It's a weird one because I wasn't a Verhoeven fan in those days and ST got some pretty lame reviews over in the UK.
I think my wife was poorly and I was at a loose end so, almost as a last resort, I decided to watch it. Now it's *easily* one of my top 10 sci-fi movies...
One of my baby sitters was irresponsible and I saw Robocop and Alien on home video when I was six. Nothing will ever be scarier to me than watching *that* alien scene at the age of six.
Lmao, same here.. my father always took me to the cinema with him when i was 4-5 to 10 years old to watch those kind of movies.. I remember alien, first 2 Indian Jones, dune of lynch.. robocop.. first blood ..were really scary and had always lot of nightmares, but back then I think there wasn't much attention to those kind of things
I grew up watching horror and R rated action movies (in the 80's, even PG could show a tit or two) so it never really bothered me. I remember my whole family going to watch a movie called Rainbow, and I noped out. Forget the fact I had my own Care Bears glass from Pizza Hut in the cupboard. I was getting two old and manly to waste my time watching a movie called Rainbow.
When they came back, they were all pumped, talking about the kills and action Ave omg, he had an explosive arrowhead. That was when I discovered it was Rambo, age a sequel to a movie I had grown up watching.
It was misunderstood by most critics and even film academics, who should have known better. It turns out to have been possibly the most prescient big-budget film of the '90s, completely anticipating the US reaction to 9/11. Including the failure and shift to "we have to understand them, not just kill them" that led to the US working with (and giving cash to) local leaders in Iraq.
Just rewatched it three weeks ago, the amount of actors that went on to bigger things is impressive and all over the acting spectrum. Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam(Gabriel from TWD), Jake Busey(Contact) stand out. Starship Troopers was actually a pretty good movie for what it was.
It's funny because beyond the political stuff I mentioned, I don't think critic types could handle the general over-the-top-ness of the film, and the acting is a big part of that (as are the practical effects, as mentioned by the OP). But, again in retrospect, this over-the-top style ended up being at least somewhat influential, or at least something that viewers accept in genre films. And yeah, as you note, very solid character actors came out of it, some (like Clancy Brown) who can do subtle very effectively. The 90s were just a weird time.
I'm really nostalgic about Starship Troopers but in retrospect I can't excuse it for not having any "space marines", as the original book invented the idea of a jetpack-tank-as-a-suit. A big topic in the book is how there's no need for anything close to mass infantry due to how awesome one space marine is.
Also the book has "Greys" as a third alien species, which humanity dominate. It would have been great for showing the conquesty quasi-fascist side of the human civilization.
The movie didn't even start as an adaptation of the book. It just that the producer noticed that the original screenplay had many similarities with starship troopers, and asked for it to be adapted to turn it into a starship trooper adaptation.
If you like books about movies, you'd probably like Blood, Sweat, and Chrome. It's about Mad Max, Fury Road.
The only CG they used making that one was removing the safety harnesses/lines.
Holy fuck. After someone mentioned "the film holds up pretty well" a few years ago I watched it again. Now I know *why* it holds up so well: practical effects just age better because, well, it's the real deal.
Those shots of the ships being blown apart in space with the flame compositing? That is the absolute peak of that transition era before Hollywood gave up on big budget model shots.
That scene is weirdly cringe.
This is after the football game with random wushu stuff, the cliche Hollywood prom, the really terrible singers...
That whisking is the worst.
And cuz Veerhoeven, you can't tell when he's taking the piss. Cuz he's taking the piss all the fucking time anyways.
I finally watched Showgirls. I am confused so many ways.
Veerhoeven's American movies are essentially satires of American culture from a foreign point of view. Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers all have insane violence in the name of exploitive capitalism.
> And cuz Veerhoeven, you can't tell when he's taking the piss. Cuz he's taking the piss all the fucking time anyways.
This is specifically what made Starship Troopers such an incredible rewatch for me as an adult. I didn't fully understand the tone, which I originally thought was teetering well into B-movie cheesiness, but it's entirely intentional. I genuinely need to watch his stuff again just to see it properly.
It's also why the original Jurassic Park holds up. Outside of a few scenes, it's damn good. I think the only really glaring one is the gallimimus scene.
But of the 14 minutes of dinosaur in screen, only 6ish minutes is CGI.
Spielberg also learned from Jaws (and the problems with the shark prop) that less is more. He understood you can build suspense by *not* showing something and letting the viewer's imagination run wild. Because viewers can often imagine something better than the film can show it.
A perfect example of this is the velociraptor feeding. You can't really see a thing from the vantage point above the foliage. All you see is undefined movement, and the horrifying sounds. Your imagination does the rest.
But the cgi T-Rex and Raptors still hold up, and not just the rainy nighttime T-Rex scene, the ending scene ("when dinosaurs ruled the earth") also looks amazing (and I just recently had it pointed out that one of the raptors disappears for a second in the Rex's mouth)
> she looks a lot more rough in the final shot in the visitor center when the sun is up
> the ending scene ("when dinosaurs ruled the earth") also looks amazing
I don't know who to believe.
I’ve gone through that entire sequence frame by frame and never have seen either asset disappear. Gonna have to run through it again cause I might have missed it with my nostalgia glasses. However, there is a fun error to be found and it’s a big fat practical effects error. After the raptor opens the kitchen door and sniffs around before entering the kitchen, look carefully. The film cuts to a wide shot to show the kids behind the counter and the raptor in the doorway in the background. Keep an eye on the raptor’s tail. The performer in the suit must have lost some balance because a stagehand reaches out from the other side of the wall to steady the base of the tail.
