YMMV / Starship Troopers

Works with their own YMMV pages:

• Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles
• Starship Troopers: Invasion
• Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation
• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
• Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars

The Novel:

• Anvilicious: Soldiers are awesome due to the sense of loyalty, duty, and camaraderie the military instills, and better soldiers are better citizens.
• Broken Base: The book's portrayal of military service is a very hotly debated topic. Fans of the book defend it as not completely shying away from the horrors of war and portraying a system where military service is voluntary, while detractors believe the book still leans in favor of a War Is Glorious message and that it only pays lip service to other forms of civil service, which are referenced in only a few sentences and overshadowed by the massive amounts of Author Tract on how cool soldiers are.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Military service is not the only way to earn the right to vote (in the original novel at least; the films are another story), federal service is. In other words, you can become a full citizen by being a civil servant in certain capacities (Merchant Marine service is said not to count, but Asteroid Mining apparently does) — the aim is to demonstrate a commitment to service over self.
  • Also, some sources claim that the Bugs attacking Buenos Aires was the cause of the war between the humans and Bugs. In fact, a lot of parodies, deconstructions and so on portray the military as claiming aliens attacked them for some ulterior motive. In the book, however, the attack on Buenos Aires was the final straw after years of skirmishes and 'incidents' between the two sides. Which side was first to blame is unknown, though the human military openly admits that its motive is securing the relatively small number of inhabitable planets (with both species having similar environmental needs) for humanity.
  • Many people (especially those whose viewpoint of it has been filtered through the movie) misinterpret the book's moral as "War is good." The actual moral of the book (if it has one) is more like "War makes you strong, but also changes you in ways that are impossible to undo". Granted, it's no All Quiet on the Western Front, but it's definitely not saying anything as plain and simple as "War is good".
• Crosses the Line Twice: The time bomb that announces it's a time bomb and reads off its own countdown is hilarious. Even Rico winces over it, as he's dropping it. It is described as a terror weapon. It isn't intended to kill the enemy, its purpose is to scare the shit out of them — some of them don't even actually explode.
• Fair for Its Day: While the pro-military message is a relic of the book's Cold War era, it's also true that it was an early example of American science fiction portraying women in competent military roles and featuring an Asian protagonist, and in both cases these are portrayed as entirely normal and accepted.
• Strawman Has a Point: Even readers who disagree with the book's heavy-handed political statements are likely to find the book thought-provoking based on how, exactly, they disagree. This is one reason that the book has out-lived a host of other Bug War/Space Invaders literature of that period: it may not change your opinions but it helps you decide what those opinions are.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Johnny very nearly gets picked for the K-9 Corps rather than Mobile Infantry. The genetically altered 'neodogs' are mentioned as being capable of (rather garbled) speech, having senses that even the MI suits can't match, and being ridden into battle by their handlers. However, this particular book is about infantry. They never really appear in the book in person, possibly due to the heavy losses the Corps suffered on Klendathu.
  • This novel is often cited as the Trope Maker or Ur-Example of such Sci-Fi staples as Space Marines, Bug War, and Powered Armor (and by extension Mechs), but the vast, vast majority of the book is about the mundane life of a soldier climbing through the ranks, while the Speculative Fiction gets comparatively little screen time.
• Values Dissonance: A Taste of the Lash is frequently used as a form of punishment in-universe and it's indicated to be employed, not just in the military, but in the civil system as well, down to teachers being permitted to administer it in schools to punish unruly children. In the 1950s and early 1960s at the time of the books release, Corporal Punishment was still seen as acceptable in many parts of the United States as a method for disciplining children, whereas societal attitudes have moved on considerably since then.
• Values Resonance:
  • In the book, a major gripe of Merchant Marine sailors is that they do not qualify as military veterans upon completion of their service under the Terran Federation's rules. At the time of writing, this was true for the real life US Merchant Marine as well—even though it suffered (proportionally) greater casualties in World War II than the actual military. They eventually did get veteran status in 1988.
  • While by no means the focus of the story, the Aesop that women can be integrated into the military without major problems, and in fact, even have some positive effects on it once in place is present. The fact that it's considered so unremarkable is actually a point in its favor, as well.
  • Another odd element of the the book that American society eventually caught up on is that while the Terran Federation is heavily militaristic, none of its soldier are conscripted; the entire military chose to enlist. It's how arguable free the choice is, since several rights are only assigned to veterans who served (Heinlein tried to retcon this), but it's a pretty startling contrast given the draft was in full effect at the time the book was written. Hell, one criticism of the book's society when it was released is that an entirely-voluntary army was unrealistic.

