Madeline
Starship Troopers is ridiculous and totally weird. The main premise is that a bunch of newly high school graduated kids go into, what is basically the military. Where the main enemy is not other countries but bugs. It is sprinkled with a love story and plenty of boobs. There is an entire group shower scene that I’m quite convinced was purely shot specifically to show boobs and butts. But although the audience might be a bit surprised, no one in the scene is put off by the opposite sex showering in the same room.
Starship Troopers Is Ridiculous… Until It Is Not
I think I would have continued to think Starship Troopers is ridiculous, if it wasn’t for my friends at Movie Crush, who discussed the nuances of all this ridiculousness. Once I heard the words satire come out of their mouths, it occurred to me that I did not enjoy this movie as well as I could have. If I had known I was suppose to laugh rather than gawk, I would have
Somehow, about five people who all went to high school together and joined very different divisions of the Starship Troopers, all end up fighting together. But as Movie Crush explained, this is not a mistake. The idea was to reference other movies who have done things like this that just seem ridiculous.
Although it is intended to be futuristic, watching this 23 years after it’s made, we know a little bit about what the future holds and it’s not this. For example, the video conferencing is way behind the times and with the little mini disc. Regardless of what the makers intentions where, they may have been making fun of a lot of things in this movie, but technology was not one of them.
The dead bugs are clearly made of rubber. When the bugs are bisected in school, the feet, all the guts, everything looks just like the fake bugs I had as a child. On the other hand, the alive bugs are actually quite a bit believable. Out of everything in this movie that was just too ridiculous, the alive bugs was the one thing that did not completely bother me. I have to say, they were some creative little creatures.
The Love Of Starship Troopers
Now, let’s get into the love stories. There are the high school sweethearts. The women in the relationship, Carmen Ibanez played by Denise Richards, wants to joining the Starship Troopers to be a pilot. The viewer knows this because she repeats it about twenty times in the first ten minutes of the movie. And the boy in the relationship, Johnny Rico and our main character, wants to follow her for some weird reason. He knows he will likely never see her again. Their relationship then falls apart due to being apart, but alas, by being brought together, they are now great again.
One thing I didn’t understand in watching Starship Troopers but later learned from Movie Crush was that it was a commentary on the current war situation. That is why Starship Troopers is ridiculous. It was intended to be ridiculous to show how ridiculous the current war state is. The premise causes young kids who don’t seem to understand what the true purpose of the war is to go into outer space and attack bugs so that the human race can take over new areas in space. Although this is still a matter today, it is much less obvious than when the movie first came out and it was a hot political topic.
Final Thoughts
Now that I understand why Starship Troopers is ridiculous, I’m a bit intrigued and am a little curious to see it again. The next time will be through another lens and the next time will not be so ridiculous and weird.