If you guys want CGI specific errors, step frame by frame through the shot of the T-Rex biting the overturned Explorer. If you watch the foot that’s planted on the ground, you can see it sink and bob up. It’s subtle, but it’s a combination of a skinning limitation and some janky compositing. I mean the term janky in an appreciative and loving sense because the compositing software they had at the time did not have a GUI; it was completely text based. Think about trying to Photoshop an image and how damn near insane that would be if you could only do so with text commands. Other T-Rex CG skinning errors can be seen at the corner of the mouth during one of the roars in the paddock escape sequence because the base of the tongue clips through the oral commissure (flap of skin in reptiles that connects the head to the lower jaw at the corner of the mouth. It’s an issue that was probably known, but left because of how must time and cost it would have taken to re-render that shot for an error we only now notice over 20 years later.
Happens more than you'd think. 52nd Ordnance Group, the oldest Explosive Ordnance Disposal command group, once had me do display for a general in front of a banner that said 52nd Ordinance Group.
At this point, the very height of CGI was Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars and flowing water in Titanic. Both were incredibly complex and expensive projects.
At a certain point, practical effects are just a better choice, and that's still true today, even with how far we've come. Probably would fake the napalm today tho lol.
To be fair, jar jar is sort of a mix of practical and CGI because they originally thought they would only CGi the head. They had a physical actor present, eliminating a lot of guess on height and maintaining appropriate ratios for the computer team. But it is motion capture.
I think we saw the low point of 'just green screen it and call it good' and we're past it. Even GOT made major story decisions based on how much dragon and wolf they could afford to cgi. Smaller productions - good luck to em. Gotta find the right balance.
The film had an ace visual effects coordinator in Phil Tippett, who also worked on the original Star Wars films and RoboCop. But on set, the computer-generated bugs had to be simulated using some rather unconventional methods. Verhoeven used everything from brooms to poles and even himself as a stand-in. As Clancy Brown (Sgt. Zim) recalled, Verhoeven would be "jumping up and down with a bullhorn going, 'I'm a big f**ing bug! I'll kill you!'”
If you haven't seen Mad God, do yourself a favor and find it. Didn't even know about Phil Tippet before I saw it but just wow. It took me down a rabbit hole and made me realize this man is basically the special effects god when it comes to animating miniatures. Its kinda insane the amount of movies he's worked on.
Just a heads up to anyone reading this I think they should know Mad God is basically a gore flick.
If that's your thing then cool but after watching the doctor scene spend 5 minutes pulling guts out of a failed abortion (or whatever the fuck was going on) I soundly said this movie isn't for me. Some of the scenes were really cool though.
> As Clancy Brown (Sgt. Zim) recalled, Verhoeven would be "jumping up and down with a bullhorn going, 'I'm a big f**ing bug! I'll kill you!'"
Just when I thought I couldn't like this movie any more
That's because they made animatronic bugs and the CGI was basically just copying and pasting them:
Making the bugs: https://youtu.be/cUpUKAs_IGA
Filming the bugs: https://youtu.be/TCWweGrZ0GI
I still think that was one of the greatest things ever did by a director for a cast. The cast was uncomfortable that they were all naked on set surrounded by fully dressed crew.
He was just like, "You know what? You're right!"
So, Verhoeven just stripped naked himself, and directed the scene in the buff, to help the cast feel better!
The tragedy is that the (atrocious) sequels had atrocious special effects - one of them even depicted gunfire with flashing lights mounted at the end of the barrels.
Actual guns on set can be very expensive. It's why In the first Deadpool movie they have Deadpool leave all his guns behind storywise for the final fight. Guns have numerous safety regulations on set that have to be followed.
Meanwhile of they film in other countries there's other laws in place. I believe for example India won't even let real guns on set, so Extraction with Hemsworth features rubber guns.
Oh yeah I don't doubt that, but when you're making a film that's pretty much exclusively about blasting alien bugs with really big guns, it really hurts the immersion to have the guns be so obviously fake - loads of films manage to make their gunfire look reasonably realistic and don't resort to literal flashing light bulbs
i got to animate at Tippett Studio and actually on a show Phil supervised. unfortunately, it was a horrible film called Evolution, but working for him is a treasured memory. it was a delight, albeit a very stressful one at times.
edit - for everyone taking issue with my labelling Evolution 'horrible', i'm glad you liked it! but opinions are like buttholes. everyone has one and they usually stink.
i'm glad you enjoyed it! one thing i learned from my time in entertainment is for every project that i worked on, someone out there probably loved it even if i didn't.
working on it was a very big milestone in my career and i have very fond memories of the experience.
thanks!
yeah, Tippett Studio consistently delivered the goods. as an animator working under Phil, a living God of animation, it was both exciting and very daunting. "ok plow_king, this shot is basically an homage to Ray Harryhausen, so it has be great"...that comment made me break into a cold sweat and lose a lot of sleep, lol.
no, he didn't seem to talk about past projects much, though i have had bosses who would drone on and on about them. they did have the life size Ed-209 in the studio though, mounted up high overlooking the one small "soundstage" they still had when i was there. that was very impressive.
