There’s a reason the film “Starship Troopers” still manages to capture the imagination. It was meant as satire, but people took it seriously.

What was intended as a diatribe against the so-called “evil isms” of the day, including authoritarianism, fascism, and militarism, ended up as an unintentional tribute.

Paul Verhoeven, who openly mocked the story he was adapting and admitted he never even read Heinlein’s novel, created one of the most effective pieces of Right-wing cinema in decades.

Like a virus, the truth embedded in the film slipped past the weakened immune system of an increasingly longhoused West. While critics were still busy accusing it of fascism, millions of young men were memorizing Sergeant Zim’s lines and watching Johnny Rico rise from pampered teenager to cold-eyed field lieutenant. What began as a satire of power and discipline became something far more subversive: a film that made strength, hierarchy, sacrifice, and war itself appear not just necessary, but noble.

Heinlein’s novel was never coy about its politics. It argues for a martial society, earned citizenship, and an aristocracy of responsibility. The vote is not a right granted for simply being alive; it is a reward for service. Power belongs to those who have proven loyalty, endurance, and the will to sacrifice. In a world fractured by decadence and softness, Heinlein offered something harder. His answer was not the hollow worship of freedom without purpose, but the truth that order, duty, and hierarchy are the foundations of any lasting society.

The Federation, far from utopian, is ruthless by design. Federal service is a filter. It exists not to shape men, but to break those who don’t belong. The training is brutal because it’s meant to be. If you can't take a beating, if you can’t lead or follow under pressure, if you flinch at the idea of killing or being killed, you are not fit to govern others. The goal isn’t equality. The goal is competence. And competence is measured in blood.

Verhoeven tried to mock all of it. His mistake was thinking he could make it look absurd by dressing his actors in Naz* aesthetics and having them deliver hard truths with absolute seriousness. But every scene meant as parody ends up radiating conviction.

When Michael Ironside, playing Rico’s steely mentor Rasczak, declares that “Violence, naked force has settled more issues in history than any other factor...” the camera doesn’t flinch. There’s no wink, no laugh track, and no signal that the audience is meant to recoil. And they didn’t, because the message didn’t feel dangerous or alien. It felt right.

When the film was released, the feeling of panic was palpable among the film school crowd and the rest of the pretentious liberal elite, whose values stood in quiet opposition to those of the nation at large. This was not supposed to happen.

Verhoeven cast tall, blond, square-jawed actors to emphasize the aesthetic extremes he intended to mock. But the effect is the opposite. It dignifies the world they inhabit. Every stone-faced soldier, every polished uniform, every martial slogan feels coherent and earned. The Mobile Infantry doesn’t apologize for its strength. It doesn’t ask for moral permission. It exists to fight and win. The Bugs, unlike modern enemies softened by diplomacy, are truly alien. They are irredeemable, hive-minded, and genocidal. You kill them all or you die. There is no middle ground.

That’s the other genius of the story: moral clarity. In most war films, the enemy is humanized, the violence is treated as tragic necessity, and the soldiers are haunted by doubt. Not here. There are no heartfelt scenes of mutual understanding. There is only the Bug, and the will to destroy it. It is not metaphorical. It is not tragic. It is war, and the only virtue is victory.

What makes the film so potent is how it treats masculinity without irony. Rico doesn’t whine. He doesn’t rebel against authority for the sake of it. He fails. He learns. He steels himself. There is no therapy. There is no soul-searching. There is only action, and the slow death of ego through duty.

At the beginning, he joins the service for a girl. By the end, he doesn’t need her. He has become a man, not through emotional validation, comfort, or any other inane therapeutic absurdity of the age, but by enduring hardship and earning the respect of other men who have done the same.

Compare this to modern war films, where the soldier is reduced to one of two roles: either a perpetual victim or a one-dimensional monster. “Starship Troopers” rejects both. Its warriors are professionals. They do ugly things because ugly things need doing. And when they fall, no one weeps. They receive a medal, a rank, and are memorialized. Then the fight goes on.

Even the film’s infamous propaganda reels, intended to mimic Naz* newsreels, end up reinforcing the message. “Would you like to know more?” Yes, actually. We would. Each segment, though presented as satire, feels more like a challenge. Enlist. Train. Take the risk. Become someone worth remembering.

The irony is almost tragic. Verhoeven set out to warn the world about the so-called dangers of authoritarianism. Instead, he created a film that reads as a tribute to order, sacrifice, and the raw appeal of military discipline. He wrapped a nationalist fist in a velvet liberal glove, and unsurprisingly, the fist broke through.

Today, “Starship Troopers” is more relevant than ever. It speaks to young men raised in weakness, denied initiation, and drowning in abstraction. It offers them something real: purpose. Brotherhood. Something to fight for. It doesn’t waste time debating the morality of war. It assumes war is coming, and asks only one question: will you be ready?

The answer, for more and more men, is yes.

They don’t laugh when Rico says, “Kill them all.” They cheer.

And that’s the problem.

Because deep down, the people who hate this film know exactly what it awakens.