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Starship Troopers (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]
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Additional Multi-Format options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
Watch Instantly with | Rent | Buy |
Purchase options and add-ons
Genre | Action, Sci-Fi, Adventure |
Format | Dolby, Multiple Formats, Blu-ray, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dubbed, Full Screen, AC-3, NTSC |
Contributor | Paul Verhoeven, Patrick Muldoon, Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Michael Ironside, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Dina Meyer See more |
Language | English |
Runtime | 2 hours and 9 minutes |
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From the manufacturer
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Product Description
Product Description
From the bridge of the Fleet Battlestation Ticonderoga, with its sweeping galactic views, to the desolate terrain of planet Klendathu, teeming with shrieking, fire-spitting, brain-sucking special effects creatures, acclaimed director PAUL VERHOEVEN crafts a dazzling epic based on Robert A. Heinlein's classic sci-fi adventure. CASPER VAN DIEN, DINA MEYER, DENISE RICHARDS, JAKE BUSEY, NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, PATRICK MULDOON, and MICHAEL IRONSIDE star as the courageous soldiers who travel to the distant and desolate Klendathu system for the ultimate showdown between the species. 20th Anniversary Synopsis From the bridge of the Fleet Battlestation Ticonderoga, with its sweeping galactic views, to the desolate terrain of planet Klendathu, teeming with shrieking, fire-spitting, brain-sucking special effects creatures, acclaimed director Paul Verhoeven crafts a dazzling epic based on Robert A. Heinlein's classic sci-fi adventure. Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Pa
Amazon.com
In the first and finest RoboCop movie, director Paul Verhoeven combined near-future science fiction with a keen sense of social satire--not to mention enough high-velocity violence to satisfy even the most voracious bloodlust. In Starship Troopers, Verhoeven and RoboCop cowriter Ed Neumeier take inspired cues from Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel to create a special-effects extravaganza that functions on multiple levels of entertainment. The film might be called "Melrose Place in Space," with its youthful cast of handsome guys and gorgeous women who look like they've been recruited (and in some cases they were) from the cast of Beverly Hills 90210. Viewers might focus on the incredible, graphically intense action sequences (definitely not for children) in which heavily armed forces from Earth go to off-world battle against vast hordes of alien "bugs" bent on planetary conquest. The attacking bugs are marvels of state-of-the-art special-effects technology, and the space battles are nothing short of spectacular. But Starship Troopers is more than a showcase for high-tech hardware and gigantic, flesh-ripping insects. Recalling his childhood in Holland during the Nazi occupation, Verhoeven turns this epic adventure into a scathingly funny satire of fascist propaganda, emphasizing Heinlein's underlying warning against the hazards of military conformity and the sickening realities of war. It's an action-packed joy ride if that's all you're looking for, but Verhoeven has a provocative agenda that makes Starship Troopers as smart as it is exciting. The DVD includes an above-average commentary by the director and Neumeier, several deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes documentary and promotional featurette, cast bios, production notes, and more. --Jeff Shannon
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.85:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
- Package Dimensions : 6.7 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches; 2.4 ounces
- Item model number : 043396160989
- Director : Paul Verhoeven
- Media Format : Dolby, Multiple Formats, Blu-ray, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dubbed, Full Screen, AC-3, NTSC
- Run time : 2 hours and 9 minutes
- Release date : August 5, 2008
- Actors : Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris
- Dubbed: : French
- Subtitles: : English, Spanish, French
- Language : Unqualified (Dolby Digital 5.1)
- Studio : Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
- ASIN : B000UAFDP2
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,835 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #60 in Military & War (Movies & TV)
- #134 in Science Fiction Blu-ray Discs
- #183 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
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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.
The story is fairly simple: in the distant future, some space Mormons from a now fascist America set up a mission on an Alien planet. The Aliens, construing the outpost as an advance on their home world, retaliate by massacring the Mormons and firing asteroids on earth. Meanwhile in a colonized Argentina, Barbie and Ken are graduating high school where they’ve been educated on a diet of nazi propaganda by the maimed and limbless survivors of some previous, unmentioned conflict. Barbie makes plans to enlist as it’s the only pathway to citizenship and by extension access to higher education or the right to start a family, while idealist Ken follows her for more goofy teen reasons. When an Alien asteroid strikes their city and obliterates their Dreamhouses, Barbie and Ken slowly lose whatever modicum of humanity they had and turn into space nazis. It’s the age old story.
From the opening scenes -a shot for shot recreation of Leni Riefenstahl’s work in Triumph of the Will disguised as a mock PSA for army recruitment- through to the astonishingly fascist civics lesson where we’re introduced to our protagonists and their world, Verhoeven’s intentions are clear. By placing the action in a post liberal, right wing dystopia, he avoids the lecturing preachiness of It Happened Here, and focuses his attention squarely on showing us just how merciless and horrifying such a dystopia would be. Concepts like social justice, personal liberty, even love are dismissed in favour of the becoming a citizen: a person who is willing to sacrifice anything -including their life- for the preservation of the body politic. To those unsure which side of the argument Verhoeven himself lands on, he draws a direct parallel between that ideology and the mindless obedience of the icky arachnids, a trait which as far as Rue McClanahan’s scarred biology teacher is concerned, trumps our individualism and superior intellect, and which makes them superior to us.
But Verhoeven knows that fascism cannot take hold without the approval -however tacit- of the broader population, so he cannily utilizes the template of the hyper militarized action films of the day, using the audience’s hunger for that type of violent wish fulfillment to point the finger at us. What the critics of the day called propaganda, is actually an indictment on our complicity in the seemingly inexorable march towards totalitarianism. Sure, he thumbs the scale by making the alien arachnids some of the most frightening, least sympathetic antagonists ever committed to film, but by hiding the origins of the conflict in a flawless takedown of the type jingoistic news reporting de rigueur on American networks, he’s encouraging us to look at how easy it is to manipulate us. And funny as it is watching a wild-eyed and hysterical Donna Reed type encouraging her kids to squish bugs, Verhoeven is asking us to recognize that by priming people from birth to accept the use of force as some sort of virtue, it’s all too easy to convince people that war and its attendant atrocities are justified and justifiable. The human wreckage this ideology has wrought is seen everywhere, from Micheal Ironside’s missing arm and Rue McClanahan’s disfigured face, to a quadriplegic recruitment officer unironically exclaiming that “the mobile infantry made me the man I am today” Verhoeven is asking us to question how we’re being manipulated, because pursuing this type of ideology is like wielding a knife without a hilt- just as likely to hurt you as it is your enemy.
But this is a Paul Verhoeven movie, so all this satire is dressed up in some of the most exciting and explicitly violent action ever put in a mainstream Hollywood movie. The grotesque and terrifying effects by legendary effects artist Phil Tippit (who’s work includes the Raptors in JP and the AT-AT walkers in ESB) are astonishing even by today’s standards, and would give any modern MCU cartoon a run for their money. This truly is a fantastic film, get it in the best format you can and strap in, it’s one hell of a ride!