Paul Verhoeven thought Starship Troopers was "too subtle for the American consciousness"
“I remember us watching it for the first time, and all of us looked at each other,” star Denise Richards said during today’s Starship Troopers panel at C2E2. “We were all like, ‘We didn’t know this was a fucking comedy.'”
She wasn’t the only one. Upon release in 1997, Starship Troopers, which the cast thought would be the next Star Wars, was met with head scratches. Staged and shot like fascist propaganda, Starship Troopers confused many when it hit theaters, whether they be new fans or readers of Robert Heinlein’s deathly serious novel. Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Ed Neumeier blended an uncommon mix of sci-fi action and campy political satire into a work that becomes more prescient every year. At the time, though, Verhoeven thought he was being “too subtle.”
“Paul said to me when the film didn’t do well in North America, ‘Maybe I was too subtle for the American consciousness,'” Michael Ironside said at the “Only Good Bug Is A Dead Bug” reunion panel. “At that time, Reganomics and all that shit, it was. It was very difficult to pass judgment on what he saw coming for America. It certainly wasn’t subtle with the violence, but it was subtle as far as, like, being able to be in tune with the political statement that the movie was making.”
It wasn’t just Americans misreading the movie. The international press didn’t know what to make of this sarcastically pro-fascism blockbuster either. Casper Van Dien said that while promoting the film in Italy, the press wanted him to play up the film’s supposedly “pro-war” and “pro-Nazi” bent. “One of the Italian press came to me and said, ‘Well, this is obviously a pro-war film and pro-Nazi film. Why don’t you do a Nazi salute?'” Van Dien recalled. “I said, ‘Obviously, you haven’t seen this movie if you think it’s a pro-war film, and I will never do a Nazi salute because, first of all, that’s not what this is about. You’ve missed the whole movie.”
Ironside cleared up any confusion about the movie’s tone. “Doogie Hauser sticks his hand up the bug’s ass, turns to everybody, and says, ‘It’s in pain. It’s frightened,’ and everybody cheers.”
That’s not to say every aspect of Starship Troopers is a simple one-to-one. Star Jake Busey dared to ask Verhoeven what the movie was about.
“At the end of it, I asked [Verhoeven], ‘What is this movie about?'” Busey said. “I can’t say I was very smart or politically wise or anything, but he said, ‘Well, it’s fascism versus communism.’ Well, who’s who? he said, ‘We’re the bad guys. Humans aren’t always the good guys.'”