The Films:

• Adaptation Displacement: For better or for worse, most people (especially people born after 1980) are more familiar with the film than they are with the novel.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Distilled into a single act, no less—the asteroid that destroyed Buenos Aires was claimed by the Propaganda Machine to have been launched by the aliens... but there's no evidence aside from the claim made on the news to back this up and it makes absolutely no sense in terms of physics. It wouldn't be the first time a freak accident was used to inspire people to go to war (the sinking of the USS Maine being one example). Alternatively, the Federation did the Colony Drop itself as a False Flag Operation to get support for the Bug War.
  • Along the same lines, Paul Verhoeven has commented on how he based the Propaganda segments on those played in historical authoritarian regimes during wartime and also how he set up the Bugs to be clearly superior in every way to the humans opposing them. Combining the two together can imply that the Surprisingly Happy Ending portrayed in the final Propaganda cut scene is simply a case of the Government trying to hide the Awful Truth of the probable defeat.
  • When Rico's father asks him where his uniform is when he's calling to tell them he's resigning and coming home, was he just making an awkward question, or despite being highly against Rico joining the army he secretly hoped he'd earn citizenship for serving and profit from his son's glory?
• Anvilicious: Paul Verhoeven knows of no other way to present a message, though for some people the message is still lost, and the movie appears to be a gung-ho sci-fi romp in which War is Awesome.
• Awesome Music: Klendathu Drop, played several times in the film during battle scenes and over the end credits... And for a certain Macross Missile Massacre/orbital drop in Invasion. It's even played in the video game adaptation, composed by Richard Jacques.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Aside from the straight-faced military satire, the film seems best known among casual viewers for the co-ed shower scene with all the cast interacting with studied casualness.
• Cliché Storm: A force five hurricane, especially the death scenes. However, the film being in-universe propaganda, this actually may be intentional.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Once you get past the awesome battles and heroic marines and realize who the actual bad guys are, this movie is a hilariously dark satire of militarism and the book's own quasi-fascist politics. It's hard to say where exactly one stops being horrified at the nature of the Federation and starts laughing at its sheer pettiness, but a strong contender is the recruiting commercial where even children are "doing their part" by stomping all over a bunch of regular roaches while their teacher cheerfully encourages them on.
• Designated Villain: The antagonism of the bugs is more ambiguous due to the film being a satire of the original novel. Especially in regard to the intentionally unanswered question as to whether they or humans fired the first shot.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: While Verhoeven made the message - namely, that the humans are an evil fascist empire squandering their lives in the mistaken belief that War Is Glorious, and you're a bad guy for cheering them on - as screamingly obvious as he possibly could, the movie is still filmed in the style of Hollywood sci-fi action/war movies as a rather unflattering take on the intersection between Hollywood gung-ho propagandism and American government imperialist behavior. In spite of that, there are still people out there who think it's just a straight-up awesome action movie, because hey, blowing up evil giant alien bugs in space with co-ed showers!
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Carl Jenkins and Sergeant Zim, for many people, thanks in no small part to their respective actors.
• Fandom Rivalry: There's quite a schism between fans of Heinlein's novel and fans of the movie for reasons that should be pretty obvious. A third option holds that both the movie and book are great for entirely different reasons, but those who hold that opinion tend to be drowned out by other voices.
• Fan Nickname: For Neil Patrick Harris' character — "Doogie Howser, SS." "Doogie Himmler" is another popular one.
• First Installment Wins: Really, the sequels were nowhere near as good as the first.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Fans of the movie tend to get along well with fans of the Earth Defense Force series (particularly since the actual video game adaptation of the movie kinda sucks).
  • In The New '20s, it began to overlap with the fandom of the Helldivers video game series, as it carries almost identical themes and stylization. This has become popular both with fans who take the film's themes by their originally intended satire, or who dismiss the satirical elements.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The repeated line "Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever?" is paraphrased from a famous WW1 Marine order from the Battle of Bellau Wood.
  • A portrait of Hannah Arendt can be seen on the wall of the classroom where the trainee soldiers have lessons. Arendt was a scholar who specialized in the study of totalitarianism, and came up with the concept of "the banality of evil". That theme fits this film very well, as the film depicts a totalitarian society, with dimwitted characters that do not know they are in a totalitarian society.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In-Universe example in the first movie: the recruitment commercial with the cute, eight year old kid in uniform saying, "I'm doing my part, too!" and everyone laughs. Cut to the last battle in the movie where Johnny and Ace command a squadron of Child Soldiers, not much older than that first kid, and it's not funny anymore...
