I think it was pretty obvious what Verhoeven was trying to do with Starship Troopers. He was basically creating an action war film loosly based on Heinleins book in the style of old WWII “Why We Fight” propaganda film reels meets the Internet.
You can certainly argue whether he did it effectively.
That “why we fight stuff”, in my opinion, was just supposed to be a stylistic flourish. It wasn’t supposed to be the point of the movie.
The thing is, I’m also taking his work into account - his good, pre-Eszterhas work like Flesh+Blood, **Robocop **and TR. That’s the kind of movies he makes, or at least is supposed to make.
It’s funny, but I’d actually be sorely disappointed if I were ever convinced that **ST **actually was intended as a satire. He tried to make an action movie and failed, that’s fine. Happens to the best of them. Satire, though… satire, to me, is one of the lowest forms of art. *Anyone *can do satire - but directing kick-ass action movies? That takes talent.
Oh I strongly, STRONGLY disagree. Satire is the single most difficult approach to ANY medium. There have been VERY few masters of it over the years: Swift, Twain, Jon Stewart–it’s almost impossible to get it right; it’s got to balance what it is with what it appears to be.
And again, Verhoeven’s prior work supports this. F+B is an angry satire about the inherently corrupt nature of the Catholic Church, AND it’s a kickass action flick. With added tough-broad goodness; themes that overlap with Showgirls and Black Book. If you haven’t seen Keetje Tippel, seek it out. It kind of crystallizes the earliest appearance of some of these themes.
One thing you’ll find in almost all of Verhoeven’s work (with some exceptions) is the haunting presence of his childhood under Nazi occuption. This comes out not only scenes of ludicrous authority figures, but even moreso in instances of normal people going insane under extraordinary circumstances: you see people betraying each other for the equivalent of a crust of bread, and you see a protagonist–usually a woman–who learns just how much she can survive, and how nasty she has to fight to do so. There’s an echo of the concentration camp in the sheer horror of the experiences a Verhoeven heroine is forced to survive. But survive she does. (This theme isn’t really relevant to ST, but it’s the main theme of Keetje Tippel, F+B, Showgirls, and Black Book.)
I dunno, seems to me parody is the lowest form of art - simple mockery and such. Satire, when done well, looks almost serious to the audience (and often deadly serious to the characters) but for one aspect of gross exaggeration.
That said, I’d venture that Jon Stewart mocks, but Stephen Colbert satirizes.
So what you’re saying that Verhoeven is capable of genuine emotion. I agree. So why isn’t there any in ST? Verhoeven’s films worked because they were populated with actual human beings; there were no human beings in ST, only poorly-drawn outlines. Think how good the film could have been if it the lead characters had been written and acted as strongly as Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Lee in F+B!
That was his approach, and it worked. Maybe it’s something about the dehumanizing effect of war, or how fascism requires you erase your personhood, or whatever. They’re ants in an ant farm. He’s perfectly capable of human emotion: watch Soldier of Orange or Black Book.
And I disagree about stronger actors: a smarter, more human character would have to be more aware of their surroundings. These people are lemmings. Thus it works.
They weren’t lemmings: lemmings are actual creatures. You feel empathy for lemmings.
The characters in ST were *either *poorly written and acted characters *or *not characters at all, merely constructs for the creator to burden us with his opinions. Either way, there was no suspension of disbelief, and without suspension of disbelief, you don’t have a story - you have a tract.
For me, it didn’t work.
lissener, you pretentious twat:
A couple of years ago I asked you a question in this very forum, where I wanted you to explain how I would go about proving to you that:
Your stance in this decade long farce has been that anyone disagreeing with you “doesn’t get it”. I distinctly remember asking you what kind of desertion you wanted for anyone criticizing your viewpoint to not be blown off with a hand wave of “you don’t get it.”
If it wasn’t the last post of that thread, at least you never replied.
So, since your self importance makes you mount Rocinante time and again here, and the mods protect your dishonest ways, I’m, here to say:
FOAD!
Ban my ass already.
It’s just a movie (well, several movies), Charlie. Chill out.
Heck, I don’t let the “Deckard is a replicant” people get to me, even though they’re grossly wrong and eternally proud of their wrongitude. As for Troopers, I only think Denise and Casper are bad actors - the rest range from okay to very good, so I’m not prepared to say the casting is some kind of meta-satrical element. It’s just a couple of pretty people at the early stages of what would turn into unremarkable careers.
Well, he’s certainly made a much more lucid, articulate, and convincing case for his position in this thread than you have of yours. The mods protect honest debate, but if all you have to contribute is whining, invective, and poor manners, I can’t imagine you being missed at all if you were to go.
I’ve always felt the mains to be a very deliberate satirical casting (I’m generally siding with lissener on ST being a deliberate tongue-in-cheek wink). Really, when watching the classroom dissection scene, or the kids playing with ammo scene, this movie is as blatantly and self-consciously campy as Napolean Dynamite.
