Rico. Rico.
Rico.
Pay attention. Sorry,
Mr. Ratchak. Let's sum up. This year
we explored the failure of democracy. How the social scientists brought
our world. To the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans,
how they. Took control and impose the stability that has
lasted for generations since. You know these facts.
But have I taught you anything of value this year?
Hmm? You. Why are only citizens allowed to
vote? It's a reward. What the Federation gives you for doing Federal Service.
No, no. Something given
has no value. Look, when you vote, you are exercising
political authority. You're using force. And force,
my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all
other authority is derived. Uh, my mother always said, violence never
solves anything. It's two
Dads one Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged dads sit around
and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s. Here are your
hosts, Steve Paulo and Nick Briana. Hello everybody.
It's another episode of two Dads, one Movie. I'm Steve. And I'm Nick. And today
we're Talking about the 1997 sci fi extravaganza, Starship Troopers.
I'm super excited to talk about this movie, Nick.
This is one that I have loved since it came out. We will talk
a little bit about its reception at the time, in the late 90s when it
came out, and how confused perhaps its reception was. For the most part,
yes. But it is directed by Paul Verhoeven,
who's one of my favorite filmmakers. He had a run in the 80s and 90s
of doing, I think in order. He did RoboCop,
Basic Instinct, RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, in this.
That was like a run of five films for this guy, which they're all really
biting satire, you know, as Starship Troopers is and.
Yeah. So what, what's your sort of history with this one?
Oh, man. So this hit us, what? Junior year,
very beginning of, you look. At the release date was November of 97.
This was in the very beginning of our senior year. Okay.
This hit at the right time. Yeah. At least
as far as just loving and being entertained by a movie. Like a movie that
had everything a teenage kid was looking for. It definitely ought occupied space on
my. My favorite movie of all time list for a bit when I first saw
it the first couple times. Although, you know, we'll get into
more of like the. The satire element of it. I don't know if I was
enjoying it for the. The reasons intended by the director. I was just having
a really fun time watching the movie. I love the effects for the time,
the cheesiness, like the unintentional comedy of it. Yeah. I mean,
not like beating you over the head. That is supposed to be a joke,
but I think the director intended on certain things to be funny. Really hit
for me. And God, what fun this was. And it didn't hurt then.
There are some titties in it. I mean, for. For a 17 year old at
the time, those were hard to come by and were easy to
come by. So, yeah, this was such a fun one. And I saw
it in the theater. Probably like two. I think I saw it three times in
the theater, which was a lot for that era. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. How about
you? Yeah, this is definitely one I saw, you know, in the theater. Maybe not
opening weekend, but I think, you know, as word of mouth went around about it,
it's definitely one that was like a theater watch for me. Watched it several times
throughout college. You know, it was definitely the kind of movie that, yeah, if any,
you know, at the time, what I appreciated about it was the sort of like
schlocky, over the top, gruesome, you know, like, like violence of
it. You know, it was very much enjoyable in the way that like, bad B
movies of like the 60s can be super enjoyable. Yeah, I didn't, you know,
at the time really understand all of the, you know, implications of what was being
said and shown to us. Except I did. As I got through into college,
I ended up getting my degree in political science. I ended up taking classes in
terrorism and in civil liberties and like, all kinds of different things that did give
me another view of, of this picture and the militarization and things.
So I have really appreciated this movie as satire, you know, not literally since
its release, but like since the early 2000s. I feel like that's something that
has only become more of a mainstream accepted position in the last maybe 10 years,
give or take. Yeah. So, okay, let's jump into the facts on
Starship Troopers. It came out on November 7, 1997 with a well
earned R rating, a running time of 129 minutes.
Directed, as we said, by Paul Verhoeven, written by Edward Neumeyer,
from the novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It stars Caspar Van Dien, Denise Richards
and Dina Meyer, alongside a handful of other really great people, too. But on Rotten
Tomatoes received a 72%. It's actually higher than I expected, given everything.
But again, those are professional scores and reviews, not necessarily from
the time it was released. So, yeah, absolutely have had a revisiting
a critical revisiting of this film over the last decade. So I think that some
of that Rotten Tomato score is informed by more recent reviews really
digging into the satire of the film. Yeah, I would love a snapshot of what
the Rotten Tomato score was as of like 98 or 99, whatever the. Earliest Rotten
Tomatoes existed. Yeah, it would have been a very different thing. I think on IMDb
a 7.3 is a very respectable score. It did win three
awards, including Best Makeup and Creature Effects at the 1998 Fangoria
Chainsaw Awards. The other one was the other award show that it won that was
a very specific like sci fi and horror award show as well.
Here's where it fell a little flat on a $105 million budget,
which big bud, big budgets, about the same budget as Terminator 2.
That's six years prior it earned just 121 million at the
box office. So it did break even. But at 1.15 times
its budget, that is a disappointment, if not an out now flop. So it was
not particularly well critically received at the time. It was not a box office
success. It garnered huge numbers on home video.
Not to the extent that Verhoeven's Showgirls did. It ended up making so much money
on home video that it more than made up for the fact that it was
a huge flop as a. As like one of the first NC17 films to be
watched released in the 90s. But yeah, is it so, and I love Verhoeven
as well. Is it surprising to you that he was given the
helm of another like hundred million dollar budget film right after Showgirls,
which didn't do as. I mean his other ones like Basic Instinct, Total Recall,
those were huge successes. But I mean Showgirls
was kind of a notorious flop at the time or critical disappointment even though
despite being misunderstood, whatever. But money wise, I think it's crazy
that he was given this much to work with. I'm glad he was. Yeah.
Yeah. I think it was probably a thing of timing where the green light for
this film potentially even came before the kind of result of
Showgirls. I think there was only 18 months or so between the release of these
two movies. Maybe two years. But you know, it was kind of in that ballpark.
So it's possible that this ball was already rolling. Second is an adaptation of Heinlein.
And getting the rights to adapt Heinlein's novel was probably more important
to the studio than necessarily who was doing it. But Verhoeven had a very important
Sort of thing, you know, that he wanted to say about Heinlein's
novel and its glamorization of vile of state violence in particular.
And so, you know, I, yeah, I'm glad it happened. I don't really
know that the details behind. I think that could be a very interesting story to
see. You know, sort of why didn't Showgirls tank Verhoeven's career?
I guess would be the question. And it's also possible too that again, the home
video bounce and the fact that it made a ton of money that way,
maybe that was what sort of made it like, hey, this guy makes movies that,
yeah, maybe they don't pull it in in that initial release, but they end up
pulling it in one way or another and that might have been all that mattered.
Yeah, yeah, that, that makes sense. And I guess there was also a bit
of a, a hunger for anything of this genre with the success of
Independence Day and like various, like Alien Attack type movies. I don't
think the Star, the Star wars prequels were still a couple of years from starting
to come out. They were, this was the same time. This was basically the year
when they re released. A new hopeful Special editions thing also happened starting in 97.
So but it was, that was a hot idea at the time. Sci fi was
very, you know, big at that time. I think like Event Horizon was around this
time or May next year, you know, so there was definitely a lot of sci
fi being placed into several genres and being and us getting sci
fi movies of different styles in the especially mid to late 90s.
So yeah, I think that some of that was just like right place, right time.
And Verhoeven had this sort of take on Heinlein's novel he wanted to go
with and he got the green light because, you know, Showgirls doing whatever
it did, like the man has had a track record of massive success. So,
you know, it's not hard to see a studio be like, yeah, we're going to
give Paul Verhoeven another chance. Maybe he gives us another RoboCop or Total Recall instead
of another Showgirls. Yeah, yeah. And like
you said, misunderstood film here and got some
weird critical response. Do you mind if I kind
of read a couple of quotes here? So one notable review was from Stephen
Hunter at the Washington Post, where democracy dies in darkness.
And he titled his review Goose Stepping at the Movies.
And I'm just going to read the first couple paragraphs of his review here,
Steven Hunter, and then we'll talk about him. Silly Me, I thought the
Nazis lost the war. But here's the exceedingly strange
new movie. Starship troopers. Commandeering 22 million American dollars in its first
weekend and certain to make gobs more while secretly whispering sig
Heil. The movie recounts the adventures of a platoon of mobile
infantry sometime in the next century, as it does battle with a race of arachnid
nasties on the far planet of Klendathu. It's an epic of
bug blasting a movie whose script appears to have been the instructions on a can
of Raid. And in some profoundly disturbing way, it's Nazi to
the core. Okay, so we.
We texted about this, and it's. This is. This is
why you're my friend. This is why we do this together. I'm very happy that
we are of the same mind of this. Like, what is this guy thinking?
Okay, I know Wikipedia wasn't real popular, if it existed at all, in 97,
it wasn't popular, but it's not hard to find Paul Verhoeven's biography. Okay,
so to it, to an average person watching this, I could definitely see
someone being like, this is kind of a fascist movie, right?
Someone who's not thinking about the intentions of the filmmaker who. Who would watch
a movie and think that, oh, there's a lot of stuff that the guy who
made it didn't mean to put in, which is like, no, the amount of money
and time that goes in, like, everything is very intentional, right? And then to understand
the career of Paul Verhoeven, who's, like, an excellent satirist across all these genres
and subjects, like you've talked about this professional movie reviewer Steven Hunter
seemed to have completely missed point of all of this.
And one thing that stood out to me on this watch, specifically,
that I was like, this is beating you over the
head with the fact that it's satire, because it deviates
from the original book a bit. And the original book, I believe they
live somewhere in North America and, like, US or Canada or something.
And in this one, they're in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
which, if we know anything about post World War II
history, the Rat lines, everything, was kind of a safe haven
for a lot of the Nazis. It is not unintentional that it takes place in
Argentina, the only country that Nazis went to after World War II.
Don't look at Operation Paperclip. Don't look at Warner von Braun or anything.
But that, to me, seems like if you're a professional movie reviewer,
that should beat you over the head that,
you know, this is Definitely satire, you know, and it's not. It's not winking
at you the whole time. It surely isn't, but you should know just from the
aesthetic. But one quick thing about this guy as well. Stephen Hunter, the reviewer,
also an author in his own right, created the character of Bob
Lee Swagger, who is Mark Wahlberg's character in the movie Shooter,
which I love, I love that movie, but it's a very
much like a go go gun guy. He's written a bunch of novels.
This is one of these guys who advocates that toddlers should
have machine guns attached to their bottles in case someone tries to
for safety. So is he against fascism?
I don't know what his real opinion is, but I just thought it was funny
that the guy who's really off put by this movie is also someone who thinks
that you should bring a bazooka to Trader Joe's. Right? Yeah, it's interesting and I
think you're right about sort of like the willful ignorance around moving
Heinlein's characters, major characters, from the United States to Argentina.
