# Another question about interpreting Verhoeven's Starship Troopers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 27, 2005, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094 "2005-10-27T00:55:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/1 "2005-10-27T00:55:06Z")
Note: I have a pretty specific question here, so please let’s not make this a GD about how he savaged Heinlein’s novel. Ok, I have heard yet another interpretation of what Paul Verhoeven intended when he made **Starship Troopers**. This version goes that the whole movie is intended to be a 23rd-century equivalent of the gung-ho war movies that audiences viewed during World War Two. In other words, that the movie as we saw it in real life is missing a 30 second prolog where we watch the future audience file into the movie house and see the title and credits of _Starship Troopers_ roll. Is this a legitimate interpretation? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/2 "2005-10-27T01:00:14Z")
I’m sure it’s a viable interpretation. Correct or not gets us into GD, and **lissener** just got back, so let’s not go there. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chairman\_Pow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/3 "2005-10-27T01:43:13Z")
Where’d you read about this missing footage? The movie was, IMO, a movie about the dehumanizing effects (both for the “us” and our perception of “them”), but played rather straight-faced. Same thing really. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/4 "2005-10-27T01:58:25Z")
No missing footage, but it’s likely that that was the effect Verhoeven was going for. Unfortunately, he was too incompetent to make it work. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/5 "2005-10-27T03:28:43Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Note: I have a pretty specific question here, so please let’s not make this a GD about how he savaged Heinlein’s novel. > > Ok, I have heard yet another interpretation of what Paul Verhoeven intended when he made **Starship Troopers**. This version goes that the whole movie is intended to be a 23rd-century equivalent of the gung-ho war movies that audiences viewed during World War Two. In other words, that the movie as we saw it in real life is missing a 30 second prolog where we watch the future audience file into the movie house and see the title and credits of _Starship Troopers_ roll. > > Is this a legitimate interpretation? It’s the explanation that Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier, the screenwriter, give on the commentary track. The film itself is an “artifact of the future.” ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/6 "2005-10-27T03:33:25Z")
Hey, [says here](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475402/combined) there’s a videogame coming out! ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/7 "2005-10-27T05:46:49Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > No missing footage, but it’s likely that that was the effect Verhoeven was going for. Unfortunately, he was too incompetent to make it work. Agreed. He may well have been trying to make a satirical film, but it just didn’t work for me. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/8 "2005-10-27T09:11:07Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > Agreed. He may well have been trying to make a satirical film, but it just didn’t work for me. I agree, and what’s interesting is that Verhoeven has proven capable of using satire in other films, such as the much superior _Robocop_. Snide comments about American consumerism aside, _Robocop_ had a strong story and charismatic actors, which are two things ST lacked. I think the difference is that while his earlier film was a serious film with satirical elements, _Starship Troopers_ was intended to be a purely satirical film, something that requires far more subtlety (and grasp of the English language) than Verhoeven was capable of providing. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/9 "2005-10-28T19:36:29Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > It’s the explanation that Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier, the screenwriter, give on the commentary track. The film itself is an “artifact of the future.” Being a huge fan of just about anything that wears powered armour (go, Space Marines!), I was intensely excited when I heard that _Starship Troopers_ was coming out. I was both disappointed and delighted with the movie, as evidenced by my purchasing the DVD (my first such purchase) before I even owned a DVD player. I bought one of the glossy pre-production fan magazines that had a lot of behind-the-scenes photographs, interviews, and such, and there was a passage in there talking about how Neumeier and Verhoeven wanted the film to be a sort of futuristic “war/buddy” movie just like the OP describes. The reasons they give for ditching the Marauder suits were that (1) they had already blown their CGI budget on the Arachnids, (2) you can’t see the faces of the men behind the armour, so you can’t empathize with the characters, and (3) Hi, **Opal**! **lissener** , I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Activision already put out a great tactical combat game a few years ago that featured the Arachnids as featured in the movie (plus a few nastier types like Chameleon Bugs and even Arachnid Queens!), Cap Troopers, “Special Talents”, and of course, the essential powered armour units. Andy Chambers, after departing from Games Workshop, has gotten stuck in at another game company that has released a tabletop miniatures game that is very much like the Activision game, although it seems to be based more on the book and the short-lived computer-animated TV series. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/10 "2005-10-28T19:47:00Z")
