Unclear and Present Danger - Starship Troopers

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 science-fiction action thriller Starship Troopers, starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyers, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown. An adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same title, Verhoeven’s film takes a satirical pass on the material, turning a fascistic coming-of-age tale into an unusual piece of meta-propaganda.Starship Troopers takes place in a future, fascist society, where democracy and universal suffrage have been overthrown, and a military government leads humanity, with full citizenship reserved for those who serve in the armed services. Casper Van Dien plays Johnny Rico, an eager young recruit in the Mobile Infantry, who is sent to the frontlines of a war against the Arachnids, a supposedly hostile race of alien insectoids. The film tells the story of Rico’s training, his experience in battle, and his eventual rise to command. It is the kind of triumphant narrative that the fascist government of the story would want to broadcast to a skeptical citizenry, which gets to what this movie is trying to do as a film. We talk about this and more, so tune in!You can find a video version of this episode at Jamelle’s YouTube page.Episodes come out roughly every two weeks, so join us then with an episode on The Jackal, a basically forgotten thriller starring Richard Gere and Bruce Willis.Over at the Patreon, we discussed The Baader-Meinhof Complex. We’re also debuting a new weekly politics discussion show, only available for subscribers! Join at patreon.com/unclearpod.Our producer is Connor Lynch and our artwork is by Rachel Eck.

In every age, there is a cause worth fighting for. But in the future, the greatest threat to our survival will not be man at all. Hey, Kittin, what's going on? It's war! We're going to war! Now the youth of tomorrow must travel across the start. to defend our world. We are a generation commanded by faith to defend humankind. Everyone fights, no one quits.

We are going in with first wave. You smash the entire area. You kill anything that has more than two legs. You get me? We get you, sir! But they will face an enemy more devastating than any ever imagined. Here they come!

Come! It's coming! Mayday, may be there. We're under attack, so we need retrieval now. Someone made a damn mistake. No! The bugs lay a trap for us, didn't that? Ah!

takes you to the front lines of the next frontier. Kill them all! Starship Troopers. Hello and welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military thrillers in 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist with the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I'm I write a column for the nation. I write the political substack on popular front. And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. And as of September 9th, you are known for spreading the hoax that the president was dead.

I am the person who convinced the world for about 24 hours, really, that Trump was dead. And I don't know why people decide to believe that. I guess they wanted it to be true. And some people got very mad at me. And some people were, but I just, I just tweeted. You know, sometimes you just tweet. The weird thing about Twitter or X or Blue Sky or sometimes like you literally, you had literally. literally have barely a thought in your head.

Right, right, right. And you write something, you're just like, ah, that's kind of funny. And then people project all of this meaning onto it. Like they had all of these like complicated psychological explanations for why I would have done it. And I was like, I literally thought it was, I was doing a bit. And some people thought it was really funny. The problem was is that like the bit was a hit with my friends. And then they all started to like it.

And then it started to snowball. Right. So like I was like, I was like, it was a victim of its own success really. Because I was like, oh yeah, my friends think it's funny.

I went to bed and then I woke up and like the world was like screaming about Trump being dead. And I was like, it was kind of funny. I mean, I never, I wasn't worried or anything because, you know,

whatever. But, but, but, uh, yeah, weird, weird things can happen on Twitter.

And I made them have to deny it, which is pretty funny. He had to go on TV and say he wasn't dead. This is sort of the great thing about the administration being so online. I mean, it's generally quite bad the administration so online. But you can't kind of make them respond to things if they become sufficiently popular online. You forcing to confirm the president wasn't dead. I wrote that piece about J.D. Vand sucking and not doing anything.

And like over the weekend in Politico Playbook, that weekend, J.D. Vance's spokesperson was like, the president has the vice president has a very busy schedule he's always doing stuff yeah i remember that yeah they were like okay we need we need to place this story immediately that that that that vance is actually doing something i'm sure he read your column and got furious oh i hope so i hope he was spitting mad good i guess sucks i hope he knows it like there's like a viral song about him being a pigman that i inspired he probably knows all at all because they all the all these You know what I heard, and I don't have, don't quote me on this because it's completely thirdhand knowledge, but I believe it.

It's that I, that young staffers in the in the Trump administration regularly watch Nick Fuentes, not because they necessarily like him, but I'm sure they do, but because like they need to watch him because they think it's important to get a sense of where their constituents are at. That's, I mean, that sounds 100% fully. That's a hundred percent true. That's absolutely true. Yeah.

That's, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the equivalent of Clinton staffers reading the New Republic, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, maybe we should do the political stuff up front and then cut the rest of the show because it sounds we're kind of getting on a role here. No. So I want, so I want Connor to keep all this in because this is going to be enticing. This can be enticing to viewers or listeners.

Yes. So listeners, if you enjoy this. kind of political banter, then on the Patreon, we'll be putting out a weekly sort of little show where we basically do straightforward political commentary. So there'll be an episode of that this week, whenever this comes out. When you're listening to this podcast on this movie, you'll also be able to go to the Patreon and subscribe and listen to the political podcast. But this is your enticement to sign up for the podcast.

to sign up for the Patreon to hear us do political banter and the great thing about the Patreon is that some people have to pay for it we're a little less you know a little less filtered

a little more inclined to say things that might be a little crazy yeah you get the raw uncut John and Jamel not that were that filtered to begin with yeah even more so raw will give it to you with no I don't have a job Jamel has a real job

I don't have a job, so I can say whatever. I don't have to worry about anything. Yeah. So we're going to get on to the main event for this podcast. But I'll say that last night or yesterday evening, the video team at the Times got like reached out. They sent me a text. Like, hey, do you want to do a TikTok about the Epstein stuff? And I was like, listen, guys, I can't say what I want to say on the New York Times official.

