Monster of the Day #456

“Quick, Henry, the Space-Flit!”

  • Flangepart

    “And I had to answer that Orkin job offer…”

  • Gamera977

    Ouch! Worst SF movie ever, maybe the worst movie ever period.

    I couldn’t understand how such a good book could become such a bad movie till I read the review from I think Food over on the old forum – sorry I don’t want to go though all that spam to try to find it. Apparently Verhoven hated the novel and set out to destroy the movie in every way possible.

  • JazzyJ

     I actually kinda have to disagree here.  Now, in no way am I defending this movie as a great work of art or anything, and I fully realize that many (most?  almost all?) people have the same reaction you do.  In fact, my father-in-law’s reaction was essentially “I am just not sure that the director didn’t love Nazi uniforms just a BIT too much…”

    For me, though, I love this film.  I watch it roughly once a year.  For me, it is clearly a stone-cold, straight-faced satiric take-down of fascist states, and a really run romp of a movie.  As my FIL proves, yes, the satire is SO straight-faced that many people don’t respond to it or assume that it does not exist, but I love it.  Hey — everyone has to have a guilty pleasure, right?

  • Monoceros4

    Maybe this really is some brilliant, deadpan satire, but that doesn’t make the movie any less painful to watch. After all, all you need to do is compare Starship Troopers to a similar movie that’s actually good, Robocop, just to see how much less entertaining it is. Satire or no, you still end up having to endure the tiresome antics of a pack of unappetizing Dawson’s Creek types. Michael Ironside’s brief scenes aren’t enough to ease the hurting.

    I do admit that it’s worth a chuckle to see Rico near the end try to act like he’s capable of command, essaying a ludicrous approximation of a tough-guy sneer when he’s sent to find the “smart bug”. Same thing with Doogie Howser trying to sound like Heinrich Himmler.

    I can imagine, though, that a guy whose home and family got the shit bombed out of them in actual wartime might not have that much truck with the original material.

  • Gamera977

    Well, actually to be honest as a pretty big fan of the novel it poisons my attitude to the movie. I’ll say that in just judging as a movie I’d probably rate ‘Battlefield Earth’ as worse. But the novel for ‘BE’ isn’t any great shakes. To me turning a good novel into a bad movie is a bigger crime than turning a bad novel into a worse movie.

    Verhoven either didn’t much like the novel or didn’t read since he turned about everything in it upside down. The Federation of the novel was a minimal government Libertarian state. I’ll admit such would it’s own problems in real life but turning it into a massive government fascist police state seems, well not to start a political arguement – odd.   

  • JazzyJ

    Hey all.  No arguments with any of you.  For me, I can separate the wonderful short novel from this movie.  I fully admit all of the bad acting, cheesy dialogue, etc., and yet, still love it.  Love is blind sometimes…

  • The Rev.

    I haven’t read the novel.  I still thought the movie was pretty damn stupid on its own merits.  Sometimes it was stupid in a fun way, and sometimes it was actually pretty good; it’s just for the most part it was neither.  But hey, giant bugs!  Can’t go wrong with that, at least.

  • The Rev.

    I found one by “GalahadPC”…was that the one, perhaps?  I couldn’t find one by Food.

  • bgbear_rogerh

    My wife loves this film.
     
    Her favorite line:  “Rico, I’m dying.
    . . .but it’s OK, because I got to have you.”

    My Favorite line: Rico’s call for a  “medic” after a guy had most of his head blown away.

    C’mon, the film had a ferret, what more can you ask.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I maintain that this film works brilliantly if you think of it as a propaganda movie…made from the point of view of the bugs, not the humans.  In that respect, demonstrating that humans are stupid and savage, use stupid tactics and make idiotic decisions, it’s perfect.

    As proof, check out how Denise Richards gets speared through the shoulder and is walking around just fine five minutes later.  No human would put a scene like that in film, not even a dumb action movie.  Gotta be the bugs, remember, you can shoot off one of their legs and they’re still effective.

  • Gamera977

    That’s it! Sorry, I didn’t feel like sifting though 138 pages of mostly spam looking for it. :(

  • Gamera977

    Personal favorite: The giant bugs FARTING so hard they propel asteroids out of orbit at FTL speeds with precise enough targeting to hit cities on Earth. Not only are the farts creating some sort of warp field (to use the Trek term) the bug planet is rotating in space, orbiting it’s sun, and moving around the Milky Way. Earth is doing the same. Yet, the bugs can take this all in effect – I can accept some crazy science but geeze loise!!! 

  • bgbear_rogerh

    I read somewhere someone speculating that the asteroid that hit earth was a naturally occurring hit but, was used for propaganda purposes and blamed on the bugs.  Of course that means everyone in-universe had to believe all the things you mentioned.