It might have been a much better movie if it wasn’t Starship Troopers. Because whatever movie was made, that wasn’t it. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/11 "2005-10-28T19:53:26Z")
I understand the disappointment of people who loved the book, and expected the movie to be more of the same. But like any such adaptation–and really, aren’t almost all movies made from books at least somewhat different, and often not as good?–the movie in no way replaces the book. Why I roll my eyes, when people go “They ruined the book!” Um, no they didn’t; I still have a copy of the book and look, see? Unruined. If you want to relive the experience of reading the book, the best way to do that is to reread the book. To the extent that a director slavisly reproduces a book on the screen, without adding his/her own interpretation, to that extent I (personally) find adaptations a waste of time. If the director can’t make it his own art, then it’s not art. IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/12 "2005-10-28T20:25:31Z")
Hmmm. – there are a great many objections I can make to **lissener’s** statement, but we don’t want to go off on _that_ tangent again – it’ll just embroil this thread in the same hijacked argument. Let’s just say that I disagree significantly with the final result, while agreeing with certain things within it. I suspect a lot of others feel the same way. ---
**Author:** ![vibrotronica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a9a28c/32.png) [@vibrotronica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vibrotronica)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/13 "2005-10-28T20:47:09Z")
The movie is a failure as an adaptation of the book, and it’s a failure as a satire, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s not funny. At least _Showgirls_ is funny. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/14 "2005-10-28T21:32:52Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I agree, and what’s interesting is that Verhoeven has proven capable of using satire in other films, such as the much superior _Robocop_. Snide comments about American consumerism aside, _Robocop_ had a strong story and charismatic actors, which are two things ST lacked. I think the difference is that while his earlier film was a serious film with satirical elements, _Starship Troopers_ was intended to be a purely satirical film, something that requires far more subtlety (and grasp of the English language) than Verhoeven was capable of providing. Over the years I’ve kinda come around to lissener’s take on the ST movie. If you _really_ look at it it’s too over the top to not be tongue in cheek in some fashion. It’s obvious satire, and that’s all there is to it. If you’re invested in Heinlein’s ST ethos then this subversive tweaking is going to really piss you off. It’s easier to say “It’s shit” than accept that he does an effective (but Per Alessan’s point slightly ham handed) job of making fun of the ST ethos and the philosophical perspectives attached to it. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/15 "2005-10-28T22:30:06Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Over the years I’ve kinda come around to lissener’s take on the ST movie. If you _really_ look at it it’s too over the top to not be tongue in cheek in some fashion. It’s obvious satire, and that’s all there is to it. I think most people in ST threads agree that it’s satirical (I realize not everyone in the general public fully grasped that) but the issue at that point is whether it’s a good satirical movie. The satire in it is pretty obvious, really, just from the propaganda films. Verhoeven uses satire of this sort in a number of his films; there’s a great scene in the otherwise mediocre “Total Recall” where a news report talks of brave cops putting down a rebellion by out-of-control strikers, while playing a newsreel of Nazi-like goons machine-gunning unarmed men. ---
**Author:** ![jimpatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@jimpatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimpatro)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/16 "2005-10-28T22:32:44Z")
Wow, **lissener** , that’s a great approach. I happen to love the book and kinda like the movie. And Heinlein is my favorite SF author. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2005, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/17 "2005-10-31T21:57:44Z")
