Posted by Os Davis in films, football, Starship Troopers, video | 1 Comment
Arena Football’s Future: Would you like to know more?
Ah, now that the 2010 NFL season has begun (sort of), BuckBokai reflects on two things: 1) how patently *lame* the aberration known as “arena football” is and 2) how awesome said aberration will be in the 23rd century – you know, once we’re at intergalactic war with Klendathu.
First, full disclosure with all the shame of a blacked out one-night stand by a married man – except BuckBokai was conscious. BuckBokai once tried to like the indoor game. Seriously, in 2002, the post-Super Bowl jones (you know, that condition due to which Vince McMahon was ostensibly induced to set up the XFL a year earlier) set in hard with me and BuckBokai sought the Arena Football League as a methadone to the proper football addiction.
What greeted me instead was this:
Grown men playing touch football, right? That’s what BuckBokai thought; i lasted two weeks. Infatuation over.
(Buck Bokai’s 48th Rule of Disquisition: A substitute for the real thing is never a substitute.)
On the other hand, once things are made simpler on Earth by the great war with the Arachnids Bugs and the concomitant discipline required of humanity makes us stronger as a species, even arena football will improve, as depicted in the utterly awesome Starship Troopers.
Here in our 21st century, BuckBokai wishes again to implore that anyone who hates this flick just doesn’t get it. And by “it,” BuckBokai means “life, the universe and everything.”
Seriously, what’s not to love about this brand of football?
Starting with the very existence of Zander Barcalow, as played by Patrick Muldoon doing a Bill Paxton impression in 1997 when the biggest thing Paxton had done that that point was probably Twisters – cough, cough, Hollywood is sick, cough – Starship Troopers’ arena football scene delivers the exaggeratory goodness that the rest of Paul Verhoeven’s masterwork continues to.
The uniforms look great and, though BuckBokai still isn’t sure about the seemingly inevitability of high-level coed sports, Illyana Petrovna or no, another scene with the stunningly sexy Dizzy Flores is well welcome. (It’s hard to believe the most notable items on Dina Meyer’s post-Troopers résumé are four Saw flicks and the just-opened Piranha 3D. No, it isn’t. Yes, it is. Oh, i don’t know…)
Plus with Flores as quarterback, you’ve got to love the further sexual ambiguity involved in cheerleading and groupies such as good ol’ Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards). Is the quarterback, if female, still the squeaky-clean cheerbabe’s ideal?
Best of all may be the look of this scene. As a Dutchman, Verhoeven gives us several seconds of some of the best American football scene staging in two decades. The editing is way too quick to properly enjoy in stills, but below run three shots wherein (hopefully) some of the nice attention to detail – i.e. that in football though not necessarily arena football, 90% of the action takes place on the lines – can be enjoyed.
Seriously, what looks better? The above or the below?
Would you like to know more?