Paul Verhoeven directed three
futuristic action movies in the late 80s / early 90s: RoboCop (1987), Total Recall
(1990), and Starship Troopers (1997).
These three films make up what I call the Verhoeven Trilogy, and I like them
very much. Although they do not share a common world, characters, or plot, they
all have the same tone and style. At the most basic, they all take place in a
bleak futuristic Earth, they are all violent to excess, and they all have a
persistent satirical and humorous vein underneath the action.
But the common elements go well
beyond. One can compile a list of ‘Things Paul Verhoeven Likes’—in the sense
that he likes to make films with these things in them.
Things Paul Verhoven Likes:
-
babes (two in Total Recall and in Starship Troopers)
-
boobs (three on one
woman in Total Recall, a roomful of
exposed boobs in Starship Troopers)
-
cool guns (RoboCop has a huge pistol and then the bad guys get the Cobra Assault Rifles, the Starship Troopers have many large and
impressive guns)
-
evil corporations / governments
/ militaries (main plot elements of each movie)
-
police, secret agents,
soldiers (the protagonists of each movie)
-
limbs getting severed (Murphy
in RoboCop, Richter in Total Recall, beyond count in Starship Troopers)
-
people dying
hilariously gruesome deaths (melted by toxic waste then smashed to bits in RoboCop, eyes popped out from violent
decompression on the surface of Mars in Total
Recall, brains sucked out in Starship
Troopers)
-
genital injury (rapist
in RoboCop, Arnold in Total Recall, Xander in Starship Troopers)
-
bald men with scratchy
voices (Clarence Boddiker in RoboCop,
Richter in Total Recall and Radczak
in Starship Troopers—both played by
Michael Ironside)
-
violently malfunctioning
technology (ED 209, the Johnnycab, the door that crushes the captain in Starship Troopers)
-
strong men of righteous
violence (RoboCop, Quaid, Johnny Rico)
A final thing which is easily
noticed in RoboCop and Starship Troopers is the use of
satirical television content: RoboCop
has news programs and a really lame sitcom (“I’d buy that for a dollar!”); Starship Troopers has over-the-top military
recruiting ads.
These are really fun movies, just made
for young men to enjoy. My personal favourite is RoboCop. I like the other two very much, but for RoboCop I have an endless appetite. I
think the guys on Half in the Bag are
right that RoboCop is a perfect
movie. Not that it will change your life, or leave an enduring mark on the
ages, or make a great contribution to human civilization—but it perfectly
accomplishes what it sets out to do; it is a perfect futuristic action /
comedy. It is also perfect in that it is hard to imagine improving it; changing
anything would make it worse.
(Using these criteria, other perfect
movies that come to mind: Die Hard
(1988); Pride and Prejudice (TV
mini-series 1995); Holes (2003); The Jungle Book (Disney 1967).
Part of the pleasure in RoboCop is the use of real old-fashioned
practical special effects. RoboCop is not a digital creation, he is Peter
Weller in a suit of metal. The car chases go at maybe 70 miles per hour and use
real cars which were actually smashed during filming. When people are
gruesomely blown to bits it is done with models and makeup which had actual
physical existence. And when people get shot they use actual squibs—it’s so
much fun when the ED 209 shoot up the poor corporate executive and the blood
spatters everywhere, and it’s so obvious that it was real fake blood and not
digital!
The movies also tend to have great
music. The RoboCop theme and some of
the military music in Starship Troopers
is enough to get the blood stirring.
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