Nazis in space: how Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers brilliantly skewered fascism

A Hollywood studio is rumoured to be remaking the Dutch director’s 1997 space epic. But will it, like so many others, miss the irony behind the film’s pseudo-fascist bombast?

When Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers originally hit cinemas in 1997, the reviews were scathing. The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan argued that the Dutch director of Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct had delivered a space flick “rigorously one-dimensional and free from even the pretense of intelligence”, even suggesting that the film-maker had preserved the “fascist utopianism” of the 1959 Robert A Heinlein novel that it had been based on. “Troopers takes us to a militaristic future where video bulletins encourage young people to ‘Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world’,” wrote Turan. “Schools teach that ‘violence is the supreme authority’ and nothing solves problems with the efficacy of ‘naked force.’” The Washington Post described Verhoeven’s tone as “so inconsistent that it’s impossible to decide whether he’s sending up the Third Reich or in love with it”.

Starship Troopers failed to make its money back at the box office, and after one more Hollywood film, 2000’s under-par Hollow Man, Verhoeven would return to Europe, his credentials as a blockbuster film-maker shattered.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/GCS1sMl