Glen enters this BIG DAMN ROOM with 3965 chairs (I told him to get it right) and there were these two big funky viewscreens with a damn good sound system on either side of this funky (yippy kai yaaaaa mudderfut) stage. This dude comes out. It’s a dude, no name, just an anonymous dude. (Not to be confused with THE DUDE in THE BIG LEBOWSKI!!!) This dude just starts yapping, flapping his jaw, not saying a thing. “Get that tape in we got 45 minutes to show 90 minutes of stuff” OK, I ain’t complaining, but if you got 90 minutes worth of stuff perhaps scheduling a 90 minute session would of been wise...
First thing they show is that newest trailer for Starship Troopers, Ya’ve seen it, calm down.
Then the trailer faded out to show the guys coming out of the drop ship, which then segued into a making of documentary with Verhoeven and Neumeyer talking about the psychology of the book and how they decided to adapt the film from Robert’s great book.
20% of the crowd began screaming for Verhoeven’s head, yelling out, “Read the fucking book you moron!!!” and “BULLSHIT!!!” Ahhhhhhh, intelligent literate banter to be sure.
Meanwhile, if those people had kept their mouths shut they would have heard about how the budget wouldn’t allow for the suits, and about the dramatics of filming power armour and so on. OH YEAH, and THE DUDE said that he was told that Power Armour would make it into the sequel and encouraged the audience of 4000 to see it.
In the documentary they began showing alot of footage from the film. When I asked Glen to tell me this stuff, his eyes went all glassy and had trouble talking for the rest of the night. It was as if something had tripped him and he was now seeing really cool stuff in his noggin. I hooked up the noggin viewer and saw “Soldiers protecting a defensive wall, along the top of it, and these HOPPER BUGS go “vizzzzzzzzeerrrwwwwwzzzzzzzz” through the sky and literally pluck this sap’s head... clean off! Man, that’s the shit.
Then a soldier gets all ripped apart. hehehheheheheheheheheheheh
Then alot of bugs coming up a wall, and these soldiers blowing them away, but not all of them.
Lots of wide angle shots of drop ships coming in over different enviroments like the daytime desert, night time stuff and over a fort like area.
Then they show this seen where Michael Ironside ( A REAL COOL FILM GUY!) is directing the “troops” into these harnesses, then the ship gets ‘dropped’. This isn’t pleasant looking. Instead of the usual “rumble rumble shaky shaky” look like the drop ship scene in ALIENS which didn’t look brutal, this sequence looks painful, like it hurts, like you’d rather be at a fine restaurant. Ya know. Then they show the ships coming out of these tubes out of these bigger ships, kinda like Galactica, which I love btw.
These ships kick out alot of fire and vapor trail behind them. You know like heat distortions and stuff. Real cool looking.
There was some academy training stuff, including the hand/knife SGT ZIM scene. I’ve detailed that scene before, but Glen says that Clancy Brown plays it to perfection. He is intense as hell, but quiet and with held, the anti-FULL METAL JACKET guy, but just as scary to deal with.
They also had a Starship Troopers bug at the con, all blown apart with green blood everywhere. It was cool, too bad the people running the show labelled it TEXAS COCKROACH and nobody knew what it was really from. God I hate that type of fan stuff.
Glen’s overall impression of the Starship Troopers stuff was that it was “Fucking Cool” and you can quote him on that. I did.
NOW FOLKS listen I know you love the novel. Who doesn’t? But there is a big difference between the written word and a film. THIS MOVIE, I Believe, will blow you away. From everything I have seen and heard, I’m prepared for mega coolness.
