Starship Troopers is a $100–110 million movie about a boy who joins the infantry to stay near a girl, and it ends with humanity at war against giant insects. Paul Verhoeven directed it. Edward Neumeier wrote it. It runs 129 minutes, and it is not a good film.
The problem is not the premise. It is that Verhoeven wants two things at once and gets neither.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Johnny Rico and the Buenos Aires Asteroid
The plot follows Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico, a school sports star who enlists in the Mobile Infantry against his parents’ objections. Denise Richards plays Carmen Ibañez, his girlfriend and a starship pilot. Dina Meyer is Dizzy Flores, who joins his squad because she loves him. Neil Patrick Harris plays Carl Jenkins, their psychic friend, who goes into military intelligence.
Rico makes a mistake in a training exercise. A squad member dies. Another resigns. Rico is demoted and flogged, then quits. He re-enlists after an Arachnid asteroid destroys Buenos Aires and kills millions, including his parents. The invasion of Klendathu follows, and military intelligence underestimates the Arachnids badly. Hundreds of thousands die.
Sergeant Zim and the Riefenstahl Casting
Verhoeven cast for a specific look. He wanted actors who matched the Aryan, blonde, blue-eyed image he saw in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Olympia. He looked at Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210 for young, photogenic, less well known faces.
Clancy Brown plays Sergeant Zim. Michael Ironside is Lieutenant Rasczak, the former teacher turned squad leader. Jake Busey is Ace Levy. The cast is fine. The satire is not.
The Arachnids and the Effects Bill
Nearly half the budget went to CGI and practical effects for the Arachnids. That money shows. The Bugs hold up better than most of the human scenes around them.
The Numbers
- Release date: November 7, 1997
- Runtime: 129 minutes
- Budget: $100–110 million
- Source novel: Robert A. Heinlein, 1959
- Score: 5.1/10
Production Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1991 | Development begins as Bug Hunt at Outpost 7 |
| April–October 1996 | Principal photography |
| November 7, 1997 | Theatrical release |
Why the Satire Fails
The film wants to be a warning about fascism and a thrill ride at the same time. It cannot do both. The United Citizen Federation grants voting and procreation rights only to those who earn citizenship through federal service. That is the idea. The movie states it, then drowns it in dead Arachnids.
Critics at the time read the film as endorsing the fascism it claimed to mock. That reading is fair. A movie that cannot tell you which side it is on has not earned the ambiguity.
Van Dien is flat. Richards is flatter. Harris is the only one having fun. The 129 minutes drag whenever the Arachnids leave the frame.
The casting search is the sharpest thing attached to this production. Verhoeven wanted actors in their late teens and early twenties and found the contemporary stars he had in mind were already in their thirties, which would have made the characters seem less naive. That instinct is better than anything in the finished cut.
Starship Troopers is worth one watch for the effects and the Riefenstahl joke. It is not worth a second.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
