Starship Troopers (1997)

Released in November 1997 through TriStar Pictures and Touchstone Pictures, Starship Troopers arrived at a curious moment in Hollywood history: big-budget science fiction was booming, blockbuster excess was practically a selling point, and audiences seemed willing to follow almost anything into the cosmos provided it moved fast enough and blew up spectacularly enough. Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director already well known for films like RoboCop and Basic Instinct, took the assignment and ran somewhere rather unexpected with it. The film is adapted from Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel of the same name, though Verhoeven has been fairly candid about finding the source material disagreeable in its politics, which goes some way to explaining the direction he chose to take things. The premise is futuristic military science fiction: humanity is at war with a race of giant insectoid creatures known as the Bugs, and we follow young recruit Johnny Rico through boot camp, combat, loss, and the grinding machinery of an interstellar war effort. At 129 minutes and on what was a sizeable studio production, the film is nothing if not committed to its own spectacle.

Verhoeven, whose subsequent work includes Hollow Man (2000), has never been a director who does things quietly, and Starship Troopers is perhaps the most extreme expression of his tendency to use genre filmmaking as a vehicle for something else entirely. Whether audiences picked up on that something else is, as it turns out, rather central to what makes the film interesting. The principal cast is led by Casper Van Dien as Rico, with Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, and Neil Patrick Harris filling out the ensemble. None of them were, at that point, particularly heavyweight dramatic names, and there is a strong argument that this was a deliberate choice: polished but unremarkable faces projecting polished but unremarkable heroism, which suits the film's satirical purposes rather well. The performances sit somewhere between soap opera and propaganda reel, earnest to the point of absurdity, and whether that registers as a flaw or a feature depends almost entirely on how you choose to watch the thing. It was not a critical darling on release, though it found a very enthusiastic audience on home video in the years that followed, which is more or less the standard biography of a cult film.

Starship Troopers (1997) is the definition of a cult classic. A glossy, over-the-top sci-fi satire that looks like a high school military recruitment ad directed by a madman. Paul Verhoeven’s take on Robert Heinlein’s novel isn’t subtle, it’s not serious, and it’s definitely not good in the traditional sense. The acting is hilariously hammy with Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer all delivering lines like “Would you like to know more?” with deadpan intensity. The special effects are a mix of practical bugs and early CGI that haven’t aged well, and the whole thing reeks of 90s excess: tight uniforms, slow-motion walks, explosions for no reason. But here’s the thing: it knows it’s ridiculous. Beneath the surface, it’s a razor-sharp satire of fascism, militarism, and propaganda, disguised as a big, dumb action movie. The world-building is chilling when you pay attention (the media broadcasts, the us-vs-them rhetoric, the glorification of violence) it’s all terrifyingly on brand. Most people miss it and just enjoy the bug-squashing spectacle, which is probably exactly what Verhoeven wanted. A modern B-movie masterpiece that works because it’s so committed to its own absurdity. Not great cinema, but essential viewing if you love films that pretend to be stupid while actually being very smart. Or if you just want to watch humans fight giant space insects with flamethrowers. Either way, it delivers.

That tension between surface and subtext is what keeps me coming back to Starship Troopers more than almost any other film from that mid-nineties wave of loud, expensive science fiction. It rewards a second watch in a way that genuinely surprises you, mostly because the first watch is so aggressively distracting. The propaganda newsreels alone deserve a film studies essay. I find it sits in interesting company with other adventure films I have covered here, like Mad Max: Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in that it uses the grammar of pure action cinema to smuggle in something considerably more uncomfortable. Those films wear their ambitions more openly, perhaps, but Verhoeven's particular trick is that he hides his behind a grin and a flamethrower. It is the sort of film that makes you feel slightly guilty for enjoying it, which is, I suspect, entirely the point.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1997  | Watched: 2025-12-01

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Starship Troopers (1997) on YouTube

Where to watch

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Paul Verhoeven: Hollow Man (2000)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)