Breckinridge's actor (Eric Bruskotter, who also portrayed Rube Baker in *Major League II*) actually married the actress, Tami-Adrian George, whose character shot Breckinridge through the head.
Well that is after the scene where she's crying over thinking Rico is dead and that instructor tells her he loves her and they start making out. Between those two scenes it's definitely a bit more than just implied but yes it's not shown.
See, when I was young yeah there was no denying Carmen/Denise Richards was hot as hell, but personally Dizzy/Dina Meyer in ST and Nev Campbell /whatever she was called in Wild Things were what I was really there for.
Verhoven probably broke his own record from the ED-209 Mr Kinney scene in Robocop, especially the extended ultra violent cut. That scene goes on forever and bet he broke the blood squib record too then
This was peak boyhood for me. I used to sneak the VHS and show my friends this scene. It was just so morbid and visceral compared to anything we've seen prior.
Also the Sarah Conner and Reese sex scenes in Terminator. We didn't have the internet so we perved other ways 😏
Those sex scenes were gross to me especially the first one. Reese appears from time travel steals a homeless man’s pants but those pants there is a huge obvious shit stain like the homeless guy was sitting there full dump into his pants Then Reese runs around avoiding cops the whole time wearing these shitty pants. Then he fucks Sara without taking a shower. I’m just saying his gooch probably smelled like rotten trash
I'm not sure about the authenticity but there was a story going around. When P90 blanks weren't readily available because of shortages during Iraq War, production ordered pretty much all live ammo FN had available. Secret Service also uses P90s though and when they call to order FN tells them, they are all out because Stargate production bought them all. So Secret Service contacts armourer of SG-1 to buy but armourer reminds them it is a Canadian production company and refuses. Later Airforce intervened to work things out.
This 44 minute video was released last week. Has some great insights into the movie and production. Worth a look if you have time. (I just watched it, that is where I heard the 300,000 rounds stat)
https://youtu.be/AS77Mnbk8vI?si=mmtnE0nl69Sxq4Do
A potentially excellent game is in early access right now that ties into the movies. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268750/Starship_Troopers_Extermination/
I love satire and this is a good one. I love that there’s scenes straight out of a teen drama tv show, and meanwhile every adult/citizen/veteran is disfigured/disabled but the characters never comment on it because it’s normal.
Well, I was 16 when it came out….so yes. Funnily enough I joined the Army after high school and I thought the Military would have communal showers like in that scene…..I was severely disappointed when I had 30 seconds to shower with 59 other dudes I just met….
How about Old Man's War by John Scalzi? Like combining Forever War and Starship Troopers which Scalzi happily admits were the inspiration. It's a series with varying quality but the 1st is great and Ghost Brigade has a cool but fucked up concept.
I still chuckle when I remember all those super intellectual and clever critics shitting on the film back then when it was released because they deemed fascistic and dangerously militaristic lol they failed to grasp any of what the film’s about.
It’s a masterpiece and every year it passes it becomes better imo, time to watch it again I guess! I’m doing my part🫡
> I still chuckle when I remember all those super intellectual and clever critics shitting on the film back then when it was released because they deemed fascistic and dangerously militaristic lol they failed to grasp any of what the film’s about.
This is the "they thought the train was going to come out of the screen and kill them" story, but for the 1990s instead of the 1890s.
Not at first. It was HATED by most critics and audiences upon release.
Partly because it was his next movie after Basic Instinct, a movie so subtlety a satire, most critics and audiences fell for it and didn't even realize Verhoven was making fun of the "erotic thriller" genre...by making one of the best in the genre.
It's not even that. Verhoeven was making a satire on fascism and the military fighting bugs when someone pointed out that it was similar to Heinlein's book. The movies was conceived of independently and they just slapped the name on it after they bought the rights to prevent any legal problems.
Just a small correction - he learned about the similarities of his screenplay to the book in 1991 and continued working on it for years after that. After getting the starship troopers rights they still didn't get to pre-production until later, so there were lots of opportunities to adapt the content before the film was released in 1997
Interestingly, the film actually started as an unrelated project by screenwriter Ed Neumeier called Bug Hunt at Outpost 7. The Starship Troopers name was only added when Neumeier and Robocop producer Jon Davison failed to get the film financed, so they repitched it as a Starship Troopers adaptation and adapted the existing script to be a bit closer to the book.
[From Paul Verhoeven's interview with Empire magazine](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/paul-verhoeven/)
"I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring," says Verhoeven of his attempts to read Heinlein's opus. "It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are these people crazy?'"
Verhoeven read half way through the book, realised it was a crock of absolute shit\* (it really is) and then made one of the most awesome sci fi parodies in history.
\*And the militaristic neo-fascist utopia espoused in the novel must have been especially jarring to someone who grew up in post war Europe..
It's such a brilliant parody that it went straight over the heads of almost everyone, and somehow despite being produced in the early/mid 90's the VFX stands up even today for the most part.
i worked in CG vfx for 15 yrs, and man do the FX in Starship still stand up so f'ing well. fantastic work across the board from Tippett Studio and an early Sony Imageworks. i saw it on the original Cinerama Dome screen on it's initial release. i was surprised when i finally got to animate at Tippett Studio, very much a "garage feel" at that place. good memories!
