"Starship Troopers": review

Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers is one of my favorite novels from the new wave of science fiction (by "new wave," I mean, roughly, the era of Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, and many others). These days, though, I think the story ought to be read in tandem with Orson Scott Card's 1985 Ender's Game and John Scalzi's 2005 Old Man's War, which owes a huge debt of gratitude to the previous two stories. Still, all three make for good military science fiction, each having a certain political leaning and narrative emphasis.

In 1997, the movie "Starship Troopers," directed by Paul Verhoeven, came out. Verhoeven (in)famously read only the first chapter or two of the book, and he apparently decided his cinematic adaptation would be a satire of the militaristic society described in the story. Any review of the movie "Starship Troopers" must, I think, inevitably include comparisons to Heinlein's book because their agendas are, at least ostensibly, radically different.

The novel Starship Troopers and the movie "Starship Troopers" both follow the story of Johnnie Rico, a member of a militaristic future society in which citizens—those who participate in federal service—have the right to vote while everyone else—the so-called "civilians"—simply live their lives in accordance with the rules and laws developed by the citizens. Johnnie gains wisdom from the grownups he meets along the way; meanwhile, human civilization finds itself in a war with an arthropod race known as Arachnids but nicknamed the Bugs.

In the movie, our protagonists are Johnnie Rico (Casper Van Dien), Dizzy Flores (Dina Meyer), Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris), Ace Levy (Jake Busey, with the characteristic Busey-family teeth), Sergeant Zim (Clancy Brown), and Lieutenant Jean Rasczak (Michael Ironside). Johnnie isn't very good at math, and he lacks book smarts in general (although he shows some aptitude for civics and history), but he's a natural athlete and a charismatic leader. Carl has mastermind-level smarts, and he's a telepath. Carmen—Johnnie's girlfriend—will prove to have what it takes to be a pilot, and Dizzy, who has long pined for Johnnie, is almost as tough as Johnnie himself. The friends all decide to sign up for federal service. Johnnie and Dizzy end up in the mobile infantry; Carl goes off to military intelligence; Carmen leaves for Fleet to train as a pilot who will fly anything from small fighters to huge battle cruisers. Johnnie resents Dizzy, who winds up in Johnnie's unit, for seemingly following him around. This will become a minor, soap-opera-style subplot in the film: Johnnie loves Carmen, but Carmen is in love with flying; meanwhile, Dizzy wants Johnnie and is available, but Johnnie keeps ignoring her.

The film spends some time with our recruits (except Carl, whose instruction is classified) as they go through their respective forms of basic training. Drill instructor Zim proves to be a hulking, holy terror, breaking arms and stabbing hands ("Medic!") to make the brutal point that war is hell, and there will be no mercy out in space. Injury to limbs isn't a tragic thing in this century: nanosurgery can easily and completely repair stab wounds, and severed limbs can be replaced with robotic prosthetics that, while bulky, get the job done. Johnnie makes squad leader, but one of his squad gets killed during a live-fire exercise through Johnnie's negligence, so Johnnie undergoes ten lashes as administrative punishment. Carmen, meanwhile, breezes her way through flight training and ends up behind the controls of a battle cruiser called the Rodger Young (named after an actual soldier from history).

Everything changes when the Rodger Young, out by Jupiter, encounters a giant meteor on its way to Earth. The meteor takes out the cruiser's radio antenna, meaning the Rodger Young can't warn Earth about the incoming hazard. The meteor—launched by the Bugs in retaliation for the establishment of human outposts in the Bug sector—hits Buenos Aires, Johnnie's home, killing Johnnie's parents and millions of others. Johnnie, just about to quit the military after his failure as squad leader, stays with the infantry as the earth goes to war, and the movie switches gears as we follow the human campaign against the Bugs. Things go poorly as the humans, in their arrogance, initially assume the Bugs are of subhuman intelligence. It becomes obvious, though, that the Bugs have a special "brain" caste that is capable of subtle strategy, and the "brain Bugs" have been using a disgusting form of telepathy (absorbing engrams by eating our brains) to understand human cognition and anticipate humanity's next moves. The rest of the movie deals with humanity's response to Arachnid intelligence.

