Just Another Bug Hunt?

by Doug Adams

If the postings on the movie music newsgroup are any indications, Starship Troopers is shaping up to be one controversial film. Here's the story so far: Some are dubbing this story absolutely mindless violence and gore. FX without pretext. Others see it as a jab at these very things. It's quotient of mindlessness and bottom-rung acting are there to make us think we're watch just another dumb actioneer, but it's been infused with a disturbing degree of political propagandizing and horrific violence in order to make us realize just how distressingly accustomed to these devices we've become. In a way it's almost Verhoven's "so there" to the audiences that betrayed him with Showgirls. (I've never seen Showgirls, but I've heard that it's actually horrible as opposed to just being perceived as such.) In Starship, he's giving audiences exactly the kind of dumb guts and high adventure they claim to want, but he's making it disturbing. By forcing us to realize some of the terrible filmic realities we take for granted, he's sucking the enjoyment out of the most popular of film genres. After all, what are human hating intergalactic insects (the most perfectly dispensable foe, if you think about it) good for if not squashing? But, if you want to do it in Starship Troopers, you're going to have to rake through the unpleasantness. On one hand, it's supposed to be fun to see the limbs flying. On the other, we feel pretty sick for liking it.

Which take is right? Who knows. I suppose it depends on your own reading of the film. I definitely think that Starship's makers were going for the latter description. It's funny though, because if they are successful, the audience is still sitting through some of the worst acting to be seen in one of these big studio bonanzas for a while. In order to get the point, we categorically have to be subjected to the process.

So, why do I say that the makers were going for this reaction? One of the keys to understanding it all is found in Basil Poledouris' score. The most obvious place to look is in the music of the psuedo-newsreel segments in the film. For instance, there's the fact that the newsreel music begins at the end of the film far before that newsreel footage. Were we really watching a propaganda film the entire time? However, I think there's an even more interesting set of clues to be found in the bug music. Poledouris' bug music is pounding and gutsy--pretty much the hallmarks of his action style anyway. It's constructed over these gargantuan rhythmic motifs in the timpani and bass drum and spindly almost dance-like patterns in the very high strings (that's where much of the octatonic stuff is, for those who know what I mean). There's a fright factor to this music, but it's conceived in terms of fun danger. All of its thrusts and parries are composed to thrill. Starship Troopers' bug music is sort of a decadent descendant of Jaws' shark music. There's never really any psychologically disturbing fear in either case. It's just the giddy joy of a spook house. Now Jaws was a little different in that there were some other very dark sections of the score (like when they find Ben Harper's boat, or the cue from Quint's speech) which make the shark music seem more like a culmination, a payoff for the portents. Starship Troopers is all payoff, exactly as it should be. It's the polar opposite of those action/adventure films which develop plots because, in it's own sly way, it was parodying all of those conventions by getting so close to adopting them, yet refusing. Sometimes imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but sometimes it has big pointy mandibles that get you where you live.

The Alien Connection

If you want to know the real reason Verhoven didn't get Goldsmith to score this film (in my opinion), it's because Goldsmith would have scored the bugs to scare us--really scare us--and not just thrill us. Look at Goldsmith's score to Alien, for an example. What is his sound lexicon for the creature concept in this film? He uses all sorts of herky jerky, unfamiliar sounds to put the audience totally off center. There are low blatting serpents and didjeridus, breathy conch shells and human whistling, and plinky col legno (played with the wood of the bow) violins and soprano steel drums. The sound world itself is alien because not only are these humans confronted by the monster, they're confronted and assaulted by their own mindsets--their fear. What would have been the effect if the scene where Ripley encounters the alien in her shuttle been scored with a growing timpani roll, or propulsively and simply constant trombone rhythms? It would have played like--yeah kill it!, get revenge!, shoot that thing in the heart with the harpoon! With Goldsmith's score, almost all of the film plays like a continual crawl of flesh. There are no easy decisions to be made.

Poledouris' score to Starship Troopers however, makes you want to see these bugs get dismembered. He says that every cue was like a main title, and it really was. These battles are all frenzied rushes to accomplish something. It's not escape music, it's music which represents the soldiers' compulsion to rectify their situations through force. Then when the film makes us realize that this rectification has either deadly or disgusting consequences, we realize how unpleasant this compulsion can be. It's a slap in the face of our most animalistic tendencies, which are usually those very tendencies that action films seek to satiate. The degree of success here depends on how highly developed those animalistic tendencies are in each audience member, but watch how many people come out of this film annoyed. I thought it was particularly interesting--most of the audience is unhappy coming out of this film, but no one can really pinpoint why they're displeased. The movie delivers the action and violence it promises, but I think in reality we're mad at ourselves for wanting it in the first place. What a bizarre, and ultimately highly evolved, approach for an action film.

I'm very interested in seeing Alien Resurrection in a couple of weeks. I don't really think that the movie is going to be that good (though, I'll keep an open mind), but I wonder what the audience's reaction will be like after seeing Starship Troopers. Once they've been slapped in the face for wanting something, will they still want it? How Pavlovian are sci-fi fans? And most importantly to us, did John Frizzell go the "fear" route, or the "kill it!" route? We'll see.

Comments? Doug@filmscoremonthly.com