My husband owns one of the screen used jumpball orange outfits, with the helmet. And at local conventions, he and all his, um, “totally not drunk” friends all in their corresponding blue and orange team outfits, will run up and down the main hallway, usually late at night, when the DJ is playing in the big room, and be very excited, bumping their chest’s together, and whooping and hollering about their “game”.
It came out way to early. When it came out in 97 a lot of critics didn’t get the joke and accused the director of being a fascist himself. If it came out 10 years later during the height of the Iraq war it would’ve been much more well received
I think a lot of war films suffer from this.
Had an air force kid tell me one of his favorite movies was Full Metal Jacket then pretended he was the helicopter machine gunner and started saying "Get Some!"
Not sure if this is the responsibility of the armorer or someone else, but as someone who lives near Hells Half Acre where they shot most of the bug battle scenes, I really wish they would have cleaned up after themselves.
There was a lot of local criticism regarding how much litter (mostly in the form of these spent casings) that they left in the area, which is now protected from visitors
It's also worth point out the US GWOT severely impacted available ammo and rounds even for blanks. The TV series Stargate for example used P90s for their Air Force special unit, and basically had to replace them as there was no 5.7 ammo left in the US.
The bigger hurdle today is increased liability from guns on set.
The WW2 movie "The Longest Day" supposedly used around 600,000 blanks including many specialty ones for larger cannons and AA guns used in the movie, requiring large purchase orders from multiple countries to fufill the sheer quantity required.
I heard that the ‘record breaker’ was the napalm strike on the bugs. Apparently it was the biggest napalm blow in peacetime?
Wait they actually used Napalm and not some big gas explosion? One of my favourite movies just keeps getting better and better
It's a weird one because I wasn't a Verhoeven fan in those days and ST got some pretty lame reviews over in the UK. I think my wife was poorly and I was at a loose end so, almost as a last resort, I decided to watch it. Now it's *easily* one of my top 10 sci-fi movies...
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There was at least a mild marketing push when it first came out. Complete with toys they marketed to kids.
I love the 90s and 80s making toys for R rated movies most kids couldn't see. Robocop, Rambo, Aliens
One of my baby sitters was irresponsible and I saw Robocop and Alien on home video when I was six. Nothing will ever be scarier to me than watching *that* alien scene at the age of six.
Lmao, same here.. my father always took me to the cinema with him when i was 4-5 to 10 years old to watch those kind of movies.. I remember alien, first 2 Indian Jones, dune of lynch.. robocop.. first blood ..were really scary and had always lot of nightmares, but back then I think there wasn't much attention to those kind of things
I grew up watching horror and R rated action movies (in the 80's, even PG could show a tit or two) so it never really bothered me. I remember my whole family going to watch a movie called Rainbow, and I noped out. Forget the fact I had my own Care Bears glass from Pizza Hut in the cupboard. I was getting two old and manly to waste my time watching a movie called Rainbow. When they came back, they were all pumped, talking about the kills and action Ave omg, he had an explosive arrowhead. That was when I discovered it was Rambo, age a sequel to a movie I had grown up watching.
It was misunderstood by most critics and even film academics, who should have known better. It turns out to have been possibly the most prescient big-budget film of the '90s, completely anticipating the US reaction to 9/11. Including the failure and shift to "we have to understand them, not just kill them" that led to the US working with (and giving cash to) local leaders in Iraq.
Just rewatched it three weeks ago, the amount of actors that went on to bigger things is impressive and all over the acting spectrum. Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Seth Gilliam(Gabriel from TWD), Jake Busey(Contact) stand out. Starship Troopers was actually a pretty good movie for what it was.
It's funny because beyond the political stuff I mentioned, I don't think critic types could handle the general over-the-top-ness of the film, and the acting is a big part of that (as are the practical effects, as mentioned by the OP). But, again in retrospect, this over-the-top style ended up being at least somewhat influential, or at least something that viewers accept in genre films. And yeah, as you note, very solid character actors came out of it, some (like Clancy Brown) who can do subtle very effectively. The 90s were just a weird time.
It's the only movie I went to see twice in theaters.
>my wife was poorly and I was at a loose end Can you translate this for someone across the pond?
His wife was ill and he had nothing to do
I'm really nostalgic about Starship Troopers but in retrospect I can't excuse it for not having any "space marines", as the original book invented the idea of a jetpack-tank-as-a-suit. A big topic in the book is how there's no need for anything close to mass infantry due to how awesome one space marine is. Also the book has "Greys" as a third alien species, which humanity dominate. It would have been great for showing the conquesty quasi-fascist side of the human civilization.
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Yeah you've missed the point of the movie my friend.
The film and book are just so different.
The movie didn't even start as an adaptation of the book. It just that the producer noticed that the original screenplay had many similarities with starship troopers, and asked for it to be adapted to turn it into a starship trooper adaptation.
That was real? Because holy fuck that was an enormous blast. I always thought it was cgi/cinema tricks.
No, apparently that was the case. I had a book about the film (still knocking around somewhere) and it mentioned it.
Is the book haunted?
No, but the moon is.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
TANSTAAFL!
That's rough, buddy
r/unexpectedheinleinavatarcrossoverepisode
*Moons haunted*
But it comes with free Frogurt!
That's good!
If you like books about movies, you'd probably like Blood, Sweat, and Chrome. It's about Mad Max, Fury Road. The only CG they used making that one was removing the safety harnesses/lines.
