Starship Troopers

Sidey: Hey, we're going back to 1997 for a, a Starship Troopers.

Reegs: Yeah. Yes.

Sidey: I remember I watched it at the time. I remember really liking it.

Reegs: I have seen this movie multiple times. I am quite a big fan and I am playing a computer game at the moment that is heavily inspired by this.

Right.

Sidey: You wanna know more? Yeah, yeah.

Cris: It

Sidey: starts off with that, doesn't it? Of the kind of like propaganda type newsreel stuff

Reegs: Yeah. From the federal network. Yeah. They're telling us about how young people in the mobile infantry they're saying, I'm doing my part

Sidey: Are you and

Reegs: Are you? Yeah. And it's like a little cursor clicking around.

Do you

Cris: want, there's

Sidey: There's a little nerd kid comes out from like behind soldier and says, aren't they my part? And they're all lll. Oh yeah. Brilliant.

Reegs: Sweet, with these enormous weapons. And then we get a news clip that talks about how a bug meteor was intercepted before it struck earth. And that an invasion of clinda through the bug's home planet

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And, we

get, we cut to a live feed [00:01:00] from Clinda where you get like hundreds of these soldiers all dressed up in this kind of Yeah. Very sort of anime looking, futuristic body armor and these assault rifles.

Sidey: infantry still on the ground against these huge arachnid, like,

Reegs: well, they come in, there's like a live feed, isn't it?

There's a guy going, oh, there's a bug planet, an awful planet. And then he's suddenly just completely eviscerated by this thing that comes screeching out. They've, they're sort of, I guess two or three times the size of a cow and sort of got like razor sharp,

Sidey: mostly jaw, like it's a huge jaw on legs.

Cris: grabs

Sidey: news reporter guy.

Reegs: Yeah. And he's just

Sidey: and he's just sliced in half.

Reegs: Yeah. And you know, a squad can be taken out by one of these things in a, in like a second. And the CGI, I still think considering 1997, it still holds up, still looks really good. And the way they've, you know, interacted or. Planned out the shots carefully has made it look really good.

So, we [00:02:00] see our prota, our hero. We know he's gonna be our hero. Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. He yells at the camera, come on, get out of here, or whatever. And you see him get attacked and the cameraman's killed. And then Johnny's impaled right through the thigh. It looks like he's dead. And then the transmission cuts off.

And then one year earlier. Yeah. And

Cris: they

Sidey: still, they're at college.

Cris: Yeah.

Sidey: and his crew. Him, there's him there is Denise Richards as Carmen,

Reegs: Yeah. Looking absolutely unbelievable.

Sidey: Yeah. There is Neil Patrick Harris. Yeah. As Carl.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And then there's the sort of douchey love rival,

Reegs: Xander are you

Cris: talking about?

Yeah.

Reegs: comes in a bit later, doesn't he? First off, they're in with the amazing Michael Einstein in his, it's where we get like a bit of world building and stuff as we learn a bit about this society. Like at some point. It's

Sidey: It's a classroom, but he, he's just basically recruiting for the

Cris: Military.

Reegs: military, yeah.

Because at some point the military basically took over. Yeah. So it's a, I I learned a new word, strato,[00:03:00]

which means a military, it's like a military dictatorship. It's like a military,

Sidey: Sue and the, the kind of the sentiment of the way they are

Cris: are

Sidey: promoting this is you are nothing, you're not even a citizen until you've

Reegs: Yeah. You own

certain rights by serving in the military, like the right to have children the right to vote. Yeah. So all, many other perks so that you don't have, unless you serve in the military. And it's, it's like basically a constant message. How they're told that violence is literally the answer to everything.

they're told constantly and, and it's like reinforced all the way through it and everybody's, like you say, it's a recruitment center. Everybody wants to be in the military. So they have some moral debates about exercising authority and all that sort of stuff. It's pretty clear in the way that it's framed that Verhoeven is like taking the piss out of all this stuff, but that did escape the attention of quite a few people apparently.

But I know

Sidey: I dunno. it's.

Cris: It's

Sidey: fairly clear.

Reegs: Yeah. Anyway, after class kids are making out in [00:04:00] the halls, by the way. That was pretty sweet. They go to check their math scores 'cause that'll send them off on their different paths. Carmen's like a brainiac and she's got 94% or whatever it is in maths and is going off to be a pilot.

Yeah. And Johnny is 37% in maths. So Dullard. And he's going off to be in the

Cris: he's

Sidey: be a grunt. Yeah. Can't afford a,

Reegs: And Neil Patrick Harris. I'd never seen him in anything like this at all. He was just Doogie Hauser MD to me at the time. So suddenly being in this was really weird. He's psychic apparently. 'Cause we sometimes get little adverts about that as well.