  • People who view the real-life United States as Eagleland Flavor #2 are quick to say this film mirrors the War on Terror, specifically the Iraq invasion and aftermath. From the DVD commentaries, Verhoeven made it clear that he views the United States government (which he was seeing from George W. Bush rhetoric as a Texas governor) as no different than Nazi Germany—a view he held of America’s government in 1997, well before the events of 2003 popularized it, emphasized by the fact that Carl and the other intelligence officers dress in Gestapo uniforms.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • NFL wideout Jerome Simpson actually pulled off the Flip 6-3 hole. In the same uniform, no less!
  • Carl's failed attempts to flirt with Dizzy are especially funny ever since Neil Patrick Harris came out as gay in 2006.
  • The Futurama episode "War Is the H-Word", which parodies Starship Troopers, gets funnier in the Italian dub given that Rico and Sgt. Zim share the same dubbers as Fry and Zapp Brannigan (Fabrizio Manfredi and Alessandro Rossi, respectively).
  • Humans are technically invading the Arachnids' homeplanet. And one of prominent characters, in fact, one that won a major victory for the invasion by capturing the Brain Bug, is called Zim.
  • Recruits Breckinridge and Djana'D are introduced together, and leave it around the same time when Djana'D slips up during a live-fire training exercise and accidentally shoots Breckinridge in the head. In real life, their respective actors got married, and have been together ever since.
  • Dizzy especially when her wavy red hair is let loose and in her tank top (with her arm tattoo visible), resembles Meryl as she appeared in the first Metal Gear Solid.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • It can be shocking how people on both sides of the political spectrum fail to realize that the film was meant to be a satire of far-right pro-militarism, jingoism, and propogandism.
  • Despite the fact that Paul Verhoeven is anti-war and anti-fascism (he came mighty close to becoming 'collateral damage' when he was a child in the Netherlands in World War II), people will accuse him from now until judgment day of making a movie that glorifies war, fascism, and blind, jingoistic patriotism. To think Paul Verhoeven made the mistake of being too subtle.
  • This Misaimed Fandom gets an In-Universe example in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The paranoid, racist, warmongering Homeland Security agent tells Neil Patrick Harris that Starship Troopers inspired him to get into his line of work.
  • This expands to the creators of the sequels as well, who clearly missed out the implication that the Arachnids were innocent victims who were being provoked by the xenophobic and jingoistic humans, and portrayed the humans as the lesser evil.
  • Much of Misaimed Fandom often point towards one side or the others as "the good guys" or "the bad guys" completely missing the point that there is no black and white to this conflict: The humans are using the war against the bugs as propaganda towards radical militarism where soldiers are regularly killed from the thousands to hundred thousands in a single conflict and their deaths are brushed off as necessary losses no matter how terrified they are or senseless and undignified their demises may be. However, the bugs, who are seemingly portrayed as mindless, only to be revealed to be sentient and capable feeling things such as fear, are brutal, merciless and show no remote sign of taking hostages they don't plan to drink the brains of, is an indicator that they are just as bad as the humans they fight. And in the end it's never answered who fired the first shot, because the reason isn't important in-universe, all either side cares about is that the other is still alive.
  • Critics lambasted the fact that the characters were flat and uninteresting. According to Paul Verhoeven, he was aiming for 90210 IN SPACE! because the entire film was a propaganda film.
  • Somehow even The Daily Show (which did movie reviews back then — one of many instances of Early-Installment Weirdness) missed the satire, picking up on Neil Patrick Harris' SS-like uniform, but not the fact that the audience wasn't meant to be rooting for the humans.
• Misaimed Merchandising: A toyline was released by Galoob in 1997. Yes, a toyline based on an R-rated film that has lots of blood, gore, political satire, and nudity. Funnily enough, this is exactly the kind of thing the film would satirize.
• Narm Charm: The video showcasing Federation soldiers letting children play with their assault rifles and laughing together as the kids fight over one of the guns. Back to back with the video of children "doing their part" by stomping on normal cockroaches in a group as a nearby mother applauds ecstatically.
• Questionable Casting: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, and Neil Patrick Harris playing Argentinean high schoolers. Dawson Casting aside, Verhoeven aimed for a Do Not Do This Cool Thing-baiting feel with the casting, going for stupidly beautiful people who would be far more at home in a soap opera—and then not telling them the film was a satire, leaving them to play their roles deadly serious. Fans of the novel balk at the casting for other reasons. In the novel, Rico is also of an ethnicity one would not expect to be common in Argentina—Filipino.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Who woulda thought Barney Stinson was a great Military Strategist that gets promoted to Colonel?
  • Dean Norris, best known these days as Hank Schrader, is the commander of the Mobile Infantry boot camp.
  • Amy Smart is one of Carmen's fellow pilots.
  • Lassie works for the government's psychic program. Kind of ironic...
  • Fans of The Wire and The Walking Dead will recognize Seth Gilliam as Sugar Watkins.
  • Robert David Hall, perhaps best known as Dr. Al Robbins on CSI, plays the Recruiting Sergeant near the beginning.
• Rooting for the Empire: A lot of people were rooting for the Bugs. In the first movie this might have been the filmmakers' intention, but in the sequels the Federation were supposed to be the good guys (or at least the lesser evil) and audiences still found a bunch of giant cockroaches to be more sympathetic. If you're reading the subtext that the Federation are Villain Protagonists, it becomes Rooting For The Empire regardless of which side you're rooting for.
