![]() Some Troopers defenders even claim that Verhoeven deliberately chose bad actors to push his satire even further. ![]() Though Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer and company have all maintained screen careers, no-one ever accused them of being great thespians. In fact, one of the (many) criticisms aimed at the film is that it's " 90210 in space", a daytime soap among the stars. In stark contrast stand our cast of human pin-ups, with their chiselled jaws, shampoo-commercial hair and toned bodies. It helps too that the arachnid hordes are screeching, scuttling, vicious eight-legged nightmares – rendered in award-calibre visuals by effects wizard Phil Tippett – that cannot be reasoned with, only destroyed. Meanwhile, onscreen ads (the screen interface with its various tabs and links is a smart predictor of browser software) constantly talk up its military operations while demonising the enemy. "The only good bug is a dead bug!" is one of the catchy slogans the troops regularly parrot to boost morale. And somehow you are seduced to follow them, and at the same time, made aware that they might be fascists."Īs a result, Starship Troopers doesn't just blur the line on supporting "our troops" on their bug-hunting mission it obliterates that line like an anthill flooded by a vat of insecticide. "Basically the political undercurrent of the film is that these heroes and heroines are living in a fascist utopia – but they are not even aware of it! They think this is normal. "Ed and I disagreed with Robert Heinlein and we felt that we needed to counter with our own narrative," he explains. Paul Verhoeven himself, now a youthful 78 and still fiercely candid and intelligent, certainly isn't shy about drawing parallels to today's increasingly right-wing political landscape, not least the USA under Donald Trump. Not to mention a public duped by "fake news" to justify the extermination of "the other". Many respected outlets now see it as one of the best films of its decade, arguably even its iconoclastic director's greatest film.įar from seeing it as totalitarian, viewers have come to accept its savage satire of militarised populism. Twenty years later, though, Starship Troopers has undergone greater reappraisal than any movie of its time, maybe even of all time. "Exactly like Star Wars – if you subtract a good story, sympathetic characters, intelligence, wit and moral purpose" – Washington Post.Įven critical guru Roger Ebert's mildly appreciative notice labelled it "one-dimensional", adding that "if Star Wars is humanist, Starship Troopers is totalitarian". Here's a sample of the brutal reviews that greeted Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers on its 1997 release:
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