The fact that the entire cast is white, yet all the characters are named Johnny
Rico, Carmen Ibanez, Isabel Florida, Flores. Right.
Have these Hispanic names. Because the idea is that,
yes, in this fascistic future, you know, German fascism
has to overtake, you know, the white. The Aryan race has destroyed,
you know, everything else in the world and is basically, it's like, you know,
there's not like every character is white, but like it's. There is a takeover has
occurred culturally and everything. And it's like, you know, you can look
at it. And if you are the kind of person that looks at a movie
and just says, whatever I'm being shown, there's no subtext. It's just context.
It's just, this is what I'm watching. Okay, then, yeah, this is going to be
a movie that probably upset you and probably very confusing. But the second that you
recognize, you know, that like Verhoeven grew up and occupied Holland during World War II
and is a very much an anti fascist, like, it becomes obvious and you're right,
like the over the top violence, the like, absolutely,
like unnecessary horrors of war that are
not needed to tell this story, but are absolutely part of the story Verhoeven's trying
to tell. Yes, it's like, how is it not more obvious? And the aesthetic choices
too are fully intentional. Like the uniforms especially that
we see that, you know, later on. Carl, Neil Patrick Harris's character,
it's like very ss like, I mean, Very intentional. It's intentional.
And, you know, this reviewer, I just don't get it. Like, art is not
supposed to make you feel comfortable at all times, and especially if it's trying to
get a point across to you. Like, you have to squirm a little bit in
your seat to, like, settle with, like. Or to reconcile with what
this is actually saying about the world. Yeah. And true artists who are
filmmakers, who are true artists, their work does not exist in a vacuum. You know,
Quentin Tarantino's movies do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in the context of
all the other movies he's made. Right. And so when there are choices that he
makes, you know, there is context that is built up in other pieces of work
he's done, even if it's not literal connections. Right. And sometimes they are literal connections
in his work. With Verhoeven, it's the same thing. You cannot look at this movie
or look at Total Recall or basic Instagram, anything else and just accept it
as, you know, that it's in a vacuum and it only exists as its own
piece. Like, you cannot look at a movie like Robocop and think that
that is pro police militarization. Yes. Or pro,
you know, corporate privatization of public services.
You can't look at Total Recall and think that it's pro consumerism
and pro, like, you know, go on vacation and travel the
universe at any cost. Right. Yeah. You can't do that. That is ridiculous.
So to look at this movie and think it's pro fascist, it's either willfully
ignorant or it's just kind of an uneducated viewpoint
of the film. And to, you know, to slightly defend Mr.
Hunter here, that was a pretty common take in the late 90s. That this was
a pro fascist. Sure. You know, and that. And that it did not have subtext.
And so he wasn't alone in being wrong. Right. And I also do
want to say this, that this coming out in 1997 and, like,
we quote, we like just the, you know, the. The colonizers
of the world, whatever, have been doing the same shit for a very long time.
But I think if this movie came out in like 2004 or something like that,
it would have been received. Interesting. Better, because that was a more in your face
version of, like, what this movie is kind of getting at. Yeah, yeah.
With. With Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, and the parallels that we have these,
you know, these races that we consider to be insects and all
this kind of stuff. So I don't know, like, I wonder if it was maybe
a victim of the timing that it came up in, like our maybe. I don't
think Verhoeven gets $100 million to make this movie after 9, 11. Oh, yeah.
Actually, I don't think that. No, you know, absolutely true. It's sort of like it
benefited from and suffered from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It came out. So.
All right, let's jump into the actual film. Let's do it. Plenty of pretext for
Starship Troopers, but. It'S important to lay that out. So I'm glad we chatted about
that. It's absolutely part of. Part of. Frankly, it's hard, you know, if anybody listening
thinks we're enjoying the movie in a pro fascist context, I would hate that.
That's not at all right. I love this movie because of its sat.
Okay, so we start off with FedNet. This is the Federal
network. This is a series of like propaganda films and news bites that always
end with would you like to know more? And the last movie
that we did together was the Naked Gun. And there's a great scene in that
where Frank Drebin is in front of a fireworks factory that's burning and exploding and
saying, nothing to see here. Nothing's here. Which became a meme. Yes. And one of
my favorite meme formats today is the. I'm doing my part. I'm doing my part.
Yeah, I'm doing my part. And then cut in Tim Robinson from. I think you
should leave. I ain't doing shit. Whatever. Great stuff. But that is part of this.
And it's like right off the bat you're hit with this absurd moment of all
these soldiers and infantry saying, I'm doing my part. And then like a 10 or
12 year old child fully in body armor going, I'm doing my part. It's holding
like a big machine gun. Like children in the infantry. Yes. And it's like,
is this. This is so clearly center. But anyway, yeah, it's fantastic. And it's a
really great. You know, Fox News was still a bit of. In its infancy.
Ish. In 97. It hadn't, you know, taken hold of the American political
consciousness. But Even like the 24 news cycle generally hadn't quite arrived.
Exactly. So to see this was very much like, you know, it was a mix
between Rupert Murdoch and Leni Riefenstahl. Right. I mean, that's sort of like where it
lives. Yeah, I love this device. Shows up three or four times during the film.
The whole Fed Net updates and giving us a peek into the
larger society at play here. Right, right. And it's also a very effective
way of just establishing and explaining things really quick where we don't need a character
needing to talk to another character. And they're basically talking about, we're at
war with this race of kind of arachnid type
alien beings on this planet called Klendathu, which is very far away. And I guess
the threat of Klendathu is that these bugs, or some of the bugs are able
to shoot some kind of a plasma from their body. And the Klondathu is
surrounded by this asteroid field. And basically they can hit it with
the plasma. The plasma is the cue ball. And then the asteroid
is gonna launch its way towards Earth. So essentially, people we
consider to be bugs who are basically throwing rocks. Rocks to defend themselves. Exactly.
Very good point. During the rocks, however, it's a good point to point out now.
Right. We were told all throughout the first half of this movie just how dumb
the bugs are and how humans are vastly superior intellectually.
You know, that. That attacks from the bugs are random and
whatever, all this stuff. And yet right off the bat, we're shown that they
are able to send a meteor literally across the breadth of the
Milky Way galaxy from their system to ours and hit Earth. Right, right. So.
So that means they know trigonometry. Yeah, there's some very advanced physics
at play here. In order to, you know, essentially make that shot like you did,
like the pool example, to really, you know, hit the cue ball on the meteor,
as it were. And so it's off the bat, we are told one thing and
shown something else. And that is another theme throughout the movie is that we get
told that this is reality. But then all of our, you know, the evidence of
our eyes and ears. Right. To quote George Orwell, shows. Shows differently. Yes, yes,
yes. So, yeah. So we get into high school in Buenos Aires,
Argentina. We are introduced into a classroom with three of our main character
or four of our main characters are here. We have Johnny Rico, Casper Van Dean,
kind of the main character of the story. His girlfriend, Carmen Aban,
is played by Denise Richards and their friends Carl. I don't remember Carl's last name,
but it's Neil Patrick Harris. Carl Jenkins. Carl Jenkins. That's an interesting. Yeah, I was
a little thrown back Hispanic, but yeah. And then Isabel Dizzy Flores,
who is quarterback of the football team, but also super in
love with Johnny. And Johnny just thinks of her as a friend, basically. So it's
a little bit of a love triangle with Carmen, Dizzy and Johnny.
And it's kind of like a sociology
class or something like that. Social studies of some kind. Yeah. And the teacher is
a one armed gentleman played by the great Michael Ironside.
So good. I don't know if he has in his contract with Paul Verhoeven
that he needs to lose an arm at some point in a film because he
gets his, I believe, both his arms ripped off in Total Recall. Yeah, yeah.
The number of actors who are in Total Recall who show up in this movie,
by the way, is very high. There's several. So the
teacher is kind of explaining to them, well,
there was a failure of democracy or something,
so we had to bring stability, which is how fascism explains itself.
It's the social scientists failed us. The veterans had to step in and instill order
by force. Patriots are in control.
Force is the key to problem solving is another thing that he says.
So you can tell that they're getting this very like, you know,
fascistic, nationalistic education. Right.
And it's important to note that, you know, nationalism actually doesn't come into play here.
Right. Because we've gotten to this point in human society where it seems like there
are no national borders. There is simply the Federation, which is apparently the
entire planet. The headquarters is in Geneva and Switzerland.
But they all treat everything and all the. The way you become a citizen,
all stuff, it doesn't. It doesn't seem to matter where on the planet you live.
It's a single global, you know, essentially a new world order. I'm sure
that was not unintended. But you know, Earth, I guess, the human, that whatever
Earth is now out colonizing the rest of the universe. So you're
kind of not in a nation but like within your planet. That's your new
version of nationalism. Exactly. We've moved to the Star wars setup. Right. Where everybody from
Alderaan is one way and everybody from Corellia is one way. Right, right.
So it shows them at school and everything. We're kind of getting the sense of
how they are as students and all that. They go to check the scores on
their math file and they walk up to this bank of video screens which has
a very Demolition man style keyboard. There with the little M and Ms. Yeah.
And they're tapping on that and you could pull your score up.
And Carmen, Carmen did very well. She wants to be a pilot
in the military. She's decided that she wants to enlist.
And she got a 97% on her math. Johnny Rico pulls his up,
he got a 35%. That's bad. And his friend Carl,
being a good friend, is somehow able to hack it and bring it from
the small screen to where it takes up this entire bank of TVs.
So we see Johnny Rico 35% and everyone's kind of sarcastically clapping
for him. Carl's such a dick. But yeah, so we
go from there. So they kind of. Yeah, like, you know, Carmen runs off to
talk to a friend because her, you know, his sister or something, went to Fleet
Academy where she wants to go to become a pilot. So there's chit chat,
but they end up going to like a science class where they have these bugs.
I don't know where. They must have like captured them from, you know, one of
the bug planets. But they're almost like little larvae. They're like baby ones or something.
But they're like beetles. They're still huge. It's the size of like a sea turtle.
Yeah, exactly. Absolutely right. So they have to like flip them over and start dissecting.
And so Johnny is cool, man. He is. He's fine. He's cutting it open.
He's got the scalpel going. He's pulling stuff out. I was disgusted by the fact
that nobody was wearing gloves during this dissection. Like, how do you not. How do
you pull organs out of a dead thing and not at least wear gloves?
But Carmen is not able to stomach this. She actually
ends up blowing chunks all over everything, really, because he hands
her like some wiggling organ or something here told this, you know. But he
basically. I think the whole point is you have to see how quickly you can
name all the parts. I think is because he kind of says, oh, you got
heart, lungs, spleen, liver, you know, whatever. And so. But the teacher,
who has a very interesting look, we don't ever see this woman again.
Kind of a Nazi scientist type look a little bit.
