Starship Troopers
“Shiiiiiiit! Kill this fucking thing!”
I was working in a movie theater when Starship Troopers came out and as a result I probably saw some portion of this film about three times a week over the course of several months, and when I caught it on Encore the other night I remembered that it still rocks my face off.
For those of you who are uninformed, "Starship Troopers" was a book written by some science fiction author about a future where the world is united under a Fascist government at war with a confederation of alien insects. The plot follows the adventures of a group of recent high school graduates as they enlist in the army, and makes several political and social commentaries regarding individuality, free will and the attitudes of people towards the government. Or at least that's what I hear from my friend Bill. I don't read anything that isn't my website.
When they decided to adapt the book into a movie, the producers were just like, "what do people want to see in their science fiction movies?". They thought about it for a while and then just decided, "screw this sentimental intellectual tacky commentary crap, let's just make a movie full of explosions, blood, machine guns and chicks". The result was "Starship Troopers", the quintessential movie about war in space.
Reasons Why "Starship Troopers" Is Badass to the Xtreme Gonzo
First off, it features FSU grad Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards, who is sort of horse-faced but is also the first woman to ever make out with both Neve Campbell and Charlie Sheen. Now if this isn't a recipe for disaster, I don't know what is. Luckily, the script writers realized what they were working with and wrote some of the cheesiest, most badass dialogue in any movie ever. I don't know how they did it, but every single line in the movie is completely corny but awesome at the same time. This results in the audience getting a good laugh in the fifteen minutes of the movie when people aren't getting their arms ripped off or aliens aren't being exploded into pieces and spewing green fluid all over the place.
The movie ends up being about an hour and a half of space marines using their bitchin' heavy machineguns (with a large-gauge shotgun as an under-barrel attachment) to slaughter aliens while their friends get torn in half and eaten by giant bugs, which is really all you can ever ask for from a trashy action/sci-fi movie.
There's a random arena football game in the beginning which serves no purpose to the plot but guys do somersaults and then their heads almost knocked off when they're tackled and bodyslammed by guys the size of Lawrence Taylor. How can you argue with a movie about killing aliens and scoring touchdowns?
Buenos Aires gets blown up by a giant asteroid that is knocked out of orbit by a huge alien bug that shoots lasers out of its ass.
Some chick pukes while dissecting a dead alien.
Right in the middle of all the killing and mayhem and monster blood Diz takes her shirt off. It's like the script writers were saying, "OK, sorry nobody's been killed or maimed in the last seven minutes... here's some tits", and you have to love that. Maybe the Star Wars prequels wouldn't have sucked so much ass if you got to see Natalie Portman's rack instead of a bunch of boring soliloquies about the nature of good and evil or midichlorians or other pretentious asshole rationalization of the plot crap.
The dialogue is best summed up in the scene where the dude who used to be on Babylon 5 looks at the gaping head wound of one of his soldiers and exclaims, "Oh my god... they've SUCKED OUT HIS BRAINS!".
When all the guys are in boot camp and Ace is trying to act like a total badass his drill sergeant knifes him to get him to shut the fuck up because he was totally pissing everybody off. Then there's the random angry black man who chases people around with a spring-loaded stun baton when they're running laps, which is pretty cool.
Doogie Howser is in it. Wait, maybe that's not badass. It IS entertaining though. You can't avoid laughing when you see Doogie trying to act all hard and mysterious.
Tons of aliens get their shit wrecked. Tons of humans also get their shit wrecked.
The little bitch character who pisses you off throughout the entire movie TOTALLY gets what's coming to him and you don't even feel bad for him.
Space marines are just awesome. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to make a movie about any kind of marines and have them not rock ass. I mean, even Imperial Stormtroopers are cool and all they did was bump into each other and fire their blasters in the wrong direction for three consecutive films.
Anyways, the movie "Starship Troopers" rules. It's the kind of movie that you can watch about five thousand times and still enjoy. It's like the ideal movie to put on when you're stoned or drunk and just sitting around with your friends while eating chips and salsa and you want to see some blood, guns, spaceships, tits and Doogie Howser. It's awesomely bad.