Starship Troopers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music Composed and Conducted by Basil Poledouris
We are very proud to announce our newest addition to our catalogue: the score for 1997 science fiction action film Starship Troopers by late composer Basil Poledouris. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, written by Edward Neumeier (based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein), and starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, Denise Richards, Patrick Muldoon, Clancy Brown, Neil Patrick Harris, Marshall Bell, and Michael Ironside, Starship Troopers may well be one of the most misunderstood movies of all time. Anyone who has read Heinlein’s book can clearly tell that Verhoeven and Neumeier never meant to be loyal to the original concept. Instead, they took the premise and the characters of Heinlein’s story and created a satirical parody of a futuristic neo-fascist body of government. Upon release, it received mostly negative reviews from critics, aiming at its cheesy acting, extreme violence and gratuitous nudity, with many viewers even claiming that the movie promoted fascism. However, in retrospect, reviews have become more positive, with much praise to Verhoeven’s intention of making a satirized inspirational war movie from the future, in the vein of Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda movies. When asked why he, having grown up in the German-occupied Netherlands during WWII, was doing a right-wing fascist movie, Verhoeven’s reply was hilarious: “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 fucking Bugs.”
The story for Starship Troopers focuses on a group of schoolmates that, after graduation, join as military recruits to the Federation, a militaristic world government in the 22nd century. Van Dien plays Johnny Rico, a vigorous young man who enrolls into the Mobile Infantry, while his girlfriend Carmen Ibañez (Richards) pursues a career as a spaceship pilot. His friend Dizzy Flores (Meyer), who is in love with him, also joins the infantry, and both of them struggle through its brutal training. In the meantime, Carmen enjoys the comfortable service onboard the Federation warship Rodger Young, while developing a flirtatious relationship with her instructor Zander Barcalow (Muldoon). All of these characters are quickly thrown into battle and facing potential death when a race of insect-like creatures, the Arachnids, presumably attack Earth with asteroids, declaring war to the humanity. The movie then accompanies several battles and events that show swarms of giant insects viciously attacking and killing the infantry troops. However, by the time we reach the end of the movie, there is a hint at the idea that the humans may have started the war as a pretense to get to the arachnid’s resources, using propaganda to inspire people to join the fight. At the climax, with the humans clearly having the upper hand and instilling fear in their “enemies”, the question of who the film’s real villains were remains.
While working for Hollywood, Verhoeven regularly collaborated with two composers, namely Jerry Goldsmith and Basil Poledouris, both of them providing outstanding scores for his movies. Having worked with Poledouris on Flesh+Blood and RoboCop, Verhoeven considered that the composer’s visceral, tongue-in-cheek approach to music was perfect for Starship Troopers. For his sci-fi epic, the director would require everything from frenetic battle music to recognizable character leitmotifs, as well as underscoring miniature propaganda TV breaks that recreated the exaggerated ultra-patriotic and melodramatic feel of the WWII movies. Right from the start of the score, Poledouris punches us in the face with a military march of rolling snare and high brass to introduce the world of the movie. This opening cue (“Federal Network”) establishes the score’s tone and its primary theme for the Federation, representing its unquestionable authority and the patriotism of the war against the giant insects. The theme is very effective in making fun of the concept of perceiving a call to arms as innocent, as if it was propelling troops to quickly forget the hundreds of people getting awfully killed and go to the next planet to kill more bugs. Deriving from this theme, Poledouris created the outstanding main theme for the film, played by the full orchestra in the track “Klendathu Drop”. This theme represents the struggle, camaraderie and heroism of the mobile infantry with a sense of fate attached to it, as it accompanies the troops boarding drop ships to descent to a rocky planet and engaging in battle with the arachnids, eventually losing it with catastrophic consequences. Poledouris uses this theme in key moments of the film, as in the first half of “Outpost Retrieval”, while the troops are forced to retreat from an outpost being overtaken by bugs, and at the end of “Brainbug”, when one of the troopers sacrifices himself to save the others. Being a minor mode variation of the Federation theme, Poledouris’ main theme perfectly encompasses the aftermath and casualties of war, as troops are encouraged by propaganda to march happily to battle, only to be confronted by the awful reality of genuine combat.