The movie is interrupted periodically by propagandistic, World War II-style "Why We Fight" videos, newscasts, and spirited debates—all a reflection of the fascistic culture that humanity has become. While the Bugs themselves undergo no character development, it is nevertheless hard to know whom to root for: human society, as portrayed by director Verhoeven, has its own rigid, Bug-like aspects.

In the years since "Starship Troopers" came out, a lot of commentary has focused on Verhoeven's satirical interpretation of Heinlein, although plenty of Heinlein partisans say that it isn't clear that Heinlein himself necessarily advocated the austere vision of humanity that appears in his novel. Commentators point to how most of the main cast are good-looking white people, indicating some sort of Aryan superiority (although the film does feature some black and Asian characters in minor roles). The dress uniforms of the higher officers are also tailored to look a lot like Gestapo gear, and the very notion that service guarantees citizenship has been described as fascistic (I, personally, am somewhat partial to the idea that our own political leaders, at least, ought to have served in the military to have the right to lead). If Heinlein himself was satirizing this vision of the future, then Verhoeven's movie is less a satire than a faithful reconstruction of Heinlein's vision. If, however, Heinlein took the ideas in his story seriously, then Verhoeven was indeed rebelling against something real. The movie leaves me with mixed feelings: there's a definite Nazi subtext to the military we see, but the characters we follow are, overall, simply human, not monsters.

Of course, "Starship Troopers" has been roundly criticized for its sloppy portrayal of military tactics. One essay written by an ex-military commentator made several painful points: the troops on the ground never seem to take up coherent formations, for example; they simply bunch up and mill about stupidly. Then there's the way the soldiers all start running out of ammo at around the same time during a siege; this indicates that no one understands fire discipline. When Dizzy Flores gets impaled multiple times by a soldier Bug, she's somehow able to scream despite having two lungs full of blood—a highly inaccurate portrayal of battlefield wounds. The starships in orbit around target planets tend to fly in formations that are way too tight; they start crashing into each other when the Bugs unleash their phosphorescent ass-plasma into the heavens. The list of criticisms is much longer than this, but suffice it to say that the movie cares little for martial realism.

Heinlein, by contrast, wrote his novel with an awareness for how futuristic technology would change the face of battle. In the novel, soldiers all wear powered suits that weigh about a ton. A single soldier, armored and armed with an array of deadly weaponry, can neutralize several square miles of enemy territory by himself, covering ground via rockets in the suit in a jumping maneuver called "the bounce."  (Think: Iron Man, but without the long flights.) The novel also plays with the idea that women generally have better reflexes than men, thus making them better pilots. (In the movie, Carmen makes pilot, but it's never emphasized, or even implied, that flying is the sole province of women.) The movie, meanwhile, constrained by 1990s-era special effects and a limited budget, shows human soldiers wearing something akin to "Aliens"-style battle armor that proves utterly useless against the Bugs.

The novel also has the humans fighting more than one alien race. In the movie, the humans fight several castes of Bug, but in the novel, there's a race called the Skinnies that seems to be aligned with the Bugs. Some critics think Heinlein's use of terms like "Skinny" and "Bug" amounts to an SF version of racial epithets. (Then again, some critics see racism in everything.) And of course, the biggest difference between the novel and the movie is that the movie presents us with a left-wing parody of perceived fascism while the novel seriously contends with issues in human society that affect quality of life at the level of the entire species. At least two characters in Heinlein's novel (Colonel Jean Dubois, who taught Rico's History and Moral Philosophy class, and Lieutenant Rasczak, provider of battlefield wisdom) serve as mouthpieces for a certain point of view that values discipline and unflagging, unselfish dedication to the larger cause of humanity. Written in the 50s, Starship Troopers predicted a lot of the malaise that had hit America by the 70s and 80s (e.g., cities as urban jungles filled with gangland predators), seeing the root cause of society's ills in a general lack of both self-discipline and the valuation of humanity as a whole. The Bugs, in Heinlein's novel, are there to put the question of humanity and its worth into greater focus: the aliens could easily destroy humanity (and in the book, the Bugs have tech!). So: are we worth saving?

