Fuck Independence Day! That bunch of patriotic mumbo jumbo was nothing more than an excuse for Will Smith to mug for the camera. As an alien attack movie it was nothing. Mars Attacks! was great if you love those cheesy 50s movies. The newest entry in the big-bugs-fuck-things-up genre, Starship Troopers, puts those attempts to shame.

The comparisons to a million other movies are inevitable. Is it a big bug movie on par with Them! and Mimic? A nasty alien invader movie like War of the Worlds and imitators? Or should we compare it to Paul Verhoeven's other movies like Robocop or Total Recall? Yes, especially in the case of Robocop; this being the last time a disturbing worldview was packaged as a fluff action movie. Moral ambiguity has never been so entertaining.

At heart this is a fun movie about a bunch of soldiers shooting and blowing up large alien insects, and getting killed in the most nasty ways. There are no cuts to the flashing lights and screaming victims as with the Alien movies. This is gruesome carnage using the most creative and disgusting deaths possible. If it had only been that it would have been a great movie.

Of course, neither Verhoeven nor Heinlein's book, allow you to be entirely pleased with the mass destruction. There's always a fascist, rightwing subtext in most of these big bug/alien invader movies. The troops are always heroic, the enemy is always evil deserving only extermination, the intellectuals are sitting back and allowing people to get slaughtered, etc. In Starship Troopers the fascist aspects seep into the context of the movie.

Not only can the title be abbreviated into SS Trooper; but a central image is of one of the "heroes" Doogie Howser in a long black leather trenchcoat, looking as if he stepped out of a WW2 movie. The future world of humans is a military dictatorship in which only "citizens", ie. soldiers have the right to vote or reproduce. Executions are publicly televised and the cheesy propaganda machine perpetually stresses earth's sovereign right to annihilate all the insects in order to have complete control of the galaxy. As with Robocop, this all seems very fun and only becomes disturbing after you leave the movie theater. Compared to the moral atmosphere, the violence is nothing.

As for the action sequences, Verhoeven once again proves himself an expert craftsman. You barely see the insects for the first hour of the movie. They are confined to propaganda broadcasts and news stories. (breakaway radical fringe Mormons set up their base on Arachnid territory and are slaughtered, etc.). Even after they annihilate Buenos Aires they are not seen.

When they do enter the movie, they don't leave. Some of the most exhilarating and scary scenes are swarms of giant insects coming over the horizon wiping out entire platoons of extras. The couple next to me made stupid remarks about how violent movies had become, about the time when one character got a pincer jabbed into his skull, whilst his brain was sucked dry. They apparently only knew Verhoeven for his work on Showgirls. If you are not familiar with Verhoeven and don't like violence in movies, then avoid this movie. Else, run to the movie theater, this is a fucking cool experience.

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