Paul Verhoeven, please come back. I miss you.

Paul Verhoeven was the director of the movie "Starship Troopers," based upon the book of the same name by Robert Heinlein.

This song, kind of ironically, is a cover of David Bowie's original "I have not been to Oxford Town." Although it's not from composer Basil Poledouris (but it is sung by his daughter, Zoe), it still fits the movie well.

And what a movie. And what a soundtrack. And what a cover.

The movie works on so many levels that, nearly 30 years later, it still resonates with audiences. The best movies always do, even if, at the time, the movie was a dud. It has since become a cult classic (much like how John Carpenter's "The Thing" was a dud only to become a much beloved cult classic), having spawned sequels of all sorts and its visual style is still used for the franchise.

It's strange how the movie has evolved over the years for me. On its surface, the movie parodies fascism and propaganda. Deeper, the movie mimics the old "cowboys & indians" black-&-white westerns of yesteryear. There's more than just a hint of 'Red Badge of Courage' & 'All Quiet on the Western Front'-styled anti-war messaging.

Yet, finally, it has come to represent the public's naivete over the Internet itself. 1997 was still very much a formative year in the Internet. A year of webrings and multiple young, scrappy search engines. AOL, Prodigy & other "mega-BBS" companies still existed. Everyone thought that the Internet would "solve everything." Did the teenagers and young adults of the 90s really do it and create the perfect tech that would propel human society into Utopia? There was no shame in thinking that way at the time.

And, of course, it all fell apart, much like the bugs shatter humanity's vision that they were the dominant species in the universe. As the great philosopher Michael Gerard Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

This cover is the perfect 1990s equivalent of "The Morning After," the 'love song' from the movie "The Poseidon Adventure" (the original); It's that song that's played before the spit hits the fan. Everything is safe. Everything is wonderful... And then everything falls apart. This is the last time everyone will be young and happy and healthy and all together.

Everyone has that moment in their life if they live long enough. Everyone has the moment that, when looking back, everything was quiet and simple and normal UNTIL THAT MOMENT HAPPENS, be it someone dies or everyone graduates and moves away or someone has a major health issue.

That's what this song represents. The pinnacle of Eden. The final evening inside of Utopia.

And the brutal nature of this song and "The Morning After" is that no one is aware of it. Everyone is ignorant that a storm is coming and they will never, ever, be the same after that.

And, in a way, that's what the movie "Starship Troopers" and this song represents for me. The shining promise of the Internet that will *solve everything*. You're still young and healthy. Your friends still live in the same time zone as you do. No one has health issues. Your whole life is still ahead of you. Everyone your age is still on a level playing field.

Maybe Paul Verhoeven no longer has his proverbial "fast ball." Maybe, like so many others, he has simply gotten too old or too tired or too cynical to make the biting social commentary that permeates his classics such as "Robocop," "Total Recall" or (obviously) "Starship Troopers." It happened to John Hughes. It happened to Stanley Kubrick.

I may not have been to paradise, as the song says, but I was privileged to live through the era of Prime Paul Verhoeven. Thank you, Mr. Verhoeven and, if you ever feel the urge to come back to the Starship Trooper universe, I would definitely love to know more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSy7KsXi6I