Starship Troopers
Essay title: Starship Troopers
Starship Troopers is a film about the future, starring Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico, Dina Meyer as Dizzy Flores, Jake Busey as Ace Levy, and Dinise Richards as Carmen Ibanez. In Starship Troopers, Earth is united as one government and it appears that English is the primary language. To be a citizen on Earth you must serve the military, which would then allow you to be able to vote and make it easier for you to have children. Near the beginning of the beginning of the film Earth is attacked by arachnids. This causes all military forces to go to war against the arachnids.
I feel that the film did a terrific job of showing the masculinity of women. The lead female, Dizzy, was very masculine in every aspect except she has the desire for Johnny. Dizzy volunteers to challenge the Drill Sergeant to a fight just to attempt to prove her worth, of course she lost but the fact that she tried shows strength and courage. On base the showers are coed and the women slap men’s butts as if they were one of the guys on a team. Because of the masculinity of the females the men do not necessarily need to think of them as inferior or weaker. This prevents the men from feeling the urge to have to protect them in battle.
Other great aspects of war films that were seen in Starship Troopers is the attempt to make the enemy seem inhuman. In this film they actually did make the enemy inhuman by making the enemy arachnids. This attempt of making the enemies seem inhuman has always been the case in most war films. In every Vietnam War film that I have seen they refer to the enemy as “gooks” this is a way of dehumanizing the enemy. This process also makes it easier for those actually in battle to shoot and kill the enemy. If they are not thought of as humans then the concept of murder is not present. I have noticed that there are not that many films that show the “behind the line” action of the enemy, and this is because if they showed that they were just as worried about dying or if they missed their families then there would be sympathy towards the enemy and film makers do not want that. The viewer is supposed to be on the side of the good guys, in the case of Starship Troopers the planet Earth.
In Starship Troopers you get to see what the kids’ life was like before they joined the military and then you get to see their bonds they create with friends. They also show you some of the letters from home or friends, including a “Dear John” letter, or in this case a “Dear Johnny” letter when Carmen decides her and Johnny should no longer be together. It was at this point when Johnny started to let Dizzy slip into his heart to fill the void. Unlike most Vietnam War films which end