  • Flangepart

    Hummm…
    Regards the movie…yeah, Ironsides should have had help with the acting gig. When a decent actor is outnumbered by the ‘Pretty Brigade”…

    Book: I understood where the author was coming from, in principle.
    If the only way to get a vote, is putting your ass on the front line, you’d be less likely to got to war because it’s not an abstraction, it’s memories of the pain and sorrow that go along with it. Unless you’re from a culture that loves death. Anyone for Muslem brotherhood?
    assuming a basic western style cultural underpinning, as the book does this is less likely. Not impossible, just less likely.

    Heh…bug farts…
     

  • Gamera977

    Could be, considering the Federation in the movie that makes a lot of sense.

  • Gamera977

    I’d describe ‘ST’ as ‘Atlas Shugged’ but about 1/5th as long and with killer alien space monsters- both pluses IMHO. 

  • Well, this week must be Movies I Haven’t Seen Since Shortly After Their Release, as I haven’t seen this one since the theatrical run. (If this pattern holds, MIMIC would be the perfect choice for tomorrow’s MOTD, except that I think it’s already been used.)

    I didn’t read the book, so I don’t have that aspect to sway my opinion of the film. I’m not real good at digesting irony, so the satirical aspect is just set dressing.  No, for me, the movie stunk because there wasn’t a single character I really cared about. The entire affair seemed unmotivated beyond Hey, Look At This, Isn’t It Cool?! I mean, it was nice to see Michael Ironside and Jake Busey (?) stop by, but really, I found nothing here to grab onto as a viewer. I hear there were a couple of sequels, and word is they aren’t bad.

  • GalaxyJane

    I hate this movie with every fiber of my being.  You could melt planets in the heat of my loathing.  Saw it once, in the theater, then spent the last 15 years pretending it didn’t exist.  I hated the pointless gore and I hated the way it turned the philosophy of the novel on its head. I even sort of vaguely hate Paul Vanhoven by extention, despite never having met the man. I now like Total Recall slightly less for having a tenuous connection to this film by virtue of its director. I already disliked Denise Richards when this came out, this gave me a reason to dislike Casper Van Dien as well.  And that sort of redheaded chick from “Saved by the Bell” who was inexplicably cast as Dizzy. Not Doogie though, nothing will even make me hate Doogie.

    What I mean to say is this is my absolute most-hated film ever!

    Oh, I also hate the woman who brought her 6 or 7-year-old child to the movie, despite everyone knowing in advance it was a hard R for gore, and stayed through the whole thing despite the fact that the kid was in tearful hysterics for half the film. You, madam, are a vile human being. 

  • Flangepart

     Ayn Rand: Space Marine!
    She could talk them to death…

  • GalaxyJane

    They’re CGI giant bugs, for me that’s always inherently meh. Gimme stop motion model or puppets or guys in suits any day.

  • GalaxyJane

    Hubby swears the sequels are watchable and that the cartoon series is actually quite good, going back more to the original concepts of the novel.  But I can’t bring myself to watch anything related to this dreck, so have no personal opinion. He only hates the movie about 2/3 as much as I do.

  • The Rev.

    I’m with you, believe me, but I rather liked the bugs in this anyway.  I can get behind CGI if it’s done well, and the bugs were pretty good.  I also don’t mind it being used for things practical effects wouldn’t be able to handle; again, the swarms of bugs would’ve been hard to pull off convincingly about it.

    The CGI was one of the few good things about ST, in my opinion.

  • The Rev.


    I mean, it was nice to see Michael Ironside and Jake Busey (?) stop by…”

    Also, Clancy Brown!

  • The Rev.

    Dina Meyer was in “Saved by the Bell”?  I didn’t know that.

    I kind of like her.  I actually watched that terrible “Birds of Prey” show because she was in it.  I can’t say she’s an amazing acting talent, but something about her is compelling to me.  Victoria Pratt from “Cleopatra 2525” is another actress that has that pull on me.

  • GalaxyJane

    Oops, I had always though that was Elizabeth Berkley. No, really.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    If this week’s theme is “CGI Monsters that worked and/or were from the late 90’s” I approve.

    This movie, along with “Deep Rising,” “Mars Attacks,” “Mimic,” and “Jurassic Park” are the ones I would point to when people reflexively say, “CGI is terrible, it never works, practical effects are the True Way.”

    Granted, all these films use practical effects, but only to underscore the CGI work.  In all these cases, the CGI creatures really, really work well. 

    (It’s only the “I’ve completed the course” CGI effects since that have made CGI so belittled.  The CGI in the films above were done by artists who wanted to use the new medium, not hacks who got the certificate.)

