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James Clive Matthews is the author of two books of film criticism, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and blog editor for the BBC's Pocket Films site. Here he picks five classic war films every home should have. Click to view Top 5 Greatest War Films.
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Best War Satire (Starship Troopers - 1997) |
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 The best satire is often played with such a straight face that it’s all too easy to mistake it for the thing it is lampooning – yet it’s still surprising that such a knowing slice of spoof-laden subversion as Starship Troopers has been so under-rated. If you like your sci-fi action to come with a gritty message, look no further. |
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| Based on a cult, gung-ho novel that was chock full of simple-minded heroics, it is – to be fair – easy to see why people might mistake this similarly action-packed sci-fi outing for a genuine attempt to make a straight special effects-loaded blockbuster. |
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 The casting of pretty young actors like Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards in the lead, the stylish design of the aliens and weaponry, the battles, blood and gore – all could seem merely like a cynical, money-grabbing and utterly derivative attempt to rip off Aliens and countless other sci-fi flicks.
But look closer and you’ll see that this is in fact a comedy without a laugh track, a condemnation of propaganda, war and those who glory in war’s violence that is at least as cutting in its satire as the likes of M*A*S*H or Catch-22, made by a filmmaker with direct personal experience of warfare, having grown up in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation.
Considering that director Paul Verhoeven’s last cinematic outing had been the truly abysmal Showgirls, it is easy to see why few were expecting him to produce a subversive anti-militaristic parody of the war film genre, and took Starship Troopers entirely at face value. The fact that even the film’s stars supposedly thought that it was a straight sci-fi actioner, and treated it as such in all publicity, merely adds to the inherent amusement value of a movie so often dismissed as worthless.
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 This is a tale of a fascist human society – complete with Nazi-style uniforms – jetting off into space to wipe out an entire race, where the death of the enemy is greeted with whoops and cheers and the final victory comes when it is apparent that the humans inspire fear in their foe. Throughout, patriotic pro-war messages and news reports intermingle with the action like a futuristic, hyperactive Fox news – where even the death of a reporter is treated as grisly entertainment.
Had it been made today, with the background of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the desert setting of the extra-terrestrial homeland of the aliens and the unquestioning loyalty to the cause of the troops sent out to massacre the enemy, supposedly to protect their homeland, would have made the parody all too obvious. Especially when the suggestion that the aliens only attacked after the humans interfered in their home world is dismissed as enemy propaganda without foundation.
The aliens here are the African warriors of Zulu – a comparison all too obvious with the episode in which the human soldiers find their compound surrounded by a thousands-strong insect host – yet could equally be the Somali fighters of Black Hawk Down, made four years later, or the lazily-sketched, almost inhuman Nazis and Japanese of countless World War Two films. The hideous, faceless nature of the insect-like aliens compared to the pristine, soap opera-style good looks of the humans is a deliberate riff on the standard war film tactic of taking sides, with the “good guys” all handsome and heroic, the enemy a largely anonymous mass, good only for killing.
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 Watch pretty much any war film again and it will soon become clear that any of the faceless, characterless enemy soldiers fighting against our heroes are just as inhuman as Verhoeven’s “bugs”. As such, it is telling that, in a film with more than its fair share of bloody deaths and injuries, the only time sympathy is deliberately conjured is when one of the aliens lies wounded on the battlefield. In war films, as in war itself, we are encouraged to take sides. With Starship Troopers, as the nature of the “good guys” becomes clear, it becomes increasingly hard not to be on the side of the enemy. |
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