Released: November 1997
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Rated R
Run Time: 129 Minutes
Composer: Basil Poledouris
Genre: Science Fiction, Action
Cast:
Casper Van Dien: Johnny Rico
Denise Richards: Carmen Ibanez
Dina Meyer: Dizzy Flores
Jake Busey: Ace Levy
Neil Patrick Harris: Carl Jenkins
Clancy Brown: Sgt. Zim
Michael Ironside: Jean Rasczak
Patrick Muldoon: Xander Barcalow
Book-to-film adaptations are a pretty tricky bunch. When you try to adapt a book into a film, you should try to follow the source material as closely as possible. The reality is that you’re not going to get everything out of the book. You’ll end up with a 4-hour+ movie. Not everybody wants to see something like that, even though sometimes it works. You have to be willing to cut stuff out for pacing and dramatic purposes. Some stuff that may work in a book, are not necessarily going to translate very well to the big screen. Sometimes, you’ll end up with someone adapting a great series of books into a great series of movies, like The Lord of the Rings. Absolutely phenomenal adaptation and Peter Jackson should and has been commended for that. Then, you’ve got garbage like The Lost World: Jurassic Park which bore almost ZERO resemblance to the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. It wasn’t a bad movie, but they changed so much from the book, that it was almost unrecognizable, if you’ve read the book. I have. Another book that got butchered on its way to the big screen was a little sci-fi book from 1959 called Starship Troopers.
The film opens in a classroom where young Johnny Rico, Carl Jenkins and Carmen Ibanez are learning about “the failure of democracy” from their teacher, Mr. Rasczak. After leaving the class, the trio decide to join The Federation so they can become Citizens. Carmen gets to be a starship pilot, Carl is going into military intelligence, and Mr. Rico gets to join the Mobile Infantry. Several months after Johnny Rico hits boot camp, Earth is attacked by a vicious group of alien insects called Arachnids from the planet Klendathu. The Terran Government decides it’s time to got war against the bugs, so Johnny and his friends are whisked away to Fort Ticonderoga in the Arachnid Quarantine Zone, where they prepare to attack.
When the film came out, the people who saw it, generally fell into one of two groups: The people who read the book first, and the people who saw the movie before reading the book. Statistically speaking, the people who read the book first, generally hated the film, because it strayed so far from the source material, it was like it was a completely different entity. The people who saw the movie first, generally liked it quite well. I fell into the second category. I had no idea the book existed until I saw the movie. After reading the book, I’m going to try and approach this from two different angles: One as a fan of the film and the other as a fan of the book. Story-wise, Starship Troopers barely follows the OUTLINE of the book’s plot. This has been attributed to Paul Verhoeven not actually reading the book, which presents a problem when adapting the material. On the other hand, though, it is pretty straight-forward without any overly complicated plot devices. It’s humans vs. bugs, but that’s not exactly what the book was about. There was a lot more going on in the book than could ever be put on screen at the time. I’m just going to flat-out say it: The movie missed the point of the book by a thousand country miles. The book delved heavily into the history of why the Terran Federation became what it was and why the only way to vote was to serve in the Federation for two years. There was a lot of interesting politics and military aspects of the book that were left out of the movie.
Don’t get me wrong, the book garnered its fair share of controversy over its militaristic themes and its depiction of a fascistic society. The movie takes the whole fascist thing and just goes over the top with it. This was done in part because of Paul Verhoeven’s personal experience with fascism when he was a child in Nazi-occupied Holland. So, his experience kind of influenced the look and feel of the film. It’s not actually that bad, once you understand why he made the choice he did, and this was something that a lot of critics of the film didn’t understand. The film is a political satire of a fascist civilization. The entire movie was done with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. When you understand how fascism works, the movie is kinda funny and scary at the same time. Verhoeven poked fun at the whole propaganda thing that the Nazis were doing at the time and how people were essentially brainwashed into doing what the government told them to do. That is vastly different from the book’s approach to the Terran Federation. It rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and they ended up accusing Verhoeven of being a fascist, which is ironic considering the Verhoeven is a staunch liberal and very much opposed to fascism.
