Starship Troopers - 4K + Blu-ray [4K UHD]

This is a great cult classic that has it all. It wasn't so well received at the box office and the critics hated it. But then what do the critics know anyways. Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Patrick Muldoon, Micheal Iron Side, Dean Norris, & Marshall Bell. All round out a well-balanced cast in this Syfy coming of age war film. With uber Patriotism and WWII styled neo-fascist propaganda in an over the internet linked in "Would you like to know more?" kind of way. In a Federalist near Fascist overbearing government where military service guarantees Citizenship. In a world where Citizens have rights and not everyone is a citizen. A world at war with giant evil bugs that are trying to eradicate humanity while we're trying to do the same to them. It follows a group of highschoolers in Buenos Aires starting just before graduation. Then following them to military bootcamp training, through their personal trials; the end of a romance for the main character Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) as Carman Ibanez (Dennis Richards) now a fleet pilot sends Johnny a futuristic dear John letter. Then more tragedy as their hometown is destroyed by a meteorite sent by the bugs. Then off to war were Johnny Rico and his school friend and want to be love interest Dizzy Flores (Dina Meyer) fight in a failed invasion of the Bugs home planet. Johnny is badly wounded, and incorrectly listed as Killed In Action. Which is seen on a casualty board by Carmen, who feels saddened by Rico's death. But Jonny and Dizzy along with bootcamp chum Ace Levy (Jake Busey) are reassigned to a group of troopers called the "Rough Necks" headed by Dizzy & Ricos old schoolteacher Jean Rasczak (Micheal Ironside) Things seem to be looking up for the friends even with the war on. Johnny gets promoted to Corporal, Dizzy to Squad Leader. Dizzy & Johnny finally get to be a romantic pair and fall for the first time mutually in love with each other.A notion their Lieutenant rather comically supports in one scene. Just before they are all sent on an ill-fated rescue mission to "Whiskey Outpost" on planet "P" where they find all but a lone surviving General Owen (Marshall Bell) a little out of his head, after all others in the Outpost had been killed. The outpost is surrounded, and the Rough Necks are forced to defend an untenable position against vastly superior enemy forces. While awaiting an Evac shuttle to come get them out. During the battle many of the Rough Necks are killed. Including Lt. Rasczak who is crippled with both of his legs ripped off, he gives Rico a final order to shot him and end it. Rico in the presence of Dizzy unhappily follows orders. A large assault bug called a "Tanker" breaches the outpost and is stopped by Dizzy who literally throws a live grenade into the creatures open jaws. A second later Its head explodes, and Dizzy and others let out howls of triumph. The moment is short lived as an instant later Dizzy is directly attacked by one of the arachnids. It stabs its pointed appendages through her body several times before Rico and the others can come to her rescue. They kill the bug and carry a mortally wounded Dizzy into the shuttle and lift off, as the Bugs are swarming over the outpost. A couple moments later with final declarations of love. Dizzy dies on the escape shuttle in Johnnys arms. Later just after Dizzy's funeral, attended by the Rough Necks, Dizzy and Johnnys old school friends Colonel Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris) & Lt. Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards) Johnny Rico is promoted to the new Lieutenant in charge of the Rough Necks. They Go back to planet "P" with a much larger invasion force. Where they defeat the Bugs capturing a "Brain Bug" a form of thinking bug that is the leadership cast of the bugs. It's the start of the end of the bugs and it's all due to Johnny and Dizzy's former Sr. Drill Instructor named Sergeant Charlie Zim. "WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?"

Paul Verhoeven has been a favorite of mine since I caught Flesh+Blood on late night cable. (If you have never seen it, Flesh+Blood is Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones. But grittier with more violence and sex somehow.)Add on a filmography that includes RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct and you have a director who knows how to make a movie sing. So it is not with faint praise I think Starship Troopers may be his best work. (I go back and forth between it and RoboCop). It holds up even better today than when it came out. Similar to Idiocracy, “Starship Troopers” is aging like a fine wine.

