François Truffaut once said, “It is impossible to make a true anti-war film, because the act of looking at violence is inherently exciting”. Robert A. Heinlein wrote, “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor”. Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers would have had them both rolling in their graves. Verhoeven’s 1997 adaptation throws good taste — and Heinlein’s original novel — out the window. The rare film that indulges the horrors of war and the joys of watching it vicariously, Starship Troopers makes the wrong feel so appealing because, quite simply, it is.
Starship Troopers opens with what might well be 90210 in space. As the sensitive jock, doe-eyed love interest and the brainy joker,…