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: So humans have developed some sort of like tele telepathy or

something?

Sidey: guess

that was some sort of nuclear. Mutation thing. But don't say that. I just thought that yeah, so there's, he, they're all gonna go off to their different branches. Rico's parents are anti-military.

Reegs: Yeah. So

Cris: So

Sidey: In the context of the film, I didn't understand.

'cause they seem

Cris: where

Reegs: there, he's rich enough to be above all that.

Right.

Sidey: So you could, you could essentially buy your way out. Yeah. Trump style

Reegs: basically. Yeah. You know, too, too

Sidey: But he, he's so in love.

Cris: He

Reegs: He is, and we see how in [00:05:00] love he is when he meets his love rival. Yeah. Xander in a, they have this sort of crazy version of American football where they can just flip through the air if you're Johnny

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: do some assaults and stuff, and it's like a really violent game.

But also men and women play it on the same footing.

Sidey: They showed that the men and women on a, like, like, like completely level playing field in this

Reegs: they do all the time

Sidey: to the point where they shout together.

Reegs: shout together, they shower together. Yeah, that's horny. And there's a bit where, carmen is flirting very heavily with this Xander guy who's also gonna turn out to be at the pilot school with her later. And the, you know, there's a bit of oneupmanship and he gets one over. Johnny eventually ends up getting one over on Xander, but it's clear that story's not so,

Sidey: he defies his parents. He does, and says, well, you know, I need to be a citizen. I am doing this

Because I'm in love with Carmen.

Reegs: oh. Egged. On by Ironside as well.

Who says, choosing your path in life is the only real freedom that

Sidey: Yeah. [00:06:00] So he rejects the riches of his family Yeah. And goes off to join the infantry.

He does. But it's not long before Carmen decides that she wants to go Korea as a pilot. Yeah. And that doesn't leave any room for Rico. So now he's like, fuck, Kind of stuck with In the infantry? Yeah.

Reegs: Undergoing a sort of very, it's a bit like the beginning of full metal jacket, but set in space like a little 20 minute bit here, where inspectors in the drill sergeant again will hammer home the point about violence being the solution to everything.

Put your hand on that. Wa

Sidey: Hey, first of all, he just breaks some guy's arm as a

Reegs: completely, unnecessarily. It's like a demonstration. Who do you think, who, who do you think here could overpower me or whatever? And he

Sidey: As farmer guys, I, I could,

Reegs: Yeah. Breaks his arm. Yeah. He puts a, a knife through someone else's.

They really subject them to it. There's also a, a live fire training exercise, which seems like a terrible idea with

Cris: these, but first

Sidey: of all.

Cris: all,

Sidey: Rico has proved himself and he is made squad leader.

[00:07:00] he like does he wins the you know the capture the flag game. Yeah. Which they use their American football game skills to win at that. And so they're like, oh wow, he is really good. We'll make him squad leader. And then yeah, it goes into the live fire thing almost immediately.

And. His, I think it's the pharma guy again. Yeah. Who's first. He had his arm broken. Now he's got a problem where his

Reegs: he says he can't see 'cause his helmet's in the way.

So Rico on a live fire exercise takes his fucking helmet

Cris: off.

Sidey: I don't think it would've saved him anyway, but yeah. He does take it off and some of flummoxes around with their rifle and pulls the trigger and when you know it, he gets shot in the head.

And we need a medic.

Cris: Medic. They ask where the

Reegs: back and his brains are just everywhere.

Sidey: Yeah. He's a goner. So he is kind of, disgraced by that. And because he's also had the news that he's been dumped, he decides to fuck

it

Reegs: He's going down. Wash out lane. Yeah.

Sidey: he quits.

Reegs: Yeah. And

Cris: immediately Bueno

Sidey: Aires is wiped out [00:08:00] by bug asteroid,

Reegs: where he's from.

Sidey: Yeah. And so he reconsiders also Dizzy has joined him

on this this. Posting.

Reegs: Yeah. She turns up and she says, I, I turn up. I wanted to be here 'cause it's the best or whatever. And then immediately gets into a fight with Zi. It's just brilliant. It's like an anime. It's amazing.

Sidey: So because he is now got nowhere to go, his hometown is literally has been wiped off the map. Yeah. He decides to reconsider and he's gonna stay and fight.

Reegs: Also because the the asteroid has allegedly, I mean, we don't know, but it's come from clinda. They authorize like a battle, don't they? so the sky marshal authorizes the deployment of the troops on this place, and they fucking, like, they glass it, first level it or whatever, and then they go in and it's all this like, big triumphant thing.

