MOVIE REVIEW: Starship Troopers (1997)

[CW: The review you are about to read contains imagery that could be construed as mimicking Nazi imagery or supporting Nazi ideology. I do not endorse the Nazi Party, the Neo-Nazi Party or any permutation or splinter group related to the Nazi Party by teaching or following its doctrine.]

Hey everybody, I wrote this back in 1997 — the year the movie came out. Some time later I also did a comparison to the 1986 anime OAV of the same intellectual property, so go look at that too. On with the review!

This is the story of four friends going to school in the middle of a war that they didn’t ask for or want. The world wants them to fight and win, or die trying. It’s the only way to vote and get a good job, so they go in hoping to just make it out alive. They know who the enemy is and what the enemy can do; they’ve seen it on TV. But will they be prepared to learn the truth about the enemy when the two sides meet face to face?

While that was a very generic opening, I had to bring the tension in the first few paragraphs. Starship Troopers is a great movie, but ultimately it just boiled down to the same kind of war movie made before the Viet Nam conflict but with more minorities. It shines in three parts: special effects, the acting and the subtext of a movie about exterminating bugs through intergalactic warfare.