Yeah. Take talk. Yeah. I understand why you reached out to me, but I really, you know, you don't want, you don't want me, you don't want me doing this one, guys. No. You'll get your thoughts on that on our Patreon. On our Patreon. Okay.

In this week's episode of Main Feed, standard episode of unclear and present danger, we watched the 1997 Paul Verhoeven film, start. Starship Troopers, based off of the novel, I'd say loosely based off the novel of the same title by the storied sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, who isn't really all that read that much, but for a time was kind of, you know, orthodox, you know, must read science fiction. If you were, when I was a teenager, when I was 15 or whatever, and it's like, I want to read sort of serious science fiction. It's like, yeah, you read Stranger in a Strange Land, you read Starship Troopers. And Stars of Troopers, the novel ends up inspiring basically an entire genre of military science fiction, including direct responses to Heinlein, of which I would say this movie is one of.

I'd say this movie should be considered a direct response to Heinlein. Anyway, Stars of Troopers stars Kasper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. And I'm about to go through a bunch of actors, only like maybe a handful you will recognize. and I think we'll talk about this later. I think you should understand the kind of anonymity of some of the actors in this film as being an intentional choice. But in any case, Starship Troopers stars

Kasper Van Deen, Deena Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon, Michael Ironside, and Clancy Brown. It was cinematography by Jost Vacano, who has worked together with Paul Verhoeven on a number of films, including 1987's RoboCop and 1990s

Total Recall as well as 1985's showgirls and then the follow-up, Verhoven's follow-up to Shracher Trooper's Hollow Man. The screenplay is by Edward Newmire, another Heingland, sorry, another Verhoven collaborator

who also worked on Robocop. We should probably do Robocop on this podcast, which feels less like science fiction and more just like, yeah, this is what America is. Yeah. But good movie.

So the plots of Star Troopers, the film, and Church Troopers, the book are actually quite similar. The film and book take place in a far future where Earth is governed by the United Citizen Federation, a regime, it's said not necessarily democratic, founded some years after founded some years by military veterans after democracy and science brought human civilization

to the brink citizenship and the right to vote are only granted those who complete military service. The story follows Johnny Rico, Caspar Van Dian, a young man from Buenos Aires who enlists in a high school

star of whatever sport they're playing, who enlist in the Mobile Infantry to follow his girlfriend, Carbon Ibanez, played by Denise Richards, into service in order to become a citizen. His best friend, Carl Jenkins, played by Neil Patrick Harris, enters military intelligence. They go through basic training and eventually grow into capable soldiers. We see here during basic training as well, the brutality of the mobile infantry and of the world in which they live. After they finish basic training, they learn that the peace that existed between humanity and an insectoid race called the arachnids, or the bugs, collapses after the arachnids launch a devastating meteor attack that obliterates Buenos Aires, killing millions of people, including Rico's family. Rico, fueled by revenge, becomes a dedicated soldier, and the mobile infantry is deployed in a series of battles against the arachnizabeth.

RICO rises to the ranks. He reunites this classmate, Carmen and Carl. Carmen is a pilot in sort of the Starfleet of this Earth Federation. The movie concludes with a dangerous assault on the Aachnid, on a Ragnet homeworld, where the Federation captures a brain bug, a bug capable of intelligence and strategy. We're reunited with Neil Patrick Harris' character. about that a bit later. Throughout this journey, various characters are killed. We see the, we see the classmates of RICO and teachers of RICO suffer in war. But the film is presented to you as kind of a, but the film was presented to you as an almost triumphant look. the Earth Federation's military campaign against the bugs and a heroic story for Johnny Rico who concludes the film, the leader of his own platoon of soldiers or battalion of soldiers

or what have you, leading the charge against the bugs. Carmen, an accomplice pilot, and Carl, an accomplished intelligence agent. The film leaves you confident that humanity will prevail against the arachnids. The tagline for Starship Troopers was a new kind of enemy, a new kind of war, totally generic and reflective of the fact that Hollywood had no idea what to do with this movie. They were completely baffled by this movie. The film didn't actually do that great box office, basically made back what it cost. And along with Hollow Man, another expensive, unsuccessful film, kind of marked the end of Paul Verhoeven's jaunt out to Hollywood.

He returns to Europe. He is, where is he from? He's Dutch, right? He's Dutch, right. Returns back to the Netherlands in France to make more films, of which there is one pretty recently, actually. It was the recent one. Benedetta in 2021. About some nuns.

People like that one quite a bit. It is about some nuns. That's all I'm going to say about it. Starship troopers can be found to rent or buy on Amazon and iTunes. There's also a perfectly serviceable 4K disc with some special features on it. I did not watch the special features. time. Maybe next time, I've seen this movie a ton. Maybe next time I'll do it with the director's commentary.

