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Review of Starship Troopers (Basil Poledouris)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you seek the most militaristically brutal and
bombastic score of Basil Poledouris' career, an explosive and simplistic
series of harsh action cues that mask an otherwise intelligently
designed core of themes.
Avoid it... if the score's intentionally abrasive attitude and inability to really enunciate its secondary themes deter you from expanding upon an already large and representative collection of Poledouris' more intellectually stimulating music.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Starship Troopers: (Basil Poledouris) Anyone who
has actually read Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel "Starship Troopers" knows
that director Paul Verhoeven's 1997 adaptation of the classic
science-fiction tale was never meant to be completely loyal to the
concept. Verhoeven took the premise and the characters of Heinlein's
story and created a satirical parody of both it and the ridiculous
television teenie soap operas of the 1990's. Throw in some glancing
blows at the idea of a fascist utopia, the usual gratuitous violence and
nudity necessary for any Verhoeven film, and a poke at the news media in
the Internet age, and you eventually get a film that simply can't be
taken seriously on any point. It exists at a level far below the already
questionable intelligence of Verhoeven's Robocop and Total
Recall, and while the movie's ultimate punch to the gut is the near
revelation at its conclusion that humans are the villains of the tale
(their attack on a civilization of nasty bugs on another planet is
perhaps not for our self-protection but to plunder new technologies), no
attempt is made to hide the tongue-in-cheek nature of the production.
The film was a substantial fiscal failure, though its cult recognition
led to several sequels off the big screen. For his soundtracks,
Verhoeven worked regularly with Jerry Goldsmith and Basil Poledouris,
both providing outstanding music for his previous films. While either
could likely have written appropriately frenetic military bombast for
Starship Troopers, the raw side of Poledouris' brutal sound for
similar films of immense violence, going all the way back to Conan
the Barbarian, made him the better choice for the assignment.
Because of the extensive post-production and special effects work
necessary to bring the alien bugs of Starship Troopers to life,
Poledouris was given an astounding six months in which to write and
adapt his music for the film, consulting with Verhoeven frequently along
the way. The director demanded rousing music of such a bombastic nature
that Poledouris commented on the fact that each cue began taking on the
characteristics of a separate title theme. As the process of lining up
these monumental cues continued, Verhoeven identified the theme that he
considered to be the primary idea of the score (the melody originally
for the Rodger Young spaceship), and Poledouris adapted it into fuller
statements throughout the film. Variations on this title theme in
several key cues ultimately become one of the most curious aspects of
the score.
The finished music for Starship Troopers constitutes a soundtrack that very much resembles the film: wildly hyperactive and lacking centralized development. In short, it's the perfect definition of a "thrill of the moment" score, its many sub-themes mostly lost in the wash of brazen orchestrations and pounding attitude. Poledouris' ballsy recording for Starship Troopers, explosively powerful and extremely heavy on the brass, is mixed in a very straight forward, in-your-face manner. The very flat recording accentuates the score's tendency to reach out and punch you in the face, though it understandably detracts from whatever elegance the music might have mustered. The orchestral ensemble is standard as well, with practically no instrumental or synthetic color. In fact, notable solos are difficult to discern apart from the mass of the ensemble. The "wall of sound" approach differs from David Arnold's Independence Day, with which Starship Troopers was often compared at the time (not to mention a few Goldsmith temp-track adherences), because Arnold made much more flamboyant use of his themes. Poledouris' music, rather, develops countless themes but does so in such a muddied atmosphere that you have difficulty recalling any of them after the fact. There are several military-related themes, as well as two love themes, and most of them follow individual characters in the soap opera, but while they recur as needed, none is particularly memorable. Thus, the score's strengths are those individual cues that really knock you out with their propulsive, harmonic ruckus. For the ridiculous faux-fascist Federation Network and its propaganda, Poledouris writes an extremely trite military march for rolling snare and high brass heroicism straight from the newsreels of the 1940's, with even a slight Western genre wink of the eye to make fun of the perceived innocence of the call to arms. In the popular "Klendathu Drop" cue, accompanying the opening to the human invasion of the bugs' world, Poledouris' main theme for Starship Troopers opens the scene on harsh brass tones, and while the brash, patriotic nature of this theme feels sincere, it's too structurally simplistic to be taken really seriously. It's a theme meant for popcorn testosterone, disposing of any notion of complex design in favor of brute force. Still, the theme is satisfying enough in context, and equally robust performances of this idea would extend into "Destruction of the Roger Young" and the conclusion of "Brainbug/Nuke Cave," among others. Note an added bass region drone to this theme's performance at the outset of "End Titles," an intriguing addition not present anywhere else. In "Klendathu Drop," Poledouris systematically alters the main theme of Starship Troopers for an interesting variant. At 1:45 into the cue, he changes the second note in the theme so that it forms a distinct precursor for the dramatic progressions of Les Misérables the following year. This more ominous version of the theme's opening bar provides a more serious edge to the remainder of "Klendathu Drop," aided also by frantic violin counterpoint that lends another dimension to the work. Rattling percussion in this cue sets up a premise of using the percussion as representation for the bugs, and while Poledouris does indeed do this in subsequent tracks, he bypasses the use of creative layers in a cue like "Bugs!!" with a more simplistic bed of timpani stylistically similar to Goldsmith's use in L.A. Confidential and other heavy suspense work. This "Bugs!!" cue in particular is yet another example of Poledouris' choice to overwhelm the listener with noise rather than give him or her any lasting musical idea to associate with the nasty aliens. A few plucks on strings here and there are largely washed away. Among other singular moments of note, the string section provides relief in the love theme performance heard in "Dizzy's Funeral" (after a likely accidental reference to John Williams' catchy Close Encounter of the Third Kind fanfare at 0:10 into the cue, started on violin and finished by horn) and "Brainbug," which treats the massively ruthless and ugly creature with an almost religious, organ-aided crescendo. The "End Titles" recording is, for those seeking out the score's major themes, an excellent summary of them. Overall, Starship Troopers is ambitiously rowdy ear candy, taking the heroic style from Robocop and magnifying it to nearly silly degrees that are engaging if only in their volume. But the score lacks much impactful development of its themes and the soundtrack unfortunately contains two grungy songs performed by Poledouris' daughter, Zoë. Fans of the score long criticized the half-hour length of the original 1997 album, and even its label, Varèse Sarabande, lamented the circumstances that caused it. Double-CD bootlegs based on the isolated DVD score for the film offered extensive additional material, including the film versions of all the cues that were remixed or rearranged for the Varèse album. The label finally rectified the issue in 2016, providing a limited, 2-CD presentation that better illuminates the score's thematic continuities. Although this album exposes more of the intelligence beneath the score's brutish surface, the experience remains somewhat incoherent in the whole, an explosion of monumental bombast perfect for the next time you find yourself in a fascist mood. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1997 Album:
Total Time: 36:24
2016 Album: Total Time: 104:32
* unused ** partially unused
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1997 album includes a pictorial of the recording sessions and a lengthy
note from writer Jeff Bond about the production and score, including the quotes below from Basil
Poledouris. The insert of the 2016 album contains even more extensive analysis.
Every cue in this movie is like a main title, because Paul approaches everything differently. Every scene takes you somewhere else; it's been so unlike a normal film where you develope your motifs and you basically do variations on those motifs in different tempi and that's your cue. The devices become more textural and harmonic, associative things."
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