Paul Verhoeven Delivers Another Great Sci-Fi Action Film With Starship Troopers

Remember when Paul Verhoeven was doing sci-fi blockbusters regularly? God, what an age that was. Verhoeven took movies about cyborg police officers and Arnold Schwarzenegger getting his ass to the moon and turned them into both effective sociopolitical commentary and thrilling action films. Brains and brawn were always around when Verhoeven was tackling sci-fi. The tradition continues with Starship Troopers. Verhoeven takes a novel of the same name penned by Robert A. Heinlein that glorifies fascism and turns it into something that’s only gotten more timely in the twenty-three years since its release.

Starship Troopers is set in the 23^rd-century. The world has been transformed into a society that places violence and military service as important above all else. That means the youth of this world grow up believing that the only way to have value is to grab a weapon and shoot up some bugs. Yes, bugs. An alien species referred to as Bugs is fighting back against colonizing humans. They’re the new enemy that the human race is dedicated to fighting against. John Rico (Casper Van Dien) would love nothing more than to go out and squish some of these bugs, proving his own value to society in the process.

He gets his chance when he joins the Army as a private. Here, he will travel to the front lines on the home planet of the Bugs. If he survives, he could become a hero! But surviving is easier said than done when fighting the Bugs. Screenwriter Edward Neumeier and director Paul Verhoeven instill the satirical nature of Starship Troopers into the journey of Johnny Rico. If you’ve seen one military action movie, you know what to expect from his character. He’s got disapproving parents. He’s got a girl he loves from back home. All he wants to do is fight for the just cause and make his country proud.

This archetype has been portrayed with a total straight-face in countless other movies. That’s not the case with Troopers. While the character of Rico never subverts expectations by deviating from his traditional personality, that’s not the point of the character. Rico is supposed to be the quintessential underdog protagonist whose dreams of service are in the name of an organization whose logo bears an eerie resemblance to the Nazi insignia. Rico is 110% sincere in his convictions but they’re still convictions in the name of a clearly fascist organization that has no regard for human life.

This is most humorously reflected in how Rico keeps getting promoted as the movie goes on simply because his superiors keep dying rather than as a comment on Rico’s talents. Further dark humor is wrung out of juxtaposing horrific actions with traditional “rah-rah” war movie aesthetics when everybody cheers over a captured alien simply being “scared”. The fact that Starship Troopers knows the beats of war movies so well, which makes its grim comedy undercutting those beats all the more amusing. Less successful is the gaggle of lead young actors tasked with playing our protagonists.

The likes of Van Dien and Dina Meyer are clearly trying to emulate the type of personalities and performances you’d see in traditional sci-fi fare. Still, these satirical performances could have stood to be more distinctive. Supporting turns from Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown fare much better in terms of balancing archetype parodies with acting that’s entertaining in its own right. As for the rest of Starship Troopers, well, it works like a charm. Especially impressive is how well the CGI for the bugs hold up more than two decades later while the practical effects used for the leader of the bugs is outright incredible. It may not match up to RoboCop or Total Recall, but Verhoeven is right on target with his sci-fi satire in Starship Troopers.