Yesterday I saw a movie that’s a perfect example of the kind of film Verhoeven modeled \*Starhip Troopers \*on: [_Twelve O’Clock High_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041996/combined), starring Gregory Peck as an American General, in England for WII, who’s assigned the task of taking a flight crew with a shaky record and bringing them up to snuff. For some reason—it doesn’t really seem necessary—the story’s enclosed in a frame tale of one of the officers visiting the airfield after the war, and the bulk of the movie is in one unbroken flashback. (His memory is triggered by finding an artifact from the officers’ club in an antique store, which has inspired one of the most [bizarre](http://918thpx.com/12_oclock_high_toby_mug.htm) pieces of movie nostalgia I know of.) The flashback begins with an airplane returning from a bombing run. It crash lands (authentically; no models were used for the shot) and a wounded man is taken off on a stretcher. It’s a more graphic movie than most people would expect from a 1949 Gregory Peck vehicle; almost as graphic, in fact, as\* Starship Troopers\*: as the stretcher passes him a bystander observes that he can see the wounded man’s brains, and the scene ends with a man carrying off a severed arm wrapped in a blanket. In the debriefing that follows, the apparent contradiction of the horrors of war and the stirring heroism of it all, which is one of Verhoeven’s targets in ST, is pretty effectively put across: > [@](#): > > —We got hit the first pass the FWs made. It took the back of his head right off. That was when Mac got it. Only, he didn’t pass out, it just made a crazy man out of him. He was still shouting orders and trying to get the control away from Jesse when I got up there two hours later. The kid has been flying with one hand and trying to get the control away from Mac with the other, and wiping the frozen blood of the th windshield so he could see. For two hours. He made a good bombing run, too; we unloaded on the target. > > —Well didn’t you know he was in trouble? Why didn’t somebody get Mac outta there? > > —The intercom was shot out, and I thought its was violent evasive action. > > —For two hours? > > —Macs’s foot was jammed in the control. That’s how we broke his leg, trying to get it out of there. That seem to hurt Jesse worst of all. He started shaking and I—I sat on Mac and held him, while Jesse brought us in. > > —Gimme a copy of that Fred, just the way he told it. I’m sending it in with a recommendation for a Medal of Honor. We soon learn that the higher ups—Peck and his superior—have reached the grim conclusion that the reason this particular group of flyers has been having such a run of bad luck is that their commanding officer is too soft on them. This is brought home when, confronted by Peck and his boss, the commanding officer chooses a pilot’s feelings over disciplining him for a miscalculation that cost the lives of other pilots. With this _ST_-worthy speech, the big boss puts Peck in charge: > [@](#): > > You can smell what’s coming, Frank. I’m promising you nothing except a job no man should have to do who’s already had more than his share of combat. I’ve got to ask you to take nice kids and fly 'em until they can’t take any more, and then put 'em back in and fly 'em some more. We’ve got to find out what a maximum effort is, how much a man can take, and get it all. I don’t even know if any man can do it; that’s what cracked up Keith. Peck’s first speech to his new troops rings of the same kind of gungho propaganda-speak: > [@](#): > > I’ve been sent down here to take over what has come to be know as a “hard luck” group. Well I don’t believe in hard luck, so we’re going to find out what the trouble is. Maybe part of it’s your flying, so we’re going back to fundamentals. And I can tell you now, one reason I think you’ve been having hard luck. I saw it in your faces last night. I can see it there now. You’ve been looking at a lot of air lately. You think you ought to have arrest. In short, you’re feeling sorry for yourselves. Now I don’t have a lot of patience for this “what are we fighting for” stuff. We’re in war—a shooting war. We’ve got to fight And some of you have got to die. Now I’m not trying to tell you not to be afraid. Fear is normal. But stop worrying about it, and about yourselves. Stop making plans, forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea, it won’t be so tough. Now if any man here can’t buy that—if he rates himself as something special—with a special kind of hide to be saved—he’d better make up his mind about it right now, because I don’t want him in this group. I’ll be in my office in five minutes. You can see me then. As the plot progresses, we find out that the greatest failure of the man whom Peck replaced was that his men liked him too much. Peck succeeds (of course) in winning the men over, but he does so by, essentially, inducing Stockholm syndrome in them: he designates an airplane as “The Leper Colony,” puts a man he accuses of cowardice in charge of its crew, and publicly humiliating any man who makes a mistake by assigning them to this crew. When a man makes an effort to defend his roommate’s airplane against an enemy plane, Peck orders all room assignments changed and roommates reassigned. Needless to say, in no time Peck’s pilots are the best in the war—with The Leper Colony, of course, at the head of the bunch. _Twelve O’Clock High_ is a fascinating and complex examination of the of the emotional sacrifices war demands from warriors. But it’s also a stirring anthem to the heroism of war. Like _Saving Private Ryan_, one of its primary themes is _“War is hell, but man is it worth it!”