Starzor Troopers was released in the United States on November 7th, 1997. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Okay. Let's see what's going on here. This is interesting. President issues last minute plea on trade measure. Fast track voters today. Conger excuse me, Congress waivers as pressure mounts against expanding White House authority. President Clinton, fearing defeat and his quest for expanded trade negotiation negotiating authority, made unusual public appear for support tonight, accusing interest groups of intimidating members of the House who might otherwise vote for the bill. Opponents of the so-called fast-track legislation gained new ground today, prompting Mr. Clinton

to cut short a trip to Texas for the dedication of the George Bush Presidential Library and return to Washington to lobby publicly and privately for votes. This is interesting because now the president of the United States doesn't really feel like he needs Congress to do anything and feels like he has carte blanche based on a very dubious reading of the laws in order to in order to, you know, do trade negotiations, they basically think they can just impose sanctions as well, at will. This shows basically, I mean, maybe, I mean, Gingrich did a lot of things to screw things up, but roughly the U.S. system kind of functioning as it should, right?

I mean, you know, you have the House of Representatives kind of trying to, trying to grab powers away from the president, vice versa. Right, yeah. So there's checks and balances. The president is trying to get political support through a speech. Normal American democracy happening here. Kind of miss it. But I think that goes to show how different things used to be.

I mean, I don't want to idealize the past too much, but this was the way we were accustomed to politics working. I don't think it really works that way. There was just a big piece in the Times about Congress, basically being a rubber stamp. Yeah, no, I mean, I'd say the big distinction between now and then is just that like Congress then behaved as if it had an independent identity from the president these days, Congress, and really the Republican majority in Congress,

acts as a little more. I mean, it's actually a lot to say that it's acts. It basically doesn't exist except for confirmations and like budget bills. Otherwise, it ceded pretty much every single bit of its authority to the president. Yeah, yeah. Not good. This is interesting, if you're like me, Isaiah Berlin. Oh, it's Isaiah.

I'm sorry, that's how the British say it. Isaiah Berlin, philosopher and pluralist, is dead at 88. Sir Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher and historian of ideas revered for his intellect and cherished for his wit and his gift for friendship died of a heart attack Wednesday evening in Oxford, following a long illness. He was 88. A staunch advocate of pluralism in a century in which totalitarians and utopians claim the title to the one single truth. Sir Isaiah considered the very notion that there could be one final answer to organizing human society, a dangerous illusion that would lead to nothing but bloodshed, coercion, the deprivation of liberty. I've always been a fan of Isaiah Berlin's writing. I like his intellectual

history, things writing about the counter-enlightment and romanticism was some of the earliest stuff that got me into European thought and European intellectual history, history of ideas. So I really always liked him very much. And some of the political theory is interesting. I think I am somewhat to the left of him now. I think his book on Marx is not very good. But I would, if you're interested in, he's also a very, good writer. So, I mean, he makes things that would otherwise be kind of intimidating, easy to

understand. So if you're interested, check them out. Yeah, I mean, I read Berlin in college. I think for any college student who is sort of doing the liberal political tradition kind of thing, you know, history of political theory, you encounter Berlin at some point. And I would second John's recommendation. If those were things that you were interested in, Berlin is 100% worth reading. And he is indeed a great writer. Yeah, very, very readable. Well, this one also is interesting to read in light of present circumstances. A lament by the Hudson as Trump eclipses the moon.

One of the secret pleasures of Shirley Lieman took from her Lincoln Tower's apartment was wearing her torn gold slippers and nothing else. She sang Gerswin or listened to opera and never bothered with the blinds. Outside her 11th door window lay only the Hudson and be on New Jersey. and on clear evening she would watch the sun fall like a red stone um you know basically this is who trump was in my childhood was basically an obnoxious figure in a new york uh local issues who would be in the paper because he was being an asshole again or doing something annoying to people um never did we believe he would be president so it's strange that you know

know this is the way he used to be covered as being like oh yeah he's building some kind of monstrosity that's ruining people's views um i think that this particular development uh no longer is called trump is no longer bears trump's name because the residents removed it but yeah this used to be what we thought of trump um what else do we got here i think you know we have something about diplomatic approach to iraq as big risk for u.s leader less than a year i after taking office as Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan might have put his reputation in his first major crisis by choosing diplomacy over confrontation to deal with Saddam Hussein.

Kofi feels this is a situation of war in peace, a diplomat who has known the Secretary for General for years has said this week, suggesting why Mr. Arnon had not left the matter in the hands of security counsel. He feels a moral obligation to get involved. In this case, Mr. Arnaan is gambling against historical odds that diplomacy might persuade the Iraqi president to end his ban on American arms inspectors rather than provoke an attack by the United States.

Well, we all know how this turned out. Well, I mean, basically, the U.S. didn't seem like it was going. I mean, neocons had their own plans, but the United States was sort of not making any real gestures. I mean, we would bomb them sometimes and there were stuff in the no-fly zone and stuff like that. But I don't think full, a military invasion of Iraq was on the table until 9-11.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there was no, as far as I remember and as far as I can recall what I've read about, there was no real energy if we're trying to take out Saddam, in part because there is a recognition among more sober-minded people that he's kind of a minor figure in the Middle East at the time, right? like he wasn't iraq was no longer some regional hegemon um he was contained uh and it's noteworthy that to justify the war the bush administration basically had to have to portray uh hussein as like hitler two yeah yeah um put hitler two plus you know what if hitler had nukes was it was basically

how they sold the war going to get nukes and he didn't have them it was just a big don't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud yeah that i remember that oh god it was so annoying it was so stupid and annoying it was it this the only thing that's come close in the stupidity is the stuff that they're doing now but i just remember being pissed off every day by just how stupid their rhetoric was yeah we're supposed to fucking believe that shit it was an insulting it was it was a base propaganda and yet lots of lots of people bought it and i think A note about base propaganda is a nice way to segue into talking about this movie. John, what's your experience with Star Shooters, either in the movie or the book?

