It was uncomfortably hot today, well into the high 90s and sweltering, and I spent most of it indoors. I felt especially bad for our dog when I had to take him outside for a walk. He hasn’t been feeling too well lately, continuing to throw up on occasion, and for the past day or two walking with a bit of a limp. We don’t know if it’s the heat, his weight, arthritis, something in one of his front paws, or some combination of those things. But my mother’s taking him to the vet on Monday, so hopefully he’ll feel better soon.
I spent most of this evening watching Starship Troopers, which I haven’t seen since it was in theaters in 1997. I didn’t much like the movie back then, but Scott Tobias’ recent in-depth review made me want to reconsider it:
Though Starship Troopers is a generalized critique of war, Verhoeven’s preoccupation with World War II dominates the look of the film, which is loaded with Nazi allusions and compositions on loan from Leni Riefenstahl, whose propaganda films lionized order and physical beauty. Only here, the fascists are our heroes in the Federation, the governing body that’s working to ensure that humans, not bugs, control the galaxy. And for some critics and viewers, that’s where the confusion sets in: Was Starship Troopers an endorsement of fascism? Or at the very least, a thoughtless, juvenile celebration of young people sacrificing themselves for the good of mankind? Audiences are naturally inclined to root for the gung-ho hero in space adventures like these, and certainly the bugs, whose motives are somewhere between inscrutable and nonexistent, seem like ghastly adversaries, worthy of extermination. What’s more, the Heinlein novel is considered a stirring defense of militarism and the necessity of war and civic duty, so an adaptation would surely honor those themes, right?
And you know, Tobias is probably right: the film is better than I remember it. But that doesn’t mean I liked it.
The film is an uncomfortable straddle between satire and summer blockbuster, an indictment of fascism that’s nevertheless couched in all of fascism’s trappings and the spectacle of a CGI-driven action movie. It’s hard not to see director Paul Verhoven’s intentions — they’re laid pretty bare in all of the ways that Tobias makes clear — but it’s also hard not to be a little exhausted by them by the movie’s end. I can admire and respect the subversive streak that casts our heroes as fascist warmongers, that simultaneously asks us to root their victory and question ourselves in the process. But it’s hard to enjoy a movie, much less a pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat sci-fi action movie, where you have to hate the characters a little, and hate yourself a little for liking them.
I may listen to Verhoven’s commentary track, but right now, I liked Tobias’ essay a lot more than the movie.