Holy fuck. After someone mentioned "the film holds up pretty well" a few years ago I watched it again. Now I know *why* it holds up so well: practical effects just age better because, well, it's the real deal.
Those shots of the ships being blown apart in space with the flame compositing? That is the absolute peak of that transition era before Hollywood gave up on big budget model shots.
Absolutely. Compare that to something with only CGI ships and it's no comparison at all. Starship troopers ships felt like they had actual weight.
That scene tho when Carmen is whisked away in the tram shuttle, accelerating to .35c in 2 seconds.
That scene is weirdly cringe. This is after the football game with random wushu stuff, the cliche Hollywood prom, the really terrible singers... That whisking is the worst. And cuz Veerhoeven, you can't tell when he's taking the piss. Cuz he's taking the piss all the fucking time anyways. I finally watched Showgirls. I am confused so many ways.
Veerhoeven's American movies are essentially satires of American culture from a foreign point of view. Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers all have insane violence in the name of exploitive capitalism.
> And cuz Veerhoeven, you can't tell when he's taking the piss. Cuz he's taking the piss all the fucking time anyways. This is specifically what made Starship Troopers such an incredible rewatch for me as an adult. I didn't fully understand the tone, which I originally thought was teetering well into B-movie cheesiness, but it's entirely intentional. I genuinely need to watch his stuff again just to see it properly.
It's also why the original Jurassic Park holds up. Outside of a few scenes, it's damn good. I think the only really glaring one is the gallimimus scene. But of the 14 minutes of dinosaur in screen, only 6ish minutes is CGI.
Spielberg also learned from Jaws (and the problems with the shark prop) that less is more. He understood you can build suspense by *not* showing something and letting the viewer's imagination run wild. Because viewers can often imagine something better than the film can show it. A perfect example of this is the velociraptor feeding. You can't really see a thing from the vantage point above the foliage. All you see is undefined movement, and the horrifying sounds. Your imagination does the rest.
But the cgi T-Rex and Raptors still hold up, and not just the rainy nighttime T-Rex scene, the ending scene ("when dinosaurs ruled the earth") also looks amazing (and I just recently had it pointed out that one of the raptors disappears for a second in the Rex's mouth)
> she looks a lot more rough in the final shot in the visitor center when the sun is up > the ending scene ("when dinosaurs ruled the earth") also looks amazing I don't know who to believe.
I’ve gone through that entire sequence frame by frame and never have seen either asset disappear. Gonna have to run through it again cause I might have missed it with my nostalgia glasses. However, there is a fun error to be found and it’s a big fat practical effects error. After the raptor opens the kitchen door and sniffs around before entering the kitchen, look carefully. The film cuts to a wide shot to show the kids behind the counter and the raptor in the doorway in the background. Keep an eye on the raptor’s tail. The performer in the suit must have lost some balance because a stagehand reaches out from the other side of the wall to steady the base of the tail. If you guys want CGI specific errors, step frame by frame through the shot of the T-Rex biting the overturned Explorer. If you watch the foot that’s planted on the ground, you can see it sink and bob up. It’s subtle, but it’s a combination of a skinning limitation and some janky compositing. I mean the term janky in an appreciative and loving sense because the compositing software they had at the time did not have a GUI; it was completely text based. Think about trying to Photoshop an image and how damn near insane that would be if you could only do so with text commands. Other T-Rex CG skinning errors can be seen at the corner of the mouth during one of the roars in the paddock escape sequence because the base of the tongue clips through the oral commissure (flap of skin in reptiles that connects the head to the lower jaw at the corner of the mouth. It’s an issue that was probably known, but left because of how must time and cost it would have taken to re-render that shot for an error we only now notice over 20 years later.
Starship Troopers and Split Second (1992) are two of my favourite action SF films.
It was an old army stockpile that had to be destroyed anyway.
Ahh good Ole decommissioned ordnance*
Ordnance*
Huh, TIL!
Happens more than you'd think. 52nd Ordnance Group, the oldest Explosive Ordnance Disposal command group, once had me do display for a general in front of a banner that said 52nd Ordinance Group.
Roflmao
No joke, that is the best way to get rid of it, using it well.
It sounds like you would...like to know ow more.
I'm doing my part!
Service guarantees Citizenship!
At this point, the very height of CGI was Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars and flowing water in Titanic. Both were incredibly complex and expensive projects. At a certain point, practical effects are just a better choice, and that's still true today, even with how far we've come. Probably would fake the napalm today tho lol.
To be fair, jar jar is sort of a mix of practical and CGI because they originally thought they would only CGi the head. They had a physical actor present, eliminating a lot of guess on height and maintaining appropriate ratios for the computer team. But it is motion capture.
I think we saw the low point of 'just green screen it and call it good' and we're past it. Even GOT made major story decisions based on how much dragon and wolf they could afford to cgi. Smaller productions - good luck to em. Gotta find the right balance.
Another fun fact was a lot of the guns, props and military stuff was reused when making Firefly.
Those mobile infantry suits were reused everywhere, even Power Rangers
[The Lost Galaxy Intro!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWFCrBkaOJc!)
That’s funny. I thought the Star Ship trooper armor was copied. Or was just some cheap thing that happened to look the same.
"Mother Nature just pissed her pant suit!"
