StrickNet

I just bought Starship Troopers last night, and it looks fantastic! And there are lots of cool features, such as the screen test between Denise Richards and Casper Van Whatever-the-hell-his-name-is. Sure, the story and acting is laughable, but the special effects are the best I've seen anywhere outside of a Star Wars movie, and it's just a damn fun movie to watch.

Great DVD! If you call yourself a sci fi fan, then this is a must-own.

jfoobar

What always troubled me about this film is the inconsistency in the content. The plot is laughable, with almost everything that was intelligent about the source material (i.e. Heinlein's novel) stripped out. What is left is a visually impressive yet dense action film that would appeal quite nicely to a younger pre-teen and teenage audience.
Yet, this has got to be one of the most graphically violent films ever made, making it unsuitable for the audience I just described (add in two nude scenes to boot).

I don't mean to say that there is not some level of enjoyment to be derived from this film by older, more mature, audiences, but you must admit that the script is not terribly mature.

It is a very good DVD though.



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"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -H. L. Mencken

garmonbozia

I just saw this movie recently for the first time because I usually can't stand action films and thought I would hate it. I actually enjoyed it. What I thought was great about the movie was the propaganda, an aspect of the film that a preteen and teenagae audience probably would not appreciate.

DigIt

Agreed. After seeing several WW2 films and studying propaganda, this movie is an excellent satire of the genre.

StrickNet

Justin, I have to disagree with you regarding your comment about it being great for pre-teen/teen audiences. As you point out, the violence is extremely graphic, and there are two (great) nude scenes. If you take the plot seriously, then yes indeed, it is quite sophomoric and laughable... but if you watch it tongue-in-cheek for the satire that it is, I think it's quite watchable over repeat viewings.

I consider myself to be a rather intelligent 34-year-old male, yet I think it's a highly enjoyable movie. Admittedly, few mainstream Americans and no movie critics would agree with me, but we're not talking Oscar material here. ;-)

Anyway, just my two cents....

dknight04

I admit that Starship Troopers is a great DVD, but the movie itself is another thing. Despite great special effects and amazing action sequences, the movie is laughable but fairly entertaining.

Characters/Cast: C
Story: C-
Action/FX: A
Picture/Sound: A
DVD Extras: A-

yangshouwen

And us brits have a sh*tty flipper disc, which had no extras at all (good thing it was our brother paying for it, but £9.99, $15 to you americans. Fookin sh*yt!). Probably upgrade to the region 1 sooner or later.

Tony Block

ROBOCOP and STARSHIP TROOPERS are both great satires on Greedy Corporations and the Media/Military Industrial Complex respectively.

If Veroeven would have stuck a few barbs into the Military in Hollow Man, which is the direction I thought the film was going and unfortunately didn't, it would have made these films into his trimuvirates of satire.

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SNAPOROZ

DVD Smurf

This Neo-Nazi Sci-Fi Shoot 'Em Up flick was good for pop corn on a nothing to do Sunday afternoon. Yet, it seemed to tie me down when I saw it.

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"A word is dead when it is said, some say; I say it just begins to live that day."

[This message has been edited by DVD Smurf (edited February 06, 2001).]

Kim Deal

Jesus H Christ, please stop this 'it was great satire bulls**T', a pathetic excuse for this clunkily directed, lame and trite film. This satire aspect of the film MIGHT'VE worked had they stuck to the original idea and revealed at the end that the humans were the villains wiping out this species in a futuristic Holocaust. As it is 'ST' is a shoddy mess of a film and PALES next to the novel, or even Verhoeven's own 'Robocop'.

Bobubott

I'm going to have to side with Kim Deal on this one. When I saw the "war newsreel" at the beginning, I had high hopes for the film, and I thought it was a very clever mimic of WWII propaganda. However, the film quickly turned into a muddled mess. The film tried to dabble in different genres and wound up utterly failing at all of them. When it tried to be dramatic it came across as laughable, the story got progressively worse (what was with that ending?), and although some of the special effects were nice, I thought a lot of the special effects and set design were pretty cheesy. Everything just had an eery Edward Scissorhands feel to it. The key difference though is that Tim Burton deliberately and successfully used that weird, quirky style to great effect, whereas in this film it happened by accident simply because nobody involved in the production of it could decide what type of film it should be. After watching the film, the only thing I could think of was, "When a film like this is being made, and there are hundreds of people working on it, doesn't even one person have the guts to say, 'Wow, this is a bad movie; maybe there's something we should change?'"

MrBEAViS

After RoboCop, Verhoeven thought he could put anything on screen and use the excuse, "social commentary".

Geofferson

Great film. Highly entertaining. The DVD ain't half bad either.

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"No shirt. No shoes. No dice."

StrickNet

Well, I'm not surprised by the range of opinions. Let me just re-emphasize that by no means do I imply that ST is Oscar-calibre, nor does it even approach being a halfway decent film in terms of story and acting. BUT if you watch it fully aware of its cinematic flaws, it's a fun and entertaining two hours. Nothing more. And the DVD is great.

Hetz

I am a 24 year old male (though when I saw it in the theater I was younger) and I really enjoyed it! I remarked after I saw it in the theater that I couldn't wait until it was out on DVD, and boy I wasn't disapointed. The DVD is GREAT! I didn't expect it to be some masterpiece of cinema and I am not going to judge it for something it is not ment to be!

It is suposed to be a fun, exciting sci-fi romp and it delivers in spades! It is still one of my favorite sci-fi movies.

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Check out my DVD Collection!

Collin

This is for the people who say the movie is laughable, dumb, stupid, etc...
The movie is about a bunch of kids who go into space to kill bugs.

What did you people expect?

BTW - I love this movie. I just watch and enjoy.

