It’s in Starship Troopers that Verhoeven does his job too well, essentially throwing a desperate warning at the audience that says, “The right action movie director can even make fascism look just this cool, guys.â€
Twenty years later, half of your friends and neighbors are okay with immigration purges, travel bans that in practice impact people with a certain religion, and a leader who seeks to de-legitimize the press. As of this writing, he wants to cut social programs and ramp up military spending, too.
In another twenty, you wonder if it’s all just going to make some young cadet shrug.
As others have described Starship Troopers as a guilty pleasure, I have for years touted it as one of the finest science fiction films ever made. It succeeds so completely that by the end of the film the audience is cheering for the Nazis, proof that propaganda works.