Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]
$28.95
This movie is almost NOTHING like the book it is based on. It's a Paul Veerhoven explosion of ideas all thrown into the blender and set to frappe. It is chock full of bad acting but has great effects. Love it or hate it, you must own it.
Also it looks and sounds great on Blu

Roughnecks - The Starship Troopers Chronicles - The Complete Campaigns
$49.95
I use to wake at 5:30 in the morning to watch this show. I saw this for a good three weeks and then they took it off the air. I never thought to look for it until I saw it at best buy. I would've bought it there but they had it priced at $100. That was about three years ago though. I loved the movie but don't expect it to be like the the movie; it based more off the book from what I'm told.

Starship Troopers
$14.94
When I saw "Starship Troopers" the first time, I was appalled. It looked like a (really bad) fascist propaganda movie. The fascism was so overt, that I started wondering why nobody else was reacting the way I did!

It's because it's parody, stupid.

"Starship Troopers" is nominally based on Robert Heinlein's famous novel, but in reality it's a parody, criticizing Heinlein and his bizarre vision of a society in which only war veterans have full citizenship rights. In the process, the movie also makes fun of American militarist propaganda, and indeed militarist propaganda in general. In many ways, "Starship Troopers" is a deliberate turkey. It looks like the worst Nazi movie ever made, but it's supposed to look that way.

"Starship Troopers" is actually quite intellectual!

The funny thing is that many people just don't get it. Some love the movie precisely *because* it looks like a militarist propaganda movie. Others hate it for the same reason. Still others, i.e. the most devout Heinlein fans, see "Starship Troopers" as a walking insult to Heinlein's great novel, which some people treat almost as a second Bible. (Prediction: soon, somebody will point out that Federal Service is broader than the military.)

The plot of the film doesn't deserve closer scrutiny. "The Federation" (spouting an eagle as symbol - the American eagle? Or a Nazi eagle?) is under attack by a race of monstrous, intelligent spiders from the mysterious planet Klendathu. A group of beautiful, perfect and young adults, fresh out of high school, decide to volunteer in the military. Their leader is a completely crazy old vet. Curiously, the fascist military dictatorship is multi-racial and gender-blind. When the attack on Klendathu fails, the White male dictator resigns, being replaced by a Black female. Ironically, this "political correctness" is freely based on Heinlein, who was indeed anti-racist, but real American propaganda movies can also be multi-racial ("Iron Eagle" comes to mind). Later in the movie, the beautiful Nazi kids finally put their act together and manage to defeat the bugs on another planet, where they are promptly joined by a team of SS-looking scientists. There, the movie ends, inconclusively. Along the way, we are treated to some really hefty special effects (naturally, the bugs are much larger and even more "alien" than in the novel).

Strange fact: shortly after the premier of "Starhip Troopers" in Sweden, a new Swedish translation of Heinlein's original novel was published...with a picture from the movie on its front cover!

That's almost postmodern. The parody is used to sell the thing parodied. Gee, what a mindjob.

Naturally, I have to give this ridiculous Nazi slapstick five stars.

Starship Troopers
$7.99
It's a great book for boys and for girls who think like boys.

Far far better than the film.