_ And this theme is the primary target of Verhoeven’s satire in Starship Troopers. (For anyone who’s interested, _Twelve O’Clock High_ is showing at noon Eastern, Friday November 11, on the Fox Movie Channel. It’s also available at Netflix.) ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2005, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/18 "2005-10-31T23:53:08Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > Hey, [says here](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475402/combined) there’s a videogame coming out! [It’s been done…](http://www.blizzard.com/starcraft/) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2005, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/19 "2005-10-31T23:57:41Z")
“Twelve O’Clock High” was also spun off as a TV series in the 1960s. Casual viewers are warned that if you see something called “Twelve O’Clock High” on TV with B-17s flying around, you may not actually be watching the movie lissener is talking about. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2005, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094/20 "2005-11-01T01:18:47Z")
Oh and, from a previous thread, this post by Cervaise is a lot clearer than anything I could write on the subject: > [@Cervaise](#): > > The thing about Verhoeven (his American movies, at least; I’m not including the films he made in Europe in this generalization) is that he makes what you might call “parallel universe” movies. > > Starship Troopers is the most obvious example. Everybody went to that expecting either (a) the typical summer shoot-em-up or (b) a faithful adaptation of the Heinlein novel. The film is neither, which is why so many people reacted negatively to it. The key to watching that movie is not to think of it as a satire of propaganda movies, necessarily; you should think of it as a propaganda movie. That is, don’t think of it as having been made by a liberal Dutch director in Hollywood; pretend that the film has fallen back to our universe from an alternate future in which the Soviets or the Nazis won and took over the world. To aid you in making this creative leap, imagine that the movie has been dubbed into English from the original Russian or German. Through this lens, the movie makes perfect sense, with its vacuous and ridiculously pretty actors, its dopey aw-shucks dialogue, the shallow rah-rah spirit, and everything else. In other words, Verhoeven isn’t commenting on the war mentality by standing outside of it and describing its horrors like a clinician, as in All Quiet on the Western Front or Stalingrad; he’s made a movie that explores the idea from the inside out, saying to the audience, “If we really went this way, this is what it would be like.” Now, you can argue that the film is a failure for a couple of reasons: First, no major critic “got” this when the movie was first released, which suggests that the message is muddled (though I’d disagree); and second, reversing and deliberately sabotaging Heinlein’s novel strikes a lot of people as being profoundly disrespectful (with which I cannot disagree). > > I describe that at length to establish a baseline for looking at Showgirls, which operates on a similar level. However, it works much more subtly, because the setting seems to be recognizable as our own world. That’s a deliberate deception; basically, the movie sucks in its audience before shitting all over them. Or, well, to be more precise, not them as people, but rather their expectations as audience members. > > The structure of Showgirls is based on the age-old “star is born” model; it’s a tossed salad of elements from Stage Door, All About Eve, and, of course, A Star is Born, among others. The general plot about a newcomer to entertainment rising to stardom has been a cliche since the 1930s, but we still see it today, stretching through Funny Girl and the remake of The Jazz Singer up to Glitter and 8 Mile (which at least did something interesting with it) and Chicago. There’s even a project in development at one of the studios in which A Star is Born will be explicitly remade for the umpteenth time, transplanted into hiphop. > > It’s a popular, recurring story form because it’s so potent: We in the audience look up at the flickering silver screen and project our dreams of wealth and power and stardom into the beautiful actor or actress pretending to be a doe-eyed naïf; it’s an escapist fantasy that allows us to imagine that our own half-developed talent (childhood tap classes or piano lessons, or singing in the shower for grownups, or whatever) might be the ticket to fame and fortune if we only met the right mentor (and maybe fall in love in the process) or managed to be in the right place at the right time. (Eddie Izzard has a bit in his show Dress to Kill wherein he tells of sneaking onto studio lots as a kid and creeping around hoping some producer will notice him and cast him as the lead in a hypothetical project called The Creeping Kid.) > > Showgirls takes this story form, and transplants it into the most foul and sleazy environment it can find that still