So this is what I think this was a reference to. And I don't know
for sure. She has clearly had some part of her face burned. She has like
burned scars next to her eyes and these little tiny goggle
glasses like things. And I kind of feel like this is a reference to Raiders
of the Lost Ark with the little tiny glasses guy. And then his face melts
at the end. Like, I felt like that was reference to it. I don't know
that for sure. That's absolutely. Could be my own thing. But that's like the vibe
I got was this was like a face melted Nazi for raiders.
But yeah, but she is basically telling them how, you know, oh, we humans like
to think that we are you know, the pinnacle of evolution. Everything but these,
you know, bugs. They feel no fear, they feel no pain, so they
know they can reproduce by the thousands. Like, it's like they're far. Are superior in
these, like, base genetic. You know, in the idea that every species, you know,
base instinct is to continue their genetic lineage. They're much better at that than we
are. They can even send spores into space to go colonize
other planets. Just, you know, and it's so. It's a very interesting take on,
you know, something that we all see, you know, we, in this sense, being the
humanity of this era, of this universe sees as inferior, but clearly,
in some ways, is vastly super superior. Right, right.
So we have the dissection scene.
We get a good scene of. I don't know what to describe this sport.
I just wrote future ball. It's football. I mean, it looks like arena football,
but it's way more fun. There's weird little idiosyncrasies that make it not
football. Like a touchdown is worth five points for some reason. There's little weirdnesses,
but it's basically like they're all wearing what almost look like exoskeleton suits.
They're not just armor because, I mean, Johnny's able to like, like, do some crazy
jumps that look real, you know, kind of assisted, I guess, in a sense.
But it's basically indoor football. And so Dizzy is the quarterback.
Rico is, you know, like a wide receiver. But also, it looks like they.
Everybody plays both ways, so, like, he has to play defense then or whatever.
And so there's a little back and forth, and we meet a player from the
other team. His name is Xander, and great future. Name, by the way. He and
Johnny get into it a couple times. There's tackles on both sides, but Johnny does
end up prevailing and his team, you know, thanks to Dizzy throwing
him a great pass, and he catches the final touchdown, they end up winning the
game, which is like a huge, you know, huge, big deal. But before that can
happen, Carmen and the Xander guy start talking. Yeah, Carmen finds out he's shipping
off to Fleet Academy, and she is wet in the pants,
like, immediately for this guy. I mean, she's like the worst girlfriend. I mean,
this is like Joe and Rounders level bad girlfriend. She's. Carmen is garbage to
Johnny from Jump street, but, you know, she's very intrigued by this guy because he's
going off to Fleet, and that's what she wants to do. Xander,
real quick for my Saved by the Bell heads.
You might recognize the Actor who played Xander, he was in a short
stretch of the show. Jeff, who was the manager of the Max,
who wanted to date Kelly. So he was dating Kelly. And I think he
was like over 18. And they were under 18. But they made fake
IDs in an episode to get into an 18 and up club, which Jesus,
never do that. But they see Jeff, Jeff the jerk,
and he's making out with some other girl when he's supposed to be Kelly's boyfriend.
So I always know this guy as Jeff the Jerk. He has one of those
great faces of a guy that you're like, oh, I can't wait to see this
guy get punched. Textile definition of the punchable face, for sure.
Textbook. Textbook definition. And textile too. We should put it on a shirt.
So, yeah. So Rico is kind of flirting
with his idea. I think maybe he's been playing with it in his head.
But he knows that Carmen, his girlfriend, is going to enlist. She wants to be
a pilot. And then Carl, his friend, wants to enlist as well.
And he's kind of toying with it. And I think it shows goes Rico back
at his house, and he's received some kind of literature about joining
up. His parents are like, what's the meaning of this? They're against it. And what
his dad says is, you're going to Harvard. And that's final with his 35%.
No, but I think the whole point here is that clearly Rico's parents are.
First of all, they're rich and he's an athlete. They're civilians. They're not citizens.
This is made clear just by the way they talk about service and stuff.
So I think the idea is that, yeah, legacies get into Harvard no matter who
they are. It doesn't matter. What Rico scores is he can get into Harvard,
right? And so, you know, they talk about a little bit and he's
like, I'm gonna do this as my choice. And his dad's like, no, you're not.
How about a vacation to Zegima Beach? The Outer Rings. Zegima beach, which it's like,
I don't know what the hell that represents. There's a beach and the rings of
Saturn, right? I guess that's what they're talking about. And so, you know, that's what
he's gonna do, I guess after. After going. After graduating from high school, he'll go
to Zeke beach. And, you know, his parents are satisfied. That's it. But he's got
to go to the dance, right? This formal dance, it's like, end of School.
And so he's all dressed up in a tux and ready to go. And I
think that of all the horrifically dystopian stuff in
this movie, which there is a ton of, one of the worst is that their
entire high school looks like Bishop Ranch. It looks like a. It looks like where
we had either a junior was like at an
18 office building, actually.
Come on. I thought we were at a rich high school. The shit
sucks. To be fair, we went to public school, man. So I think that's.
But actually, to be honest, the De La Salle Corandelette junior prom that year was
also there because I went with a girl from Crandallette. Oh, ok. Same place.
But yeah, anyway, yeah, so dystopian,
you know, sort of. It looked like a shopping mall.
Again, this is like the worst, like clinical, sterile looking space.
And yet they're having this like dance and whatever. And there's like a DJ or
the singers or something. I don't know. But it's all very kind of weird and
futuristic in like the crappiest possible way. Right. And for
some of them it's kind of their. Their last day because they're signing up for
the military. So this is their. Their last night and everything.
Rico has a talk with Mr. Radczyk, who is the. The one
armed teacher played by Michael Ironside earlier, who seems, you know, he's definitely a veteran.
He has some past in this. And one of the things he was asking the
students in the class earlier is, you know, what's the difference between a civilian and
a citizen? And, you know, trying to get them to think about it. So I
think Rico says about how he's been thinking about signing up and Rad Shack's basically
like, you know, your choice is kind of the only thing you have left.
So he's encouraging him without directly telling him to do it.
Yeah. He says, like the only freedom we all actually have. Again. Again. Yes.
This is a totally proficious movie. This is a signal that it's not. Is when
he says the only freedom we have is to make up our own minds.
Yeah. That everything else has been taken from us. Yeah. And it's like,
again, how do you not see the actual point behind this movie? But yes.
So he's told like, you got to make up your own mind, Rico. It's the
only true freedom that you have. And yeah. So Rico agrees to go with Carmen
and Carl to enlist. The next day they go, they go to enlist and they
get kind of placed pretty quickly into their slots. You know,
Carmen is going to be sent to the flight academy to become a pilot.
Carl draws his. And they said, what did you get Carl? He's games in
theory. Like, oh, that's military intelligence. That's big time. Earlier, we had
a quick scene where Carl was sitting with Rico and doing kind of
a Ghostbusters, like, couple of wavy lines type scene where there were
playing cards and Rico was supposed to project to Karl with his
mind what he was seeing or something. So Carl's been dabbling in this ESP.
And stuff like that. Psychic abilities. Yeah, that. So they
join and they realize Rico ends up being assigned to Mobile infantry.
So he'll be a frontline soldier.
The personnel who's signing them up and giving them their assignment says,
oh, Mobile infantry made a man out of me. And basically,
I think he has one arm. And then he backs away from his chair and
he has, like, one leg or no legs. He says, mobile infantry made me the
man I am today. And he shakes Rico's hands with, like, this metal prosthetic,
right? This, like, cybernetic prosthetic. But then as he rolls his chair back,
you can see he just doesn't have legs at all. Like, he's got the pinned
up, sort of Lieutenant Dan pants, you know, like. Yeah. And so Rico
takes a moment, goes, oh, okay. All right. And then they
make a very cheesy promise to each other that, hey, no matter what happens,
guys, let's always be friends. Right? Let's make sure we're always weird.
Yeah. And it's. And it's clear, too, because, like, they're going into different branches,
whatever. But also, it seems like they're clearly going into a scenario where Carl is
going to outrank both of them, just kind of by nature, what he's doing.
And then Carmen is going to outrank Johnny just by the nature of what job
she's going to have. And so it's like, in that, you know, in a military
setup, like, it's harder, I think, to be friends, you know, with people that you.
That you have authority over in that sense. I mean, I don't know that for
sure. Maybe that's. Yeah, no, that's. That's a very good point. That's a very good
point. So. So they decide, or they're going to go to the airport,
basically. Right? That's like the next thing. Yeah. And I think we get an inner
cut of a propaganda video.
There's the kids who are all, like, fighting over a gun, basically. One of
the shoulder, one of the soldiers showing a bunch of school children, his gun.
And they're kind of holding it back and forth. It's like something that
only Arnie would have been able to wield in T2.
So it shows that, and then it shows an ad for, you know,
A murderer was sentenced to death. Execution live
tonight at 8pm yeah, he. Was arrested this morning, tried this afternoon and sentenced
to death. The execution's live Tonight on at 6pm all nets, all channels.
So it's like they make sure you see. Everyone sees the execution.
Absolutely. And I think that that guy. I read in the notes that the.
The guy who played the murderer in that scene was the.
The writer of the film. Oh, really? Oh, I think so. Interesting.
Okay, so. So, yeah, I mean, it gives
you a good sense of, like, what this world is like. And then we get
another news bite that's showing this outpost that was basically overrun
by the Iraq. It said a group of Mormon extremists were killed
within the Arachnid Quarantine Zone. So basically, just this whole base
that was wiped out. People cut in half. Very gruesome. Very good. Just lit.
Bodies littered everywhere. Yeah, Very, very gruesome. But.
Yeah, but I mean, imagine if they'd been able to convince those Clandathu about
Mormonism. It would have been worth it. It would have been interesting. They could have
saved some souls. So, yeah, so they're now at the airport the next day,
ready to leave, and Carmen and Rico are saying goodbye to each other.
And, you know, basically, Rico is like,
you know, hey, just say it. Once tried on for size,
and she says, I love you, Johnny. He does not say
I love you back. Like, what? That was just. He just wanted her to say.
And he's like, all right, cool deuces. Have fun at Academy. Like, that was so
weird, Johnny. Like, why don't you say I love you as well? Casper Van Dien,
Denise Richards. Not a lot of future starring roles.
Right. I mean, wild things, you know. Right. But it
seems like there was something that Verhoeven was going for. Yes.
I mean, one with how they look because they're, like, undeniably beautiful
people to look at. And I think if you're making something that's like a satire
of a propaganda film, you want your side to look, like, the most beautiful according
to, like, whatever standards as you can. Classical Western beauty,
blue eyes, pale skin, fair hair. I mean, the whole deal, you know?