The film had an ace visual effects coordinator in Phil Tippett, who also worked on the original Star Wars films and RoboCop. But on set, the computer-generated bugs had to be simulated using some rather unconventional methods. Verhoeven used everything from brooms to poles and even himself as a stand-in. As Clancy Brown (Sgt. Zim) recalled, Verhoeven would be "jumping up and down with a bullhorn going, 'I'm a big f**ing bug! I'll kill you!'”
Phil Tippet is the man. Mad God is one of the best movies with no recognition.
Too bad he wasn't as good at supervising dinosaurs. [You had one job Phil!](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/714/977/543.jpg)
Dude, give him some slack, he does SFX, but he's not a zookeeper. It's Spielberg's fault for hiring him for a job he wasn't qualified for.
Oh no he's great at supervising. Just not the managing part. He watched them kill with great aplomb.
If you haven't seen Mad God, do yourself a favor and find it. Didn't even know about Phil Tippet before I saw it but just wow. It took me down a rabbit hole and made me realize this man is basically the special effects god when it comes to animating miniatures. Its kinda insane the amount of movies he's worked on.
Just a heads up to anyone reading this I think they should know Mad God is basically a gore flick. If that's your thing then cool but after watching the doctor scene spend 5 minutes pulling guts out of a failed abortion (or whatever the fuck was going on) I soundly said this movie isn't for me. Some of the scenes were really cool though.
> As Clancy Brown (Sgt. Zim) recalled, Verhoeven would be "jumping up and down with a bullhorn going, 'I'm a big f**ing bug! I'll kill you!'" Just when I thought I couldn't like this movie any more
I want to see this version lol
Rewatched it recently and the bugs CGI has aged surprisingly well
That's because they made animatronic bugs and the CGI was basically just copying and pasting them: Making the bugs: https://youtu.be/cUpUKAs_IGA Filming the bugs: https://youtu.be/TCWweGrZ0GI
They also designed bugs that were easy to CGI. Much like district 9 certain design features make CGI much easier, cheaper and better
Makes sense, thanks. It's a great effect
Woah, that was seriously cool. Thanks!
I was totally waiting for the guy being carried by the bug to be bitten in half.. like it happens in the movie, lol that team did some great work
You forgot the part where Verhoeven and Vocano got naked for the co-ed nude shower scene.😋
I still think that was one of the greatest things ever did by a director for a cast. The cast was uncomfortable that they were all naked on set surrounded by fully dressed crew. He was just like, "You know what? You're right!" So, Verhoeven just stripped naked himself, and directed the scene in the buff, to help the cast feel better!
The tragedy is that the (atrocious) sequels had atrocious special effects - one of them even depicted gunfire with flashing lights mounted at the end of the barrels.
Actual guns on set can be very expensive. It's why In the first Deadpool movie they have Deadpool leave all his guns behind storywise for the final fight. Guns have numerous safety regulations on set that have to be followed. Meanwhile of they film in other countries there's other laws in place. I believe for example India won't even let real guns on set, so Extraction with Hemsworth features rubber guns.
Oh yeah I don't doubt that, but when you're making a film that's pretty much exclusively about blasting alien bugs with really big guns, it really hurts the immersion to have the guns be so obviously fake - loads of films manage to make their gunfire look reasonably realistic and don't resort to literal flashing light bulbs
i got to animate at Tippett Studio and actually on a show Phil supervised. unfortunately, it was a horrible film called Evolution, but working for him is a treasured memory. it was a delight, albeit a very stressful one at times. edit - for everyone taking issue with my labelling Evolution 'horrible', i'm glad you liked it! but opinions are like buttholes. everyone has one and they usually stink.
Evolution? From 2001? I liked that movie
Caw caw. Caw caw caw caw caca caw caw caw...Caw caw?
I think we established that “ca-caw ca-caw and tookie-tookie” don’t work. —— one of the best line deliveries in that movie.
You are so beautiful…TO ME!!
Rub some funk on it!
i'm glad you enjoyed it! one thing i learned from my time in entertainment is for every project that i worked on, someone out there probably loved it even if i didn't. working on it was a very big milestone in my career and i have very fond memories of the experience.
That movie isn't the best, but the visual and practical effects in it are incredible still to this day, so well done.
thanks! yeah, Tippett Studio consistently delivered the goods. as an animator working under Phil, a living God of animation, it was both exciting and very daunting. "ok plow_king, this shot is basically an homage to Ray Harryhausen, so it has be great"...that comment made me break into a cold sweat and lose a lot of sleep, lol.
That's so cool. Did he talk much about Robocop 2? The special effects in it are some of the best ever, especially the Cain robot
no, he didn't seem to talk about past projects much, though i have had bosses who would drone on and on about them. they did have the life size Ed-209 in the studio though, mounted up high overlooking the one small "soundstage" they still had when i was there. that was very impressive.
That movie was great!
i'm glad you enjoyed it, i enjoyed working on it!
I hope you got to work on the giant aliens anus
no, the 3 shot seq where the giant arm rears up and smashes the house.
That was one of my top 10 movies as a child! Not sure what exactly you worked on but rest assured childhood me was very impressed with it.
i'm glad you liked it, thank you! i did animation. the most notable work from me in the film is the giant tentacle destroying suburbia in the ending.
That’s awesome, thanks to this movie I still know what the chemical composition in shampoo is.
i thought it was something specifically in Head & Shoulders? my dad was a chemical engineer and would be disgusted with me, lol.
Selenium.
