Matchup of the Day: Ace in the Hole vs. Starship Troopers
It’s another satire double feature, this time about the media manipulation of the masses – Ace in the Hole vs. Starship Troopers.
There’s a scene toward the middle of Starship Troopers when the humans invade the bug planet. As a news reporter comments on the carnage, he is ripped in half by one of the giant arachnids. The cameraman continues to film. That’s Ace in the Hole in a nutshell. While more obviously comparable to the recent media satire Nightcrawler, in which Jake Gyllenhaal orchestrates news stories with a complete disregard for human life, Hole does share similarities with Troopers. Both depict how large numbers of people can be manipulated into action by the media. Hole focuses more on the behind the scenes machinations while Troopers shows what can happen to the multitudes who are mobilized by those machinations.
The novel that Starship Troopers is based on is pro-militarism. The director of the film, Paul Verhoeven, failed to read it all the way through, saying that the novel left him “bored and depressed”. Verhoeven has stated that Troopers is anti-war and anti-fascist. Because the film uses satire rather than outright declaring that militarism is bad, some viewers assume that Troopers supports what it actually opposes. Regarding the film’s satirical approach, Verhoeven has explained
“If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work, no one will listen to me. So I’m going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it’s only good for killing f**king bugs!”
The only information Troopers provides for the viewer to understand the motivations of the characters comes from propaganda videos that pop up throughout the movie (the opening references the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will). The videos can be taken at face value, depicting the giant alien bugs as the clear enemy, or they can be seen as absurd and over the top. One video shows children stomping on cockroaches as an example of everyone doing their part for the war effort. Squashing cockroaches, of course, achieves nothing at all. But the soldiers accept the message wholeheartedly as they march off to be ripped to shreds by the tens of thousands.
The reporter, Chuck Tatum, in Ace in the Hole, has a shady career history, having been fired from various newspapers. He ends up at a small time newspaper office in Albuquerque, New Mexico desperate for employment. A year later he’s still stuck there reporting on trivial local events. Things start to look up when he hears about a man, Leo, trapped in a cave that collapsed. Tatum immediately sees the potential for sensationalizing Leo’s predicament. He enlists the help of the corrupt local sheriff and Leo’s dissatisfied wife to concoct a scheme to milk the situation for all it’s worth. Tatum even deliberately delays Leo’s rescue to heighten the drama. People come from near and far to be a part of the event until it turns into an actual carnival, complete with a ferris wheel.
The propaganda videos in Troopers valorize the soldiers while sending them off to their deaths. Tatum drums up sympathy for Leo’s plight while prolonging his suffering. But, at least, Tatum realizes the gravity of what he’s done when Leo expires from pneumonia only minutes before he’s rescued. The ending of Troopers implies that there will only be more war. At the news office where Tatum works, there is a sign hanging on the wall that reads “Tell The Truth”. Both films illustrate how easily truth can take a back seat to theatrics.