Starship Troopers is one of the many movies that are just now being looked at as a problematic movie by people that have suddenly become ‘woke’ and realized the inherent racism in various movies since it’s trendy apparently. Or maybe it’s just because the costume designer didn’t think that hard about the military outfits and decided to go with something that looked good because everything matched. Who knows? The thing is, Paul Verhoeven did in fact use Nazi propaganda in part for this movie and he did do several things on purpose for the effect of creating a ridiculous movie. That’s the funny part of it since many people let a lot of what they saw go by the wayside since they didn’t want to see the implications of it. Starship Troopers did, in fact, have a few instances that might have been disturbing had the movie not been intent on refusing to take itself seriously, since the SS uniform, or as close as it could, and the fact that Verhoeven did intend to add fascist attitudes was something that he didn’t shy away from or deny. But one thing the movie is not is openly racist or in any way problematic when it comes to being diverse or troubling in how it deals with various characters. Like it or not they all get portrayed as heroic in some regard at some point and despite the love disputes that go around the movie things tend to work out by the end.
It’s true, humans did colonize the bug world, to begin with, which was likely a bad idea since some organisms don’t appreciate having their homes taken over in any way by other species. But unlike other instances that can be mentioned, this movie made it clear that the bugs were numerous and vicious enough, not to mention smart enough, to fight back in a very aggressive manner. Not only that, but they managed to take a supposedly superior force and knock them down a few notches by killing thousands upon thousands of soldiers despite their own losses. This is yet another movie that shows that on an evolutionary scale, sans weapons and armor, humans really got the short end of the stick when it comes to being able to defend themselves or fight off bigger, more aggressive species. But then the scales balance again since the ability to think around corners so to speak and to develop different ways to overcome superior enemies has been a human trait that’s been developing for quite some time.
Starship Troopers was, more or less, a look at war movies from a sort of comical lean since it was over the top in a big way and it did take from various tropes that weren’t to be taken seriously even as the movie was about the survival of the species no matter who was seen to be in the wrong. The fact that the director admitted to a few different things that he included in the movie makes it a little easier to laugh at since really the movie only became more ridiculous as the sequels rolled out. But for those that were openly offended by this movie in any way, or thought that it was promoting something that it was actually trying to make fun of, it might be time to take to stick to TV or maybe even take a liberal arts course in cinema studies just to see what the process is all about, and how certain subjects are easy to parody and turn into something that will earn a reaction. Starship Troopers has been analyzed over and over since its release and the same things have been said pretty much every time, no matter that people have said different things. The same conversations continue to take place about this movie, railing on about this or that, stating what went wrong, what was an issue, why it wasn’t a good movie, why it was better than we were told, and so on and so forth. Let’s just put it this way, if you’re offended by this movie then you might need to read a few articles that won’t tell you how bad it was.
As far as action movies go it’s still pretty laughable, but the way it pokes fun at a society that’s dominated by a military regime is enough to make people feel lucky that such isn’t the case in this era, since without service one doesn’t have as many rights in this movie, which is a bit abhorrent, but it works for the overall story. Plus, the whole idea of being thrown at an enemy that outnumbers your race hundreds to one at the very least is something that can be inspiring or horrific, it all depends on how a person looks at it.
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