Okay, here's the deal. I just noticed on my calendar that Veterans Day is closing fast. Y'all know what that means. The American Legion posts will have their ceremonies, and there may be a parade or two on the court square, and those are good things, to be sure. But it also means that every cable channel in the known universe will start throwing war movies on their schedules, all day long, every day this week.
Ol' Ted Turner loves to hammer the point home with the war movies. He'll crank out Sands of Iwo Jima, Battle Cry, probably Kelly's Heroes, definitely The Dirty Dozen, and, in a pinch, he'll crank out Midway and stretch it out to a five hour mini-series. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. But, after a while, that stuff starts to wear on you, like the way Miracle on 34th Street beats on your skull starting the day after Thanksgiving.
But, on the weekend before Veterans Day, I was all skippy about finally getting to see the long-hyped Starship Troopers. The line was wrapped all the way around the dodecaplex, but, being the man that I am, I did what any other respectable person would have done. I slipped Bennie The Popcorn Guy a couple of Lincolns and he sneaked me in the back door with a shipment of "buttery-flavored oil topping." I went through all that trouble, grabbed a seat before the other ten jillion folks started fighting over the remaining ones, and settled in for the "sci-fi event of the year."
Guess what I got? I got Sands of Iwo Jima with crickets and praying mantises instead of Japanese soldiers. I got The Longest Day with the 90210/Melrose road company instead of Henry Fonda and John Wayne. All well and good and patriotic and all that, but hardly what the ballyhoo that the advertising campaign was promising.
It seems that, a few centuries from now, way over on the other side of the galaxy, there's a planet full of assorted bugs with really pissy attitudes towards us Earthlings. They have discovered how to shoot meteors at us, and that really ticks us off. So we stomp our foot and declare war on Planet Roach Motel. Our troops gather at a place called the Fleet Academy, where the world's Stepford recruits go to learn how to be soldiers and pilots and such. And we're sent into an hour's worth of basic training sequences, and the usual soap opera moments that accompany these scenes. Boy Soldier Meets Girl Soldier. Other Girl Soldier gets in the way. Boy Soldier has to decide who he loves more. Girl Soldier 2 joins the Academy to be near her boyfriend. Tra-la-la.
This bombast goes on for a while. Then the fighting starts, and, suddenly, you're thrown into a whirling dervish of special effects like you may have only dreamed about. When the action finally gets going, it's like a bucking bronco on speed.
If any of this sounds familiar in any way, good for you. Remove the sci-fi details, and I've basically described the plot of any of a hundred war movies, from Iwo Jima to Sergeant York, sans hair mousse. Here's a group of people thrown together for the cause of patriotism. A little character development here and there, to make sure you can tell the different people apart. Train, train, train. Learn how to shoot, how to march. Throw in a bad-ass drill sergeant who's mean as a cuss but, deep down, he cares about his devoted trainees. Bunch them all up onto a transport for a little more last-minute development ("I'm scared." "I miss my girl." "I'm a mean soldier like my daddy wanted me to be.") Then, turn them all loose on the enemy. The enemy is beating the tar out of the soldiers. They regroup and figure out how to beat the enemy.
That being said, I have to say this. Formula be damned, this is still a kickin' ride. Michael Ironside, who gets the John Wayne role of leader, plays a stereotype, but he plays it with gusto. He has always been a strong bad-guy performer, but here, his quiet, teeth-clenched intensity works wonders for the role, reminding us of Sgt. Rock, comic book hero. He gives the movie a much-needed focus point, and he finally gets the chance to be the "star" of a big movie, something that's long overdue. Odd how he's basically ignored in all of the movie's pre-release hype. Guess he ain't purty enough.
The soldiers themselves are cookie-cutter kids shaken out of the bowels of the Fox TV lineup, all a little too lovely and too spiffy to be anything but boring. It becomes hard to really care if the Arachnids (Reader's Digest word for "bugs," meant to be spoken the same way "Nazis" was said in 1944) rip these folks apart or not. Carmen and Johnny (Denise Richards and Casper Van Dien) have a yawner of a love story, and bringing in possible other love interest for them, like Dizzy and Zander (Dina Meyer and Patrick Muldoon) only fluffs the pillow rather than stirs up trouble. You can look through the recruits and pick out the ones that will bite it at the end of the movie, so much so that some of them ought to be wearing yellow suckersigns that say, "Don't mind me! I'm dying soon!" I was also made a little uncomfortable by the idea, whether subconscious or not, that everyone in the future will look pretty much alike and act alike and think alike. A little too "Boys From Brazil" for my tastes. If the formula of the old war movies were to hold true throughout, there would've been a huge cross-section of soldiers from all over the place. There was always the New Yorker, the Farm Boy, the Rich Kid, the Married-with-a-Kid-On-The-Way Guy, and so on and so on. Here, everyone was way too white bread. Verhoeven on a quest for the Aryan ideal, perhaps? Or am I reading way too much into this thing? Yep. I'm reading way too much into this thing.
But, hey, somehow it works, thanks to Paul "Top This" Verhoeven's sense of showmanship. He keeps this thing as straight as possible, using the same dry humor he showed in Robocop to break up the monotony every now and then. He does the best he can to get us through the training sequences, getting us comfortable. Then, SOCKAROONI, he hits us with CGI effects that are ten times more exciting than anything trotting through The Lost World. A nice way to say it would be that Mr. Verhoeven likes his eggs runny, if you know what I mean. If not, allow me to simplify. If an effect would be fine with one bag of blood, he will use five. Things don't just blow up, they splatter. People don't just die, they erupt. Therefore, his bugs ain't just creepy, they are evil incarnate. Bugs rip folks apart, puncture them with their whatevers, shoot energy bombs out their keisters (much like lighting a ripper, as we said in college.) If you think I'm kidding, see it for yourself.
Credit FX man and puppeteer Phil Tippett for the entire last half of this movie, because, no offense Paul, but this is Phil's baby for the last half. Tippett's CGI monsters are absolutely the state of the art, going places that Jurassic Park only hinted at and Independence Day gave us glimpses of. His monsters don't just run by and push jeeps around. They don't just fly up and blow up the White House or swoop over Air Force bases. These things slice, dice, and chop their way through anything and everything in their path. When they're killed, they go up in a Technicolor nightmare, about as subtle as a cannonball hitting a barrel of oatmeal. Fully interactive and almost frighteningly believable, Tippett has pushed the FX envelope to its furthest point to date, and he deserves the Oscar® he'll win next March, believe me.
Will you enjoy this movie? Probably. Will you remember anything about the acting? Maybe, if Ironside gets under your skin like Gossett did in An Officer and A Gentleman. Don't expect cinematic triumphs or DeNiro-Keitel-Streep acting, and let art, such as it is, flow over you. John Wayne and Henry Fonda could make you proud to be an American. Let the spirit of Independence Day take over, and let Starship Troopers make you proud to be an Earthling.
Copyrighted image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
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