"Star Landing": interesting facts about Paul Verhoeven's film

В 1997 a very controversial film was released in the United States in the year "Star Troopers."The film was not well received by either critics or audiences. The film was not well received by either critics or audiences. It was originally directed by Paul Verhoeven accused of promoting fascism, but years later. "Star Troopers." has been universally recognised and has even been described as underrated masterpiece of his time.

That's because people realised that the director. Paul Verhoeven tried to convey to the audience by disguising a bleak future - actually a warning - as a meaningless action film.

Today we're going to tell a lot of interesting factsrelated to the filming of the iconic film and find out what kind of stipulation put Paul Verhoeven actors "Airborne.".

"Starship Troopers" is one of the best film satires of the 90's

The film is based on the film of the same name novel 1959 Rby A. Heinlein. Action the film is set in 23 century. and tells the story Johnny Rico and his friends who serve in the military under the world government of Earth, known as the United Civilian Federation.

As humanity explores and colonises outer space, they are entering the conflict with an alien species known as "arachnids", leading to an "interstellar war".

As with previous Verhoeven films such as. "Robocop."he's making a statement about authoritarianism. "Star Troopers." - is satire, and he's acutely aware of his message vs. right-wing militarism and fascism. Although many scenes in the film seem to glorify cruelty, they do so only because they were intended to be its judgements.

As a matter of fact. "Star Troopers." - it's a funny, dark comedyThe fact that critics have failed to identify this aspect of the story over the years shows how well it works. The fact that critics have been unable to identify this aspect of the story for many years is a testament to how well it works.

An unusual condition that Paul Verhoeven was forced to agree to

In the director's commentary for the film, there is an interesting anecdote about an apocryphal incident during mixed shower scenes Marines.

The cast agreed to star without any clothes in the famous scene only on one single condition: Paul Verhoeven must also be fully undressed.

"Yes, of course I did. And it helped! My cameraman Jost Vacano and I, we stripped down, and of course everyone started laughing. Then we shot the scene with no problem. Jost had no problem with it, as this kind of liberated atmosphere was very familiar to him almost from childhood. For me it was a bit more difficult, but I said to Yost, "Hey, we need to give an example...". He said: "Sure," and boom!" - recalled the "Star Troopers" director proudly.

Verhoeven gladly confirms the fact that he also stripped down to calm the nervous young actors.

On ComiCon в 2014 a year in Toronto Casper Van Dien и Dina Meyer (aka Rico and Dizzy) confirmed the long-standing legend that the actors refused to strip unless their director did the same (although Paul Verhoeven had to stay behind the camera while unclothed).

"There were probably about 100 people in the room," Dina Meyer recalls, "and Paul was like, 'Before we start filming, we want you guys to take everything off and stop embarrassing yourselves.' So, he actually had us do kind of a fashion show without the fashion. We were a bit reluctant to take our clothes off, and Paul said: "I don't understand you Americans! What's the big deal? Just do it, it's fine, no problem!".

Other interesting facts about the film that many people didn't even know about

1. Paul Verhoeven couldn't get through the book to the end.

The director knew he needed to read Heinlein's book before he started filming, but he only read a few chapters before he gave up and binge read. Then he asked Neumeier to tell him the rest of the book's story. Dislike Verhoeven to the book made him distrustful of even making a film, but Neumeier had the idea to convince Verhoeven to take on the project after all.

"It's really a pretty bad book," he said Verhoeven to Empire magazine.

2. The first scene of the film is a kind of parody on the Nazi propaganda film.

"Starship Troopers" begins with a recruitment video for a mobile infantry unit that recreates the most famous propaganda film in history "Triumph of the Will" by Leni Riefenstahl. 1935. Images of eagles, flags waving, a wide row of troops in formation and soldiers cheerfully declaring that they would contribute to the "brave cause".

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3. The role of Juan Rico could have been played Mark Wahlberg.

Paul Verhoeven was looking for young actors that audiences would root for to back up what he thought was a ridiculous premise. Verhoeven considered some promising film stars for the lead role, but he eventually found his Johnny Rico in Caspere Van Dine.

"It's an idiotic story: young people go off to fight bugs. So I felt the human characters should look like they do in the comics. Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon were tried, but I was looking for a prototype blond, white and arrogant, and Casper Van Dien was so close to the images I remembered from Leni Riefenstahl's films," Verhoeven said.

4. Arachnidov played himself Paul Verhoeven.

In the late 90s, computer graphics was still in its infancy, and there were still many difficulties in incorporating computer-generated creatures into live action scenes.

One of those problems was that the actors. intricately was to react correctly when there was no real physical presence on the set. A tried and tested solution was to use a tennis ball on a stick to indicate height, location and direction of movement, and this is usually an effective method.

However, to evoke a more emotional and dramatic response from his actors, Paul Verhovehimself became an arachnid, and whenever an alien presence was needed on set, he would jump around, screaming, swearing and lunging at his actors, getting right in their faces.

5. A huge amount of real ammunition was used in the making of the film.

While some people have criticised the film's politics or its brutality, no one has ever said that the "Star Troopers." looks cheap. This was a huge film with a great cast. The battle scenes were so intense that more was used in them ammunitionthan any other film in history. U.S.A.. The special effects utilised state-of-the-art computer graphics graphics in conjunction with full-size Arachnid models.

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All of which amounted to a budget of more than $100 million. Unfortunately, the film grossed only $121 million worldwide, which barely covered the production and marketing costs. The studio was disappointed with the release, and Verhoeven's career was never the same again.