Tag Archives: Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers RiffTrax Live Trip Report

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RiffTrax Starship Troopers
[adrotate banner=”1″]RiffTrax beamed across America and also some other strange country called Canada to give the world some of the fruits of their Kickstarter, a RiffTrax of Starship Troopers. Disclaimer: I donated to said Kickstarter, which was originally meant to try to snag the film Twilight. You can find my internet name on the thank you page. I was joined as is usual at the theater events by Todd from Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!,

As per usual, the preshow featured funny trivia cards and word jumbles (My favorite being the Magneto/Cerebro jumble!) The show began on the Starship Troopers-themed set, and unlike the usual shows, we jump right into the movie without shorts (the film is long enough there probably wasn’t any time)

Mike, Kevin, and Bill also thanked the cast of Starship Troopers that have been helping promote the event (and a few watching in theaters), including Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, and Clancy Brown, along with please for them not to be mad or want to murder them later. As of yet, no member of RiffTrax has been found dead.

We all know the classic story of Starship Troopers – in a crazy fascist future, teenage models battle killer bugs and blood and guts fly everywhere. Verhoeven is a big fan of the blood and guts, and also of extremely ridiculous violence (one only has to look at his filmography to catch this!)

The ridiculous violence no one seemed to have a problem with. However, there is the famous coed nude shower sequence, which seemed like sort of a weird thing to be riffing over. Thus, it got hit with a skit for a Gorilla-gram! Which was weird and didn’t work that well. Maybe next time there is a RiffTrax film with lots of gonzo nudity we’ll get a different way to deal with it. Like just showing it, as they showed some of the nudity later. Or bring back the two Gorilla-grams, that seemed to work!

Quips were usually on point, with lots of references to past and future output from the cast. There was even a The Dog Who Save Christmas Vacation joke, showing a strong ability to look at IMDB links. Among the great bits was a sequence with the ferret, the pointing out how often the movie’s dialogue is just “Move!”, the Airplane! reference, and the very true slam on AT&T. I would rate Starship Troopers as among the best of the RiffTrax Live shows, maybe bested only by Manos (and the Daredevil one I saw actually live, which always win for me meeting Bill, Mike, and Kevin!)

There was minor controversy among a few disgruntled sourpusses who thought that doing a RiffTrax of a film that had satirical elements was somehow the worst thing that happened in the entire universe. This view was shocking, even as a big fan of Starship Troopers. Do people not know the movie is still ridiculous? I hold the view that you can RiffTrax anything (and there is a RiffTrax audio for Casablanca!), and Starship Troopers lends itself easily to that role. It’s not like you have to be a rocket surgeon to detect the satirical elements in a film where characters are literally wearing Nazi uniforms.

This RiffTrax Live will not be released as a separate digital download/DVD, so I was glad I was able to see it. There will be an audio file released eventually that will be able to synch with a copy of Starship Troopers, for a similar but not quite the same experience at your home.

Next up on RiffTrax Live is the original Night of the Living Dead.

RiffTrax will riff Starship Troopers in theaters nationwide!

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Denise Richards Starship Troopers
[adrotate banner=”1″]Remember that RiffTrax Kickstarter that attempted to get the rights to Twilight? (Disclaimer: I donated to that Kickstarter) Well, it didn’t get the rights to Twilight. It did get the rights to Starship Troopers, so on Thursday, August 15th, there will be bugs. Would you like to know more?

Uh… That’s about all the details the email had at this point. Like usual, it will be done live in Nashville and broadcasted throughout the country via the magic of Fanthom Events. There is also no certainty that there will be a digital download available for the broadcast, because the rights for that haven’t been approved yet. But who knows what the future will hold.

It will be interesting seeing the big budget bonanza cheese that is also satire against fascism e dealt with by guys who used to voice robots watching bad movies. Because that is the world we live in, reality!

Remember: The only good bug, is a dead bug!

via RiffTrax

A Less Violent Starship Troopers?

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[adrotate banner=”1″]That’s like a less nude stripper! Seriously, are they dumb, or just stupid? For those of you out of the loop, the producer of the upcoming reboot of Starship Troopers (which is different from the upcoming CGI animated sequel that follows the continuity of the original film and possibly the DTV sequels) has stated that they’re gonna make it less violent. Toby Jaffe told Empire: “The more expensive a film is, the harder it is now to make it that violent. With Recall in particular, we made a conscious choice to keep it tonally closer to something like Minority Report. It gives the studio, and us as producers, the opportunity to reintroduce it in a new way.”

“Verhoeven took [Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel] from one extreme and made it almost comical, whereas our job is to be a little more faithful to the book, and ground it a little more.”

Translation: It will be a boring generic action film. But it gets worse…

“Verhoeven made his movie a critique of fascism,” says Jaffe, “whereas Heinlein was writing from the perspective of someone who had served in World War II. Y’know, one man’s fascism is another man’s patriotism…”
Translation: Nazis? Totally awesome! BTW: Heinlein served in non-combat roles in WW2. So he’s not a citizen. Would you like to know more?

