Starship Troopers (1997): The war propaganda satire still packs quite a punch 25 years later

Chad’s Grade: B-

It’s safe to say that Paul Verhoeven is one of the most controversial directors working in Hollywood. The Dutch director has always been a hot potato in Tinseltown, with a filmography that revels in violence (Robocop, Total Recall) or the sexual (the NC-17 rated Showgirls) and sometimes both (Basic Instinct). He also showers his sex and violence with layers of quirky humor and satire, making him one of the more unique voices in the film world. 

In Verhoeven’s American debut 1987s, “Robocop,” starring Peter Weller, the director mixed a violent exploitation tone with a sly commentary on American corporate culture. It was a potent mix, and the film was a big hit, and many of those elements would appear in his follow-up feature 1990s “Total Recall” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Verhoeven would shower the satire and social commentary full throttle in “Starship Troopers,” skewering one of America’s most cherished institutions: the military-industrial complex. 

Released in 1997 and based on Robert Heinlein’s popular and right-wing-tinged novel, “Starship Troopers” is set roughly 200 years in the future where much of the Earth is under military fascist rule. In Buenos Aires, our young hero is Johnny Rico, happily in love with his much smarter and classier sweetheart Carmen. When Carmen decides to join the military to earn “citizenship” and to pursue her piloting dreams, Johnny follows as well. But Johnny is assigned to the grunt marine unit and soon realizes he joined for the wrong reasons, almost quitting his basic training. That is until his hometown of Buenos Aires is destroyed by an asteroid from the planet Klendathu, whose planet’s inhabitants are a race of intelligent, giant, and very deadly insects. Now it’s all-out war as Johnny, and his fellow troopers set out to destroy the “evil” bug army. Johnny slowly rises the ranks and finds his place in the marines while growing apart from Carmen, who fulfills her dreams of becoming a pilot.

The straightforward plot has all the tropes of the classic War World II film, but Verhoeven takes the source novel’s fascist overtones and satirizes it. The director also blends imagery inspired by German director Leni Riefenstahl and her propaganda masterpiece “Triumph of Will.” There are also newsreel shorts filmed like internet web pages with the clickbait “would you like to know more?” Along with commercials and “news” announcement that resembles much of the war propaganda that the U.S. used to dole out during the great war in the 1940s. It’s a little haphazard but works well and lands quite the comical punch. 

The script is also full of social commentary nuggets, such as the opening classroom scene where we see the eager faces of our senior class hearing a history lesson about the “failure of social democracy” from a one-armed military vet. And the film smartly shows how fascist governments use the language of the “other,” i.e., immigrants or foreigners, in this case, the alien insects, to harness the energy of the grievance-filled populace. Not to mention the massive profits that the industrial complex stands to make when that angered public goes to war. Or even the benefits of earning your “citizenship” like the right to vote, hold office, or even have children, all it takes is a few years of military service. 

“Starship Troopers” also benefited from the dynamic and highly violent insect-war sequences that earned the film an “R” rating. Verhoeven shot these sequences in his trademark style with brightly lit sets, an intense sense of color, and clean wide angles that give an almost cartoon tone, heightening the shocking gore and body count. And it’s no accident that the battle terrains resemble the barren desert from the first Iraq invasion. The movie’s wild action scenes also benefit from the exceptional visual effects, a mixture of CGI and puppetry by the great Phil Tippet that are still stunning to watch. Much like “Jurassic Park” in 1993, this was a giant leap forward for computer-generated special effects technology. 

Sadly, the movie’s one weak spot was the casting of Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico and Denise Richards as his love interest Carmen Ibanez. I’ve heard that the white-washed casting for the primarily Latino characters was intentional and part of the satire, but I don’t buy it. Van Dien is a blank canvas that decently portrays youthful eagerness but not much else. And Denise Richards is even worse than Van Dien’s one-note performance. She’s too perky to play a “Maverick” style daredevil, and many of her scenes are unintentionally funny. During her space piloting sequences, she looks like she’s driving a mini coop down Hollywood Boulevard. There’s a reason these two actors would disappear into the Beverly Hills 90210 eco-system, never to be heard from again.

Despite the blank lead performances, the supporting cast is fun to watch and perfect for Verhoeven’s quirky tone. In his post “Doogie Howser” pre “How I met Your Mother” phase, Neil Patrick Harris makes for a great nerdy Nazi-style game theory commander. Michael Ironside gives his gruff General Rasczak a deadpan military energy that is satire comic gold. I love watching Clancy Brown pop us as an exaggerated drill instructor dressing down his grunt recruits. But the standout is Dina Meyer as Dizzy, the tough fellow marine with her sights on Johnny Rico. It’s a bold, energetic performance, and it’s baffling why Rico pines after the dull Carmen when he’s got this dynamic warrior woman throwing herself at him. It’s a tragedy that Meyer never became a bigger star, as this should’ve been her break-out performance. 

“Starship Troopers” satirical tone is haphazard, messy, and a little over the top, but it’s aged like a fine wine in the post-9/11 landscape. The film was released in 1997, right in the middle of the “milk & honey” years of the Clinton administration, when we couldn’t imagine fascism returning to our progressive paradise. But 25 years later, we see authoritarianism and fascist overtones re-emerging worldwide, showing up in our current pollical polarization climate. In the film, the bombing of Buenos Aires and the vengeance-filled response reminded me of the images of 9/11 in New York. Many of the film’s large-scale battle sequences play like sci-fi versions of imagery we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq. We didn’t know it, but Verhoeven was warning us that democracy is a fragile thing that can turn upside down fast.

When “Starship Troopers” premiered, the critics had their claws sharpened and ready. The movie was massacred critically, audiences were baffled, and the box office was middling at best. The biting comedic satire and social commentary were way ahead of their time, and even worse, many audiences took the mocking military jingoism at face value. The movie was unfairly compared to James Cameron’s “Aliens,” another military sci-fi war film that was clearly inspired by Heinlein’s source novel but had a straightforward tone using Vietnam as its war metaphor. While Verhoeven was hoping to do more installments, he walked away from the franchise, and sadly, a series of poorly made, direct-to-video installments were produced. 

“Starship Troopers” is worth a watch, but it’s my least favorite Verhoeven film. I prefer “Robocop” or “Total Recall” as more potent and better-made entertainment. I appreciate that the film eschews the dark dystopian tone that befalls many future space epics with a bright, clean, modern style. While the film is haphazard and unfocused, it comes very close to being a masterpiece of war propaganda satire.