Starship Troopers

‘Would you like to know more?’ Say what you want about Paul Verhoeven’s edgy sci-fi satire, but they did a bang up job of predicting our unspectacular now. A futuristic fascist society fighting colonial wars specifically invented for that purpose? Yup. Blank-faced actors struggling to create the impression of humanity? Check. Starship Troopers was one of the few fin de siècle movies that got it right, down to the internet adverts with the cursor point hanging over the next atrocity. Audiences didn’t get it because, well, satire, but Starship Troopers is a rare 90’s movie that comes up trumps when it comes to portraying authoritarianism.

Let’s not get too hung up on the human drama; the casting director seems to have been inspired by the line ‘fresh meat for the grinder’ and didn’t take this assignment too seriously, and the lead performances are uniformly awful. But Verhoeven was a great 70’s and 80’s film-maker whose slick commercial work in Europe left him ideally situated to helm fleet blockbusters like Robocop and Total Recall; Starship Troopers completes the trilogy. Vaguely based on Robert Heinlein’s seminal novel, we’re on the side of Johnny Rico (Casper van Dien) and his gal pals (Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, grinning like a loon) as they gear up for war against ‘highly evolved insects’ who we’re told are flinging asteroids at the earth. But with every viewing, it seems less feasible that that’s what’s actually happening here; the Buenos Aires massacre that claims Rico’s parents looks more like what would now be called a ‘false flag’ operation, and the video evidence of the atrocities seem far too slickly assembled and edited to have been constructed so quickly.

So you’ll come for the bug hunt, big guns and body armour, but pay some attention and you’ll be rewarded, as Verhoeven is as anti-war as they come and his sardonic wit shines. An early scene has the new recruits viewing their exam results displayed on giant walls, then showering together in unisex fashion; this is similar to Robocop’s locker-room scene, and persuasively suggests a society where character and libido are sublimated to the desire for violence that benefits the state. ‘There should be a law against using schools as recruiting stations,’ observes one character, but clearly, there is no such thing; the military machine demands youth, and there are rewards- ‘service guarantees citizenship’ ‘The mobile infantry made me the man I am today’ boasts one veteran, with one arm missing and both legs amputated. While Starship Troopers’s tech doesn’t get the importance of mobile phones, Rico’s video-chat to his parents is very Zoomy, and the clinically clear backdrops of military training give way to the gruesome splatter of the alien world that humans seek to enslave, leading to a muted ending that sees humankind cavorting with joy about giving the captured bugs the fear.

Starship Troopers came to mind when standing in line for my first vaccination dose; with no music or live shows, the Scottish government used disused concert venues for mass injections of the populace. In a cavernous venue where I’d once enjoyed the music of Shania Twain and Mariah Carey, I stood in long lines while giant video screens listed numbers of casualties mixed with cheerful self-empowerment slogans; it felt like participating in a real Starship Troopers sequel. Predicting the future is a fickly business, but with more than a bug or two in our current political system, Starship Troopers is one prescient sci-fi epic well worth losing your heart to. Who doesn’t yearn for the simple, state-controlled blandishments that the Fed Net announcer promises?

‘Citizen rule! People making a better tomorrow!

A murderer was captured this morning and tried today.

Sentence, death. Execution tonight at 6:00.

All net. All channels. Would you like to know more?’