By the movie’s climax, aloof jock Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) has risen through the ranks to lead the elite Roughnecks, pretty girl Carmen (Denise Richards) has become a captain, and the human forces have captured the Brain Bug orchestrating the enemy attacks. When psychic intelligence officer Carl (Neil Patrick Harris) reads the Brain Bug’s thoughts and declares, “It’s afraid,” the people stand up and cheer, and the movie invites us viewers to cheer with them: the music swells, the camera pans over the celebrating soldiers, the attractive heroes we’ve been following throughout the movie all smile together.
At no point does Starship Troopers break to point out that, in fact, it’s kind of depressing to cheer about a living creature’s fear. Nor does it point out that Carl’s dressed like an SS officer. Instead, it simply heightens the reactionary nature of the Robert A. Heinlein novel it adapts and uses classic Hollywood war movie tropes, and leaves it to the viewer to decide if they want to cheer, or if they can recognize that endless conflict renders any form of life meaningless.
Starship Troopers is hardly the only time Verhoeven’s exposed the nasty side of Hollywood tropes. His first American movie, Robocop, presents itself like a sci-fi action movie, with the violence and bloodlust heightened to ridiculous degrees. Showgirls follows the same plot as Gold Diggers of 1933 and Gold Diggers of 1937, musicals about starlets making it big in showbiz, but emphasizes all the exploitation and cruelty it involves. Basic Instinct goes beyond the sleaziness of a film noir to make the police utterly incompetent and craven.
Each of these films have moments that should turn the stomach of a viewer with a mildly functioning moral compass. The shot of a pre-teen joining Earth’s military in Starship Troopers—turning to the camera and declaring with a smile, “I’m doing my part!”—or the weak resolution to Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) and Cristal’s (Gina Gershon) tensions in Showgirls undercut any good feelings the music and dialogue demand.
But Verhoeven’s movies never do what Digger does. They never break from the facade to create a second audience, an audience to whom the real viewers can condescend. Instead, they just force the real audience to face the awful things they find enjoyable, and to wrestle alone with the messages the movie gives them.
Not So Deep
Even within the Fossil Fools section of the movie, Digger raises questions about how to control the narrative, suggesting that the way a story is told often has more power than what the story’s about. That’s true, and Iñárritu’s not wrong to point it out. However, by giving a foolish, false audience, Digger suggests that it’s “other people” who hear and believe that false story. Whether viewers loved or hated watching Cruise bluster on the screen and listening to Goodman bellow about his anal cancer, the frequent shots of fake audience members crying and cheering at the end of Fossil Fuels assures the viewer that they aren’t taken in. They’re smarter than the dumb-dumbs who are cheering for Fossil Fuels because they see what Digger‘s trying to do.
