News culture 26 years before Helldivers 2, this sci-fi film having received incendiary reviews set cinemas ablaze

Culture news 26 years before Helldivers 2, this sci-fi film, which received incendiary reviews, set cinemas ablaze

Split hairs

Were the producers of Starship Troopers fooled by Paul Verhoeven when they lined up the tickets? This is necessarily the question we ask ourselves when we analyze the headlong rush of this funny film as unpredictable as the movements of a panicked cockroach. What could the director of Robocop and Basic Instinct have said to the financiers to make them agree to sign a check for around $100 million for a war against giant insects? Perhaps he assured that it will only be an action film with belligerent aliens that space marines will have to eradicate for the survival of humanity? Or maybe he promised that it will just be a hugely impressive adaptation of the bestselling sci-fi book.Stars, watch out!” (Starship Troopers in original version) by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1959?

“A new kind of enemy, a new kind of war” we read on the original posters of the time. All the ingredients of the relentless blockbuster seem to come together: a director whose popularity has exploded thanks to two sci-fi films (Robocop, Total Recall), a screenplay loosely inspired by a book that was a hit, a range of actors with physical impeccable and a budget higher than that of Men in Black. What could go wrong that the press and public would shun it when it comes out? It’s simple: the art of caricature, satire, humor used by Verhoeven has not been appreciated at its true value. The film which cost around 100 million dollars will only bring in a little over 120 million.

“Humor is the bladed weapon of unarmed men”wrote Romain Gary in “The Meaning of my life”, “because it is one of the best weapons that man has ever forged to fight against himself” we read in “The Roots of Heaven“. With Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven used the weapons of fascism to better fight against primary militarism. Except that some of the press and spectators did not understand the subtlety. Warlike aesthetics, the codes of propaganda film, youth sacrificed on the altar of cruelty… everything that the director plays on to better distance himself has unfortunately been taken literally. Critics didn’t have to look far to accuse Starship Troopers of fascism, since the book it was based on, “Stars, watch out!” is a work that many considered to advocate imperialism.

Tear off the legs

Let it be described as “terrible movie“, Creation “vulgar“, Or “endless splash”, Starship Troopers was mistreated by the press at the time of its release. In France, in Cahiers du Cinéma n°523, it is said that “Starship Troopers is not a film for experienced viewers. It was developed just to attract as many young Americans as possible during a holiday weekend, virgins addicted to video games who enter a room like they are at the controls of a Doom-like game, with the sole objective of seeing everything that appears in their visual field screw up”. Further on, we can read that “seeing the film today, on a screen in Paris, is a misunderstanding. An indiscretion. A malevolence”.

The square jaw of Casper Van Dien, the costume inspired by those of the Nazis worn by Neil Patrick Harris, the battles with disproportionate violence… what was supposed to serve the purposes of the director and screenwriter definitely turns against them. The scenes bordering on burlesque which punctuate the feature film, such as these propagandistic advertisements where we see children crushing vermin in a playground, are seen as distressing. The fact that military strategies are always more aberrant, which is Verhoeven’s criticism of the army, is seen as a storyline weakness. Finally, the love stories between the different protagonists, insisting on the fact that they are only young adults sent into a conflict that exceeds them, are analyzed as being mechanically integrated to appeal to an adolescent audience. Even if the film had been classified “Restricted” (prohibited to under 17s, unless accompanied by a parent) when leaving.

When the film arrived in American theaters in 1997, Sony broadcast a small making of film where we see a casual Paul Verhoeven, trying to explain the themes of the film in the simplest way possible. “You join the army and it’s good. If you want to become a citizen, you must enter the federal service” he declares, before adding “this ties in with the idea that sacrificing oneself for one’s country is a good thing. Helping your friends survive is a good thing… even if you die yourself”. He concludes : “it is also a film about paradise lost. The innocence of youth is replaced by the cruelty and difficulty of war” before admitting to having been inspired by the Second World War for certain elements of his film, such as the monstrosity of the enemies. It is not certain that these declarations, placed in a marketing tool dedicated to the greatest number of people, have invited critics and spectators alike to delve into the true subject of the film..

The creature that (re)comes up

Worn by actors at their best, such as Casper Van Dien (Sleepy Hollow), Denise Richards (Sexcrimes), Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), Clancy Brown (Detroit: Become Human), Dina Meyer (Saw ), Michael Ironside (Total Recall) or Jake Busey (Shasta), Starship Troopers is a film to watch, even in 2024, if you like sci-fi at all. In recent days, it has experienced renewed interest thanks to the release of Helldivers II.

According to data from Television Statswhile it was ranked beyond 100th place on February 14 in the ranking of the most popular films, the feature film jumped like a grasshopper by positioning itself in 19th place on February 20, 2024. As we said in a previous article, with a peak of 457,000 simultaneous players on Helldivers 2 in the last 24 hours, it was almost certain that many curious people were going to see (or rewatch ) this film from which the Helldivers series has been inspired since the first episode.

The similarities between the two productions are indeed numerous, whether in terms of the appearance of the Terminides, the excess opponents, the general tone of the game, the green splashes, etc. The biggest thing in common between Helldivers 2 and Starship Troopers? It is that there are bugs everywhere ! Big bushy ones, little chubby ones, big wrinkled ones… there is something for everyone. We could also write with a touch of cowardly irony that the war sequences in Starship Troopers only begin after an hour of film, which, in a way, recalls the endless queues before starting a game in Helldivers 2 . A defect which is annoying some early adopters who are not kind in their comments on Steam, where the average of recent reviews has gone down to “average”.

Subscribe to Disney+

Today, Starship Troopers can be seen on Disney+, Amazon Prime or Apple TV. It can obviously be purchased on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Blu-ray. On the covers of the physical versions, we can read as a teaser: “humanity has just become an endangered species” or : “only one goal: to survive”. While it might have been more judicious to print: “the worst in war are the brains”.