Starship Troopers (movie)

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Starship Troopers is a 1997 film directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards. The movie is partially based on the novel by Robert Heinlein. The movie uses many of Heinlein's characters and settings, but both the plot and presentation differ enough that the movie is described only as "based on the book by Robert Heinlein."

This movie polarised both popular audiences and critics, as did the original book. On one level, the movie tells a straightforward action-adventure science fiction story, with attractive stars, innovative CGI special effects, and an entertaining but clichéd and often ludicrous plot. At this level, the movie appealed greatly to teenage boys. However, beyond this, it attracted widely divergent responses. Fans of the novel often regarded it as a shallow insult to a great work. Others regarded it as an clever satire of what they saw as the book's endorsement of fascism, as well as propaganda films in general. Still others assumed that the movie was endorsing fascism and responded to this negatively or positively depending on their political beliefs.

The film depicts a future state that is broadly reminiscent of America, except that it is extremely militaristic and uncompromisingly warlike in its attitude to attacks from a species of bug that lives in a distant solar system. On one level, the movie encourages us to identify with the gung-ho antics of the Earthlings as they successfully destroy the bugs. Their attitude, combined with the unsuccessful first attack on the bugs' homeworld, is similar to the Vietnam War. At the same time, there is considerable moral ambiguity, as it is never stated that the bugs started the war. Furthermore, there are several scenes that appear to be deliberately reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, and some of the military costumes resemble those of Nazi Germany, particularly Neal Patrick Harris's Colonel Carl Jenkins, whose costume apes that of the Gestapo. The cast are notably white, despite supposedly fighting in a 'global defence force'. At the conclusion of the film, the main characters are depicted training new recruits barely in their teens, which may be a reference to the children and old men who attempted a last-ditch defence of Germany in the last days of the European theatre of World War II.

Because of this, the movie may have been intended as a satire of American militarism, but a disturbing number of audience members seemed to applaud the quasi-fascistic beliefs of the characters, and entirely missed the irony.