Humans and bugs are out to exterminate each other in Verhoeven’s much-maligned ‘fascist’ blockbuster that has enjoyed a cult resurgence, with its nonchalance and irreverence towards the pleasures of gory violence and media brainwashing satirically relevant. 

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Made after the critically blasted but now reappraised Showgirls (1995), Starship Troopers has also enjoyed a similar resurgence as a cult blockbuster. 

While initially judged to be an empty spectacle of grisly violence as soldiers are recruited to battle intergalactic bugs that are threatening Earth, Paul Verhoeven’s work has in recent times been treated as a caustic if entertaining satire on militarism and propaganda. 

Becoming more relevant than ever before, Starship Troopers points to the Western obsession with declaring the Alien Other as enemies to fuel wars—well, look at how utterly irresponsible the U.S. deep state is (through Biden and his allies) in using Ukraine as bait to continually agitate the unbelievably patient Putin. 

While the bugs are indeed nasty on the battlefield, decapitating, maiming and tearing human beings apart with nary a care in the world (Verhoeven somehow was able to sneak in a gory VFX-laden film at this studio blockbuster scale one year after the more family-friendly Independence Day), we never get to hear their side of the story. 

“Come on you apes! You want to live forever?”

Why are they so vicious towards the human race?  Why are both parties trying to brutally exterminate one another?  These are questions that relate to our world today as countries reveal genocidal intentions and alliances of aggression. 

With 24/7 news coverage and military recruitment advertisements blowing the trumpets of the story world’s one-and-only authoritarian government, the initial criticisms of the film’s fascistic themes now feel rather ludicrous, when it is precisely its tone of nonchalance and irreverence towards the visual pleasures of wanton violence and brainwashing that keeps it all ironically grounded in its shallow logic of absurdity. 

Verhoeven doesn’t get the credit he deserves for getting all the mayhem and excess under some kind of authorial control, and I suppose with studio executives breathing down his neck. 

Some have lamented its cringy dialogue, bad performances and shoddy ‘90s effects work, but it doesn’t get any better seeing Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards awkwardly trying to save the world—and just maybe, their romantic relationship.    

Grade: A-

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