has some of the trappings of showbiz glitz and glamour. Thus — and this is the subversive bit — it brings our associated fantasies along with it. We cannot help but identify with the rising newcomer, even though from almost the first frame the movie is telling us what an awful person she is; we feel bad when bad things happen to her, and we feel triumph when she gets her big break, but at the same time we feel deeply icky about it. If we don’t understand what the movie is doing and how it works, we may be repulsed by this conflict and reject the movie as a failure, which is how most people responded to it. I am arguing that the film does this on purpose; just like Starship Troopers, it says to the audience, “You find this fantasy appealing? Okay, but let’s look at it another way.” Most people don’t want their fantasies exploded, and the fact that Showgirls comes off as creepy-to-the-bone caused most folks to push it away, assuming (incorrectly, I assert) that this underlying moral contradiction is due to incompetence rather than by design. > > Now let’s consider that design. First look at the characters; every single one is a stock type, right off the shelf of A Star is Born and All About Eve and Gold Diggers of Broadway and so on, plugged right into their expected place; a handful are two-dimensional, and most are fewer. The only difference between those “nice” pieces of froth from the 1930s and 1940s and Showgirls is that the characters get naked and say “fuck” a lot. The correlation is obvious in the performances, too. Look specifically at Kyle MacLachlan. He knows exactly what movie he’s in. Listen to the way his character speaks: a little fast, a little clipped, in a deliberate nod to the genre they’re exploring, sort of a low-key version of the same thing Jennifer Jason Leigh did in Hudsucker Proxy. (Sadly, MacLachlan can’t take credit for an interesting, intelligent performance; whenever people bring up Showgirls and say, “What were you thinking?” he has no choice but to laugh it off as a mistake and change the subject.) And he’s not the only one, and that’s not the only giveaway: There are shots, lines, and occasionally whole scenes that hearken directly back to the fantasy genre being dissected. > > The real key performance, though, in my opinion, is that of Elizabeth Berkeley. It’s not a good performance, really, but I think that’s deliberate; unlike MacLachlan, I don’t think Berkeley has a clue what movie she’s in. Based on how fiercely she grabs hold of the role (despite her obvious dramatic limitations), and how seriously she obviously takes it, I think Verhoeven cruelly and consciously misled her. He has a habit of casting beautiful but vapid people, and using them as polished mannequins to undermine audience expectations; this is true in Starship Troopers, of course, and then he did much the same thing later in Hollow Man with Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin, two more thespians of questionable depth. The way he uses Berkeley in Showgirls, in my view, as viciously deceptive and unfair to the actress as it seems to be, is part and parcel with the film’s overall intent. > > If you decide to get Showgirls and look at it again, I’m going to suggest a point of view that I think will help, along the lines of watching Starship Troopers as a dubbed bit of ineptitude from a semi-parallel future. Instead of watching Showgirls as an ordinary movie, step outside. Imagine yourself in the cinema projection booth, with the audience below you and the movie in front. Rather than just watching the movie, watch the relationship between the movie and the audience. As the movie plays out, look at how it introduces a familiar plot element that seems to tell the audience where it’s going, and then observe as the film quickly twists or undercuts that familiarity. Imagine how the average filmgoer, who is used to passively absorbing the average movie, with its graceless but unambiguous exposition and carefully telegraphed story points designed to lead the inattentive viewer by the hand through the plot, will perceive a given moment in the film and, without even really consciously realizing it, make certain assumptions about what the story is doing and where it’s going; and then watch as the film turns these unconscious assumptions back on the audience with a nearly accusatory tone. > > Yes, it’s a fairly hostile film, with a very dark sense of twisted humor not just about the characters in the story but about the comfortable audience illusions it’s attacking. For that reason, even if you “get” it, you may not find it a particularly pleasant experience, because the whole thing, in many ways, is such a cruel joke. And in order to get the joke, you have to work pretty hard and make a big imaginative leap, and keep yourself from being sucked into the movie’s tricks and deceptions, and most people, understandably, don’t want to have to work that hard at what most people would call “merely” entertainment. From that perspective, then, Showgirls cannot be called a “good movie,” because you don’t just sit back and look at it. But it is, in my view, a great work of Art. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-interpreting-verhoevens-starship-troopers/328094.md?page=2)