Starship Troopers gets the Honest Trailers treatment, with a special appearance by Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. Released in 1997, Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi novel looked on the surface like little more than a ridiculous action movie filled with blandly attractive actors playing somewhat dumb and super-violent characters.
But of course, the man who made the classics Robocop and Total Recall had a lot more on his mind than just unleashing loads of bloody human vs. alien carnage. Though many did take the film as a straight action movie a la Aliens, savvy viewers soon picked up on the movie’s dark comedy and anti-Fascist themes. Today, Starship Troopers is seen by many as a secret masterpiece that savagely satirizes militaristic attitudes and deftly skewers cultures that send their optimistic but vapid young people off to die in useless wars of conquest. Others of course are content to just shut their brains off and enjoy the mayhem.
The new Honest Trailer for Starship Troopers hits on all the major points that have been brought up over and over again about the movie, but does so in that inimitable, hilarious Honest Trailers fashion. And as a bonus, the trailer brings back the movie’s star Van Dien as his character Johnny Rico, who takes over vocal duties from Epic Voice Guy. See the hilarious clip in the space below (via Screen Junkies):
As the trailer points out, one of the funniest aspects of Starship Troopers is how the actors don’t seem to realize they’re in a dark satire, and indeed there are still many audience members who don’t get that the movie is not actually pro-military. Of course, the sly and subversive first film was unfortunately followed up by a number of sequels that did not have the benefit of Verhoeven’s directorial hand or blackly comedic sensibilities. Van Dien himself never seemed to quite get the joke when he was in the films, but he does seem to now understand that Starship Troopers is trying to be funny on purpose. Or at the very least, he’s game for making fun of the movie and himself by appearing on Honest Trailers.
Though Starship Troopers was not a monster hit at the box office, making $121 million worldwide, nor a major success with critics, it’s widely regarded today as a classic of ‘90s cinema and another movie making triumph for Verhoeven. Whether one sees the film as truly successful satire, or merely a weirdly comedic action movie filled with dumb pretty people, some cool early CGI and a few great practical effects, there’s no question that Starship Troopers is still a whole lot of fun to watch.