So I've never read the book. I'm not a huge sci-fi guy. I watched this movie. I went to the theater to watch this movie with my dad when I was 12, I guess. And it was a little uncomfortable because the kind of full frontal scene in the shower. my dad hated the movie and I don't think just because of that I think he thought I don't he just I don't think he liked the satire or appreciated that the satire just thought it's kind of tasteless and stupid and I remember being like fine with it but not super enthused at it as a kid it was kind of cool like the action sequences but I also found it to be I guess I got the satire Me and my friends kind of got the satire. I had friends who thought it was cool.

But it was not a movie like, I don't know, that I really got into at that age. But, yeah, and then since then, I think I might have seen it once since and other than this time. Obviously, I don't understand. I was looking at reviews from the era, and I don't understand how anybody didn't get it. like some people some people got like it was so exaggerated and verhoven's history and his you know growing up under german occupation like you know i think they should have been able to get it but a lot of people claim that it was a fascist movie a complaint that it was a fascist movie and not a send up of fascism now i think heinland's book heineland's book was not a satire

Heinlein believed in the militaristic society that he was presenting. Now, important details changed from the book to the movie. In the society that Heinlein presents, the main character, RICO, is a Filipino descent because this fascist or this kind of multinational fascist, multiracial fascist regime has solved racial problems with its militarism. and it's no longer, that's no longer an issue. The movie makes real pains to replicate the aesthetics. There are people of color in the movie,

but the movie takes real pains to present an aesthetics that's very not just fascist but Nazi because the characters by intent are supposed to look like people, Lenny Riefenstahl might cast. And the uniforms, if you know anything about Nazi Germany, Vensignia and the uniforms look like Waffen-S-S-S-N-S-uniforms. So Verhoeven very clearly indicated what he was trying to say with the movie.

This is a post-apocalyptic movie where there's a world fascist government that's highly militaristic. Obviously, some veterans have taken over and gotten rid of democracy. So, yeah, it's clear what the political message of the movie is, and I'm very surprised that people didn't get it. Now, some people watch this movie, got it, but didn't think it was a effective satire because it didn't point to anything else, and it kind of was just pleased with how good of a job it was doing. And I got to tell you, Jamel, I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this movie because I did not find it. particularly interesting on a second watch. I did think sometimes watching it today when, you know, we're obviously have somewhat of a fashion government. There were things

that resonated with me today, but I found myself, my patience being a little tested by this movie. Neither the action nor the satirical elements exactly did it for me. Although I have to say it's representation of like the dream of fascism being eternal high school. eternal movie high school like 80s and 90s movie high school that's what they actually are doing now they're constantly trying to like play on people's

stupid nostalgia not of anything that happened but of that kind of movie so and the love triangles and so on and so forth I'm interested in your defense I know that you have a defense of this movie that you've discussed you've brought up before so I want to hear it yeah I got to tell you I'm not entirely sold

so I also saw this movie when I was when it was in theaters when I was 10 at the time and my dad took me to see it. I wonder how many dads took their sons to see this movie. I think assuming that probably it was going to be a just straightforward film at 10 I certainly

I do not think the whatever intent there was came across but I've seen this movie a bunch it's something I rewatch you know not every year but like every watch it semi regularly I do like the film I read the

I read Highland's book when I was in high school, as I mentioned previously. That book, as you said, John, is very, it's very clearly not satirical. It is Highland criticizing what he saw as sort of the decadence of the 1950s of youth culture at the time. And his notion of, you know, military service ensuring citizenship is put forth as something that is maybe worth. or at least that kind of forced service being a necessary part of political representation. I'll say also that the film, or the rather the book, as I said, inspired responses. And one of the most famous responses is by Joe Alderman. Now, Heinlein writing in the 1950s in the wake of the World Wars,

He served in the U.S. Navy. I do not believe he actually served in the Second World War, but he served. He was in the Navy in 1920s and 1930s. Yeah, I'm looking at a biography right now. He was too old to serve in the war, yeah. But he was in the military. Joe Holdeman, who's booked The Forever War,

is a response in a lot of ways to start. Starship Troopers is writing in 1974, 1974 in the wake of Vietnam. And that really, I think, captures so much the difference is Haldon actually served in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat, which he's a Purple Heart. And his combat experiences very much reflected in that novel. And the Forever War, far from presenting service as ennobling, is all about the sense of alienation. that soldiers feel or can feel in the wake of their service.

I think it's one of my favorite books, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction. It's interesting, but it is sort of trying to, again, respond to Heidland. And then there was a bunch of other search of receivers media after this film. There was a animated television show for kids,

which I actually watched a lot of and thought was pretty good. There were sequels, which are bad. But if you are like me and like to just watch trash sometimes or perfectly serviceable for that purpose. And I feel like there's always been talk of maybe doing a more straightforward adaptation of the book. There are video games. Obviously, it's very well suited to video games.

so lots of stretch of trooper stuff I've consumed much of it now my view of this film is not that it's so it is satire but I think I think that the term satire which suggests sort of like a knowingness a winkingness which there's actually very little of that in this movie doesn't quite work I've always thought of stretch of troopers as basically being an in-universe propaganda film for the fascist government in the movie, right? It's, this is the movie that that government produced to sell the war to the people under that government. And so the matinee idol looks of the characters, the interstitials throughout the film

where you're being shown basically at the recruitment ads or, you know, how the federation's fighting the war, for one view that can be, you can treat, you can treat those as sort of like not really part of the movie, just like transitional things. But I think you should understand them as part of the narrative of the film. And that is because you, the viewer, are watching the movie that that government has produced to get you, the viewer, to sign up for the war against the bugs, against the arachnate. And I think, I think basically the entire film works on that level. And to the extent that it's trying to do anything, I would agree with you, John. I'm not sure it has like a sophisticated message.