• The Scrappy: Carmen, so much so that in the DVD Commentary, the director recalls that after test screenings, the survey cards were filled with comments like "kill the bitch!" and "kill the slut!"
• Shallow Parody: The film is an In Name Only adaptation of the book to begin with, so this was inevitable. By his own admission, Paul Verhoeven only read part of the book and decided that it was endorsing Fascism (which it doesn't; as with all things concerting Robert A. Heinlein, the views expressed in the book are much more complicated and long-winded), causing the film to satirize political aspects of the book that it doesn't have. Consequently, while the film works overall as a satire of fascism and militarism, its attempts to take on the book are... questionable. The Mobile Infantry are portrayed as a bunch of clueless Cannon Fodder in an effort to portray them realistically, but the book's Mobile Infantry are a highly-trained group of Elite Mooks who get badass Powered Armor, shoulder-mounted nukes and are deployed in Drop Pods very unlike the film's dropships, and the book goes out of its way to describe how each and every one of them is a One-Man Army. The movie also makes it ambiguous to how sentient the Bugs are and implies that Humans Are the Real Monsters in order to contrast the book's supposed jingoism, even though the killing of nonhumans is something that Johnnie Rico grapples with in the book. Finally, the Federation is portrayed as a hyper-miltaristic nation in which citizenship can only be obtained through military service as a satire of the book's Federation, where citizenship can be obtained by doing multiple different kinds of civil service, not just military-based.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • In its portrayal of a xenophobic evil space-empire pointlessly expending thousands if not millions of human lives in a genocidal war against marauding aliens, this is basically the best movie about the Imperial Guard we're ever going to get.
  • Also the closest film to a Terran vs Zerg scenario from StarCraft to this day.
  • The plot plays out a lot like an X-COM playthrough. Human soldiers are sent in with armour and equipment that are hopelessly ineffective against aliens, suffer horrendous losses, and have to eventually capture one alive in order to research it and develop better equipment. Hell, even Rico's rapid rise through the ranks mirrors that of a rookie who manages to survive long enough. Bonus points for psionics being involved and the Bugs being reminiscent of Chryssalids.
• Sequelitis: All of them except Invasion.
• So Bad, It's Good: Badass of the Week.com explains best:
  "Luckily, the script writers realized what they were working with and wrote some of the cheesiest, most badass dialogue in any movie ever. I don't know how they did it, but every single line in the movie is completely corny but awesome at the same time. This results in the audience getting a good laugh in the fifteen minutes of the movie when people aren't getting their arms ripped off or aliens aren't being exploded into pieces and spewing green fluid all over the place."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The opinion of the novel's fans. There's some overlap with Questionable Casting at the directorial level, since you don't hand Paul Verhoeven a novel that states that War Is Glorious and say, "Adapt this into a movie! Change whatever you like." ^note  Sort of. The script was written first, as a ripoff of Aliens, and was retroactively turned into an adaptation of the novel to avoid accusations of plagiarism after some similarities were noticed. Verhoven himself claims to have given up on the book after reading only the first two chapters.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: It's not necessarily a bad movie, but much of the main cast (and even some of the background extras) put in performances so sincere sounding that it can be easy to not see the movie is actually a parody of military jingoism. In fact, Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown seem to be the only people who know what kind of movie they're in. Neil Patrick Harris also definitely did; in one of the tie-in magazines, he actively states that his character was becoming this 'dark little fascist' by the time the film ends. Casper Van Dien has also said in later interviews he was aware of the satire when filming it.
• Uncertain Audience: Some people have criticized this movie for this. On one hand, it's intended to be a political satire, on the other hand, it plays itself straight like any other action movie to the point where one would be forgiven for not knowing it was satire.
• Vindicated by History: The film was quite controversial upon its release, with criticisms reared towards its lack of faithfulness to the source material and others misinterpreting its intended messages about war, nationalism, and radical militarism. Nowadays, the film is widely praised as a spot-on political satire and an enjoyable film in its own right.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The script is a deliberate affront to Heinlein. But every single Bug is crazily cool. The practical effects by Kevin Yagher (man responsible for the effects of Dream Warriors, Chucky and the Crypt-keeper) and Amalgamated Dynamics (the effects company founded by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. responsible for the Xenomorphs and Graboids) are well integrated with Tippett Studio's CGI bugs that manage to hold up surprisingly well decades later, with the unearthly sheen of 1997 CGI actually enhancing the effect of their alien carapaces and incredibly great looking movement. The Fleet's spaceships realized with brilliant miniatures and model work by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Industrial Light & Magic also hold up splendidly.
• Woolseyism: The German dub changed much of the dialogue in the classroom scene, shifting the focus from Rasczak praising the fascist ways of the Federation to emphasizing the need to defend against the bugs. Likewise, the reference to Hiroshima is replaced with a reference to Washington being destroyed in the First Bug War. In addition, the FedNet slogan "Service guarantees citizenship!" becomes "Fight for the future!"

