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Starship Troopers
Try thinking you're the director of this film, supposedly a mindless science-fiction-action with a silly plot. Why would you:
#1. Put in the two-second notice that the war was actually started by humans invading alien home planets?
#2. Right in the end, put in an alien with disney eyes and make you feel sorry for it?
#3. Make an officer shout "you wanna live forever?", a slogan from WWI, and look right into the camera for half a second?
#4. Put up obviously out-dated war tactics with masses of simple infantry soldiers instead of supertechnology?
#5. Constantly be mixing up american symbols with nazi ones?
#6. Dress superkid Doogie Howser as a nazi and make him a high commander?
#7. Make sure the audience won't identify very much with any of the main characters?
#8. Refuse to give us a normal ending?
I'll give you some suggestions right away:
#1. Because you simulate having to read between the lines not only in Soviet newspapers, but just as much in american TV.
#2. Because you want to show that you too can be fooled in by the demonizing of the enemy - in this case they are even presented as bugs.
#3. Because most people know WWI was a meaningless war that slaughtered 8 million people too decide which country would control the most colonies, and your point is that this is typical for most wars.
#4. Because that's what happened in WWI.
#5. To show how easily The american way could be adopted for a fascist society.
#6. Because the Doogie Howser-style beliefs about "intelligence" actually isn't that far from the nazi übermensch. This point is also made in the test results-scene.
#7. Because you've read your Bertold Brecht and want to try out the Verfremdung-technique. That is, to put the audience at a distant from the characters to make them use their sense rather than getting emotional.
#8. Because in the real world, the wars of the US imperialism won't end with any final victory as stated in the propaganda. As long as there is oppression, there will be resistance. Movies made to point out the need of a certain change in the real world seldom end with a complete solution, as opposed to movies that try to avoid political change by "solving" the problems on screen instead.
This movie is about how the US is being formed by US imperialism. It shows what war looks like from the viewpoint of someone fooled by the propaganda of his/hers aggressive establishment. Just as in other countries were democracy is something you say rather than a reality, Verhoeven too speaks between the lines. Time after time, he points at the alert viewer saying "Ha! I got you again. If it's this easy to get you cheering for the wrong side, how silly won't you be in the next real war?"
I can also recommend making a feminist analysis of the differences between the two women in the film. I believe the keywords are 'surface' and 'content' - as in the whole film. Verhoeven doesn't treat women different from men in his later action movies (same in Hollow Man), which is a bit annoying for our subconscious conservatism.
Spoon feeding is for babies. There are many more subtleties in this movie than the ones listed. This is far more intelligent than Truman show and the likes that Hollywood spits out. This is commie propaganda at it's best.
Regi Paul Verhoeven 1997
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