I think it's more or less trying to basically be like, huh, I got you. Like trying to see if a viewer begins to buy into the perspective of the film, which is, right, that like this is a recognizable society, now unlike your own, fighting a monstrous enemy. and that you want them to prevail against the monstrous enemy. If you watch it from the perspective of this is a propaganda film. So, like, I would describe it with me like a piece of meta satire, right? Like, if this is a propaganda film produced by the government of the, in the universe, to sell the war, then there are a bunch of other questions to ask. Do the bugs actually look like this?

like is this at all a real a realistic portrayal of who the enemy is did did the bugs destroy um when it's i think the film suggests very subtly that no this was a miss this was an accident you'll see uh in carman's training mission she bumps into an asteroid and it's after this trading mission sometime later that a an asteroid destroys Buenos Aires was that the arachnance or was that the arachnance or was a training into them that created a catastrophe. I think the movie drops these hints here and there that, you know, nothing is what you see. Obviously, as you point out, the designs of the uniforms, especially Dugie Hauser, Neil Patrick Harris's uniform at the end of the film where he's just straight up in an SS uniform along, you know, leather flowing cape hat the whole nine yards that is just putting like a like dotting dotting the

eye crossing the tea like really trying to hammer home to the viewers these are the bad guys right like this this fascist government is um is actually probably the antagonist of this film because you don't know anything about the arachnans you only know what they're telling you about them um And there's, and from that view, there's no evidence whatsoever that the Arachnans are some kind of aggressive threat. If anything, it might be the humans who are the aggressors in this war and looking for a way to manufacture for the conflict. So that's, that's like my take on the film that like you should, you should, it's, it's satire, but it's not like, it's not like, it's not satire like, um, like the death of Stalin, right? It's a better movie. It's more or less trying to do like a sci-fi trium.

It's like a sci-fi triumph of the will. It just is. I get what you're saying. Yeah. I do think that it is, it has a little, well, yeah, I mean, and, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a comment on contemporary culture because he pulled from a lot of, you know, TV idols at the time. it and the fact that they could just fit right into this fashion society might tell you something about the aesthetics of television but i think there are moments that are directly commentating um like when they show the tv cable news and how result idiotic and they show how it it continually

shows how idiotic and anti-intellectual and mistake prone this society this military artistic society is, right? So it shows, as you say, it kind of shows that maybe a training mistake caused this. It shows that there's absolutely no interest in trying to, um, trying to understand the bugs. And in fact, they're extremely hostile to it. Now, okay, that's where some of the satirical elements in the book kind of I'm sorry, the movie kind of worked for me because I felt it was sadly recognizable today

with the extreme stupidity and anti-intellectualism of maga. It was a little bit well Fox News hadn't really gotten going at this point. This was, this is okay, now I'm coming around to the movie. This is, this movie yeah, it's like an all-American

North Korea at the Picks. and that's basically the aesthetic of maga and now fox so this movie is so like is basically the world they want to create um obviously not it's not going to be as slick and people are not going to be as good looking or skinny but like the um you know i don't think a maga person or the idiots that they have like as ideologues i don't know would look look at this movie and see anything particularly objectionable about it. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I think a MAGA person, this is how they imagine American

society was, right? Like this is where there is kind of like unquestioning obedience to like your social betters and everything's all wholesome. You mentioned it being kind of like trying to make the movie reality, actual reality. Like this is what I think, maybe not, maybe not, you know, my MAGA neighbor or my MAGA neighbor across the way. But certainly, certainly the kind of young chuds that make up the online right and, you know, are in the Trump administration. I think this is how they imagine the past was or so that America was something like this and that this is, that's what has been lost and now needs. to be restored through, you know, the brutal suppressing of their political enemies.

There's something, I mean, there's, I would draw not just a connection between the, you know, Fox and OAN and sort of like modern right wing propaganda, but also between sort of the whole trad wife and and trad aesthetic. Yeah. And in what's portrayed in this film. It's interesting to think about this in the context of the 90s because, I mean, I mentioned that, you know, audiences and critics were somewhat baffled by this film. I weren't really sure where it was coming from. And the kind of, so you have, right in this period the late 90s, you have this sort of mini boomlet of films about kind of how suffocating. kind of corporate modernity is right so you have office space and you have the matrix um and dark city and there's a couple others the truman show all of them are kind of circling around the same

thing that like there's something about our corporate and commercial and like highly managed social lives that is not just suffocating but um but sinister And the Truman show, Truman is controlled by television producers. His life is a television show. Something sinister was going on. In Dark City, the titular Dark City is a creation of, you know, sinister outside. Like everything's kind of weird. And of course, in the Matrix, what you think is real life is actually just a computer simulation put together by sinister artificial intelligence.

