'Starship Troopers,' The Unlikely Cult Franchise: Would You Like To Know More?

Paul Verhoeven's subversive blockbuster classic needs very little defense at this point; the Criterion Collection could add it to its list of upcoming Blu-ray announcements and some of our best and brightest writers would gladly fight to the death over the opportunity to write the essay. Critically and commercially reviled in its day, Starship Troopers has quietly seen the rest of the world catch up to its biting satire. What seemed ludicrous beyond belief in 1997 is now one of the premiere anti-fascism films of our generation, and the current wave of alt-right politics has, incredibly, only made the film's broad displays of xenophobia, jingoism, and fascism seem all-the-more prescient. We tend to celebrate any movie with a little bit of vision as being ahead of its time, but Starship Troopers is a film that has improved a little more with each passing year.

You know the story: Johnny Rico and company sign up to fight in the endless war between humans and Arachnids, and as the human casualties mount, the war effort reaches a frenzied pitch back home. Much has been made of Verhoeven's wondrous Federation Network (FedNet) broadcasts, and they – like the rest of the film – have found their stride with age. Children fighting aggressively for the opportunity to hold a soldier's rifle; public discourse on the morality of the Arachnids shrugged off as bleeding heart liberalism; dehumanization of the enemy that involves destroying even those things that bear a passing resemblance to it (earth insects). The FedNet broadcasts may have seemed ridiculous to the point of lunacy in 1997, but at that point, Fox News was less than a year old. State-approved neocon propaganda was still a relatively new thing for audience members.

What really stands out on subsequent rewatches, however, is how essential the romantic subplot is to the success of the film. Maybe Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards don't exactly have a crackling onscreen chemistry, but their scenes together give Verhoeven's satirical elements the breathing room it needs to remain safely out of the spotlight. As long as Rico, Flores, and Ibanez are playing out their Riverdale melodrama in the midst of an interstellar war, Verhoeven is free to stuff his movie with as much fascist imagery as he wants, secure in the knowledge that the "life-and-death" stakes of his love triangle will always disguise the darker story elements of the movie. As is always the case with the smartest movies, the "worst" parts of Starship Troopers are incredibly calculated.

And while the film's reputation has been repaired on the basis of its intelligence, it's also worth mentioning that Starship Troopers is also one helluva'n action film. The work done by Industrial Light and Magic on the starship models and creature design gives a physical texture to the battlefield; even when Rico's command post is being overrun by thousands of Arachnids, there's still a sense of physicality for viewers that would be frequently forgotten by early CGI modeling in the years to come. Like all the best action movies, Starship Troopers's violence comes as a blend of modeling, prosthetics, and CG; as he did throughout the decade, Verhoeven moves nimbly between genres, giving his action sequences a horror or science fiction bent depending on his mood. This, paradoxically, is what makes the rest of the Starship Troopers franchise such a bizarre mixed bag. Verhoeven was too good to be pinned down to any one genre, so his followers were free to pick and choose from horror, overwrought science fiction, and action depending on their own predilections.

Be careful what you wish for, though. If you were let down by the second film's lack of satire, you may find that Sony wildly overcorrected with Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, the highly anticipated return of Caspar van Dien to the Starship Troopers universe. After Edward Neumeier wrote the first and second installments of the franchise, someone at the studio must have decided that he was past due for a turn in the director's chair. Neumeier was given an estimated $20 million dollars (!) and apparently encouraged to go hog-wild for his film. You certainly can't accuse Neumeier of holding anything back: not only did the filmmaker swing the focus back to the beloved Starship Troopers FedNet briefings, he also crammed about four different movies into Starship Troopers 3's brisk 105 minute runtime. Neumeier didn't throw away his shot — instead, he fired randomly in as many different directions as possible, with a few bullets landing somewhere in the ballpark of a decent movie.