Like, so. And Casper Van Dien is an actor. I don't know if he's just
like, we got into this a few episodes Ago about, like, is it an actor
making a choice or is it somebody. Was he playing a really good dumb
guy or is he just the level of actor where it's like, you're a soap
opera guy. It would be real. You would come off really funny in this role
because you don't have the chops to, like. Like, he doesn't have the charisma to
be this lead necessarily. Yeah. He reminds me of
God. Who? There were the twin brothers. One of them was in Mallrats and the
other was in Dazed and Confused. Jeremy and Jason. O.
London. London. Thank you. Yeah, he reminds me of them. Okay. It's like, yeah,
not terrible. Actually good enough to do the job. Don't get me wrong. Like,
they're not like, geeks off the street or whatever. Right. But no, this is not.
This is not a series of really great creative choices being made. Yeah. This is
a person, you know, barely able to tread water and
keep their head above the script is really what it feels like to me.
I felt the same way with the London boys, that they were both sort of,
like, out of their elements in almost every good movie they were in. Yeah.
Yeah. And so, yeah, I feel very much the same way about Cassie.
And, hey, I like him, but it seems like he was put there for a
reason. That's, again, I think Verhoeven being brilliant, putting these actors and
knowing their limitations, knowing how it would come across. But I did see some quotes
from him after the fact saying, you know, in retrospect, maybe I should have thought
more about what kind of actors they were rather than just how they looked.
That's not the exact quote, but it was to that. To that degree.
Maybe the satire would have been more obvious with, like, a more nuanced performance.
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. All right, well, now we're off at boot camp.
Yes. And we get some action here. We get. Was it Sergeant Zim?
Right. Is that Sergeant Zim, our boot basic training leader?
The warden from. Or not the warden. The main guard from Shawshank.
Shawshank, that's right. Great actor. Absolutely. And he says a line that I think
slips past you initially, but you really need to hear it because he
does not say that most of you will not make it through basic
training. He says most of you will not live to join
the Mobile Infantry. So he is saying most. Now, this doesn't end up becoming true,
but he is saying to them, most of you are going to die here.
Great. Before you even get into the military, I'm going to kill
you. Yes. Essentially what he says. And it's like so dark
and so dystopian, and yet I still think. I think it slips past a lot
of people. But yeah, he says, most of you will not live to join the
Mobile Infantry. Like, damn. And he does. I mean, you know, and it's that
type of guy's job, I guess, to toughen people up immediately.
Right off the bat, he's talking to his new recruits. He says,
you know, which. Any of you think you could take me, right? If you knock
me down anybody? And one of the. One of the bigger dudes, you know,
raises his hand. He says, yeah, sure, I'm going to come. And Zim
beats him up and then mercilessly breaks his
wrist. Like, not a twisting break. I mean, just snaps his forearm.
It. So, you know, then he's off. Call for the medic.
This is kind of a pain is in your mind. It's like, no, dude,
it's in the compound fracture of his fucking, like, arm, dude.
And then, you know, they shout for the medic. And this is kind of a
recurring theme here. And then walking
up to the crew as, like, Rico and all of his fellow recruits are,
there is Diz. Yeah. Dizzy's back. He's walking up and he sees her and he's
kind of giving her a pissed off look because he feels like. Like this girl's
man, this super hot girl who's into all this, the same stuff as me,
is so annoying and clearly wants me. Yeah. Like, yeah.
But basically, Diz immediately gets into hand to hand compact with
Zim and does pretty well, but ends up, you know, getting choked out with his
knee on her neck and this gnarly bruise on the side of her neck.
So it's merciless. And it's kind of funny that they disregard
once they're in the military, really. Like, race and gender is disregarded as
long as you're a psycho killer, you know, so it's like we accept every type
of looking psycho. Right? Exactly. There is an egalitarianism to it.
Right. But it is only against the backdrop of this sort of,
like, dystopian existence. Yeah. One person who is from another film
that you might have spotted and might enjoy here. So we get
back and the guy who had his arm broken by the sergeant,
like, they're in the chow line and they're just yapping it up and pushing each
other around or whatever. This redhead with short hair. This woman
is the girl in Swingers that Trent gets her phone number, the one
with the cigar and he Gets her phone number and then turns around and rips
it up. I wrote that down, too. What an iconic
role there. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, so, like. And the crazy
part is that Diz is in the chat in the mess hall, whatever, talks to
Johnny, and he's like, hey, like, I want. I was doing this to get away
from everything. And then, you know, you came and followed me. And she. She goes,
who's saying I followed you? And he's. You saying you didn't. It's like, at the
dance, she had said she was going to play for Rio.
Right. Unless Tokyo lets me start. So, obviously there is this professional
version of this game they're playing in high school, and she was very good at
it. Yeah. And able to play. So she gave up a professional sports contract,
which. Which, look, I don't know everything about this future society that,
you know, has been cooked up for the movie, but if it's as dark
and shitty as I think it is, then you can probably also buy your way
into citizenship. And if she had been a professional sports athlete, I think she
would have been able to get it that way, too. But she is there for
Johnny. I mean, it's like she can say whatever she wants, but she is there
for Johnny. And he is not crazy to think that. And. Yeah. And he doesn't
like it. He doesn't want to sit with her. Whatever. Another training scene that we
have, they're all throwing knives into a target on the wall. And.
And it's kind of, you know, funny because it's a laser gun war. And one
of the characters played by Jake Busey, Gary Busey's son, Ace, who's kind
of like, rico. Hey, Rico, I'm your buddy. I'll be your buddy, buddy. I really
liked him in this. Yeah. And he says, hey, Sergeant,
what's the point of learning to throw knives? Like, in a nuke war?
Like, just press a button. What are we doing here? And he goes, put your
hand up on that wall. He's like, what? Put your hand up on that wall.
And he sticks his hand up on the wall. And the sergeant just absolutely hums
a knife right into the middle of his palm. Like Ted Lasso playing darts.
Just gross. Like, through his hand. And he's screaming in.
And he says, basically, you can disable your enemy's hand. He can't press the nuke
button. Your enemy cannot press a button if he cannot control his hand.
Which is cool, except also, our enemy are not really ones
with hands. Right. I mean, I guess there must still be Some human on human
fighting happening somewhere in the world or something. But you know,
but yeah, then after. This is, you know, one of kind of the more
memorable scenes in the entire film. The shower scene. Yeah. So this
is a co ed shower scenario. There are no stalls. There's just some like,
you know, big stands up, big, big shower, heads up, coming to the middle of
the floor and out of the walls. And it's men and women all together.
They're all butt naked and they're chatting. And this is a really, really interesting
scene to me. Well, okay, first of all, this was my favorite scene when I
was young because a lot of boobies, a lot of butts. It was great.
Yeah. But now it's one of my favorite scenes because it's so interesting that a.
It's this juxtaposition of this egalitarian society where they really do seem to be
treating each other's equals. The men are not checking the women out. Their eyes are
on eyes. Like if you look at like where everybody's looking and how they're talking
to each other, there is no sexual innuendo. Nothing about this is sexy. It is
just a bunch of people together showering because they need to get clean. And they're
all together in this and they're chatting. So there's something very wholesomely egalitarian
about that. Then we get into what they're talking about. So one of the guys
is like, I'm going to be a writer. I came into getting the military service
because I want to like learn more and travel and like, you know, whatever.
And I'm going to write about it and I'm going to ask questions. And he's
asking everybody, why are you here? One of them is here because she wants to
get into politics. And if you want to be politics, you got to be a
citizen. One of them's here because she wants to have babies someday. And it's much
easier to get a license to have a child if you're a citizen. One person
wants to be there because he got into Harvard but his dad couldn't afford to
send him. One person wants to go because if he stays where he is,
he'll just work the family farm and he wants to get out of it.
Like there is this combination of the reasons people today go into the military.
From poverty, no other options to pay for school, like all kinds
of stuff with some really dark versions of that. The whole like licenses
for children, you know, it feels very Demolition man. Oh, in that sense,
sure. Yeah. But yeah, so I love this thing, because it really is in many
ways a micro. It is the most distilled view of what is this society
like? It is, this glossed, the glossy front of it is, is sort
of clean and egalitarian and everybody's equal, you know.
Well, not equal, but like, you know, everybody within civilians, within citizens is equal.
And you can transit between the two. Right. There's nothing, not hard and fast casts
like there is in a lot of societies today. But it's all underpinned
with this just absolute darkness and this absolute dystopia that
is just really all of humanity has been clamped down on in so many
ways. And this scene in particular really draws that out. And it's another one where
it's like, were you listening when you were watching this movie, were you listening to
these characters? And are you really suggesting that this is the filmmaker's intention to tell
you this is good, right? I mean, because a character doesn't say,
man, it's so, so messed up, we need to get a license to have a
baby. It's like of course not there. This is ingrained in them. Right? Like we're
not supposed to take these people's cues as like how to feel about all this.
Like we're viewing this as outsiders. It's basically a series of orphan crushing machine
stories. Yeah. You know that term, right? And, and it's basically like we see these
all the time, right? Like oh, like you know, man at Walmart, 85 year old
greeter at Walmart still works so he can pay off his wife's medical debt.
It's like that's not good story. No, that's not a good, a feel good story.
That is an orphan crushing machine. We don't ask how did the person save the
orphans from the orphan crushing machine. We ask why the fuck is there an orphan
crushing machine? Yeah, and it's, it's. Yeah, that's what this is. And so I
think to not be able to see that if you are looking at this film
critically was a pretty huge mess. But let's move forward. No,
hey, hey, maybe hey, Robert Hunter, if you're still around.
Stephen Hunter the show@2dads1movie.com
the number two. And the number one. So now
we're kind of moving away from boot camp. And we have
Carmen who's in flight school. And Carmen is in the seat. Her other trainee
co pilot is played by Amy Smart who doesn't get to do a whole lot
in this movie. I love her. I love that movie. Just friends. Just friends.
I Don't know if I've seen that one. Ryan Reynolds, very early ryan Reynolds,
late 90s. And basically he was her. Our best friend in high school. And he
was kind of like a fat, dorky guy, so it was like a fat suit
thing. But now he's Ryan Reynolds and Christmas time. It's not a bad,
not a bad one anyway. But she appeared in a lot of these kind of
like, you know, mid level movies made for people our age.
Mox's girlfriend in Varsity Balloon, stuff like that.
And then the instructor who's been there just for a little bit longer is
the rival from the future ball
game, Xander. Right. And. And Carmen is, you know,
doing a lot of irresponsible bullshit with the ship.
Yeah, she's really cutting, cutting things close with this. I mean, it's not
like if you work at Enterprise, they're going to be like, hey, be careful how
you take those corners, all right? It's going to cost $400 to fix that bumper.
I can't even fathom the budget that goes into these giant.
