Review of Starship Troopers (1997) by Dylan C — 11 Nov 2010

An ever popular trend in movie making is the advancement of special effects. It's getting easier and easier to make movies look good, that less time is spent on the movie's characters and plot.

"Starship Troopers" is an excellent example; a not-so-clever science fiction satire on war and militarism with jaw-dropping special effects and nothing else. We're placed in the life of Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) in his last year of high school.

His girlfriend, Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards) is going into the military and he decides to join her against his parent's wishes. Soon after, Johnny becomes a soldier and Carmen becomes a pilot, leading to them break up and split ways.

However once war is declared on a hostile planet inhabited by millions of overgrown alien spiders, they cross paths once again to fight for the human race. Paul Verhoeven directs this movie in an indecisive manner.

At times this film clearly makes a statement about war and the militarism way of thinking, but at other times it falls right to that level of senseless violence. This movie depends so dearly on it's state-of-the-art CGI action sequences that it becomes hypocritical when the next scene satirizes the nationalistic views that this movie's characters have.

This film tries to invite us into the same nationalistic point of view that it tries to parody and in the end, it feels more indecisive than satirical. The movie knows its characters and their ideals are all simplistic and one-tracked but it fails to either fully satirize its characters or fully invite us into their way of life.

Instead, the film seems content to only half agree with the stance it takes against the military while the other half is just as dumb as the military it portrays. "Starship Troopers"'s special effects may be great to look at but they fail to make up for the confused focus of the film.