So there's, that's kind of floating around in the culture and in the broader pop culture. And Starship Troopers doesn't really fit into that, right? Like, it's not, it's not a critique of corporate life, of commercial life. It is perhaps a critique of militarism and jingoism and these things. But it doesn't late 90s, I mean, kind of the thing about late 90s America, although we are engaged in interventions abroad, it's not, this isn't like the 2000s America, right? Like this isn't the criticism of Clinton was that he was what he was, I guess, to use the term from a couple decades later, like leading from behind in terms of his use of American military force. It was multinational partnerships. It was working through the UN and NATO.

It wasn't sort of unilateral American force. Go ahead. If this movie came out during the War on Terror, I think it would be a pretty sharp movie. Yeah, no, it would be immediately recognized. Right. Yeah. And some of the aesthetics of the movie reminded me a little bit of, I mean, it's not that many years off, of the awfulness and shallowness of early 2000s period

where it was a combination of kind of Bush-era materialism and the idiocy of the War on Terror in Iraq. Now it looks quaint. But I think that, yeah, this movie was maybe timed, unfortunately, a little bit badly. And maybe that's not why it did. It didn't do super well. But if this movie was made in the midst of the war on terror,

I think it would have been, you know, a really, it would have been really something. That being said, obviously Verhoven kind of saw these potentials and was sensitive to them and they were there. So that's what's interesting about it, right? I mean, that's sort of what's interesting about Verhoven's career in Hollywood. So Verhoven, who is, I believe in his 80s now, has been working in film since the 1960s. He's working in Dutch television in the 1960s. He's working, does his first feature film in 71.

He's working throughout the 80s in, well, about the 70s and the early 80s in Netherlands. He's a collaborator with Rucker Hauer. Rucker Hauer is a Verhoeven guy, the late Rooker Hauer. And all of his films, He, you know, he's a, um, his family escaped German occupation, um, um, or survived into German occupation, rather. He has this experience with the war as a child and his films are highly political in the Netherlands films are highly political. So he's a popular Dutch filmmaker and then makes his way into American filmmaking. And his first American film is Flesh and Blood, starring Ruger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Lee.

It's a historical adventure film, but a horny one, which is kind of... Of course. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, part for the course. And that kind of begins his Hollywood career is, I think, basically, well received. His super hit, though, the thing that kind of like takes him from being, oh, interesting Dutch guy, sort of like big American filmmaker is 1927's Robocop, which is a huge hit, makes $53 million off of a $13 million budget is, you know, not, it's, it's, it's reception is critically positive. and it quickly became like a cult classic. It is widely sort of, it's very influential in science fiction filmmaking.

It's a whole thing. And Robocop, I think also is, you know, it's where his political eye for the United States gets even sharper. It's basically, you know, using maybe more contemporary language, it's basically a movie about neoliberalism. It's like this is the end point of, you know, market commercial society and the privatization of everything and the elevation of corporate interest over civic ones. The end point is just rampant criminality, both official and unofficial, licit and illicit worlds, and the destruction of the person themselves. And the person, and this is the Peter Weller, Alex Murphy, his character, is literally killed by these criminals and rebuilt as this machine man and has to that the story of the film is a story of Robocop rediscovering himself as Alex Murphy of reclaiming his personhood. But the movie, the movie, you watch it today, and it feels like it was written last year. Like, it feels like a film that is attuned very specifically to 2024 and 2025.

But it's Verhoeven kind of just projecting forward the trends he sensed in the United States in 1980s. And this ends up, you know, his film after this total recall, a movie I like a lot. It would not as good, but I enjoy quite a bit. is not as politically sharp, but again, it's dealing with these same issues of consumerism and corporate culture and neoliberalism and all these things. So that's all to say that I do think Verhoeven has a bit of the curse of Apollo, right? Like he has a good sense of the most dysfunctional things in American culture and is able to translate those to cinema.

So Starship Troopers, I think, I think you're right to say it's picking up on American jingoism and American militarism. And it comes out at a moment when those things weren't especially salient, but four years later, literally four years later from when the film comes out, it's basically perfectly suited for the world of post-9-11 America. Yeah. I mean, he does a kind of thing in his movies where he plays with the audience because Robocop, obviously, you can tell where the political consciousness is there.

But, you know, he's made some very pulpy and on the surface exploitive movies. And you're kind of wondering all the time with his films, like how much of this guy is in on the jokers how much is he just like kind of dealing schlock and i think that the answer is pretty obviously he has a sense of humor and he's interested in kind of like um playing with these conventions in order to make them you know to make a meta commentary on them not exactly the same way i'm not comparing him to david lynch but but david lynch also plays with cliches and um hackney themes kind of pulpy or cheesy things and kind of makes art out of them and you can maybe say that sometimes uh verhoven is doing something similar i don't think

he's quite an artist on the same level but like show what is going on with showgirls like that movie is so is terrible on one hand but you was he kind of aware that it was like you know was that tongue in cheek was it not you know i think that he's movies get a lot of mileage out of that yeah yeah um and i tried to watch one of his dutch films because it looked cool black book which was about the war uh about the resistance and it was just too verhoveny and it's luridness uh that i just didn't like it as a presentation of the world war two because i just felt like his aesthetic was inappropriate for it like i was like dude you're you're making a movie about the war like can you drop your bullshit you know what i mean

yeah like it's too serious as a subject matter for you to do this really cheesy cheesy verhoven stuff um but you know i i can appreciate him as an artist and appreciate that he has like a real sensitivity to this level of of of bad taste um and kind of revels and comments on at the same time but you know well he made basic instinct it's not such a great movie but it's kind of fun I guess but yeah I mean

I guess that's maybe why people struggle to understand that this was a satire because they were used to Verhoeven being a little bit inscrutable about what he was trying to say with his movies but I think this would make Robocop you kind of know where he's at no I mean yeah that's that's the thing right

like Robocop to me seem for his American output Robocop really does seem like to be the skeleton key, right? Like you watch Robocop and kind of you, you get this guy's point of view. And he has like, you know, he has a take. I, I, in the same way that I am a big Brian DePaulma fan, I feel like the Palma is divisive. But DePaulma has, he has a take, right? Say what you will look at the guy, he has an angle.