No, no, no, no. Billions of dollars. The captain of the ship, by the
way, is one of my favorite character actresses and someone we've seen before for on
the show, it's Brenda Strong. So I've always pointed. She played Sue Ellen Mishke
on Seinfeld and one of the main characters, one of the larger characters on Sports
Night, Suellen Mishke, of course on Cybo is the woman who walked around wearing just
a bra that made Kramer crash. Yes. But she was also. She was Nurse Gretchen
in Spaceballs. She was the plastic surgeon's assistant to give Great
helmet. That whole thing. So I love Brenda Strong and she, she shows up here
as the captain of the ship that Carmen's been assigned to. Hell yeah. Hell yeah.
Yeah. So we have Carmen there, and then we have Rico and Diz back in
boot camp and they're like winning a kind of laser capture
the flag game by incorporating some of the plays from their football past
together. Yeah, exactly. And they're impressed by Rico. They see some leadership in him and
they make Rico squad leader. Squad leader. So he's excited about that.
At the same time, then Carmen is sending him a video showing like,
this is what my life is like. This is amazing. I think I'm going to
go career. I think I want to be on this side of world. The,
the world essentially breaking up. Like, we can't be together if I'm going to
be. If I'm going to be career doing this. Like, we're not
going to be together, so what's the point? Like, I'm so sorry. I know it's
not you want to hear, but basically breaking up with him. I don't think she
literally says we're not together anymore, but, like, it's pretty clear. And all of his
bunk mates are like, oh, man, so sorry they ripped your heart. Yeah. Tripped your
heart out and everything. And. And it's a bummer for him. But of course,
you know, the dizziest scene is sort of noticing that this has occurred. I'm sure
she's cooking up all kinds of plans in her head. Right.
So the next exercise they're doing is they're doing this capture
the flag type thing again. But it's a live ammunition course. And this is
where, you know, something happens. The tragedy strikes. Basically, the Farmer character
who we'd seen the guy who had his arm broken, whose name was Breckenridge.
That's right. During the course of this, he has a malfunction in his
helmet with the communication. Rico instructs him, take your helmet off. Let me have a
look at it. A bullet ricochet. Somebody falls and shoots. Right there
was the woman who was going to go into Paul politics. And, you know,
she is hit by one of the lasers from the, like, dummies they're supposed
to be shooting. And it spins her around. And as she falls, she, like,
pulls the trigger on a rifle and basically blows Breckenridge's head square off his body.
Which, of course, you know, then Rico yells for medic. Everybody kind of stops.
And yeah, you know, they slow down. And it's like all we hear initially is
Zim going, rico, you are relieved of your command. Like, you know,
and so now he has to be. He's brought before, you know, the commandant of
the Booth boot camp, played by Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad.
Rico. Rico.
Yeah. And he's basically sentenced
to. They say we've already lost two good recruits off this.
The guy who got killed and then the woman who had shot him. It showed
her kind of like walking out in street clothes. Don't know if she was kicked
out or if she quit based on what happened to what. But she's gone.
Yeah. And Rico is sentenced to administrative punishment.
Ten lashes. Yeah. Which looks brutal.
Brutal. Very brutal. And he. We hear all 10. He's got the leather,
you know, the wrapped up, like, leather in his mouth to, like, bite down on
for the first few. But that falls out of his mouth after, like, the fifth
one. Yeah. Brutal, Brutal lashing and. And Then he's,
you know, ready to leave. I think he basically is kind
of like, I'm gonna go. Like, I'm not gonna stick around for this. Which is
a little crazy, it feels like, because you've got taken your punch punishment and now.
Yeah. You know, I almost would have been like. If they were like, hey,
we're not going to kick you out. We're going to give you 10 lashes.
You'd be like, could you kick me out instead? Seriously, Whatever. So. But he tells
Dizzy, like, he's going to. He's going to quit, you know. And so he's packing
his bags and he starts heading out towards what they call washout lane. The walking
out the thing. And then there is. And he calls his parents. That's right.
To tell him that he's coming home. Yeah. He was like, hey, guys, I'm going
to let you know, I'm going to go. I'm going to be back soon.
And then they. The call gets cut off because there's like darkening skies over
over there overhead. It's like, oh, it's weird rain this time of year kind of
thing. Actually, I think we skipped, like, where Carmen, up on the ship.
They almost got hit by an asteroid that flew by. Right. And that's important.
And they tried to call back to Earth to say, hey, a bug, asteroids coming,
meteorite, whatever. But their communications tower was destroyed as the
meteorite kind of struck them. So they weren't able to put that call in.
And so what ends up happening is a new blood meteorite
gets through, you know, global defenses and hits Buenos Aires. And so
that's everybody at boot camp is now rushing over to the TV screens to see
what's going on, you know. And Rico asked, what's happening? War. We're going to war.
And one of my favorite lines from is the redhead, the one from Swingers,
looks at Johnny and goes, goddamn bugs. Whack this Johnny.
It's just the way she says it is. Very good. So many cheesy,
cheesy lines there. Earlier, when Rico is talking to his parents,
he's the way he says, this always killed me. From the first time I saw
the movie, he's like, I've been an idiot. His delivery
is really funny. And that's why I don't think they were choices by Mr.
Van Dien. Yeah, I think you're right. Buenos Aires got
nuked essentially from this bug meteor. It said
8.7 million people dead. Just absolutely
fully wiped out. Yeah. Over 12 million more wounded destroyed it.
So then we cut to the FedNet stuff. And we get Sky Marshal Dean
Teens, played, by the way, by the actor who played Ian Miller's father
on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which is a fun movie as well. But,
yeah, he, you know, basically says, like, yeah, we're gonna strike back. Blah, blah,
blah, whatever. And the next
one is like a commercial, right? Because it's like half of these are like little
ads, little propaganda ads. And this is a bunch of kids stomping cockroaches on the
street. And the absolutely, like, black hole
sun video level maniacal laughing of their mother is so unnerving.
That is such a good description. Just the one wide smile maniacal laughing
of these kids crushing cockroaches under their feet. It's just so gross.
And another point where I'm like, how do you not tell? This is satire,
Right? But it's super crazy. I'm doing my part. And then so.
So we're back before they're going off to war. We're at, you know, where the
troops are stationed. And there's a reporter who we see a couple times throughout this
movie, and he's giving a report and talking about what happened in Buenos Aires.
He does say something about. About, well, you know, we have been colonizing all
these. You know, some people say that our colonization of the universe is leading to
this. And maybe a live and let live approach would. And he gets cut off.
And Rico comes in and just says, I'm pump Buenos Aires. And I say,
kill them all. Yeah. Yep. It's.
Yeah, it's. Again, it's kind of. That's. Some of this is on the nose.
And I don't know how you could not, you know, see it. But. So basically
they're there and apparent. I think they're actually on the ship that Carmen is,
like, piloting or something. Or they're in the same place. They're coming from the same
place. So now the mother infantry is being taken by fleet to Klendathu.
That's the whole point, right? That they're being, like, deployed. And so Xander and Carmen
are there. Rico and his crew are there. And there's this,
like, kind of back and forth. One thing I noticed is in the background at
this point, Massie Stars Fade into youo is playing. I'm like, wow, Mazzy Star survived
this long. That's fantastic. Great song, by the way. Fantastic song. Absolutely.
But a little anachronistic for the time. Yeah, it's the first time I noticed
it. And it so didn't fit, really,
but it was sticking with me back in.
I think 2017 was the first year in California when
we had a few years in a row of really bad wildfires where you couldn't
go outside for a week because of the smoke and stuff like that. And the
night those fires started, my wife and I were in Sonoma at
the Gundlach Bunchu Winery watching Hope Sandoval of Mazzie Star play.
And we couldn't finish the concert because it was getting windy and windy and windy.
It was crazy. And I remember running down to the car, which was parked super
far away, to come pick up her and her sister because. And they were like.
We were watching, like, things on fire, like, blow across
the road as we were leaving. So there's always this, like, apocalyptic association
I make with Mazzie Starr. That's not fair to Hope Sandoval or the band.
But that is a killer song. And it was just really funny that that was
playing in the background during the fight. Yeah. Yeah, I think. So what happens is
then Xander and Rico get in a fight, basically over Carmen. Yeah, right. Which is
like, this chick is not worth fighting over this way. She hasn't been good to
anybody. But yeah, they basically, you know, they fight for a while, but then gets
broken up and, you know, Rico gets pulled back by Ace and Dizzy and.
The guys and they get their tattoos. Yeah, they decide to get all their tattoos
together. Death from Above, Mobile infantry, whatever. At which point, Ace decides
for kicks, to pour alcohol over the brand new fresh tattoo.
That's not cool. Cool. Don't do that, man. But also, these are like
weird future tattoos that are instantly healed, which is kind of cool because that's sort
of the worst part of getting the tattoo is the healing shortly after. But yeah,
so now. So they're on their way there and they feel like they're.
They're going to Clandathu, but they're not expecting to be under
attack to the degree that they are. Yeah, we're told. Brendan Strong's captain character tells
Xander and Carmen, hey, you know, Intelligence said these plasma blasts
from the surface, they're going to be few and they're going to be random,
right? Well, they start hitting things. Like, they start clearly, they're aiming at
the ships and they start hitting them. And she's like, somebody made a huge mistake.
This isn't, you know, few or random. So they are, you know, into maneuver around
them, you know, like emergency maneuvers and all this stuff. And then
they actually get hit as well. Before that, though, they do mention. Xander says,
like, we are you know, we're all deployed or ever. So all the infantry who
are on board did get to their drop ships. They're on their way down to
the planet kind of while this plasma is being shot up into the sky.
One or two dropships get hit. But I think they're very small. They're more easily
sort of able to avoid things. I noticed as they land on the planet surface
and the infantrymen start, you know, piling out of these. Looks very, you know,
landing of Normandy beach kind of idea. They are shooting something up into the sky.
Like there's, like, rockets or something. And I'm like, what? What are they shooting at?
That's not. Like the ships up there are theirs.
Just to throw in case. They're like heat bug plasma. You can. You can throw
it off. It was very strange, but, yeah. So they're shooting something in the air.
It does not make any sense. Interesting. So. So they
land on the planet and they're kind of, you know, immediately in the shit.
Right. There's all these arachnids after them. At this point, because Rico
had been relieved of his duty. Ace is the squad leader. That's right. And he's
leading him through. And they're kind of shooting some aliens. And then all of a
sudden they're, like, surrounded. Yeah, right. And they're like, ace, what do we
do? And he kind of frees him. And Rico, this kills me so much.
Rico, because he definitely has leadership and smarts and strategic
brilliance here. They look to him and he says,
kill him. Kill them all.
Very subtle. And that's
it. There's some good chaos here. At the
very beginning of the film, when we're shown the newsreel There is shown live
news footage of that reporter who's there on the planet with the infantry.
