tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-715711610648154390.post8691112090510773034..comments2024-03-27T03:16:36.721-04:00Comments on Checkpoint Telstar: June Bugs: Starship Troopers (1997)Tim Lehnererhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410878013331168436noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-715711610648154390.post-52946643523261338112016-05-22T23:00:37.433-04:002016-05-22T23:00:37.433-04:00My take on it is that it is a complete gang-rape o...My take on it is that it is a complete gang-rape of Heinlien's novel. Heinlein was a WW2 Navy veteran and wrote Starship Troopers some years after the war. A lot of the military action parallels WW2's pacific theater and nomenclature. (Rodger Young was a posthumous Medal of Honor winner in WW2, KIA at New Georgia in 1943. Heinlein would surely have known the popular ballad commemorating him and wrote it into the story.<br /><br />HEINLEIN'S MOBILE INFANTRY WAS PATTERNED AFTER THE USMC, NOT THE WAFFEN-SS! "SEMPER FI", not "SIEG HEIL!" To this quasi-tribute to the Marines he attached a "what-if" society kind of like a modern Sparta that would have produced the MI as the pinnacle of their society.<br /><br />One example of the difference between book and movie is the scene of the MI recruiter whose legs were blown off who said "The MI made me what I am today" while showing off his prostheses. Heinlein's original reads as "yes, I'm crippled; but my buds in the MI didn't kick me out on the street but made sure I still had a place; WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN."<br /><br />But the movie, made in a post-Vietnam zeitgeist instead of a post-WW2? What we got was set design by Albert Speer & Associates, Architects; costume design by House of Goering; and Josef Goebbels as production designer. A movie whose MI are best described as NSDAP instead of USMC.Headless Unicorn Guynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-715711610648154390.post-60209059583035617522015-06-18T19:07:04.279-04:002015-06-18T19:07:04.279-04:00There is a fan theory that the meteor attack on Bu...There is a fan theory that the meteor attack on Buenos Aires was actually a setup meant to galvanize the Terran government into starting the war--that the patent impossibility of the Arachnids hitting Earth from the other side of the galaxy (not to mention the hundreds of millions of years it should take for the missiles to get to our solar system) are actually plot points rather than open absurdities. I don't happen to agree with this theory but it's a pretty good one.<br /><br />My own take on it is that if this is an intentionally wooden action movie designed to rile up lunkheaded fascists and get them to join the military, the science stuff will be kept to an absolute minimum. So that's what we get.Tim Lehnererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02410878013331168436noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-715711610648154390.post-89653366168543845722015-06-18T16:00:44.462-04:002015-06-18T16:00:44.462-04:00The absurdity of the science in this science-ficti...The absurdity of the science in this science-fiction film caused me to crack a couple molars. It reminds me of an astronaut's reported comments on the plausibility of Sandra Bullock's "Gravity", which is akin to someone swimming east from New York and in the middle of the ocean bumping into someone who swam west from London. Repeatedly. So a couple dozen plasma-butt bugs are able to snipe a fleet of enemy ships out of extra-atmospheric orbit when they shouldn't even be able to SEE them. As you noted, Tokyo golf ball meets Empire State Building. And then these bugs, with no apparent technology, are able to launch rocks across the galaxy and hit Earth? That's orders of magnitude sillier and that's without even factoring in that said rocks would have to be travelling Warp Bajillion to maintain a relevant timeline.<br /><br />But while I wish Verhoeven had thought the plot through a little more, I know that science isn't really the point. That is some deliciously pointy satire, right there.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09334013610288458384noreply@blogger.com