I’m tired of all this explicit violence on TV. In my day, our sci-fi epics didn’t show men getting their legs cut off or women being impaled by alien insects. Anyone who died was shot by a laser and died painlessly. That’s the way it was, and we LIKED IT! We didn’t show a poor girl coughing up blood and gasping for air as she died. They either fell down without a scratch or said some eloquent last words before nodding off to sleep. And we LIKED IT!
OK, seriously — I understand and appreciate the point of Starship Troopers, which is that war is essentially made possible by propaganda that pumps us up so much that our only reaction to seeing stomach-churning violence is to get back out there and keep killing the bad guys. But I think that point probably went over the heads of the kids who saw this movie and said, “Whoooaaa, man … that dude just got his legs bitten off.”
This movie was on prime time on FX when I came home from the doctor about my back. (See what I mean about getting old?) I saw five minutes of it and darn near threw up. Sure, the medication didn’t help, but now it’s several days later, and I still get a twinge in my stomach just thinking about … excuse me … BLLECCCCCCHHHH!
Forget the warning labels for kids. We need warning labels that say, “Warning: This movie might make people who don’t normally throw up toss their cookies big-time.”
EDIT: Forgot to mention something that shows how sick American sensibilities have become. I asked Jen if they’d edited this movie at all for television. She said they blurred out a brief shot of a topless woman. Oh, thank heavens. That might have — oh, I don’t know — made teens want to have sex. Much better to see people impaled.