Bedtime story, from Papa Bush to his young 'uns: Once upon a time, a long time from now, there was a United Earth. A New World Order of peace, prosperity and freedom. Everyone was clean and pretty and healthy. Good genes, all around. Black people too. And the streets were clean, and the environment, and the trains ran on time. Then one day, bad monsters attacked Earth, because the monsters were evil and ugly, and looked like giant bugs (because they were giant bugs), and they hated anybody lucky enough to have so much peace, prosperity and freedom, and who were so good-looking.But luckily for the happy people of Earth, their world government had the bestest military in the universe, with lots of gnarly weapons and way cool uniforms. So everyone enlisted like crazy to fight the ultimate war between good and evil. The politicos and top brass called it the Bug War -- but for the young recruits, it was the kick-ass adventure of a lifetime!The bugs never had a chance. The end.No, not a bedtime story, but Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, a dead-on satire of post-9/11 war hysteria -- astonishing because it was released in 1997!The film's satire was originally aimed at its source material: Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel, Starship Troopers (condemned by some critics upon publication as "fascistic"). But like humor-impaired Trekies, many Heinlein fans remained clueless and unamused. They complained that the film had replaced Heinlein's socio-political military philosophy with mindless bug battles. Few realized the joke was on them. Verhoeven didn't so much ignore Heinlein's philosophizing as lampoon it.Heinlein's novel paints a future Earth in which everyone enjoys equal rights and liberties -- except to vote and hold office, which are reserved only to those who complete military service. Enlistment is voluntary and non-discriminatory; any sex, any age. Blue-haired grannies can sign up. But no special treatment. Many softies die in the sadistically brutal boot camps. (However, you can quit anytime, without reprisal). Another rule: everyone fights. Cooks, supply clerks, nurses, medics, privates, generals. No paper pushers or desk warmers in Heinlein's military.Verhoeven's Starship Troopers parodies Heinlein's romanticized military culture by trivializing and sanitizing war. Soldiers are sexy and clean even after battle, ready to party hardy. Ready to die. Dina Meyer's deathbed speech satirizes an old war film clich?: while reaffirming her love for her main squeeze, she nobly adds that she has "no regrets" about her sacrifice.For "red shirt" soldiers, death is less sentimental. Quick -- and quickly forgotten. After shooting a captured soldier (to prevent a painful bug death) Michael Ironside curtly informs his platoon: "I expect you to do the same for me." Which they do.Starship Troopers was no big hit in 1997, but it has its fans, many of whom -- judging by review postings on Amazon.com -- confuse the film for a serious sci-fi epic with a "war is hell" message. (Not surprisingly, post-9/11 postings are more likely to "get it".)Those who doubt the film's satirical intent should consider one hero's uniform, which can best be described as neo-Third Reich. Clearly, Verhoeven's film was not informed by Heinlein's libertarian fans, but by those critics who interpreted the novel as fascistic.Also noteworthy, the film's stars are all strikingly attractive with well-chiseled Aryan features.However, their SS physiques are not part of the plot, but merely a hint at the film's underlying satire. Plotwise, Federal Service (as it's called) is open to all, and the Aryan protagonists warmly welcome their sidekicks of color. In one brief scene, a dumpy black female is appointed as the new Sky Marshall, promising to "take the war to the bugs."However, because many moviegoers confuse fascism with racism, and because most of them were unfamiliar with the novel, the film's satire was lost on many. For most moviegoers, the film was just vapid soldiers shooting giant bugs. Further obscuring the satire, the soldiers were just too damn sexy, the bugs too mean and ugly. We humans are inclined to sympathize with attractive people, which is why satirists often paint their targets in hideous garb (communists as pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, and as grotesque vampires in my own Vampire Nation).Starship Troopers takes the opposite tact, painting globalist fascism as imagined by globalist fascists. Everyone is healthy and happy and sexy. The satire is in the exaggeration of fascist ideals (as in Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream). With unwavering fortitude and unshakable confidence in Earth's inevitable total victory, Denise Richards flashes her Pepsident smile throughout the film. In hairy battles, her mouth may turn sexily pouty, but her brilliant teeth soon return, vast and blinding, equally at home on a TV commercial and an SS recruiting poster.Want to laugh out loud? The funniest scenes are the recruiting ads and "news" propaganda bulletins. One "news" item features warmly grinning soldiers distributing bullets to the delighted squeal of eager schoolkids. (How clueless do you have to be to post reviews at Amazon praising the film's "war is hell" message?)But the clueless are out there. Unfamiliar with the book, smitten with the sexy stars and repelled by the bugs, many didn't "get" the jokes. In practical terms, until 9/11 Starship Troopers was a satire without a target. The war hysteria following 9/11 provided that, the players and events stepping tailor-made into the film's sites with amazing prescience, granting the film a powerful resonance that was lacking when it was first released.All the parallels are present. The enemy -- the Bugs -- are pure evil. The military, the news reports, the war, the government, are all beyond question. If they make a mistake, they can be trusted to correct it. United Earth we stand.The Bug War begins with a Bug attack on a city. In the film's eeriest scene, a burning building's framework resembles the Twin Towers. Also remarkable are the many random jokes that find a target post-9/11. In adapting a 1950s book to a 1990s sensibility, Verhoeven tossed in some contemporary satirical barbs unconnected to the book, or even to much of anything in 1997 -- but which eerily resonate with our post-9/11 war culture.There is the film's black female Sky Marshall, a kooky but satirically pointless joke in 1997. Yet it's a role tailor made for Condoleezza Rice. There are the TV war correspondents, absent in the book, but today stationed in Iraq. They pester the soldiers in battle, don't appreciate the threat, and are killed by the bugs. There are the TV pundits who would understand the bugs, woolly and ineffectual as seen through the film's fascist prism (the New World Order likes to see itself as tolerant).Starship Troopers is a penetrating satire of post-9/11 war hysteria as might be imagined by an idealistic New World Order fascist. It's hard to believe it was made pre-9/11; impossible to think it could be made post-9/11. Starring Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, and Michael Ironside.