In fact, it joins up with the, from the beginning, right? Yeah. Is that, have I gone too far?

Sidey: I think there is about first, but

we see just how hopelessly

outmatched

they are by, yeah, the Cland fu. And we've seen. [00:09:00] We've been shown the arachnid ones, but there is actually a hierarchy of the, basically the size of

Reegs: other things going on, isn't there? 'cause when they turn up, there's like these blue things, it looks really nice coming up through

Sidey: like a big firework, but

Reegs: and they're all revving up the team to go down and kick ass. But then they realize it's actually targeting them and it takes out a load of fucking

Sidey: the first one gets hit. And the, the captain of the shit that Denise Richards is, is part of thing. It's like, this is wrong. There's a bit of mistake. And then they all these like, transports just start getting blown to smithereens.

Yeah.

And then we see

Reegs: people die. Like a hundred thousand. At least.

Sidey: they say a hundred thousand in the first hour. That's just on the ground. Yeah. But we see the bugs. There's these massive bugs and they're just squirting these, these rockets outta their ass into space. Yeah. So we know there are other kind of bugs on the planet

Reegs: and fire breathing ones

Cris: and we

Sidey: don't see him till right towards the end

Reegs: when they go to the

Sidey: Yeah, Extreme Mormons

Reegs: The Mormon extremists. Yeah.

Sidey: So they go down you know, the infantry on the deck and this is where we see them get, they get [00:10:00] absolutely pummeled and someone looks over the wall and there's just fucking thousands of these things,

Reegs: Well, this, no, actually that's later because this is the bit where Rico, it comes back to the beginning where Rico gets stabbed through the leg

Cris: Oh, goes,

Sidey: Oh, it goes because he goes into the backer

Reegs: he goes in the back to tank for a little while.

You think he's dead, but he's not. And then, but like everybody's fucking dead. They're now like the old guard. And it's like

Sidey: he's been promoted by virtue of everyone else being

Reegs: everyone's dead now, basically. Yeah. And so, and they get these kids in and they must have deliberately cast actors who looked about 12 in this scene.

'cause they're just obviously getting younger and younger

Cris: Vietnam

Sidey: thing, wasn't it?

Reegs: Yeah. And it then it turns out that his fucking person in command, the guy who saved him on the battlefield, turns out to be Michael Ironside.

His teacher from the beginning. Amazing.

Sidey: His sort of battle cry is

don't

you wanna die today? Or something like that. You know,

Reegs: who wants to

Sidey: he wants to live. Yeah. Basically saying like, are gonna fucking snuff it here.

Reegs: So the old Sky marshal is hooked out and the new Sky marshal is put in place and her plan is [00:11:00] to go and fight the Yeah. Same fucking thing.

Yeah. And I love this bit because you get the news reports where they show you like they censor. A cow or something, or a guy being attacked and then they just show you like an attack. The aftermath of the attack,

Sidey: millions of dead bodies,

Reegs: bodies just dismembered with arms and like disgusting stuff everywhere.

Cris: There's been

Sidey: a hint of. Something is controlling, or, you know, this isn't just

Reegs: mm-hmm.

Sidey: a load of silly bugs like this. They, they're organized and they,

they

set traps and there's a, yeah, there's something going on.

Reegs: Yeah. And they find this out when they're sent down onto one of the planets. The Sky Marshal's plan is to start the outer in planets and move in.

They're sent down to one of these planets, and it's clearly a setup when they get there. The bugs have come out of the floor. There's been a thing where you see, like somebody's had their brain sucked out, and then suddenly when there was supposed to be no bugs around at all, there's fucking thousands of them.

Like you were saying, it's overwhelming [00:12:00] numbers.

Sidey: Yeah. There's no way they could survive that.

Reegs: No. So they fight them off to the, like the best they can until the greatest pilot in the world turns up. And she Carmen rescues them with Sander.

Sidey: Yeah. And if they're here, they, they do meet Doogie.

Yeah. And it turns out they're, they, they don't know it, but they suspect there's a brainy

Reegs: bug

This has confirmed it. The thing with the, 'cause they found out that the, the guy, the general. Stayed in the locker, didn't he? And he, he knows exactly what happened. They, the brain bug made somebody call them in and all this sort of stuff. He couldn't warn them. So now they've got definitive proof of the brain bug and they're going back to go and get it again. Same plan.

Cris: Lucky.

Sidey: This time though Carmen's gonna be.

So they get, they get hit, don't they? By, by one of these blue rockets. Yeah. Which cause them to crash land on the planet and.

Like right into the hive of the the bugs. Yeah.