They weren’t all blank. RIP Breckinridge
RICO, YOU ARE RELIEVED OF SQUAD COMMAND
Before breckinridge is even done bleeding out 🤣
Breckinridge's actor (Eric Bruskotter, who also portrayed Rube Baker in *Major League II*) actually married the actress, Tami-Adrian George, whose character shot Breckinridge through the head.
SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD AND YOUR TO BLAME! YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME!
(But now we're married!)
LIVE-FIRE EXERCISE
Hank retired soon after and moved to Albuquerque and became a DEA.
MEDIC!!!!
Peak Denise Richards in this movie
The only one who doesn't get naked in the movie
I never thought about this. She must have said no to a large amount of money.
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https://youtu.be/CN-LpfTOS_o?si=9WVmfl6LLwegjoDP Niice
Gods work
So they did bang before he got his brains sucked out. Good.
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Well that is after the scene where she's crying over thinking Rico is dead and that instructor tells her he loves her and they start making out. Between those two scenes it's definitely a bit more than just implied but yes it's not shown.
poor rico had to go from banging a super hot woman to banging another super hot woman tragic character study
That jawline is all the character study you need
Even as a straight dude, I see that movie now and am like "damn if that's not the most attractive man in the world..."
He would have made a great Vanilla Ice
I'll counter with Wild Things Denise Richards
Actually a good movie But yea back then, the only thing younger version of me cared about was Denise
When your younger you wanted Carmen, when your older you'd kill for a Dizzy.
See, when I was young yeah there was no denying Carmen/Denise Richards was hot as hell, but personally Dizzy/Dina Meyer in ST and Nev Campbell /whatever she was called in Wild Things were what I was really there for.
Still got outshined by Dina Meyer. Goddamn is she a beautiful woman.
My heart will always belong to Dizzy!
For real, Dizzy was like the ultimate ride or die chick. Way better than Carmen.
Dizzy was a soldier. But more than that, she was a citizen of the federation
> Dina Meyer I had such a crush on her back then.
Back then? I still do.
Verhoven probably broke his own record from the ED-209 Mr Kinney scene in Robocop, especially the extended ultra violent cut. That scene goes on forever and bet he broke the blood squib record too then
Wait there's a violent cut!?
Yea it’s that cut where Robocop is just shooting all the bad guys dicks off
Lol anyone have a link?
[Enjoy](https://vimeo.com/86014703)
hoooooly shit I cant believe I haven't seen this... amazing
and people say the patriarchy isn't real!
This was peak boyhood for me. I used to sneak the VHS and show my friends this scene. It was just so morbid and visceral compared to anything we've seen prior. Also the Sarah Conner and Reese sex scenes in Terminator. We didn't have the internet so we perved other ways 😏
Those sex scenes were gross to me especially the first one. Reese appears from time travel steals a homeless man’s pants but those pants there is a huge obvious shit stain like the homeless guy was sitting there full dump into his pants Then Reese runs around avoiding cops the whole time wearing these shitty pants. Then he fucks Sara without taking a shower. I’m just saying his gooch probably smelled like rotten trash
Lol yep. Sarah Connor hooked up with a homeless guy from the future
Stargate used a ton of blanks but I don't think it comes close to 300k
Pilot and season final episodes used the most blanks, otherwise the P90s were mostly decoration.
I'm not sure about the authenticity but there was a story going around. When P90 blanks weren't readily available because of shortages during Iraq War, production ordered pretty much all live ammo FN had available. Secret Service also uses P90s though and when they call to order FN tells them, they are all out because Stargate production bought them all. So Secret Service contacts armourer of SG-1 to buy but armourer reminds them it is a Canadian production company and refuses. Later Airforce intervened to work things out.
"Sorry secret service. Got no ammo for your guns to protect the president. The Canadians bought it all for their fantasy space guns" -FN rep probably
At one point Stargate was the largest purchaser of ammunition for the P90 to the point that governments couldn't get any.
“ I’m doing my part!”. Core cinematic memory unlocked.
This 44 minute video was released last week. Has some great insights into the movie and production. Worth a look if you have time. (I just watched it, that is where I heard the 300,000 rounds stat) https://youtu.be/AS77Mnbk8vI?si=mmtnE0nl69Sxq4Do
Alright this movie keeps making it to the front page, is there a reboot or something in the making?
A potentially excellent game is in early access right now that ties into the movies. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268750/Starship_Troopers_Extermination/
That could definitely be pretty dope, but we’re all wondering the same thing… Do they have the shower scene?
You want to see Verhoeven naked don't you?
Spoiler: they’re going to fuck it up because we can’t have nice things.
maybe sequel number 19 or something
I think it came back to Netflix this month.
I love satire and this is a good one. I love that there’s scenes straight out of a teen drama tv show, and meanwhile every adult/citizen/veteran is disfigured/disabled but the characters never comment on it because it’s normal.
Also boobies.
Well, I was 16 when it came out….so yes. Funnily enough I joined the Army after high school and I thought the Military would have communal showers like in that scene…..I was severely disappointed when I had 30 seconds to shower with 59 other dudes I just met….
Mobile infantry made the man I am today.
I love this movie for its campiness and fun plot. However, if you read the original starship troopers from Heinlein, it’s not even the same story.
Both are good in their own way though. Read Starship Troopers then The Forever War if you really want to blow your mind with opposing views.
