Reply #63: There's one brief scene that sells the whole thing:

[CanuckAmok]

It's in one of the newsreels, and the tagline is something like "and everybody is doing their part". It cuts to a group of young children standing outside a school, stomping a bunch of cockroaches while a teacher laughs hysterically and claps her hands in approval.

It's probably 10 seconds of the film, but it says so much.


I also think Verhoven intentionally downplayed the effects of violence, to bring that element of the typical action scene to attention. Example: one of the characters has her arm burned off by some sort of bug acid/flame thrower thing, and in the very next scene, she stands armless and grimacing in pain but still ready to fight. Another one is when Michael Ironside has both legs sheared off and still behaves coherently and without any fear of death for the few minutes until Rico kills him.

Nobody goes into shock, nobody panics, nobody dies of blood loss, etc etc etc...

It's like every episode of Magnum, where Thomas gets a .45 slug in the shoulder and only ever has to wear a sling; he never has a shattered clavical or any other serious injury typical of a bullet wound. A friend of mine accidentally shot himself in the arm with a 5.56 round and required three reconstructive surgeries, and he still has nerve problems.

And how many times did Jim Rockford get cracked in the noggin with enough force to knock him out for minutes, without any resulting brain damage?

edited for atroshus speling.