With the benefit of years, I've come to see the characters in Verhoeven's movie as more fleshed-out than they initially appeared: Johnnie, Carmen, Dizzy, Carl, Zim, and Rasczak all have distinct personalities, and when something bad happens to one of them, we in the audience actually care. Sure, the movie is big and dumb overall, and Verhoeven designed it to be that way, but the story's got more layers than one might think at first. As for the million-dollar question—was Verhoeven satirizing fascism in general or specifically satirizing Heinlein's vision of a future society?—I think that, if the stories are true, Verhoeven thought he knew what Heinlein was on about after reading only a snippet of Heinlein's story, and he based an entire satire on just that scrap of information. I recently watched a YouTube retrospective about "Robocop"—also directed by Verhoeven—that notes that Verhoeven initially dismissed that story, too, after reading only a page or two of the treatment. It was Verhoeven's wife who picked up the story, read it, loved it, and convinced her husband to make the film. So Verhoeven seems to have a history of reading things only superficially before deciding, unwisely, that he understands what he's reading. That's unfortunate because it means that, although Verhoeven can be a fascinating director, he's not really digesting the ideas of the stories he chooses to put on screen.

Is "Starship Troopers" worth a view in 2022? I think it is. There's a lot wrong with it (e.g., why does Dizzy Flores get a special funeral, but none of the other KIA troops do?), in terms of both the plot and general plausibility, but it does a decent job with its world-building, and in some scenes, it makes us believe that a Bug attack, with millions of giant Arachnids pouring out of the ground, can leave you with a feeling of utter hopelessness. "Troopers" is a visceral, bloody movie, and while it often fails in terms of story logic,* it successfully conveys the gritty nature of war. Plus, it's damn entertaining even if, as with a Tarantino film, you're left unsure of whom you're supposed to be rooting for. Another benefit of watching the movie is that it might motivate you to read the original book and actually grapple with (1) the ideas that Heinlein presents in it, and (2) the question of whether Heinlein meant what he wrote.

One final remark: the movie is filled with good-looking people, and a lot of male critics will focus on the goofily smiling Denise Richards (who smiles her way through the whole movie and is still bizarrely smiling, at the end, even after having been impaled through the shoulder), but for me, my vote for Sexiest Character goes to Dina Meyer in the role of Dizzy Flores. Meyer has a couple nude scenes in the film, and as yummy as those were, the hottest moment, for me, was when Dizzy received a battlefield promotion and saluted her superior officer. Over the years, I've been resigned to seeing sloppy salutes by Hollywood actors. (At the end of "Starship Troopers," Clancy Brown snaps off a horrible salute, for example; he looks as if he's shading his eyes from the sun.) A notable exception is Tom Cruise who, when he's in a military role, takes the idea of a uniformed serviceman seriously and always salutes crisply. So when Dizzy saluted her superior officer with perfect form, something inside me—I'm the child of a military dad, after all—stood up and took notice. Nude scenes aside, that was Dina Meyers's sexiest on-screen moment for me. A woman who can snap a perfect salute is hot. Very hot.

“I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue—indeed, a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was—there cannot be—a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal, there are always one or more adult delinquents—people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.”

—Jean Dubois, Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein) 

ADDENDUM: a vigorous video defense of Heinlein can be found here. The narrator assumes—correctly or not—that Heinlein was serious in everything he wrote.

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*The biggest logical problem is with that Bug meteor that hits Earth. The Rodger Young is moving past Jupiter when it encounters the meteor, and it barely manages to veer out of its path. But on a map, we see that the Bug planet of Klendathu, which has a huge asteroid belt giving it an endless supply of meteors, is located almost on the opposite side of our galaxy. Our galaxy is roughly 100,000 light-years wide. In the film's chronology, the Bug meteor took only a year to travel across the galaxy to hit Earth, meaning it was going nearly 60,000 times the speed of light. This, in turn, means that the Rodger Young could not have been flying past Jupiter when it encountered the meteor: it had to be flying backward towards Earth. How else do you explain why the meteor appeared to be so slow-moving relative to the battle cruiser? Jupiter sits at an average distance of 390 million miles from Earth, i.e., about 290 light-seconds. The meteor might beat the Rodger Young to Earth, but if the Rodger Young is traveling backwards toward Earth at almost the same speed, then it ought to arrive at Earth about 300 seconds later—not in time to prevent the meteor from smashing into the planet, but in time to help the survivors—oh, wait. If the meteor is traveling at 60,000 times the speed of light, then when it hits our world, the earth will simply explode—vaporized by all that kinetic energy. Obviously, something is very wrong with this picture.