So we're kind of caught up to the very beginning of the film now.
And they end up getting attacked. The reporter gets pulled up.
The cameraman gets hit. Rico gets stabbed in the leg,
Basically. It looks bad for Rico, you know, left for dead.
And then they're saying on the news thing. 100,000 dead in one hour.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And real quick, I want to mention, like. So when they
first sort of see one of these big plasma shooting bugs. They have, like,
these nuke bazookas, right? And so they're actually, like, firing a nuclear warhead
at the thing that does blow it up. But like, a battlefield nuke has to
be a terrible idea. Like, that's going to have ramifications for your own army.
So my thing is that there's that. And then their guns seem to be firing
bullets. These are not laser weapons. Right. These are conventional, you know, physical ballistics.
And so do they really not have anything in between a bullet and a nuke?
Because it takes way too long to kill these bugs with their rifles.
Right. I mean, it takes. It takes like four guys, 40 or 50 bullets
to kill one of them. Wild. And so they have that or they have the
nukes. And those are the only two weapons we ever see them use on the
battlefield. Yep. Is some version of like a, you know, 556 or whatever gun and
then a nuke. And it's like, really, all this, you know, time and all this
advancement and like, you know, space travel and everything else, you couldn't come up with
a weapon in between those two? That would be like. Like the thing, you know,
Wesley Snipes has in Demolition man that has to, like, warm up and then shoot.
Like, they could add something. Yeah. Anyway, it is kind of funny, though. I mean,
if you look at now, like, the stuff that the infantry members
of the military are using as far as machine guns and stuff like that,
it probably hasn't advanced too much since, like, World War II, Korean War. Like,
a lot of this technology, even the planes were using the planes that were the
Future in 1985. But now it's like, why is the Top Gun plane
still our main fucking plane? It's so far after that.
Yeah. So we're shown 100,000 dead
in one hour. And then we get kind of a talking Head Crossfire style show.
Yeah. With one guy who really reminds me of how Tucker Carlson was
on the Jon Stewart appearance on Crossfire in the early 2000s. I don't know if
you're familiar with that. Absolutely. Just ran him down.
But this is such a goofy guy. And he's just. He says the
other person is talking about, well, there might be, like, a brain bug. There might
be something around this, some intelligence. And the guy says, frankly, I find
the idea of a bug that thinks offensive. Right. Yeah. Well,
good for you, pal. But, like, it doesn't mean that's not real facts. Doesn't care
about your feelings. Right, Right. But, yeah, so that's.
So then what happens is basically, the sky marshal gets, you know, steps down.
Because it's a. It was a horrible move to just think they could, you know,
take the infantry onto Clindapu and just wipe things up one on one.
Basically terrible idea. Totally underestimated the enemy. So they step down. New sky marshal
comes in and is like, we're going to figure this out. We're going to.
We're going to protect the human race. Like, we're going to. We're going to get
it right. So they start with like an actual bombing run on.
On. Not on Clandathy, but like one of the outlying systems. Well, I know.
I guess we should say before we get to that, oh, Rico, Rico, join a
new team. Right. Because it's like Rico's KIA According to something that Carmen
sees. Yes. But then we see him in like. Reminded me of like, Empire Strikes
Back. Luke in the back to Tank. Right. He's in some kind of like,
healing thing that's sewing up his leg where he took a bug. You know,
forceps or whatever. It's like where Lilu Dallas came from in the Fifth Element.
Exactly. That kind of thing. Yeah. And so he's like, floating in this stuff.
And it's Ace and Dizzy show him his paperwork that says he's kia, which is
like, funny. I don't really even know why they. They did that, except to give
Carmen the idea that he's dead. But it's like, how did that mistake happen?
And then why is he immediately able to get re. Registered to like, a new
team or whatever if he's, you know, officially documented to being dead? Like, it's very
strange, but they get assigned to a new group, the Roughnecks. And so
basically the only ones that are left are Ace, Dizzy, and Rico. And so
they join this new group and who's the. They hear that the lieutenant's a real
ball buster. And Ace says this a few times or I think he says,
and the other troops don't. They don't stand for that.
So they're basically starting. They're like, you don't know how many times this guy saved
my life. He saved my life too. One of the other troops, I don't know
if you recognize this guy. The black dude,
bald head. He played Carver in the Wire. And he was also the priest
in Walking Dead. I don't know how long I never. Watched Walking Dead that went
for. But he was on the wire for the stretch of it, so it
was a familiar actor. I was like, oh, he got. Could have been the lead.
He actually is an actor, right? He's actually an actor. But yeah,
Radhak is the lieutenant. And they're immediately going. And there's
no, like, oh, good to see you. Hey, sorry about everybody, you know, from the
town that we both are from. Right. It's just all business right away.
Yeah. And he's got a mechanical arm now instead of just having the stump
that he had at the beginning of the movie. And he is there. And he
says he's got one rule. Everyone fights, nobody quits. If you don't do your
job, I'll shoot you myself. Yes. Okay. Well, I guess,
you know, setting expectations is really important. I'm glad that he's able to so clearly
set expectations with his team. Yeah. And. And now they end up on this.
On this planet here, where the air strikes had taken place. And they're there to
clean up. Yeah. And that makes a lot more sense. Right. You come in with
these, like, bomb. Clearly very effective. Almost like a napalm, you know, bombing. They're really
killing a ton of these arachnids with these bombs. And then they send down mobile
infantry to sort of clean up. And initially, they are sort of just walking through,
you know, carcasses. And it doesn't look like much. But they end up getting in
a fight, you know, with. With some bugs that are there. And then a big
one, one of these big. I think it's the same ones that do the plasma
shooting from their butts. They can also shoot flames, basically, from their faces.
Yeah. And it's sort of like a liquid that is on fire. So it fall.
It doesn't shoot. It shoots, like a flamethrower sort of idea. Right. Where the flame,
like, falls a bit after a little distance. But basically, like, they can't beat this
thing. Like, it's very hard. Right. They've already used a. The bullet aren't doing much.
The thing is so big. And the armor, the exoskeleton so thick. So Rico gets
the idea to get up onto, like, the cliff, you know, above it and jump
onto it. And then sort of use his gun to shoot a hole into its
carapace in the back. And he just basically tosses a grenade down into it and
flies, you know, whatever. It's basically Luke and the Walker on Hoth. Yeah. Same kind
of idea. And then he's, like, flown. Thrown free from it and it
explodes. And he took it. I mean. And everybody's like, dude, that's amazing. And it
gives us another cool scene, by the way. Very cool scene. Very good action scene.
Scene. One of the other sort of soldiers who's
like. I think maybe the corporal or the sergeant that, you know, was working with
Radcheck. She loses her arm. The flaming bug, like,
burns her arm off or whatever. So she obviously can't, you know, continue as a
leadership role, at least. Which Gives Rico there's an opening. Now he's a
field promotion to corporal. Yep, basically. And so. And Radcheck
says, I need a corporal. Rico, you're it until you're dead. Or until I find
someone better. That's right. Yeah, exactly. So then we. We kind of cut to the
evening of the same day and, you know, got a case of beer and a
couple of kegs of beer and some entertainment, which looks like footballs
and a fit. Yeah, it's very interesting. But they're having a little party. They're celebrating,
whatever. And one of the guys comes over to Rico, and another one
of the lines I love is like, rico, you kill bugs good.
And that was a choice. And you could tell the way that actor delivered that.
That was a choice. That was like. There's a way you can tell that.
Might have been the guy I was talking about. Exactly. And clearly an actor,
because that was such a fantastic deadpan delivery
of like, a crappy grammatical line. Yes, Rico, you kill bugs good.
He, like, gives him a beer, you know, like. And they're.
They're having this celebration, and. Yeah, it's great. And finally,
Rico and Diz, right, end up hooking up. And again she says to him,
I love you, Johnny. He does not say back, this man has had two beautiful
women. What's he holding out for? They love him. And he can't say it back.
This real. You know, of all your faults, Johnny Rico, that is one of the
biggest I know. Geez. They're about to hook up, and then Rad
Check basically pops his head in and says, you know, rico, we need you out
of here in. In 10 minutes. We're mobilizing again. Party's over. Yeah. And then he
sees some rustling under the. He's like, who is that? She pops her head up,
and then he goes, I'll make it 20 minutes. And,
you know, so they. They hook up and, you know, all good
for that. And she does say that she loves him, which is whatever.
You're in the battlefield. We're all going to die. Say what you want to say.
What does this guy have to offer besides his jawline? Like, really, this guy just
has. He's 100% jawline. Yeah.
Oh, my God. So. So now we're kind of on a new patrol, and they're
in this distress signal. Basically. They got a distress signal. They had to go,
you know, answer it. And so, yeah, they're, like, walking through and trying to figure
out, you know, what. What's going on in there? And Rico's looking through some binoculars
or whatever and looking up at the. There's, like, rocks coming down from above.
So it's like, what's going on? And there is a little flutter of maybe,
like, wings or something. But he doesn't really seem to notice or see anything,
which I would have been like, hey, lieutenant, I think I see something over that
ridge. Like, he clearly saw something that's not. A person talking
about here. So then red check sends his actual sergeant, who's got the comms pack
up to. He's like, yeah, he's like, I can't get anything on the comms.
Oh, well, it's this canyon. Get up to higher ground, you know, and do it
from there. Well, he does that. But then, yeah, one of these flying, like,
dragonfly sort of bugs, you know, comes and grabs him and is, like,
fleeing there and. And it's just all bad. And he's about to get, like,
eaten alive. And Rad Shack gets a sniper rifle and puts one through
his heart. And he's like, I expect everyone in this squad to do the same
for me. And it's like. I mean, I get that. That part. No, I mean,
that's. That's a good, you know, part of it. The mercy. The mercy killing.
Yeah. They end up coming across the distress signals coming from this base,
which looks very similar to that, like, Mormon outpost that it showed earlier. It's clearly
like a prefab fort. Usually get set up. Right.
A kit for it or whatever. Costco. Yeah, it's from temu.
And they go in there and just. Everyone's dead.
Like, this distress signal is coming from somewhere where literally everyone's dead. You could tell
that the bugs came in and took this whole thing over. There's nobody
there that they can find. Except then they hear this sound inside of a cabinet,
and there's a very cowardly, whimpering general character who's
like, oh, they're gonna kill us all. Very panicking. A good. Get ahold of
yourself. Where you get to slaps. I need a superior
officer, see? Someone who needs to get a hold of themselves so bad. It would
be your honor. I'm sorry. They needed to get a hold of themselves, so I
slapped them. Universal clear clearance for assault is that they needed
to get a hold of themselves. So this is a really cool scene here.
