Troopers (film): Difference between revisions

* [[Blood Knight]]: Watkins empties [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|roughly a hundred rounds into a bug]], even after it's clearly obvious it's dead. [[Full Metal Jacket|Instant Section Eight]].

* [[Bloody Hilarious]]

* [[Bottomless Magazines]]: In spite of the massive amount of ammo expended, you can pretty much count on one hand the number of times anyone reloads on-screen.

** Apparently lampshaded in the video game tie-in, as your basic weapon never runs out of ammo.

* [[Dawson Casting]]: Casper Van Diem was ''twenty-nine'' playing a ''high school student'', Denise Richards was 26, and the other "high schoolers" weren't much younger. Results in [[Fridge Horror]] when you realize how utterly creepy it is that people who ''just barely'' avoid being [[Child Soldiers]] are hardened veterans.

* [[Dead Line News]]

* [[Death By Cameo]]: Scriptwriter Edward Neumeier briefly appears as a murderer who is sentenced to death by lethal injection in a show trial (from what we can tell there wasn't even a trial, just a verdict).

* [[Death By Sex]]: After spending over half of the movie pining, the day after {{spoiler|Dizzy and Rico have sex, she dies}}.

* [[Death of the Hypotenuse]]: {{spoiler|Dizzy. And, for that matter, arguably Zander.}}

* [[Digital Head Swap]]: Done in-universe in ''Marauder'' to create the illusion that Sky Marshal Omar Anoke is still around.

*** Ships parked shoulder-to-shoulder in orbit? Check.

*** Underestimating an enemy that can throw asteroids at you from across the galaxy? Check.

*** No artillery, armor, air, or orbital support for your massive ground assault, even when clearly shown having carpet bombing capabilities? Check.

*** After landing, announcing their presence to all of Klendathu by exiting the landing craft screaming while the craft shoot off flares? Check.

* [[Meaningful Echo]]: Many of Rasczak's lines to his men.

* [[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.}}

* [[Moral Dissonance]]: Invoked. "It's afraid!" *cheers*

* [[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 (earily 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.

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

*** "Tactical Nuclear Grenade. Throw very, very, VERY far away..."

{{quote| '''Carmen''':''(after giving her location to Rico)'' The situation is...is...''(looks up to see that they're surrounded by bugs)'' The situation is extremely hostile!}}

** Probably the best one was early in the Klendathu raid, when a Fleet ship damaged by the bug plasma (which was, contrary to expectations, neither random nor light) plows into another ship in orbit, directly in the ''[[Cool Starship|Roger Young's]]'' path.

* [[Scars Are Forever]]: With some exceptions, most adults in the movie have lost one or more limbs, become blind due to burn wounds, or gained some other type of permanent scarring due to their military service.

* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Scary Dogmatic]] [[Humans Are Bastards|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 -- and a minor, short-lived character -- in the novel.

* [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]]: The MI's weapons are so [[Cool but Inefficient|ridiculously overpowered]] that the recoil makes them practically impossible to aim.

* [[Token Romance]]: in this case, a whole-cloth token [[Romantic Plot Tumor]]/[[Love Triangle]] gets tacked on.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Dizzy's death could've easily been avoided if she hadn't stopped to do a celebratory dance in the middle of an evacuation from a [[Zerg Rush]]. Or, failing that, if she had ''run'' to the [[Drop Ship]] instead of happily skipping to it like a schoolgirl. Or even failing ''that'', if she'd kept moving when Rico yelled out her name instead of stopping, turning around, and staring at the bug. Or if Rico, like an idiot, hadn't ''[[Worst Aid|torn the jagged bug arm from her abdomen]]'', or maybe just yelled something helpful like "Dizzy, drop so I can shoot the bug behind you" instead of "Diiiiiiiiizzzzyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy".

*** 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 astroid drop? The bugs use a similar method to colonize other planets, seeding astroids 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...

** A very good example of this trope is towards the start, when a news correspondent (embedded with the MI) stops to give an on-camera summary of the action during the attack on Klandathu, only to be slaughtered by a Bug partway through. We later find out that this summary is being given in the middle of a mass retreat.

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: Many times. The [[Asskicking Pose|scene]] [[More Dakka|at the end]] of the second film [[No Kill Like Overkill|is notable]].

* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: Inverted. A character prays, in conjunction with obviously [[Doing in 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."

* [[Writer On Board]]: Again, in the opposite direction.

* [[When She Smiles]]: Say what you will about the third film in general, and about [[The Load|Holly]] in general, but the scene when the [[Drop Ship]]'s lights come back on, and her face in turn lights up with a huge smile? ''Gorgeous''.

[[Category:Starship Troopers]]

[[Category:Film]]