Coming in at number 20 on Slant Magazine’s list of the 100 best films of the 1990s last year (a poll in which, full disclosure, I was among the voting critics), the site’s Phil Coldiron described it as “one of the greatest of all anti-imperialist films,” a parody of Hollywood form whose superficial “badness” is central to its critique. But you can feel the conversation beginning to shift it rightfully has come to be appreciated by some as an unsung masterpiece. Over the nearly two decades since the film’s debut, the critical reputation of Starship Troopers hasn’t especially improved. Even the conclusion makes a point of deflating any residual sense of heroism and valor: We see our protagonists, having narrowly escaped death during a near-suicidal mission, marching back to battle in a glorified recruitment video-suggesting that in war the only reward for a battle well fought is the prospect of further battle. Heinlein’s notoriously militaristic novel with archetypes on loan from teen soaps and young-adult fiction, undermining the self-serious saber-rattling of the source text. The screenplay, by the Robocop writer Edward Neumeier, furnished the old-fashioned science-fiction framework of Robert A. The resulting film critiques the military-industrial complex, the jingoism of American foreign policy, and a culture that privileges reactionary violence over sensitivity and reason.
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