Cinema Craptastíque: Starship Troopers

The latest in a series of essays about classic, awful films. 

Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997) holds a special place in my heart right next to those animatronic singing fish people hang over their mantles. Difference is, the plastic fish could serve a practical purpose, such as beating Paul Verhoeven savagely until he is unable to make another film. 

“But the book was awesome!,” you awkwardly blurt, revealing more about yourself than intended. OK, fine. Let’s deal with that. If Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers is truly the work of satirical genius it is celebrated as, then there is all the more to hate about this movie. 

By 1997 Verhoeven was already a career criminal, having polluted our once green and hopeful homeworld with Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and the holiday family classic Showgirls. I’m also pretty sure he killed some puppies and lied on some important tax forms somewhere in there. 

If Heinlein’s Troopers novel is indeed a biting and powerful satire of fascist militarization, I must question the decision to hand screenwriter/director duties over to Verhoeven, himself a biting and powerful satire of a filmmaker. Hiring Paul Verhoeven to direct a subtle political farce is as absurd as asking Oliver Stone to make a sprawling Hollywood musical, or hiring Woody Allen to direct Resident Evil 3, or hiring Paul Verhoeven to direct a good movie (you see where I’m going with that). 

Consider this tidbit from the Internet Movie Database: 

Director Paul Verhoeven admits to never finishing the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both bored and depressed.

Yeah. This is the guy I want interpreting my literary vision for the masses. 

If you haven’t seen Starship Troopers, I’d love to sit down with you and listen to your account of the last eight years. I can only imagine how colorful and bright the world must be to a mind unstained by this filmic tumor. The movie tells the story of an invasion of earth by giant cartoon insects so scary they incite all of earth’s females to remove their clothes. Earth’s men, confused and excited by this nudity, proceed to blow the bugs up, and blow ’em up good. “You kill bugs good,” remarks one strapping young cadet. Indeed, private. Indeed. 

Casper Van Dien, a young actor who has apparently discovered a method by which brain capacity can be exchanged for dental health, leads the pack as Johnny Rico. While I imagine the Johnny of the novel was a parody of the affluence and directionlessness of modern youth, Van Dien plays Rico as best he can: as a big dumb guy with a giant chin. 

The cast also features Denise Richards, who shares Van Dien’s toothy fortitude but has chosen to enlarge parts of her body other than her chin. Oddly, Richards is one of the few actresses NOT to appear nude in the film, a fact that just sounds incorrect no matter how many times it is verified. 

Also present in this fine ensemble (for Starship Troopers movie fans, that means a group) are Jake Busey (staple bully character and son of the craziest damn person on the planet), Dina Meyer (who does get thoroughly nude in this movie), Neil Patrick Harris (who I like to believe never, EVER gets nude), Michael Ironside (a Verhoeven regular who I suspect the director may be blackmailing) and many others who would probably deny it if put on the spot. Even Rue McClanahan pops up as a science teacher, which I think I can safely say is the high point of the entire affair. 

So earth goes to war with the bugs, ultimately confronting them on their own planet. In 1997 computer animation had been introduced and well established as the new standard for film effects, but was yet to be overdone and run into the ground until even small independent films about gay accountants were required to feature some kind of dinosaur chase. Starship Troopers was among the first films to suggest that CGI could not only enhance films, but could in fact ruin them.

In addition to nudity and comic amounts of forced vulgarity, Starship Troopers‘ defining characteristic is surely its graphic violence. Characters are skewered by the giant bugs, torn in half, their brains sucked out, and all the while I’m thinking “Ah yes, the world’s superpowers are indeed engendering a global military complex that favors the corporate over the human.” But then I put down my Chomsky and return my attention to the movie. 

When it’s over, what does one learn from Starship Troopers? Speaking only for myself, I learned that war might be really naughty, but it’s oh-so-fun to watch and at night, when the battle subsides, there’s lovin’ to be had in the army’s futuristic, co-ed tents. Go earth!