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Starship Troopers

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 21 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Sci-fi
Written by:
Robert A. Heinlein (book)
Edward Neumeier
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 7, 1997
DVD: May 19, 1998
Running Time: 129 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for graphic sci-fi violence and gore, and for some language and nudity
Starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Ironside, Clancy Brown, and Seth Gilliam
From the bridge of the Fleet Battlestation Ticonderoga, with its sweeping galactic views, to the desolate terrain of planet Klendathu, teeming with shrieking, fire-spitting, brain-sucking special effects creatures, acclaimed director Paul Verhoven crafts a dazzling epic based on Robert A. Heinlein's classic sci-fi adventure. Courageous soldiers travel to the distant and desolate Klendathu system for the ultimate showdown between the species. (Sony)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Basic Instinct Black Book Hollow Man Robocop Starship Troopers Total Recall
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
USA Today Mike Clark
This twisted space opera serves up carcasses in six-digit figures but is foremost a sendup for the ages.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner George Powell
Jingoistic politics are not proper or prudent in the pluralistic human society of the 1990s. It's much easier to assuage these baser urges by facing a real nonhuman enemy that just wants to kill you. War is gore. You or them. That message is the real strength of "Starship Troopers," although many may find it morally flawed. No matter, this is powerful entertainment that appeals to our most basic instincts.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The movie is sensationally exciting, but its hey-kids-let s-put-on-a-war! story line plays like Beverly Hills, 90210 recast as a military-recruitment film for the Third Reich.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
A spectacularly gung-ho sci-fi epic that delivers two hours of good, nasty fun.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The film's special effects are astonishing, but the most notable and unexpected thing is its tone.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Although none of the characters are fleshed out much beyond the comic book level, we nevertheless find our sympathies aligning with them.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Russell Smith
Wall to wall blood 'n' guts laced with surprisingly keen social satire, much of it targeting the fatuousness of media culture.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Maybe the filmmakers are so lost in their slambang visual effects that they don't give a hoot about the movie's scariest implications. [10 Nov 1997, p.102]
TV Guide Sandra Contreras
This is a movie nasty enough to kill off the major characters twice and still manage to serve up a happy ending.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Faithfully represents Heinlein's militarism, his Big Brother state, and a value system in which the highest good is to kill a friend before the Bugs can eat him. The underlying ideas are the most interesting aspect of the film.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Paul Verhoeven's movie takes more action than ideas from Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel, which is just as well, considering the book's goofy suggestion that military veterans should control society from top to bottom.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The word "arachnid," as it's said so contemptuously in the movie, begins to sound suspiciously like "Iraqi," and indeed, we soon see the elite bugs are hunkered down in their desert fortress, resisting the mighty air assaults of the Federation. The conclusion of our story involves unearthing the chief bug.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
What Ed Neumeier's script provides instead is a cheerfully lobotomized, always watchable experience that has the simple-mindedness of a live-action comic book, with no words spoken that wouldn't be right at home in a funny paper dialogue balloon. Not just one comic book either, but an improbable and delirious combination of "Weird Science," "Betty and Veronica" and "Sgt. Rock and His Howling Commandos."
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
A collection of shots and characters designed to circle the globe rather than to say anything much about either the filmmakers or the audience, a triumph of multinational capital at work rather than of people or ideas.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Peter Rainer
What makes the claptrap in Starship Troopers so flabbergasting is that it's monumentally scaled.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
Pretty actors, grisly critters, brains sucked out of skulls, buckets of green slime and a plot that is half beach blanket bingo, half Iwo Jima.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Nothing like the sight of thousands of scuttling, hideous, practically indestructible insects crawling up the sides of a fortress, hellbent on destroying the human race. As they keep coming and coming, theyre the only things in this movie earning your money.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Scott Rosenberg
In this bizarrely discordant mixture of ultraviolent action footage, bad acting, crisp special effects and futuristic camp, the remnants of Heinlein's rhetoric of military pride stick out like a grimy Marine uniform at a high-toned Hollywood party.
Read Full Review >Newsweek Jeff Giles
An empty videogame of a movie about interplanetary pest control.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
It's exactly like "Star Wars" -- if you subtract a good story, sympathetic characters, intelligence, wit and moral purpose.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
I can not see how this movie got a 51! How can you not like this movie? I mean, it has an awesome story, incredible effects, and some of the coolest action sequences ever. It was made in the 90's and yet it looks more realisitc than most of the movies now. I mean, granted its not the best scifi movie(that title goes to Aliens), but its pretty damned close. I just cant say enough for this movie. So, BUT IT NOW!!!!
Andy M. gave it a5:
One thing that immediately struck me about the film was the absolute gender equality that seemed to be present in this society. Such an aspect starts out as being novel and inspiring, until you realize it's just an excuse for the filmmakers to put hot women in scenes which would otherwise be all-male. In addition, the themes of war and violent conflict are addressed, as well as the morality of the destruction of life that may be sentient and intelligent. But these thought-provoking concepts are quickly thrown away for more entertaining things like dramatic visuals and gore. It is an entertaining picture, I'll give it that. The "brain bug" that is apparently intelligent looks like it has a vagina on its face. Yet, there are so many ridiculous things... the prominent one being the strange ability for overgrown bugs to attack other planets, yet without any kind of tool use other than "throwing a meteor". Additionally, I was constantly wondering why these troopers went around blasting fruitlessly at this unaffected bug-monsters with rifles, when they could just drop a huge bomb and be done with it! Oh, right, classic weapons make better cinema. I mean, despite the faults, one should watch it for free on hulu.com, while it's up. Otherwise... you could skip it.
J C gave it an8:
An honest attempt at adapting the book to the screen.
A. Nonymous gave it a10:
It may not be the most original, epic or awe-inspiring movie ever, but it's FUN. You remember that? FUN? The thing we used to have before every movie is now rejected if it isn't a Jane Austen drama?
Tom T gave it a10:
A thought-provoking, entertaining sci-fi action film based on Robert A. Heinlein's Hugo award winning classic sci fi military novel..that is not for the squeamish, the humorless or the knee jerk, politically correct.
Nuxes gave it a10:
The only people who don't like this movie are the one who don't get it. Yes, it's supposed to be cheesey. Yes, there are a lot of things left unexplained. No, it's not Star Wars. It's a 1940s John Wayne movie set in space. The beauty of this movie is its simplicity. It allows us to see common themes in all war movies. It also helps to read the book, especially to get a feeling of the society.
Flux X. gave it a1:
Astonishingly awful film, thanks to the plot and dialogue and acting. I think that's why I dislike it so; since they had the special effects and budget and even the fascist satire angle to make a good film. They just ruined it with the impossibly insipid cutie teen actors and the complete idiocy of their every action. If you completely unplug your brain you might be able to sit through this one for the pretty colors and explosions, but any thought will doom your enjoyment. Why do humans go down on planets that are death traps? Why don't they have insecticide or lasers or virtually anything that would work better than the completely ineffective machine guns? Why don't humans just nuke all the planets? How did the bugs evolve their abilities to shoot things into orbit? How do the bugs live without any food or water on their planets? How do they throw a rock millions of lightyears through space in a few months without space ships or any sort of technology? How can they aim it once they throw it? Why didn't they just throw a rock big enough to extinguish life on earth in the first place? I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Dumbest movie ever.
