Starship Troopers Ending Explained & Film Analysis

The film tells the story of John Rico, an ordinary student from Buenos Aires. For love, he gets involved in a military career, and since he is not endowed with big brains. falls into the landing unit. Rico’s love goes to the flight academy, Carmen quickly makes a career for herself thanks to her extraordinary abilities. Another friend of the protagonist gets into intelligence, as he is a psychic. Well, the last of the four graduates of the Buenos Aires school is Dizzy Flores, who is madly in love with Rico. She ends up in the troop compartment with the main character and they serve together.

Paul Verhoeven made a film in the style of military fiction, trying to show the full range of military operations. Here you can meet both large-scale space battles and sieges of forts. An important role is also given to the training of military craft. However, if you look deeper, you can see not only love triangles and shooting at bugs, but also global problems and mistakes that humanity repeats over and over again.

Explanation of the meaning of the movie “Starship Troopers”

The meaning of Starship Troopers. As told by Paul Verhoeven, the story of Starship Troopers should be thought provoking about the behavior of the human race. We look at the plot of the film: a group of colonists landed to settle in the planet. Naturally, the bugs living there simply destroyed people, for which a nuclear bomb was dropped on the planet. Arachnids, which is what they called the insects, responded symmetrically – they sent a meteorite to Earth, which destroyed Buenos Aires. Thus began the galactic war of humans and arachnids.

Filled with hatred and vengeance, Rico, whose parents died in Buenos Aires, falls into the first wave of attacks against insects. However, the leadership of the terrestrial military forces underestimated the organization of the arachnids, because the landing force is ambushed, and the space fleet is half destroyed. The protagonist is seriously injured, but due to a clerical error, he is declared dead.

After treatment, Rico and Dizzy end up in the “Thugs” squad, an elite paratrooper unit whose lieutenant taught friends at school and, in fact, inspired them to serve in the military. The protagonist is rapidly growing up the career ladder, and when a lieutenant dies as a result of a large-scale insect attack, he himself takes his place. As a result, it is his unit that captures the main beetle and significantly brings the victory of the earthlings closer.

Historical Parallels and Easter Eggs

Starship Troopers has sparked controversy in the public and critical circles due to its peculiar presentation of the world of the near future. Firstly, the film was conceived as anti-war and satirical, but in the end it turned out quite the opposite – the picture, like the novel, turned out with a touch of propaganda of militarism and even fascist ideology. Of course, this could be interpreted as a deeply veiled satire, but still controversy arose during the theatrical run.

Secondly, one of the main places in the film is precisely the propaganda of military affairs. In the world of the future, the right to call oneself a citizen is not obtained from birth, it must be earned. Even with the birth of children, problems begin. One of the solutions is directly a military contract. Service in the army guarantees a high position in society and a special status in the electoral field.

The final point in the resemblance to the Nazis was put by the costumes of intelligence officers, which are exactly like the uniforms of the top of the Wehrmacht – long raincoats, high caps. Even some of the chevrons were very similar. This still baffles some critics to this day, leading to questions about rebooting the franchise.

Another important theme that the film takes up is the brutal colonial politics. Here you can find analogies with the settlement of North America by the conquistadors, when the more developed representatives of the European race actually destroyed the indigenous population of the mainland. The scheme is the same – people arrived on a populated planet, were met unfriendly, and as a result, only reservations and experiments on poor beetles remained.

The film makes you comprehend and weigh your own importance as opposed to someone else’s, when the interests of the parties intersect in the same plane. As well as discretion, you can’t climb into someone else’s territory, especially without any intelligence data – this is a fact.

Ending Explained of Starship Troopers

Conventionally, the finale of Starship Troopers is a happy ending. Humanity defeats a race of alien insects and captures the main brain of arachnids – a huge beetle. An unconditional victory is still far away, however, thanks to cruel experiments, it will soon become clear how insects think and communicate, which means that it’s up to you just to pull the trigger on missiles with nuclear warheads in time.

The meaning of the film is that humanity will still win, regardless of losses, with the help of cunning or force. This is our essence and strength of spirit.

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