“Working in a visual-efects renaissance as we are, we have the ability to do so much more now. We can do the Jump Suits [armoured exoskeletons from Heinlein’s novel], for example, which I don’t think they could have done before.”
Let’s ignore that they did do them in Starship Troopers 3 and focus on the fact that having giant armored exoskeletons is cool, except for the fact they won’t be doing anything violent in them. And if they did, it would be safe PG-13 violence. The only possibly interesting thing about this is we might get to see the Skinnies. For the giant armored exoskeletons, Pacific Rim will be doing them one better. The entire concept of the novel is ludicrous, and Verhoeven’s satirical take on the subject matter is the perfect way to deal with the problem of the source material being awful to translate to film. There are barely any action scenes and most of the book is either training or classroom lectures.

Speaking of less nude strippers, just watch this Jaffe joker redo Showgirls next, except also PG-13 and ignoring everything Verhoeven did as well. The only good Jaffe is Al Jaffe, the Mad Magazine Fold-ins guy.

via EmpireOnline

Starship Troopers: Invasion trailer says Kill ’em All!

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[adrotate banner=”1″]The CGI flick Starship Troopers: Invasion has hit full trailer form (but only in Japan, land of Starship Trooper trailers), and it proves to both dump all prior sequels and also be a sequel, while also giving us plenty of bugs getting shot action! Stupid bugs, think they own the universe! Don’t they know that’s our job? excuse me, the relentless propaganda has cause me to become a bugophobe. I even dream about being from Buenos Aires! Jake Busey plays neon fiddles for me. It’s weird, WEIRD!

Carmen Ibanez, who flew the Rodger Young in the first movie, is now captain of the John A. Warden (the battleship I introduced in previous blogs). Carl Jenkins, now Minister of Paranormal Warfare, takes over the John A. Warden for a deep space experiment – leaving Carmen livid and ship-less. Carl brushes off her vehement objections and disappears with the ship off into the vast nebula. When Carl and the ship go radio-silent, guess who orders a rescue mission? Yep…it’s big-time general/war-hero Johnny Rico.

As our film is set almost 10 years after the first movie, the big 3 are now in their mid-30’s and have somehow kept their relationships intact despite deployments millions of miles apart. You will see their fragile yet strangely resilient relationship evolve in this movie, especially with Rico still a little soft on Carmen…and a familiar uncertainty about whether Carmen still reciprocates those feelings. We definitely paid homage to the original movie (in all sorts of ways), so we can’t wait to see how fans of the original respond to an awesome mix of nostalgia and “franchise update.”

That’s a bit more complex that the prior plot:

A distant Federation outpost Fort Casey comes under attack by bugs. The team on the fast attack ship Alesia is assigned to help the Starship John A. Warden stationed in Fort Casey evacuate along with the survivors and bring military intelligence safely back to Earth. Carl Jenkins, now ministry of Paranormal Warfare, takes the starship on a clandestine mission before its rendezvous with the Alesia and goes missing in the nebula. Now, the battle-hardened troopers are charged with a rescue mission that may lead to a much more sinister consequence than they ever could have imagined….

If you want to see what the big 3 look like now, they’re in the blog as well as the trailer above.

Shinji Aramaki directs and Edward Neumeier and Capser Van Dien are executive producing.

Starship Troopers Invasion trooper

Starship Troopers: Invasion preview trailer hits

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[adrotate banner=”1″]Starship Troopers: Invasion is the CG animated Starship Troopers film coming out later this year, and is sort of a sequel to the original film. This trailer is more of a preview teaser that doesn’t show much of anything except a trooper gearing up for battle. But the production blog promises blood and action, and even bugs in space.
The plot:

A distant Federation outpost Fort Casey comes under attack by bugs. The team on the fast attack ship Alesia is assigned to help the Starship John A. Warden stationed in Fort Casey evacuate along with the survivors and bring military intelligence safely back to Earth. Carl Jenkins, now ministry of Paranormal Warfare, takes the starship on a clandestine mission before its rendezvous with the Alesia and goes missing in the nebula. Now, the battle-hardened troopers are charged with a rescue mission that may lead to a much more sinister consequence than they ever could have imagined….

Shinji Aramaki directs and Edward Neumeier and Capser Van Dien are executive producing.

Still no word if NPH will return as the voice of Carl Jenkins.

Official Site

starship-troopers-invasion

Starship Troopers: Invasion

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[adrotate banner=”1″]Yes, troopers, we got a new Starship Troopers movie coming through the pipes! This all-CG film will be ready for 2012. Would you like to know more?

Synopsis from the official site:

A distant Federation outpost Fort Casey comes under attack by bugs. The team on the fast attack ship Alesia is assigned to help the Starship John A. Warden stationed in Fort Casey evacuate along with the survivors and bring military intelligence safely back to Earth. Carl Jenkins, now ministry of Paranormal Warfare, takes the starship on a clandestine mission before its rendezvous with the Alesia and goes missing in the nebula. Now, the battle-hardened troopers are charged with a rescue mission that may lead to a much more sinister consequence than they ever could have imagined….

Carl Jenkins was Neil Patrick Harris’s character, who was also in the cartoon, so I don’t know which continuity this is taking place in. But, Casper Van Dien and Edward Neumeier are both executive producing. Shinji Aramaki directs.

Starship Troopers Invasion

via Dread Central