But they [00:13:00] don't execute. They just, well, they're just dead straight away. But then they're not, they're pinned down by these, I guess the main soldier ones, the arachni ones, and then we see the brain bug. Yeah. And it's just a big shuffling brain with a sort of a arachnid

Reegs: and like

Sidey: and like

Yeah.

A big claw thing that comes out of its vagina, like forehead. Yeah. Basically.

Reegs: it's like a big V in the middle, definitely with loads of eyes, sometimes C, GI, and sometimes practical effects

Sidey: It works quite well, I thought. And Xander is the poor, unfortunate who's pinned down. Yeah. And we know what's gonna happen to him.

The hook thing goes into the top of his skull and they sort of scoop out. He's hit like an ene animal, like pulling out his brain.

Reegs: It's Phil Tipt,

Cris: you know, the legendary Star Wars

Reegs: did

Sidey: And his face just gets all hollowed out and he, he's dead. He's really, really

Reegs: really dead. Yeah.

Sidey: Carmen to go next. But he has passed her a knife. Yeah. And we've been told in the past, in the earlier on in the film that, you know, they can't [00:14:00] fire or attack you if you That's right.

Yeah. So the knife comes in handy. Slices off the brain bugs, like brain sucking dick

Reegs: What is that? Yeah, I dunno. It was like a long

Sidey: What do you call those things? Pros, SCUs. Yeah. Yeah. So that's reeling. And they, they've heard on the radio that she's in there. Yeah. And they didn't want to derail the mission, so they sent the mo like.

Three of them have splinted off to go and try and rest. Rescue her. There

Reegs: Rico,

Sidey: Thinking that she's probably already dead and the rest of them have been sent to carry on with a mission. Yeah. And they do get there in time.

How does it play? I

Reegs: he, he walks, they, it is just as they're about the brain bug's about to kill her. They're all about to kill her. He walks in, he's holding a nuclear weapon in his hand, basically a nuclear bomb, and the brain bug obviously recognizes what it is, and so they allow them to back out. One of the guys in the three man team has been injured, so he stays there holding it to sort

Sidey: of That's right.

Reegs: of self-sacrifice.

Just fucking blow them all up and let Carmen [00:15:00] and Johnny get away.

Sidey: Yeah, and they do get away. What I really like is that the battle's kind of been one off screen.

Reegs: Yeah. The battle's been one off screen. Hooray.

Sidey: the drill. The drill instructor,

Cris: Zi

Reegs: was the hero. Yeah. He's

Sidey: Clancy Brown.

He's

Reegs: a private now and has to salute Johnny.

Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And I also love the way that they present this last moment as a triumph where they sort of drag this fucking brain out of the. Hole. And Neil Patrick Harris walks up in full. We haven't talked about, he's wearing full Nazi, like black

Cris: prop. Gustapo. Yeah, Nazi

Reegs: outfit, and he puts his hand on it and he goes,

Sidey: it's afraid.

Reegs: it's afraid.

It's afraid. And everybody cheers.

Sidey: La.

Cris: And then it ends

Reegs: with a recruitment video now, but featuring Carmen and Johnny

Sidey: Do you wanna know more?

Reegs: Now they're the, you know, join Ricoh's. Roughnecks. Come on you, apes. Do you wanna live forever?

Sidey: Yeah. Just regurgitating the same shit.

Reegs: and it says they'll keep fighting and they'll win. Awesome.

Cris: [00:16:00] Absolutely It's

Sidey: really great. It's I was so surprised at how, well, I dunno if I've watched it again since the nineties.

Okay. How well it still holds up, like visually, like the story, the story, the story is still great. But it still really looks fantastic. I think.

Reegs: I think the CGI and all that still holds up really well.

I just, all the performances are so over the

Sidey: top Yeah. because it's

Reegs: a Paul Verhoeven movie and

Sidey: It it's by design.

Reegs: by design. Yeah. And like, you know, 'cause the kids are so brain deadly, stupid and just running into battle and like preposterously outmatched in this ridiculous society that he's created.

It's just so good.

Sidey: it's.

also quite on the nose for how things are now.

Reegs: Yeah, as always, you start to see those sorts of things, don't you, about how the young can be

Sidey: Yeah, exactly. Ice, I was thinking of

Reegs: fascism really easily. So yeah, just great stuff timeless and still, you know. People apparently don't get that.

It was a satire is amazing. And also the complete polar opposite of the author, Robert a Heinen, [00:17:00] his book was very serious about some of this stuff. Yeah. And so is, there's

Sidey: he's probably, a

Reegs: ever been like a big, bigger fuck you of somebody doing to the source material going, here's your stuff, I'm gonna make it look as ridiculous as it is.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: strong.

Cris: Strong

Strong, Yeah. Very good. Very.