  • sandra

    At last, a movie I’ve actualy seen. I like it.  Never having read the book probably helps, there.  If you have read a book and really liked it, a bad movie version infuriates you.( Don’t get me started on The Postman !)  I thought Starship Troopers worked pretty well as a satire of the very values it was pretending to approve.  The cast are what you would expect of those who have grown up in a fascist paradise:  healthy, mostly good looking, and dumb as posts.  It takes them until their mid-twenties to graduate from high school !  At my house, Denise Richards is known as That Grinning Bitch, after she managed to go through the whole movie with a fixed toothy smile. Well, to be fair, she DID stop smiling when her boyfriend got his brain sucked out.  At thing like that can ruin your day.  But she got over it pretty fast.

  • Terrahawk

    I didn’t see the “Hero of the Federation” sequel, but heard it was done extremely cheap and was massively bad.  “Marauder,” I caught on Netflix.  It was slightly above the level of a Sci-Fi Saturday night movie.  Van Dien was in the movie in the B story while Jolene Blaylock was in it as well in the A side of the story.  It’s watchable but I wouldn’t call it good.

  • Terrahawk

    I am with GalaxyJane on this one, I hate this film. 

    “Starship Troopers” was Verhoeven’s attempt to return to glory after the bomb of “Showgirls.”  As such, he decided to return to his “Total Recall” and “Robocop” roots.  Hence, you get the cheesey commercials throughout the film, the ultra violence, the gore, and the nudity.  The sets are good but have a toy quality about them that makes them seem unrealistic.  The CGI though is top notch. 

    ST is one of those films where the filmmaker follows the actual outline of the book but then completely destroys the intent of the story.  I always consider that to be unforgivable in a book to movie translation.  Changing the plot but keeping the intent is fine.  If you are going to do the other, then just come up with your own story and leave the book alone. 

    Finally, two words describe the last major failing of the film, POWER ARMOR. 

  • The Rev.

    I haven’t seen the cartoon, but yeah, I recall it getting a lot of generally positive word-of-mouth from people who saw it.

  • Flangepart

     Yep. Power Armor was a prime part of the war in the novel. It compensated for the sheer mass of bugs to put the humans on a level playing field.
    Dark Horse did a SST comic with an example of P.A. and it worked. So there!

  • This is one detail I recall from the pre-release hype. They were originally going to include the fabled power suits, but the effects budget was already climbing too high. The decision was made to focus the effects budget on the bugs and drop the suits, for including both elements would have stretched the money too far and the whole thing would have looked crappy. Figuring the bugs were the exploitable element, they backed those to the hilt. Again, I haven’t read the book, but I can understand the logic in changing that element for budgetary reasons.

  • Marsden

    When I first saw this it was ok, and I didn’t mind the gore, but when I read the book?  Ugh, I hate it.  We hates it forever!

  • Marsden

    That’s the movie not the book, that was great and I reread it every couple years, it doesn’t get old.  I also like that  verhoven couldn’t “get through” it but all the actors on Aliens were required to read it.  Aliens was a good movie.

  • Terrahawk

    I remember them saying that the problem was you couldn’t see the actors’ faces.  Plus, they seemed to be under the impression that you needed the same number of extras if you had the power armor.  The whole point of PA was it made you a one man wrecking crew.  Add in working with others and it was a powerful force.  Instead of hundreds of guys running out with rifles, it would have taken maybe 15 suites spread across seven to eight miles.  It would have been a challenge to film, but it would have been different and truer to the book. 

  • Oh, was he in it? Oh, yeah! He was the instructor! I forgot all about him being there! What a forgetful movie.

  • Marsden

    and a final blow to this dead horse, Juan Rico is Filipino.   What the hell.

  • Petoht

    He didn’t read it.  I think he said he got 2 pages in and stopped caring.

    It’s a absolutely terrible adaptation of Starship Troopers.  But if you divorce it from the novel and just watch it as a sci-fi actioner with anti-fascism satire, then it’s pretty freaking fun.

  • Petoht

    The second movie was pretty bad, but I guess you could call it watchable (talk about damning with faint praise).  The third was far better than the second and had more satire.  Well… it was a little heavy handed to be satire, but it was still better than the second.

    The third also had what could only be described as The Compulsory Group Nude Shot.  Like the first had the shower, and the second had… something.  The third had a group nude shot for them being scanned for their suits or some nonsense.  Thing is, it felt so wonderfully cynical.  Like they were told they had to have a group nude shot, so they did it in the most sterile, pointless, perfunctory way.

    Well, that or it was just ineptly scripted, blocked, and shot.  But I like the cynicism explanation better.

  • Petoht

    Stuff and nonsense.  The best part of the books was the smart grenade psychological warfare device!

    “Hi!  I’m a smart grenade!  I will detonate in ten seconds!”

  • Terrahawk

    I know she almost did in high school when I had to read “The Fountainhead.”