Starship Troopers **** (1997, Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer) – Classic Movie Review 494

Director Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 movie is an exciting, vibrant and gruesomely violent sci-fi satire spectacular, in which the Earth is threatened by an enemy from Outer Space – whole massive regiments of giant insects. Idealistic American teenager Johnny Rico (played by Casper Van Dien) enlists in the army, undergoes a brutal training programme to prepare him for the horrors of war and then sets off to the alien planet to destroy the big bugs.

Based on the book by Robert A Heinlein, this is partly an old-fashioned, jingosistic war movie that plays like a modern computer game and partly a critique of fascist world politics and American society. The film was derired in some quarters at the time but it manages to function extremely well both on a daft popcorn-movie level as an action thriller and as a really quite witty satire of war games and the media.

Van Dien makes a fine, upstanding young hero and Denise Richards is a feisty heroine as Lt. Carmen Ibanez. The costly production ($100million)and scary special-effect bugs are extremely well done. Phil Tippett’s visual effects were Oscar nominated.

Sadly, it didn’t do too well at the box office, with only a $55million take in the US.

Robert A Heinlein’s novel Rocketship Galileo provided the basis for visionary producer George Pal and director Irving Pichel’s 1950 trailblazing sci-fi movie Destination Moon.