Starship Troopers 3 opens on the planet Roku San, where Van Dien's Rico is expecting a visit from the Federation's latest acting Sky Marshal. This particular officer — a telepath and singer-songwriter whose patriotic ballads have gone the Federation's version of double-platinum — is a Christ-like figure for much of the infantry, so when Roku San is overrun by the bug army, Rico and company sacrifice countless lives to ensure that he is escorted off-planet. Then, when the Sky Marshal's shuttle crashes on a bug planet, it is up to Rico and a few of his old friends to launch a clandestine rescue operation before a handful of Federation generals can angle for his position. Sound simple enough? Now throw in the fact that the Sky Marshal has telepathically bonded with a bug Demi-God and is preparing to betray humanity, and the fact that Rico is only sent on the rescue mission because the Federation staged a public execution for his so-called treason, and you'll understand how many different balls Neumeier is trying to keep up in the air here.

Despite the film's unnecessary twists and turns — and somewhere between two and four distinct opening acts — much of the film boils down to a low-budget riff on the original Starship Troopers and a bizarrely religious science fiction film. If it weren't for the frequent dismemberments and beheadings during the film's action sequences, it would be tempting to view Starship Troopers 3 as an oddly ambitious faith film. Most of the characters in the movie are initially resistant to the idea of religion, with the shipwrecked survivors of Roku San arguing vehemently over its place as a superstition in a modern world. It isn't until shit hits the fan that Neumeier begins to ramp up his pro-religious message. In fact, the film slips no fewer than three bits of religious iconography — including a hilariously blatant nod to Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam — into its final minutes, even using a character's newfound beliefs as the basis for a riff on Some Like It Hot. "I got religion, Dix," the female captain tells her fiance after their safe return. "I got it bad." "No one's perfect," Dix responds, and the two kiss passionately as the Federation destroys an entire world in the background.

Unlike Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, the third film in the franchise doesn't try and veer from the mold, but this somehow makes it even more frustrating than its predecessor. Sure, the film does manage to find its voice for a few brief moments here and there — mostly during the FedNet sequences, which double down on the idea that pacifism is the greatest weakness of the Federation — but too often, the film is little more than a halfhearted attempt to remake the original. And surprisingly, the biggest missed opportunity of all this is Casper Van Dien's willingness to step back into Johnny Rico's boots. Finally cast in a film where he serves as one of the more talented cast members, Van Dien's return to Johnny Rico really isn't half bad: the actor is still a walking, talking action figure, and if anything, an extra decade of wear-and-tear allows him to bark his orders with a bit more authenticity. Van Dien knows exactly the type of film Starship Troopers sets out to be and is more than happy to deliver. If only anyone else could say the same.

All of which brings us to Monday's release of Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars, another animated movie that promises to continue the adventures of Johnny Rico and his ragtag group of indistinguishable marines. This will be the second time that Casper Van Dien has returned to the franchise after a movie off; despite serving as a producer on Invasion, he didn't bother voicing the character of Johnny Rico, which must set some kind of odd record for the number of times an actor has walked away and then returned to the character that made them famous (hell, at least Sean Connery only came back to the Bond franchise the once). Van Dien is also joined by returning star Dina Meyer, who will somehow repeat her role as the very-dead Dizzy Flores in the latest movie. Ghost? Telepathic residue? Guilt manifesting itself as a psychological hallucination? Whatever the case, expect to add Battlestar: Galactica to the list of science fiction franchises Edward Neumeier unapologetically lifts from for his films.

Whether Traitor of Mars is good, bad, or somewhere in between, it may represent the first time in the history of the franchise that there was some semblance of tonal continuity between films. Watching all four of these movies in short order makes you appreciate the rich textures of Verhoeven's classic all that much more, where a horror movie, an existentialist religious space opera, and a hyper-violent animated movie all still feel torn from the same cloth.

Someday, some brave soul will tackle a remake of Verhoeven's film in earnest; whatever the outcome of that film, know that it cannot possibly measure up to the delightfully unhinged mess that is the Starship Troopers cinematic universe. Good, bad, or somewhere in-between, at least they're movies that take a stab at doing something unique with the source material. I'll consider Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars a success as long as it does the same.