Screen Life

Karen Krizanovich
Friday 28 November 1997 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Verhoeven knows

that Americans have

an irony deficiency:

they don't get his

joke of having Yankee youth cheering

what are essentially modern,

warmongering

brown shirts.

Movies, mountains of food and loads of moaning, that's what Thanksgiving in America is all about. For this big holiday moviemakers put out some of their best stuff, hoping to lure the turkey-weary Americans into darkened multiplexes for a real mixed bag of filmed entertainment.

Starship Troopers, for instance, is a sci-fi extravaganza pitting Aryan- type youths against scissor-armed, brain-sucking bugs in outer space. It has gone to number one so far with only a handful of people really catching Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's ironic gesture: all the troopers are so Hitler-youth they may as well be singing Tomorrow Belongs To Me. Verhoeven has freely admitted to plagiarising its opening sequence from Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda classic Triumph of the Will. Here, politically-correct Nazi youth (if there can be such a thing) fight and die horrible deaths for the good of our universe.

Of course, this kind of fascistic fashion statement is not new. From the uniformed robotic police in THX 1138 to Star Wars stormtroopers, groovy Nazi-like uniforms showed the seductive side of evil. In Starship Troopers we don't find them offensive. We are encouraged to cheer and even identify with those wearing Nazi trappings. It is almost as if Verhoeven wants to court more controversy by offending the older generation who remember the Second World War. (I myself waited for some over-stuffed midwesterner to stand up and cry, "Hey! Them're Nazis up there!" It didn't happen.)

Well, no. Verhoven has been quoted as saying that he just wanted to play with these controversial images in an artistic way. Again, his Dutch humour shows through. Few could accuse the post-Spetters Verhoeven of being an artist, especially with those two monuments to good taste Basic Instinct and Showgirls under his belt.

that Americans have an irony deficiency: they don't get his joke of having yankee youth cheering what are essentially modern, warmongering brownshirts. Still, you can say what you like about Nazis, but you have to admit that they had the best uniforms.

Thankfully, the nasty bug-enemy are tough but just easy enough to destroy. We gaze at their violent, anthropomorphic behaviour and sigh, "Never mind the story, look at those effects!" Starship Troopers is a big nothing of a movie but fabulous to look at. The plot? Not only has Verhoeven lost it, he never needed it in the first place. It's Dollars Uber Alles, baby.

Starship Troopers comes out on 2 January.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in