‘Troopers’ Offers a Realism Check

In “Starship Troopers,” wholesome, handsome teen pals Johnny, Carmen, Diz and Carl do their part for the Federation, signing up for the intergalactic military and fighting hoards of limb-chopping, brain-sucking, slimy insects from the planet Klandathu. (Rated R) Even though the movie had been totally hyped, Mikey Montmorency, 12, of Newport Beach didn’t expect much. Friends described it as really lame. And he figured all space-alien movies were probably pretty much alike.

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But this one, based on Robert Heinlein’s 1959 science-fiction military novel, changed his mind. It wasn’t just the action and adventure, the amazing giant computer-generated bugs and their slimy guts, the funny computer-news format between scenes and the impossibly good-looking actors, but also the plot. “They just put everything together and made a good story,” he said.

Kids who cut their sci-fi teeth on “Star Wars” and “Independence Day” were shocked at the extent and realism of the human dismemberment, evident from the first scenes, in which a newscaster on Klandathu is ripped apart by one of the oversized warrior insects. Some parents hustled their children out of the theater right then and there.

“I didn’t think there was going to be that much killing,” said Greg Bartlett, 11, of Newport Beach.

“In the previews, they make it look so good for kids and make it look so non-bloody and nonviolent,” agreed Jeremy Collins, 10, of Irvine. “In the advertisements when they show people attacked by bugs, it just looks like they get knocked down at the most.” Instead, he complained, “People were ripped in half!”

But some kids 11 and over said the gore and the slime were what made it fun.

“It wouldn’t have been good if it wasn’t like that,” Mikey said.

Said his friend Ainsley Kling, 14, of Newport Beach: “It was kind of nasty, but that’s why you go to the movies is to be grossed out and to be scared.”

Most kids had no trouble switching from the opening kill to the flashback explaining the Ken and Barbie relationship between Johnny and Carmen (he’s in love with her, she’s thinking of a career in space flight) and their friends: Diz (she’s stuck on Johnny) and Carl (a nerd with extrasensory perception). They were amused by the high school of the future in which girls make up half the football team, personal computer graphics replace note-passing in class and seniors must decide whether to go to college or join the military and become “citizens”--veterans with the right to vote.

Ainsley appreciated a future where males and females are so equal they can shower together in boot camp and where women command and pilot intergalactic space vehicles. “That’s hopefully what we can get to in the future,” she said.

But the movie raced along so quickly from high school to boot camp to war with the space bugs that most kids accepted without question the depiction of a techno-fascist future where group loyalty reigns and where grade-schoolers are urged to “do their part” by squashing cockroaches.

Of more interest were the special computerized effects used to multiply an attack by one horrifying creature into thousands and make the fear heart-poundingly real.

Of course, a few nit-pickers complained that the wrong main characters were killed off, that people with mortal wounds got up and walked or that using the infantry against a planet of smart bugs would be a pretty stupid military strategy in a high-tech future.

But then, if the insects had been blown off the face of Klandathu, the kids knew exactly what they’d be missing: the sequel.

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PARENTS’ PERSPECTIVE: Daryl Kling of Newport Beach enjoyed the movie, particularly the graphics and the story. “The idea of having an intelligent bug is possible and scary. Think of how many years roaches have been around.”

He thought his 12- and 14-year-old were mature enough for the movie but said parents who left early with their younger kids “should not have come at all.”

Nudity in the coed shower scene wasn’t on the same level as sex, he said, and it bothered him less than the glamorization of war.

“It was a total communistic state they were living in. But the way it was presented, it completely went over the kids’ heads.”

* FAMILY FILMGOER, Page 18