And it's schlocky and exploitative very often, but he's trying to do something. And I am attracted to that in filmmakers. Like, are you trying to do something? Are you trying to say something? Are you trying to get a rise of the audience an interesting way? If so, then I'm, you know, I can, I think I can vibe with that. Yeah. I'll say real quick, basic instinct.

I mean, I sort of take that movie to be kind of like Verhoeven comment on like American sexual dysfunction. um but i haven't seen it in a while yeah but it's been a while for me too i don't know if i don't it's one of those movies that i'm going to watch in my living room and my wife will be like what's going on jemal what are you watching yeah um it's been it's been a minute since i've seen basic basic instinct and i think i've seen it's been a minute since i've seen showgirls like i kind of i should i should i should watch it again it's completely absurd uh uh yeah maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe

I'll do a whole Verhoeven, you know, just like make more way through all, all the American stuff. All right. Starship Troopers. Any other thoughts I have on that movie specifically? I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, it does. I think it does what it sets out to do as far as it's sort of like, as far as Verhoven's aesthetic choices. I think, I think it actually holds up quite well.

in 2025, if nothing else, it looks good. Actually, I think the action parts of it are pretty decent as far as these things go. I think it's a well-constructed film that, you know, it's trying to comment on the aspects of Heinlein's story that Rehoven viewed as being fascist, which, I mean, they straightforwardly were. Which is what's interesting to me that there has been this desire, this talk about doing a more faithful adaptation of the book. It's like a more faithful, what is a more faithful adaptation of Star Trek troopers? Is it just sort of like, you know, Verhoven's movie at the very least, in its style, it's clear.

Again, his point of view, I think is quite clear. But if you're going to do like a more sedate, straightforward adaptation of Sturter Troopers, wouldn't you just be making? like literal fascist art that's all that would be yeah because he believed it he wasn't joking you know so yeah I don't

I mean not to I don't want to upset science fiction fans but no I mean you you should you should not feel like is it that important of a piece of artwork that it needs to be adapted again I mean come on like what we're not talking about the lord of the rich well even that

But, like, you know, this is not fucking Charles Dickens over here. This is not Jane Austen. It's a science fiction novel that was made in the 1950s because the guy was afraid of communism and thought it was okay, like, it was okay that the United States used the bomb on and was, like, didn't want people to cry over that. It's just like, you know, a guy who was, you know, went to the military and thought that that was the way to write a society and thought, you know, everything should be like that. I just don't see the this is this is what annoys me sometimes about these science fiction novels like that it's like you know it's the text is there's not that much subtext you know like that's what he was trying to communicate he was using it as a way to communicate a very simple idea and verhoeven was able to be like well I disagree and I'm going to make fun of this a little bit but if you just like this movie was just adapted then it's just like oh the military I don't know it's like what's the what's the message exactly what's the message doesn't seem to me me interesting. Even if I shared those politics, it doesn't seem that interesting to me. You know, and I don't, there are things with dubious politics, but I think that they're ambiguous enough or contain other tensions that hold my interests, but it just wouldn't even hold my

interest. Like that conceit doesn't hold my interest. It barely holds my interest in the, in the satire. I mean, now that I thought about it a little bit in respect to the president, I'm a little more into it, but I just don't think it needs to know that it means a more faithful lab teaching. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean, in fact, if you're going to spend money on adapting, you know, 1950 science fiction, there's much better stuff to go for in terms of doing so.

But I don't think, I don't think Heinlein needs a new adaptation. And I would frankly just like question the intent of someone who was aiming to do a new adaptation of Heinlein in this moment. Yeah. I think that's good for last thoughts, so we can wrap up. Yeah, let's wrap up. Would you recommend? Would you recommend the movie?

I would recommend the movie, but I like it. But how about yourself? No, not really, but not, not, I'm not strongly against it, but I, I wouldn't, I'm never going to, I'm never, I don't think I'm going to watch it ever again. I don't know, unless a girlfriend, like, forces me to or something like, I just don't, right, right. I just don't see a situation in which I would watch this movie again, unlike many of the things you watch, which I watch over and over. But yeah, not, not thrilled by it, not, not a hater, but not into it. Yeah, yeah.

All right, that's our show. Thank you for listening as always. If you go to our Apple podcast page, I always say iTunes, but iTunes just really exists anymore. Our Apple podcast page, you can leave. a review of the podcast. And we do appreciate that it helps people find the show. In addition to Apple Podcasts, you can find us pretty much wherever podcasts are found, Spotify, Google Podcasts, wherever.

Wherever you sign up to list the podcast, ours is available. You can reach out to us over social media if you like to, but the best place to send this feedback is via the feedback email. Unclear Impressive Feedback at Fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from Rick, titled, You Couldn't Make the Lethal Weapon Films today. Hi, Jamel and John, big fan of the pod. I'm writing because I just rewatched the four lethal weapon films

and was fascinated by how they mapped onto our current politics. I really think you guys should consider doing an episode of Lethal Weapon 4 and maybe a Patreon episode on the other three. although I know from conspiracy theory how much John hates Mel Gibson. What's most interesting to me are the villains in the four films. In the first one, the bad guys were a gang of ex-special forces guys who have become heroin smugglers. This very scenario has turned out to be true, as documented by the recent book, The Fort Bragg Cartel by Seth, by Seth Harp.