Tony Block

quote:<HR>Originally posted by Kim Deal:
This satire aspect of the film MIGHT'VE worked had they stuck to the original idea and revealed at the end that the humans were the villains wiping out this species in a futuristic Holocaust.<HR>

Of course, the humans were the villains. That's what I took away from the film.

The gung-ho attitude of the troops, & the media coverage in the film reminded me of the same F*****-up attitude that our government and the media promoted in covering the Persian Gulf war & how that attitude shaped the majority of our citizens reaction to it. Just blind patriotic acceptance of the war, and no questioning of why we were there, and who was actually the aggressor.



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SNAPOROZ

Collin

"Just blind patriotic acceptance of the war, and no questioning of why we were there, and who was actually the aggressor. "

Who was the aggressor? Didn't Iraq invade Kuwait? Now for the reason the US was there...that's another story.

DVD Smurf

quote:<HR>Originally posted by Hetz:
I am a 24 year old male (though when I saw it in the theater I was younger) and I really enjoyed it! I remarked after I saw it in the theater that I couldn't wait until it was out on DVD, and boy I wasn't disappointed. The DVD is GREAT! I didn't expect it to be some masterpiece of cinema and I am not going to judge it for something it is not meant to be!

It is supposed to be a fun, exciting sci-fi romp and it delivers in spades! It is still one of my favorite sci-fi movies.

<HR>

Fun? Entertaining? Well, lets see here if I got this one straight. Humans gets killed by gigantic bugs that are being exterminated by humans, because some people in power decided that YOU should join and fight for their cause. (More power to them in power.) The men in power glorify warriors and the death on a battle field to young minds that have not learned critical thinking skills, or questions the leadership because their teacher says it is right to die on the battle field. In addition, the human race do not understand that we are attacking a different species that lives far away and do not want to be bugged. (No pun intended.) But the men in power rolls the dice and want to get more by taking the land from the bugs that only tries to defend themselves. I can understand that you think this is funny, because our society has already institutionalized us with movies such as Alien, Species, and many others that what is from space is bad.

Moreover, I want to aim this to Collin. In Nazi-Germany during WWII the Third Reich had the same educational method as they did in Starship Troopers, and nazis used children to fight in the battles starting at the beginning of 1944. So maybe there is a point to what the director tries to say.

Well, I feel that the producer and the editor of the film really cut down the traumatic truth that was attempted to be conveyed by director Veerhoven, i.e., the villain is human.

Anyway, movies are good, but knowing yours and others history is as important when one tries to make sense of some movies as well. As my uncle Olaf used to say, "Do not open your mouth, if you do not know what you say."


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"A word is dead when it is said, some say; I say it just begins to live that day."

[This message has been edited by DVD Smurf (edited February 07, 2001).]

Collin

quote:<HR>Originally posted by DVD Smurf:


Moreover, I want to aim this to Collin. In Nazi-Germany during WWII the Third Reich had the same educational method as they did in Starship Troopers, and nazis used children to fight in the battles starting at the beginning of 1944. So maybe there is a point to what the director tries to say.
<HR>

Why me?

fargus

I've worn out three copies of the book. As far as I'm concerned, little from the book made it into the film other than the title and the basic premise. I don't think Robert Heinlein would have given the film a thumbs up.

If you haven't read the book, do so.

roger_d

The ending was very very disappointing to me. It was as bad as the ending of CONTACT.

garmonbozia

I only saw this movie once so may not remember correctly, but the bugs did blow up part of the Earth by sending a bomb or something. I got the impression that it was a war that has been going on for a long time and there weren't many details given about who started what. Could someone who keeps claiming that the movie clearly illustrated how the humans were definitely the evil ones please explain?

DVD Smurf

You wrote: "This is for the people who say the movie is laughable, dumb, stupid, etc...
The movie is about a bunch of kids who go into space to kill bugs."

What did you people expect?

BTW - I love this movie. I just watch and enjoy.

Ok, I will explain my answer. Either you are very intelligent, which I might have missed to give you credit for. Or as I assumed (assumption is the biggest threat to accuracy, I am guilty then) you were agreeing with them who thinks war is laughable etc. Well, I think I might have made a mistake here and I must apologize for my error. Sorry.



The purpose of this particular scene in the movie was to portray how media can twist the truth to raise the human attention to the bugs and that they are evil who attacks us. However, lets not pretend that the human race started the whole thing by attacking them and their homes (irony). As Sun Tzu wrote in his philosophical piece "Art of War" --Best defense is attack.-- And these bugs were far more intelligent that we give them credit for, they feel threatened, and protect themselves. As well as plotting attacks and raid strategically. Read the book and you get a good view of the story, and try to draw parallels to nazi germany as well.

[Edited by DVD Smurf on 02-08-01 at 05:37 PM]

Collin

DVD Smurf - I'm probably the last person who would say war is laughable.

When I watch this movie, I just turn off my brain and see it as pure entertainment.

I know this movie was made to have some sort of fascism satire, commentary or whatever you may want to call it, but the director and screenwriter just did a horrible job of interpreting/translating this message on the screen that I just ignore it when I watch the movie. I've read the book and the movie is an embarrassing adaptation of the story.
My comments are based on the movie and only the movie.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I just see this as a typical sci-fi, action film and nothing more.

"I only saw this movie once so may not remember correctly, but the bugs did blow up part of the Earth by sending a bomb or something. I got the impression that it was a war that has been going on for a long time and there weren't many details given about who started what. Could someone who keeps claiming that the movie clearly illustrated how the humans were definitely the evil ones please explain?"

I think the movie showed that the war was brought on when humans began to colonize the bug's home planet. I'm not sure if the humans physically attacked the bug first or if it was the other way around. The hatred for the bugs started after the media showed footage of the slaughtered humans. But as I remember the earth officially declared war on the bug after the bug attacked earth.