I saw the meta-casting as something of a “nerds rule” jab at the pretty-people and jock segment that typically gets revered as the heroes in society. In ST, we get Rico as a popular football star who fumbles his way through every encounter. Denise Williams is a giggling cheerleader whose piloting the starship more resembles a mockery of a sorority girl trying to parallel park daddy’s car. Diz is an obvious jab at the vacuous girl whose only power in life, and esteem basis, is her looks. “At least I got to have you, Johnny”.
Contrast this with the “ugly” people who are universally the wise, intelligent, and correct thinkers portrayed. Ironsides, Clancy Brown, Neal Patrick Harris, showing that it’s really the nerds and the unpopular who see through the propaganda and know what real life means. The pretty main characters are doomed to simply be tools and shills of the propaganda machine.
I’m not going to ban you, but I’m going to warn you. This kind of personal attack on another person, esp. in a thread that is – or had been – proceeding with remarkable civility, is inappropriate in Cafe Society. Warning issued.
Granted. There are many, many films that thoughtful people disagree on. ESPECIALLY satires. And the suspension of disbelief, in ST’s case, has to include the context. No one is going to watch ST and suspend disbelief about what’s going on on the screen. The context–and this is where Verhoeven resonates, for me, with Lars Von Trier as well as Douglas Sirk–the context includes the audience. **Cervaise **said it much more clearly than I ever could without plagiarizing him heavily:
–Well, my search-fu is wonky. But here’s Cervaise on Showgirls, with a mention of Verhoeven’s casting of bad actors.
–oh here it is. For some reason I can’t find Cervaise’s original post, but luckily I once quoted it in full. Here’s the most lucid explanation of the fictional context of a Verhoeven film that I know of.
And if anyone can point out where I said “you just don’t get it,” I’ll happily apologize. In this thread, actually, or anywhere else. It’s bullshit like Charlie Tan’s post that keeps that meme alive, when there’s no basis for it.
I’m not judging the movie on how it satirized the novel. I never read the novel. I’m judging the movie on how it satirizes WWII propaganda films. I don’t think it adds anything to my understanding of those old films. I can see they are campy and ridiculous when I watch them, and ST is just the same thing except in the future.
You say the movie is relevant for today? I don’t see it. I see it as a mockery of outdated propaganda techniques and saying nothing about the way war propaganda is spread in the modern age. The Government just doesn’t use the same tactics they did in WWII. Mocking the old tactics makes the movie irrelevant for me.
Using bad acting to portray the soldiers as tools doesn’t feel right to me. It’s different from using good acting to over exaggerate some qualities of the soldiers’ patriotism. That is what Dr. Strangelove does with its characters. They are a little over the top, but all are well acted. The bad acting does not work for me as satire.
I dunno that I’d call Jake Busey’s character (or Jake Busey, for that matter) a pretty-boy, nor is Ironside’s character such a keen voice of wisdom. How much control did Verhoeven have over the casting, anyway?
I read the novel years after seeing the film. As adaptation accuracy goes… I’d guess it’s typical.
Better than Robocop? Gotta throw down on that one, sir.
Robocop is what Starship Troopers was trying to be - but more subtle, smarter, and with a good frontline story to boot. Everything you can claim ST was trying to do, Robocop did.
I think there’s some confusion here between satire and parody. I’d agree that to some extent ST parodizes those old films. But they’re not the target of its satire. The target of the satire is modern militaristic governments, and the marketing of war. The old propaganda are a source that informs the satire, but the film is not focused backward on them; it’s focused on the present, and the future, using the past as a lens, so to speak. Or something.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. Vehemently, in fact. I think it’s current relevance is utterly inescapable. And I think you’re focusing too much on the WWII resonances. Those are building blocks, not structure. To the extent that he’s “mocking” the old tactics (and “mocking” is not a word I’m comfortable with), his point seems to be, “Plus ça change . . .” rather than limiting his theme so specifically to WWII, as you seem to assume.
Again, agree to dis. I don’t think ST would work as a satire–certainly no better than it does now–if the leads had been replaced with Johnny Depp and Julia Styles. But I’m a fan of John Waters, and Alfred Hitchcock, for a couple examples of directors who ave deliberately used bad actors as the best way to realize an intended character. As much as I love ST, my favorite Verhoeven remains Showgirls, which would ABSOLUTELY not work with a good actress in the lead.
I don’t remember specifically, but it would surprise me if he didn’t have thumbs up/down final say on each person cast.
And Ironsides’s character is a font not of wisdom, but of fascist bumper stickers. Ironsides is not a great actor. He does a certain character very well, but–certainly in ST–he’s as cartoonish a character as any of them. Brilliant casting, and though I wouldn’t argue this point too strenuously, I think it’s quite possible that he’s not in on the joke either.
I agree that Robocop is close to flawless. Even though it began life as a Christ story. Or, well, maybe, even because of that.