If you can get past the fact that the Starship Troopers film has almost nothing to do with the book, outside of some main characters, the bugs and the Terran Federation, it’s a solid little sci-fi movie in its own right. The film was criticized for its level of violence, but if you’ve ever seen anything from Paul Verhoeven prior to this movie, then you know that ultra-violence has always been a part of his movies. Look at RoboCop and Total Recall for example. The level of violence in those movies is pretty extreme for mainstream action flicks. Starship Troopers gets a lot right in terms of its action and set-pieces. You can see what’s going on, and it does get pretty gory. The action that takes place on the ground is phenomenal. Using a combination of practical effects and CGI, Paul Verhoeven has crafted a very visually unique world that feels real.
Nearly 20 years after the film’s release, the visual effects in Starship Troopers are still amazing. You can tell that a lot of effort went into making the film’s world look as real as humanly possible with lots of great sets and space sequences that are simply amazing to behold. A lot of detail went into the models of the spaceships, so when they get wrecked by bug plasma, it looks phenomenal. The creature effects themselves are simply astounding, even by today’s standards.
The CG animation, especially on the larger “Tanker” bugs is just mind-boggling. They are extremely detailed and move fluidly. This is all thanks to the legendary teams at ILM, or Industrial Light and Magic, the guys responsible for the visual effects in Star Wars. You can’t tell me that these creatures don’t look awesome, because they really do. Let’s talk about the acting. Overall, it’s decent. Casper van Dien plays Johnny Rico, Denise Richards as Carmen Ibanez, and Dina Meyer as Dizzy Flores. Well, they’re young and gorgeous, so something has to be said about that, but I really do dig van Dien’s portrayal as Rico. He starts off as kind of a smug and arrogant little rich boy, but over the course of the film, he becomes the bad-ass son-of-a-bitch that the Mobile Infantry needs. Denise Richards is little more than eye-candy as Ibanez. Dina’s Dizzy has the hots for Rico, but she more than holds her own on the battlefield. The real standouts of the film are Clancy Brown as Sgt. Zim and Michael Ironside as Rasczak. Just watch the following video clips, and you’ll understand why:
Few people can command the screen the way these two actors do. Everybody knows Clancy Brown as the Kurgan from Highlander, but his performance as Sgt. Zim is the stuff legends are made of. Like-wise, Michael Ironside just chews the scenery in a way that nobody else can. I absolutely have to give credit to Paul Verhoeven for getting these kinds of performances out of his actors. He’s the kind of director that gets down and dirty and really has a hands-on approach to film-making. His film-making style is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
Now, if you’ve seen the movie, then you’ve noticed the propaganda commercials peppered throughout the film. These things are very interesting to watch and gives you a bit of insight into the film’s Terran Federation works as far as controlling the populace goes. It’s not entirely unlike the way that Germany controlled the flow of information during World War II, just without the high-tech gadgets. Now, anybody who has read the book, will notice a not-so-subtle absence of the power suits that the troopers wore in the book. While the bugs that are in the movie are well-designed, there are bugs that the movie hadn’t touched on, namely the laser-shooting bugs and the queen. These creatures would show up in later films, but in the first Starship Troopers they are absent. The reason for the lack of the things that fans of the book were expecting is very simple: Lack of resources. The budget for the film was about 100,000,000, and a lot of that went into the visual effects. Yet, even if they had the budget, they couldn’t have done the power suits properly without making them look completely silly and unrealistic. Again, the suits would show up later, but for the initial film, nothing. That burned a lot of people, and understandably so. I had no idea why people who read the book hated the movie until I read the book. I certainly will not blame people for not liking the movie at all. It has its share of issues, but personally, I rather enjoyed it. Also, the soundtrack that was composed by the late Basil Poledouris is nothing short of epic:
The film strays extremely far from the source material, there’s no doubt about it. But the film has garnered a cult following after its initial release and I think a lot of people are beginning to understand the movie now. It’s approach to the source material is controversial and unorthodox to say the least, but the results of the film are surprisingly good. The visual effects are spectacular with some of the most iconic action sequences seen during the 90’s. As somebody who has read the book after seeing the movie, I can certainly understand and appreciate both sides of the argument on the merits of the film. I’m going to score Starship Troopers twice. Once as a film that stands on its own and as a book-to-film adaptation.
As a film that stands alone, I give the film a solid 9/10. I loved it back then, and I love it now. As an adaptation: 3/10. This is one of the worst book-to-film adaptations ever. It barely has any resemblance to the source material and a lot of die-hard fans of the book were rightfully pissed. It leaves out a lot of the story and background into the characters and their history, and certain elements of the film just really didn’t make sense. Truth be told, I will defend the movie until my dying breath, despite its problems. Would you like to know more?