Paul Verhoeven is one of the great misunderstood satirists of modern cinema.
His work is often dismissed as mindless ultra-violence. Though most critics understand that Robocop and Total Recall were, at their core, satires of corporate culture and greed, he’s never really got his due.
This is exemplified by the reaction to his unacknowledged masterpiece, Starship Troopers. It was disparaged at the time as ‘Ken and Barbie go to Space,’ and while this opinion has changed over the 18 years since its release, the brilliance of Verhoeven’s parody of militarism is still largely unappreciated.
Robert Heinlein’s novel of the same name was an award winning, fetishistic ode to military culture. 
Verhoeven brilliantly inverts this, drawing the principles of military government espoused in the book to their logical conclusion: a mindless, violent, overtly masculine dictatorship.
With a remake of Starship Troopers being discussed, it is timely to remind ourselves why the original is the greatest science fiction satire of all time:
1) The Federation government is modelled on the Nazis
Paul Verhoeven was seven years old when World War II ended. His early memories of the Nazi occupation of Holland stayed with him, in particular the violence and the hunger he experienced day-to-day. His movies resonate with this experience.
Starship Troopers begins with an advertisement for the Federation (the military government depicted in the film). Verhoeven has said this initial scene was copied shot-for-shot from Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Nazi propaganda documentary Triumph of the Will. Advertisements for the Federation throughout the film are xenophobic, militaristic and frequently use children learning from a young age to ‘hate bugs’. News programs are jingoistic Fox News analogues.
The uniforms worn by Federation troopers are modelled on those used by Germans troops and the gestapo. The credo taught to high-school students at the beginning of the film is text-book fascism. The teacher, Jean Rasczak, blames the troubles of the 21st century on ‘social scientists’ and praises the military for restoring order. He then lauds the bombing of Hiroshima: “Naked force has resolved more conflicts throughout history than any other factor. The contrary opinion, that violence doesn’t solve anything, is wishful thinking at its worst; people who forget that always die.”
Yet, not only did most critics and audiences miss the central anti-fascist theme of the movie, the studio didn’t even understand what sort of movie it was. Verhoeven said he was surprised no executive at the studio figured it out: “It was already in the script, all this ironic stuff, all this hyperbolic stuff, all this playing with fascism or fascist imagery to point out certain aspects of American society”
After its release, it was either dismissed as an ultra-violent action film, or worse, criticised as being neo-Nazi. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post wrote a tragically obtuse article denouncing the film entitled, “Goosestepping at the Movies: Starship Troopers and the Nazi Aesthetic.” Verhoeven, in turn, was forced to defend himself against the absurd charge of being pro-fascist.
Interestingly, a now-defunct extreme right political party in Australia, One Nation, copied the advertisements used in Starship Troopers in order to promote their party. Specifically, stirring rhetoric about Australia followed by the “would you like to know more” line used by the movie.
2) The human species is the man, the alien species the woman
The space marines – male and female – dress with stereotypical fascist masculinity. Polished boots, crisp uniforms, chiselled physiques. They whip each other when they are bad, hold communal showers, and experienced friendship through a back-slapping, head-butting, tattoo-getting version of turbo-charged manhood.
The bugs are treated as the alien ‘other’ for most of the film. Neither male nor female, but an inhuman, unrecognisable, unfeeling enemy.
Until that is, we meet the brain bug. The brain bug looks pretty much exactly like a giant vagina with eight eyes (see picture).
What does this giant vagina bug do? Well, it sucks out the brains of the man, of course. Two troopers have their brains sucked out off-camera and one (Zander) on camera. All three are men.
When the brain bug is captured by the Federation and imprisoned, the final vision we have of the giant vagina is it being penetrated by a huge metal phallus wielded by a scientist. This is the masculine, fascist culture giving the alien, female culture the good rogering it deserves.
And if you think I’m reading too much into this, in the DVD extras package, the special effects team say that Paul Verhoeven specifically told them to make brain bug mouth look like a vagina.
3) The cast looks like ‘Ken and Barbie in Space’ for good reason
The cast of characters are perfect physical specimens, unrealistically good looking. But the Starship Troopers cast smacks of Melrose Place not just because of their physical beauty, but because shows such as this are synonymous with the empty-headed, 
shallow lives the people in them lead. Starship Troopers is equating the shallowness of the characters with the federation ideology they unquestioningly accept.
There’s also the simplistic dialogue to match:
Private Sugar Watkins (to Rico): “You kill bugs good.”
Lieutenant Rasczak: “I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don’t do your job, I’ll kill you myself.” (isn’t that three rules?)
Johnny Rico: “Come on you apes – you want to live forever!?”
Johnny Rico: “I’m from Buenos Aires – I say kill ‘em all.”
The main character, Johnny Rico, has no internal intellectual life. He is a Ken doll driven purely by external factors. He joins the Mobile Infantry because his Barbie girlfriend (Denise Richards) joins the military. His dialogue is never original; it is simply him repeating what other people have told him (usually slogans learned from Lieutenant Rasczak). Rico represents the perfect fascist soldier: an elite physical specimen who unthinkingly follows orders.
4) The humans are the bad guys
In the history of Hollywood there are not many movies that devote themselves entirely to the lives, the loves, the trials, and the victories of people who turn out to be the bad guys. But this exactly what Starship Troopers does.
Take the character of Colonel Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris / Doogie Howser) as an example. Over the course of the film, Jenkins makes the transition from high-school nerd to Nazi mad scientist. He becomes something of the Heinrich Himmler of the future.
At the end, Jenkins, dressed in what looks like a gestapo uniform, puts his hand against the brain bug and uses his psychic reading ability to learn what it is thinking. His conclusion, yelled to the assembled troops: “It’s afraid. It’s afraid!”
As the troopers fire their weapons into the air in response, the viewer is left with one inescapable conclusion: these people are monsters.
Tragically but predictably, Hollywood wants to reboot Starship Troopers. As though the lightweight, forgettable remakes of Robocop and Total Recall weren’t enough, they feel compelled to ruin another perfectly good Verhoeven film.
Those working on the reboot of Starship Troopers have been quoted as saying it doesn’t have the irony of the original, and is more ‘An Officer and a Gentlemen in Power Armour’. If true, given the military missteps in America’s recent history, it looks like the new version is on track to miss the point completely, and miss a golden opportunity for satire as well.
Fortunately for us, we’ll always have the original.
Email: Voight0Kampff (AT) gmail.com.
Twitter: @DarklingEarth
Those are two rules and one threatening statement.