In the second film, the antagonists are a white South African diplomat in his flunkies. This is perhaps the wokenest of the films, as it's about a black one. black cop and his white partner, fighting the agents of apartheid. Danny Glover's character, Roger Murtaugh, has even established as canonically anti-apartheid in the first film by a shot of the family fridge with a large bumper sticker on it that reads in apartheid-free South Africa. What's interesting to me about this film is how you could probably not make it today because, as we know, Donald Trump is very much a fan of white South Africans.

and the white in the South African trio of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, now will tremendous government, maybe not Musk so much anymore. The third film about a corrupt ex-cop who is in an arms dealer, is perhaps less salient to our current moment, though I do think that this kind of person in the current day is Trump's kind of person. The final movie in the series is the most relevant, as it's about the Chinese triad smuggling undocumented immigrants into the country. And the opening scene, after Mertan Rakes

is discovered a group of Chinese crammed into the hold of a ship, Murta confronts an INS agent, this is prior to the creation of ICE, who speaks disparagingly of them. He says, What happened to the sign that says, Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to be free? The INS agent replies, now it says no vacancies. Murtae secretly shelters one of the immigrant families in his house. In addition to the film's pro-immigrant views, the other reason it would be difficult to make today is that the movie studios won't make Chinese nationalists the villains in any

films because they want to be able to sell their pictures in the PRC. Although I think Lethal Up and Fork gets around this by having the bad guys be from Hong Kong rather than the mainland. Anyway, I thought it was interesting how in the first three films, the kind of guys who are the antagonist, along with law enforcement officers, are now sort of all in the vanguard of Trumpism, making the politics of these films sort of alien to our present moment. In any case, I highly recommend to give them a viewing it. as the first three are all absolute fucking bangers.

Lethal weapon four is by far the worst of the bunch, though the most relevant to the theme of your podcast. That's how we like it, the bad ones. Keep up the great work, yours truly. Thank you, Rick. Great email. I have not watched any lethal weapon films in some time. I should, I will rewatch these just to rewatch them,

but it might make for an interesting project. The first lethal weapon is good. I don't want to watch all this. the weapon. I mean, it's funny. It's interesting. I like the letter that lethal weapon is too woke now for today. That's interesting. But yeah, no, I don't think I've watched any lethal weapon movie. I probably should. But the first one's good. The first one's great. The first one is actually like a genuine classic of the buddy cop genre. You know, I like Eddie Glover a lot. Yeah. It has Gary Busey is the villain. He's great. If you've never seen a

weapon movie you should at least let the weapon the first lethal weapon legitimately a great film uh i like two quite a bit and then it's kind of diminishing return death for that but it's like lethal weapon along with beverly hills cop and 48 hours like these are kind of the canonical cop films of the 80s and i do recommend you check it out and die hard is a canonical cop film so those are your four right all right uh thank you for again for the feet And for the rest of you, if you want to reach us unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com episodes come out roughly over two weeks. And so we'll be back to you in two weeks or so from when you hear this episode, when this episode is released with a new episode on, I got to take a look at our list here. Starship Troopers

with a new episode on The Jackal Directed by Michael Caton Jones starring another Richard Gear Christ Starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gear And Sidney Poitier

That's good J.K. Simmons is in as well A lot of people How do you stop an assassin who has no identity Hired by a powerful member of the Russian mafia to avenge an FBI stigm that left his brother dead. A psychopathic hitman known only as The Jackal proves an elusive target for the people charged with the task of bringing him down. A deputy FBI director, a Russian mvk major, and a jailed IRA terrorist who can recognize him.

This feels like you chat GPTed a nighties thriller. The podcast. Using the podcast is a source material. You just plugged every episode of the podcast in the chat, GPT. It's like spit out a script. Yeah. And this is the movie that it made. So the Jackal, it seems perfectly mediocre.

And that's going to be your next film. Over on the Patreon, we have an episode on the Bader Meinhoff complex, kind of a two-parter with our previous episode on Carlos. and our next set of Patreon episodes or next Patreon episode will be on the three Mobile Suit Gundam compilation movies which I have been told are no longer available on Netflix and so the way to watch them, I'm checking this out right now,

the way to watch them without paying any money is going to be, I will continue looking this up and if they aren't available in any easy form then we're just going to switch gears for for the Patreon episode we'll decide on something else but I think you should be able

to find them this way but I'll look into that but that's the next Patreon episode Gundam being the Japanese Mecca anime indebted in some ways to Starship Troopers um uh

Heinlin kind of pioneers the idea of a mobile armor, armor. So kind of part of a theme, you might say, and a series that deals with the horrors of war in militarism. So I think on brand, or not on brand, on topic for this, with this Starship Troopers episode. And yes, the Gundam films are all on Archive.org. So I will just provide links to those.

to you, John, and if you search archive.org, you should be able to find this. I don't know how I can provide links to y'all who are not Patreon members. I'll put them up on the Patreon, so if you are subscribed to the Patreon, you can find them there. All right, that is it for this week's show for John Gantz. I'm Jamel Bowie, and we will see you next time. I'm going to be able to be.