The Video Game:

• Broken Base: The fanbase is divided on whether the game suffers from The Problem with Licensed Games or not.
• Demonic Spiders: Any small bug except the Chariots/Sand Beetles, but the Blaster Bug takes the cake for being both of these; it's essentially a tiny Plasma Bug. It attacks by leaping speedily at and kill you or a trooper with a few plasma blasts.
• Goddamned Boss: All of the bosses, because they had absurd amounts of health and armour and could often only be hurt by attacking tiny, constantly moving weak spots.

The Pinball Machine:

• Visual Effects of Awesome: One of the jackpot animations features a carpet bombing that appears to be lifted from the movie itself. Sure its on a pixelated DMD display, but for 1997 standards, where most movie licensed machines recreate scenes from their source material, it looks amazing.

The OVA:

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Some of the Marauder designs were reused in MADOX-01, which was directed by Shinji Aramaki. Guess what happens 26 years later?
  • This OVA is produced by (in case you haven't read the main page) Sunrise. In the one Gundam movie that almost no one liked, G-Saviour, the CONSENT troops reused the Mobile Infantry armor from the first movie.
• Older Than They Think: This, and not the 1997 movie, is the first adaptation to turn Rico, Carl and Carmen from Filipinos to Caucasian Argentinians that lived in Buenos Aires (in the novel, Rico's mother was there on vacation when the Bugs destroyed it) and have Rico play American Football in high school.

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