Poledouris’ leitmotif approach becomes more and more evident throughout the score, with plenty of themes for characters, situations, and even for the different kinds of bugs. There’s a heroic theme for Rico that underscores his victories (most noticeable near the end of the film during the second half of “They Will Win”), as well as two different love themes for the love triangle between Rico, Carmen and Dizzy. Rico and Carmen’s music plays during the early cue “Departure” as both characters say goodbye to each other after enrolling into the Federation, and later during the end of “Death of Dizzy”, when they reunite in an evacuation ship. On the other hand, Rico and Dizzy’s love theme is heard while they start making love in “Johnny and Dizzy”, later when the wounded Dizzy dies in Johnny’s arms in “Death of Dizzy”, and finally as a solemn variation during “Dizzy’s Funeral”. Both themes are lovely and quite similar in orchestration with soft string passages under tender flute melodies, but it is Dizzy’s love theme the one that understandably reaches a grander rendition during the funeral sequence, as it is Dizzy’s demise the event that has a bigger impact on Rico’s coming-of-age arc. Carmen gets her own music as well: one being a small theme for her relationship with Zander (played by a bassoon solo at the end of “The Fleet Limps Home” when Carmen shifts her attention to her instructor after believing that Rico was killed in action), and a bigger theme in the form of a catchy orchestral waltz to express the character’s love of piloting. This theme makes a grand orchestral entrance during the excellent track “Carmen’s Shuttle Ride”, and later makes another appearance during the middle section of “Asteroid Grazing”. This track along with “Undocking” show Poledouris’s choice of using light orchestration for Carmen’s flying scenes, with strings, flutes, harp, clarinets and tinkling percussion taking the lead and providing a delightful feeling of weightlessness that contrasts heavily with the music accompanying scenes in which we see Rico’s struggles during his military training. An aggressive and tough orchestral march represents Michael Ironside’s character Lieutenant Jean Rasczak and the Roughnecks, the special unit Rico and Dizzy become part of later in the film. This theme makes its entrance during the beginning of “Tango Urilla” and later when Rico himself becomes the Lieutenant of the unit. For the different arachnid creatures, Poledouris intertwines several motifs during his action cues, which are impressive on their own already and arguably one of the score’s strengths. Tracks like “Live From Planet K”, “Tango Urilla”, “Bugs!!”, “Outpost Retrieval”, and “Destruction of the Rodger Young” are real tours de force, all of them exhibiting propulsive harmonies over complex percussion passages, all of this showcasing Poledouris’ impressive abilities to put together a thrilling and incredibly enjoyable orchestral wall of sound. All of this makes Starship Troopers a rich thematic action score with practically not a single dull moment.
Poledouris’ score for Starship Troopers was originally released in 1997 by Varèse Sarabande in the form of a half-an-hour album that missed several of the composer’s best cues for the movie (like the “Carmen’s Shuttle Ride” and “Outpost Retrieval” cues). Furthermore, while enjoyable, the short album remained an incoherent one, with little space for Poledouris’ themes and motifs to be fully appreciated. Low quality double-CD bootlegs with the isolated score from the film DVD would quickly surface later, offering extensive additional material. Varèse Sarabande eventually re-released the complete score in 2016 as a limited deluxe presentation and, while many enjoyed the possibility of finally having the score in full and with outstanding audio quality, some argued that the listening experience turned out to be quite cumbersome for its amount of non-stop bombastic music. Therefore, Renovatio Records has put together a new program of the score that exhibits its best moments, arranged in such a way that allows the music to breathe and flow. This new edition will hopefully let film music enthusiasts appreciate the amount of musical story-telling craftsmanship that Poledouris brought into Starship Troopers. Relax and enjoy what may well be one of the late composer’s best scores of his career. Forget the insecticide and the nukes; bring on your best speakers!