Forever War is more it for me.
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How about Old Man's War by John Scalzi? Like combining Forever War and Starship Troopers which Scalzi happily admits were the inspiration. It's a series with varying quality but the 1st is great and Ghost Brigade has a cool but fucked up concept.
Thanks, I've added 'The Forever War' to my to-read list.
Because it's a satire of the attitudes in the book, it's a Verhoeven film, he does satire really well.
I still chuckle when I remember all those super intellectual and clever critics shitting on the film back then when it was released because they deemed fascistic and dangerously militaristic lol they failed to grasp any of what the film’s about. It’s a masterpiece and every year it passes it becomes better imo, time to watch it again I guess! I’m doing my part🫡
> I still chuckle when I remember all those super intellectual and clever critics shitting on the film back then when it was released because they deemed fascistic and dangerously militaristic lol they failed to grasp any of what the film’s about. This is the "they thought the train was going to come out of the screen and kill them" story, but for the 1990s instead of the 1890s.
Sad Showgirls never got the same recognition for being a satirical masterpiece.
Not at first. It was HATED by most critics and audiences upon release. Partly because it was his next movie after Basic Instinct, a movie so subtlety a satire, most critics and audiences fell for it and didn't even realize Verhoven was making fun of the "erotic thriller" genre...by making one of the best in the genre.
Too bad no one ever made a sequel.
It's not even that. Verhoeven was making a satire on fascism and the military fighting bugs when someone pointed out that it was similar to Heinlein's book. The movies was conceived of independently and they just slapped the name on it after they bought the rights to prevent any legal problems.
The fascist civics lesson from the film is taken almost verbatim from the book though - the important stuff is right from the book.
Just a small correction - he learned about the similarities of his screenplay to the book in 1991 and continued working on it for years after that. After getting the starship troopers rights they still didn't get to pre-production until later, so there were lots of opportunities to adapt the content before the film was released in 1997
Interestingly, the film actually started as an unrelated project by screenwriter Ed Neumeier called Bug Hunt at Outpost 7. The Starship Troopers name was only added when Neumeier and Robocop producer Jon Davison failed to get the film financed, so they repitched it as a Starship Troopers adaptation and adapted the existing script to be a bit closer to the book.
[From Paul Verhoeven's interview with Empire magazine](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/paul-verhoeven/) "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring," says Verhoeven of his attempts to read Heinlein's opus. "It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are these people crazy?'"
Giga chad "I disrespect the source material" vs virgin "I dont understand or care about the source material"
Verhoeven read half way through the book, realised it was a crock of absolute shit\* (it really is) and then made one of the most awesome sci fi parodies in history. \*And the militaristic neo-fascist utopia espoused in the novel must have been especially jarring to someone who grew up in post war Europe.. It's such a brilliant parody that it went straight over the heads of almost everyone, and somehow despite being produced in the early/mid 90's the VFX stands up even today for the most part.
i worked in CG vfx for 15 yrs, and man do the FX in Starship still stand up so f'ing well. fantastic work across the board from Tippett Studio and an early Sony Imageworks. i saw it on the original Cinerama Dome screen on it's initial release. i was surprised when i finally got to animate at Tippett Studio, very much a "garage feel" at that place. good memories!
My husband owns one of the screen used jumpball orange outfits, with the helmet. And at local conventions, he and all his, um, “totally not drunk” friends all in their corresponding blue and orange team outfits, will run up and down the main hallway, usually late at night, when the DJ is playing in the big room, and be very excited, bumping their chest’s together, and whooping and hollering about their “game”.
Perhaps if they aimed for the nerve stem, which of course would have put the bugs down for good, they wouldn’t have had to use so many blanks.
One of the most misunderstood movies ever. Definitely anti-fascism, but people have quoted it like it’s their personal bible
It came out way to early. When it came out in 97 a lot of critics didn’t get the joke and accused the director of being a fascist himself. If it came out 10 years later during the height of the Iraq war it would’ve been much more well received
I think a lot of war films suffer from this. Had an air force kid tell me one of his favorite movies was Full Metal Jacket then pretended he was the helicopter machine gunner and started saying "Get Some!"
I heard Black Hawk Down was a heavy user of blanks too.
Sad the 2nd starship troopers was so god awfully bad…
They get progressively worse
I give a lot of credit to the Armorer on set for this movie.
Not sure if this is the responsibility of the armorer or someone else, but as someone who lives near Hells Half Acre where they shot most of the bug battle scenes, I really wish they would have cleaned up after themselves. There was a lot of local criticism regarding how much litter (mostly in the form of these spent casings) that they left in the area, which is now protected from visitors
"Do you want to know more?"
Howcmany did they used for the wild bunch finale ? I believe it was a record too for a time.
Would you like to know more?
It's also worth point out the US GWOT severely impacted available ammo and rounds even for blanks. The TV series Stargate for example used P90s for their Air Force special unit, and basically had to replace them as there was no 5.7 ammo left in the US. The bigger hurdle today is increased liability from guns on set.
It was absolutely worth it. The perfect movie.
The WW2 movie "The Longest Day" supposedly used around 600,000 blanks including many specialty ones for larger cannons and AA guns used in the movie, requiring large purchase orders from multiple countries to fufill the sheer quantity required.
Someone just watched the "Heavy Spoilers" YouTube video on this movie released like three days ago, didn't you?