[ASTRO] Starship Troopers (no MOA?)

[Michael Kepler <kepler@metro1.com>]

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Yeeeehaa!  I saw Starship Troopers last night and it totally rocked!
There was a whole lot more of the book in there than I thought possible.
Shockingly, much of Heinlein's hyper-right-wing political philosophy 
shows through as well.  In case you don't know, Heinlein makes
Rush Limbaugh look like a Socialist weenie.  Although he is extreme,
Heinlein is more rational and not as reactionary as Limbaugh.  Even
if you don't have the remotest kinship with his philosophy, he still
gives you something to think about.

The over-the-top recruitment ads peppered throughout the film are
very amusing, but somewhat inconsistent with the tone of the rest
of the film.   They were a very effective vehicle for exposition,
although they seemed to mock the values promoted by the dramatic
sequences of the film.

The knock-your-head-off effects worked well mostly because they were
in the context of a truly magnificently directed photographed and
edited film.

The most amazing all-effects sequence was an air strike on a desert
valley filled with swarming arachnids.

Setting aside usual complaints about Hollywood's habitual lack of
respect for the silence of the vacuum of space, there were just a
couple of effects moments that were distractingly unsuccessful.

First of all, the characters shoot what we are led to beleive is
a very low yield nuke down a "bug hole".  The ensuing explosion is
dramatic and mostly credible.  There is the usual Hollywood time
expansion of explosions, but we'll forgive that because it's kinda
cool anyway.  But after the main explosion, there was this series
of nice neat rows of small charges outside the tunnel that were
discharged about half a second apart to give this wave-of-debris
effect.  Well, we're supposed to see the wave-of-debris, not the
series of neatly spaced little charges going off.  The biggest
mistake was made it audio posting, where they actually added
explosion sounds for each row of charges, drawing more attention
to the fact that we were watching a small pyrotechnic display rather
than a tactical nuclear explosion.

The other thing that didn't work was the flying bugs.  Their wings didn't
move much at all and were very small compared to the size of the bug.
For these flying bugs to look credible their wings would have to be
literally buzzing with rapid motion, just like real bugs, or really
big, just like real birds.

Mookie

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