Yes. Yeah. So basically, they find the radio operator or the communications operator
and his. He's got a hole in his head almost the size of a baseball
ball. And, you know, Ratchet literally reaches into it and there's
no brain in there. They sucked his brain out. And that's when they find the
General. And when he comes out, he talks about how they get into your mind.
They make you do things. And they realize, oh, shit, this was not actually a
distress signal. Everybody was dead. And the bugs used this human
by controlling him, you know, sort of ratatouille style. Except from the inside of
the head, you know, and made the stress call. It was a trap.
They've been trapped. And so now they leave Diz to try to find. Fix the
comms, you know, communications array so they can reach out to the fleet.
And they now have to. They look over the fence of this outpost.
And an absolute huge swarm of arachnids coming out. I mean,
like, no amount of their rifles is going. Not enough weapons,
nothing. Yeah. And so they start attacking.
And, you know, one thing I've noticed is, like, it's very
much like. I feel like this happens in zombie movies a lot. Like, as zombies
come attacking some fortified position. Position. And you're killing them. They start climbing
the dead bodies. Exactly. The arachnids are now climbing
the pile of dead arachnids. As they're trying. Because there's. This base has a couple
of really big machine gun turrets. They're able to do some decent damage
on an. On an individual bug by bug basis. Right. This is not a winning
proposition for them. They need to get a drop ship. There's a point where the
General is just absolutely freaking out and like, oh, we're all dead. We're all gonna
die. Oh, my God. And then it's like these flying bugs are coming down.
And one of them gets shot. First of all, they're cutting heads off left and
right. Yes. Every time the flying limbs and heads. Flying heads cut in half,
heads cut off. It's really, really maniacal when these crazy flying
bugs come. But one of them gets shot by the big machine gunner or maybe
by a shotgun or something. And it sort of like loses control of its
flight path, but flies right into the General, just smearing him across the
ground. So he's gone. We don't got to worry about him anymore. And when that
happens, Ace and Rico give each other a kind of look. Look like.
There'S one less thing we got to worry about. It's a living. Like.
Another day at the office. It's funny how they react. And honestly, it was
good seeing that guy. Because that guy was very annoying. So,
yeah, the bugs, they're getting overrun. And they're like, we need
a rescue. Or we're all dead. Yeah. You better have a crazy pilot.
Yeah, right. Hope you've got a crazy pilot come down on this transmission inside the
outpost. I hope you got a crazy pilot foreshadowing. That will be revealed in 20
seconds. So, of course, then Carmen
ends up flying the evacuation ship into
there and Xander. And it looks like, okay, we're getting out. I mean,
guys are getting killed as they're trying to get in. But all of a sudden,
the ground is breached, I believe. And Radcheck
is pulled underneath, so he's basically halfway.
So he's losing his legs as well or whatever. So Rico
needs to. Ratcheck says, like, you know what to do do. He mercy kills Radheck.
And then on their way out as well, at the very last second,
Diz gets really slashed as she's getting onto the transport.
So she gets on there with them, and then they. And then they take
off. I have always wished in watching this. I mean, literally from the first viewing
of this movie, I really wished it had been Carmen and not dizzy. That got
it. Yeah. I feel like if one of these two had to survive, I really
wish it had been dizzy totally. But, yeah, so.
So now they're on the drop ship. They're getting away, and Rico runs
up to Xander and Carmen and is like, you know, hey, let's get. You know,
get the fleet to bombard planet P immediately. You know, whatever. And. And he's.
And over. You know, so he calls that in, but in over the comms coming
back, I think the captain of their ship, Brenda Strong, she's like, negative. You know,
Fleet's got. Or, you know, military intelligence has another plan for P. And Enrico
gives one of the best. Actually, one of the best lines he delivers in the
movie, which is, that's right. Right. Infantry does the dying. Fleet does the flying.
And I do like the way he delivers it. It's very angry and upset and
fittingly so. So. So kudos, Casper. That was. That was a good line delivery.
But, yeah. So they're brought back up to the Roger Young, which is the.
The ship that Carmen's on. Right. And. And Diz is succumbed
to her injuries, so. So she is no more. Diz gets killed.
And the thing that she says to Johnny is, at least I got to have
you. Which is just. God, Diz, you're so much better than that. I'm sure your
life is so full of achievements that are better than fucking this zilch.
Who, like, didn't pay any attention to. You, you could have been
playing starting quarterback For Tokyo. Yeah,
I mean, jeez. But at least it
wasn't a. Another unreturned I love you. Yeah, that's true.
That's true. That's a good point. And although he did have the opportunity to see,
say, a pretty consequence free. I love you. If you wanted to at that point.
Dude, let it rip, man. She's not getting better. Promise her some
stuff. Come on. Oh, we'll get married as soon as we land. Just what we
call pillow talk, baby.
So now they end up. They basically have this kind of
space funeral for Diz. The conditions you end up being your
remains end up in as someone who makes it back to the ship are so
much better. There's all these half people just littering planets everywhere.
And then Diz gets a cool like, coffin shot out into space
and this like, ceremony and it's like a Viking funeral. Yeah, very cool.
Carl immediately walks in very cold. It looks like
Carl's Neil Patrick Harris. We haven't seen him in a bit. His eyes look kind
of more sunken. Like there's something about the way he looks that it's.
Yeah. Like he's been affected by what he's doing. They were trying to show us.
Yeah, like, you know, he's become colder, more calculated, tired,
stressed, etc stuff, you know, he makes a comment about, like, hey, you know,
thanks to you guys, we now know P has a brain bug on it.
And they're like, oh, that's what this was all about. Yeah, like, had to make
calls. And he basically says, like, you don't like it? Too bad. This is how
it works, you know, we send in people to go die. I do this all
the. I do this all day long. Very cold, very heartless, and very intentionally
so. And this was the thing where I will forgive you if you did
not take these uniforms as satire because they are so on the note.
Very close for SS uniforms. They are literally missing nothing
except for the swastika itself. The red armband, that's the only thing they're missing.
But Prince Harry Halloween costume level, it's. Still very much
satire. This is. This is a. This is part of the Verhoeven's,
you know, play on this. But yes, these are very on the nose. Not the
hats in particular look exactly like the dude who died on the tank in Indiana
Jones and Last Crusade. Like, he sure looked exactly like that. So. So I get
it. But yeah, but this is. This is the. They're the head honcho shows and
it's. They've discovered that they did believe that bugs had
brain bugs. There were thinking bugs that are kind of controlling these
swarms. And this proves it. Right. They basically felt like, you know, we know for
sure now. He's got a brain on it. Because they couldn't have, you know,
ambushed you basically. Right. Regular bugs wouldn't plan for us. That they
just send out to a planet. Probably wouldn't be doing. Exactly. So that's. So that's
the thing. So now they're going to have to go back. And this is one
thing I want to briefly mention. Mention is that I do feel like this movie's
too long. I feel like this movie's too long by 15 to 20 minutes.
I. I think that's fair. And one of the things is they have four different
active campaigns and they really could have done two or three.
Yeah. Because there's the. There's the one where, you know, they go to. They go
to Clindathu and everybody gets decimated and Rico loses his whole squad. Like that kind
of had to happen. I get it. Right. But then once he joins the Roughnecks,
everything that happened to that point could. Have all been combined. Yeah. It could have
all been one. One attack. You know. Yeah. Maybe you lose this. You could have
had Dizzy and how was it? Casper, Enrico, you know,
screw on the boat beforehand if they had to. I don't know. There would have
been ways to do it. Carmen doesn't have to think he's dead at some point.
Like this is all kind of. There was so much extra stuff in. Right.
But it is what it is for. The trunk full of Frisbees and saxophones.
So now we're going to have our fourth deployment. Basically down
to a bug planet in order to capture the. The brain.
That's. That's the new mission. Right. Is not that they're not there to destroy anything
necessarily. They're there to capture it. Right. And Carmen and Xander again
have the duty of getting them down there. That's right. The starship is heavily
under attack and Carmen and Xander end up crash landing
like real quick. So their. Their. Their ship gets hit like real bad.
Like it's clear that it's going down. He actually cuts their ship in half.
So them and their captain Brennan Strong are. Are running around trying to get the
escape pods. She gets crushed by a door in a
way that was very reminiscent to me of Rose McGowan and scream getting cut in
half by the garage door. It was something that I thought of initially. But yeah.
So they get. Xander and Carmen get to an escape pod and they get out.
But they are basically have no other choice but to fly down to the planet's
surface. Yeah. And try to. To, you know, call for help from there. And they
actually end up sort of busting through the ground into like this underground cavern system.
Which is not ideal if you're on a planet overrun by bugs.
Not at all. And of course they end up being surrounded
by the basic arachnids. Like the kind of infantry type arachnids
that we see. And they're looking at each other like they
both have been stabbed, I think Carmen through the shoulder and Xander through the leg.
And they're like, why aren't they killing us? Why aren't they killing us? What's going
on? And then all of a sudden they kind of back up. And then these
little like, kind of what they were dissecting. All kinds
of come up. Yeah. And then the Brain Bug walks up and this kind
of arm, like, spider arm looking thing comes out of its. But it's a
straw. Yeah. And it. And it jams into Xander's head and just
drinks his brains out. Sucks his brain right out. Which is like very Highlander,
very like, I'm gaining your powers, I guess, or something. I'm learning what you know,
like, as if our thoughts and knowledge is literally stored
in our brain in an accessible way. Right. Like, if I eat this, I will
know everything you know. That's exactly right. That's exactly, exactly what it is. But so
car. But Rico's Roughnecks now because. Because Rad checks dead.
Rico is the lieutenant of the Roughnecks has taken over. And they call it Rico's
Roughnecks as they've welcomed a whole bunch of new, very young recruits.
Right. In order to be part of this, they're heading down through the tunnels.
They know where another group is going. And they kind of are being told where
to go to find the Brain Bug. But. But Rico stops at
this sort of, you know, fork in the road basically under. In these underground tunnels.
And his left, like, we need to go this way. And they're like, well,
A company's that way. He's like, yeah, but Carmen's this way. And they were pretty
sure she's dead because they heard that the Roger Young went down Y. And so
he's like, okay, the rest of Roughnecks, you guys go. But I need two volunteers.
So Ace, I think it's Wilcox, I think is the name of the other character.
And they go with him down to like where, you know,
basically where Xander and Carmen are. And before
they get there. Xander's been killed by the Brain Bug. And the bug is.
The Brain Bug is coming at Carmen to suck her brains to kill, too.
But before that happened, she had been handed a knife by Xander in a way
that none of the arachnids notice. I don't know where their eyeballs are located.
She is able to reach up and cut off this proboscis, this whatever straw
thing. Yeah. That comes out of the Brain Bug. She's able to cut it off.
Now, why she is not instantly shredded by the arachnids after
having attacked their leader, I don't know. I'm not sure why that worked that way.
