Starship Troopers review


Two days ago I saw Starship Troopers, a movie by Paul Verhoeven that was released in 1997. This movie is set in the 23rd century – democracy has failed and the world is now run by a fascistic and very militarist government. For instance, if you want to be a real “citizen” in thiw world you need to have served in the army. Non-citizens aren’t allowed to vote and one of the scenes in the movie also explains that it’s a lot easier to get a license to get chilrden if you’re a citizen.

The star of the movie is Johnny Rico, a young student who’s dating a beautiful girl named Carmen. His girlfriend is going to enroll into the Federal Service to become a pilot which convinces Rico to join the Mobile Infantry. Rico has to go through a pretty brutal training and starts to realize that he joined the army for the wrong reasons. But when an asteroid that is presumably send by an alien species hits Earth and destroys Buenos Aires (Rico’s home) he is send to another galaxy where Earth engages a full scale war against an alien insect species (the Arachnids).

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The movie is already 10 years old so some of the special effects may look a bit dated but overall it still looks pretty good. One of the very neat things of Starship Trooper is that it’s filed with very short propaganda films, which help to present the time frame in which the movie is set.

While the movie is very violent, action-packed and full of gore it actually has a lot of social satire and an anti-militaristic message. Some people even call the movie a bit profetic as Earth gets attacked (the twin towers in NY) by the aliens (terrorists) and the government (the U.S.) responds with a massive attack on the planet of the Arachnids (Afghanistan, Iraq). At first the war seems like a piece of cake as everyone in the movie thinks these bugs are far less intelligent than the human species but it proves to be harder than than they expected..

I give Starship Troopers a 7/10.


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