But it is about that time that Rico and Ace and Wilcox show up.
And they start, you know, sort of firing at. At the bugs and sort of
shooting whatever and trying to save her. And they're able to hold. He's holding up
a nuke, you know, threatening. He's. He's like, you know, Princess Leia in Jabba's
palace, you know, with a thermal detonator. Yeah. Holding it up like, I'm gonna blow
us all. You know what? This is gonna go boom. You're a smart. You're a
smart bug, right? This is gonna. You know. And so the Brain Bug backs off.
But I can see why maybe the arachnids didn't attack then, right? The Brain Bugs
telling them, right. Hey, this guy's serious, Whatever, that sort of thing. Brain Bug backs
out. They're able to head down the. Down the way. And I think Wilcox
takes an arachnid, you know, Spike, through the arm or through the
chest. He's gone. So he says, leave me the nuke. I'll. Yeah, I'll take care.
He's in Dyson mode. He is. He's in Miles Dyson mode. But he's
not going out like Miles Dyson because he is blasting the entire time.
Yes. He's got the gun going. He's really. He's really letting it rip. And he
saves the day. He didn't. He didn't act it quite
as well as the great Joe Morton there. But. But you got to
have that part. You got to have the person who sacrifices. I'm going to die
anyway. Let me blow up some of these guys before I go out. So Ace
and Carmen and Rico are able to exit the tunnels, at which point they see
a bunch of cheering infantry. And it's like something's big
has happened. So they sort of join the crowd that's running. And it's like,
oh, we caught it we caught the brain bug. Oh my gosh. Kind of thing.
At which point one of my thoughts is like, why aren't they being swarmed by
arachnids? They've pulled this brain bug out of the cavern. It's like ropes
and they're capturing it. But like, why aren't they being attacked by all the other
bugs on the planet at that point? I mean, I wonder if the brain bug
can give instruction, like knowing a probability of I will be killed
if you. Its own self preservation, I guess.
Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, it doesn't fit with the mentality of like the
horde of insects that were led to. But if this is the one bug that
is sort of human and has an ego and has an understanding of and fear
of death, then maybe that makes sense. I didn't quite put that together, but okay,
that. That works. I would say to the music at this point in the movie,
pretty much from Carmen and Xander's capture through the other action of that
of these scenes and into this capture. The music in the background really was
reminiscent to me of Avengers Endgame. And obviously it would be the other way around
that the endgame music is reminiscent of this. But like having watched Endgame
more recently than my last viewing of Starship Troopers, it was really funny how
very much like the event Avengers theme, the music playing in
this thing is. And it made me think about just how fascistic is the Avengers.
If that's like what the line I'm drawing or the connection I'm drawing here,
that's for another podcast. So the brain
bug comes out and it's just captured in the most old timey classic style
net that they're dragging it out. So it's like what it took in the
end was just capturing this guy. Carl walks up to the brain bug.
Yeah. And puts his hand on its head. Right. And then looks down and says,
it's afraid. So he's able to sense that it has.
Cheers. Because they're all. They were aware in what they
were aware of. Right. Because they obviously didn't know their enemy that well. They feel
no fear. Yeah. So there is no. Yeah. Like they're the perfect soldier
kind of thing. But now we know, okay. In this society of bugs, there are
some that are afraid and they're the ones in charge. So therefore. Or they can
maybe be manipulated, I guess is sort of the thought. Right, right, right.
And I think Carl basically reunites
with Rico and Carmen and you know, hey, we're old buddies together and
stuff. And Carl says You know, in the end, what it took was a private
named Zim who was able to capture the bug. And this is the former drill
sergeant who had busted himself down to private so he could see some of the
shit in the. Rather than be stuck killing and maiming recruits
as a drill sergeant, the final thing
that we're shown is another one of the propaganda
reels. And it's service guarantees
citizenship and it's highlighting some of the characters we've watched throughout the
movie. You could be like the pilot, Xander and Carmen
Ibanez or Captain. Right. They all have increased ranks. Lieutenant Rico and
although they noticed, they mentioned Private Ace, whatever his name is. So in other words,
he said he was done, he didn't want anything.
Okay, that's a good point. I was thinking to myself, like, how did he not
get any promotions while. While Rico went from private to corporal to sergeant lieutenant,
he gets nothing. But he forgot he did say that specifically, that he just wanted
to. To fight, basically. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's fine. And then, you know,
you see that Rico has adapted rad checks like, come on, you want to live
forever and stuff like that as they're running into to war. So it
ends with, you know, they'll keep fighting and they'll win. Yeah. And just ends
on this propaganda video. And then that's the movie. That's it.
So good. And yeah, it's a little too long. Definitely, definitely,
you know, maybe 15, 20 minutes too long, but like damn good stuff. And it
was so interesting to watch it today just with everything going on. And I'm not
going to get into every bit of it, but like, you know, there is a
reliance on militarization and othering of. Of people who are foreign
of us. And there's so much going on that this movie attacks
in a satirical way that is very prevalent and
very sort of apropos today. And so I thought it was a really interesting watch
in 2025. Yeah, yeah. Well, this was your movie, Steve. Should I
give my four first? So like I
said, this is something that right off the bat, when I first saw it as
a young person, it got me for a lot of reasons. And I think over
time, time it gets me for different reasons. I agree with you about the length
of the movie. I think you could carve 15 or 20 out of it.
And then certain of the performances weren't great or whatever. But I kept
coming back to Verhoeven was somehow able to make $100
million critique of the US empire or just any kind
of colonial empire in A very smart way. And maybe
if it was so obvious that the Stephen Hunters
of the world knew what it was supposed to be, then it wouldn't have got
greenlit, potentially, you know, so it's like you have to. You have to be a
little subversive with this stuff. And I think this is just. It's classic Verhoeven.
I really enjoy him. I like the risk that he takes.
I'm kind of surprised at how this didn't do all that well.
I mean, it didn't do well at the box office by the standards
that we use, but it was an enjoyable movie
to watch. I think the special effects are decent. They hold. Hold up pretty well.
I agree completely. Especially all of the creature effects. The bugs in particular,
hold up. They look real well. Yeah. And it's nice starting with something that's
completely unfamiliar to people. So, like, we don't know how those are supposed to move
and if the effects make it look good or not. Right. So totally different.
They created this world. And the propaganda videos spliced throughout
were very brilliant. The looks of it, you know, the Nazi ness
of it was an intentional part of the satire. Tire acting,
not good. But I think some of it was okay. Again, I think,
you know, some of. The side characters, like you said, well. And Dina Meyer,
I think, is a decent actress who played Dizzy. And obviously Neil Patrick Harris is
a good actor and he wasn't in a ton of it, but, you know,
he's a good actor. And Michael Ironsides is a fantastic actor. There were definitely some
people, but really, it suffered from Rico, Carmen and Xander in particular.
And Jake Busey is, you know, not a very good actor either. But really,
those three, Xander, Carmen and Rico are all pretty bad. And it
definitely hurt, sort of the actual film itself. Yeah. Yeah.
All that being said, though, I can't give this anything less than a four
out of five because I have so much respect. First of all, I really enjoyed
just the ride of the movie. Yeah. I like a little Massie star showing up
in it. And also I just have a lot of respect for what Verhoeven was
trying to do. And I think that time has kind of vindicated this film.
Yes. So I'm giving it a four out of five. Five. Really liked it.
That's great. That's good stuff. Yeah. I mean, I kind of can't disagree with anything
you said. I think that I. The. The qualms I have with the film are
all very similar to the ones you have. Like I said from before, you know,
I Think it is a little too long. There definitely could have been a much
more like a streamlining of the plot. We didn't need as many deployments, you know,
by each unit quite as, as much as we had. And so,
you know, there's that part of it, the acting, yeah, definitely left something to be
desired by, by the. Unfortunately the people on the screen the most. Right. Which is
a bummer. However, you know, this is classic Verhoeven.
I, I love about it that it was so misunderstood at
its inception, at its release because I feel like it adds to the, the sort
of mythology of the film and, and gives it this sort of place in like
my mind and I think in a lot of moviegoers minds about how we
can be wrong about how movies are received. And we have to, you know,
the movie never changes. Right. Nothing about the film changes from the
moment that it is released until whatever time in the future we change.
Right. And so we have to re examine films with whatever
new perspective we have. And the fact that this movie came out before 9,
11 in particular. And again, I wonder if it could have come out after.
But the fact that came up before I think is one of the reasons that
it was so difficult for people to notice and recognize the
satire of it and the anti fascist, you know, sort of bend throughout
the movie movie. Which again is sort of silly when you think about Verhoeven and
that this was the fifth of a run of. Five very strong Verven.
Right. And two of which were in the sci fi genre. He'd already done RoboCop
and Total Recall. So having this setting and being able to make modern day,
this is very much Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Mikado. This is making fun of,
you know, or satirizing what they did was they satirized, you know,
British, the British Empire in a way that would have gotten them thrown in jail
if it had been about Britain. So it was about Japan. Right. And it's not.
It was all about Britain, but the setting was Japan. This is all about the
United States, but the setting was this future in space.
Right. And so it's, it's, it's classic quality satire
in that way. I am also a four out of five. I think this is
a four star movie. It's not a perfect movie by any stretch, but it is
so important and it's, and it's. The story behind it is so good and
sort of everything about it, it's just, it's one I love. So. Yeah, so we're
an 8 out of 10. The 2D on Starship Troopers masterpiece from Paul
Verhoeven. And, well, this. This was my pick. So, Nick, what are we going to
watch next week? Well, I know we just watched a very
biting satire of aspects of US Society,
directed by a maybe underappreciated director who we both
love, starring an actor who's definitely not a classically trained.
You know, are we doing this again? You're saying? So what
we're doing next is we're gonna go to the year 1988 and we're
gonna go to Los Angeles and we're gonna hang
out with one of my favorite Scotsman. Okay? The great rowdy Roddy Piper.
Love it. And we're gonna enjoy John Carpenter's classic they Live.
You're absolutely right, though, that the parallels between, you know, the choice of the actor,
the director being misunderstood, but immensely creative. I mean, even. And we'll
get into this next week. The creature effects in the special effects in
their movies collectively fantastic. I love they Live. I have not seen it, I think,
since college. All right, over two decades since I've seen They Live.
But yeah. Ready to strap on the sunglasses, man? Hell yeah. Can't wait, man.
So this has been another episode of two Dads, one Movie. This was Starship
Troopers. If you like what you're hearing, please go to Apple, go to Spotify,
give us a five star review. It helps people find the podcast. And if you
want to send us a note, let us know what we're doing well or not,
or give us your opinion on stuff, you can email us at the showdadson movie.com
that's number two. And the number one, I'm Steve. And I'm Nick. And next
week, we'll be back with they Live. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Bye.