Starship Troopers is, sadly, an evergreen movie. Famously premiering to negative reviews in the US, its satire was eventually appreciated by viewers as the years went on, and it only gets better with age. But since Starship Troopers - the film, at least - is a satire of fascism, war, and propaganda, using the IP to make a first-person shooter seems to be in poor taste.
Starship Troopers: Exterminationis therefore both fortunate and unfortunate to have found itself launching afterHelldivers 2, a game that wears its love for the 1997 film on its sleeve. On the one hand, it’s a reminder that shooters can be more than, at best, passive violence, orat worse, military propaganda. On the other hand, the devs risk Helldivers 2 doing what it wants to do, only better.
And yet, there is one thing that Helldivers 2 doesn’t have on its side - Casper Van Dien’s involvement. Van Dien, who played Johnny Rico in three Starship Troopers films, reprises his role for Extermination. We spoke atGamescomthis year after I played some of the currently unreleased single player mode, and his passion for the game was contagious.
Casper Van Dien On Starship Troopers: Extermination
“I play it at least five times a week,” Van Dien tells me. “I actually stream it with my daughter too. She was born during Starship Troopers. She plays a medic and I play a ranger, and we kill bugs together. People are like ‘Wait a minute, are you really the guy from the movie?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, now let’s kill some bugs!’
“[The players] all get really excited, and they’re already doing quotes from the movie,” he gushes. “It’s a fantasy I’ve had for 30 years now.”
He doesn’t just mean that as the star of the film. As a longtime gamer himself, Extermination combines his two passions.
“When we first saw that screening of [the movie] at Sony before we had the premiere, before it came out, I went to them right away and said, ‘You guys need to make a video game about this’. And they go, ‘We need a movie. We don’t need a video game.’” he recalls. “And then, a couple of years later, Halo came out.
“There’s been so many games that have been like Starship Troopers, and they’re awesome, and they’re great. I love them. But they were never Starship Troopers. I always wanted that.”
Over the years, Van Dien was insistent, “always pushing” Sony to do a Starship Troopers game.
“Every time there was a game that was similar, I’m not kidding, I would call Sony up and say, ‘When are we doing this?’” he recalls. “We did little ones, I did voiceovers for a couple, but they never really followed through.”
That was until Van Dien got into contact with Extermiantion’s developer Offworld. He was immediately impressed. “These guys get it. They’re huge fans. They were really into it. They got all the details, and they would ask questions, and they were so excited about it,” he explains. “It is completely different this time. And I know that because I can see it in the game and I feel it.”
Does Starship Troopers Work As A Video Game?
Regardless of gameplay quality, any Starship Troopers game is entering a genre that is oftenaccused of acting as pro-war propagandaand, at worst, aiding recruitment drives.
Naturally, we can’t get into that topic without addressing the reception that the film received when it premiered. Back in 1997, some critics felt that Starship Troopers was an endorsement of the world it depicted, in which the right to vote is locked behind military service.
However, Van Dien is quick to highlight that the film was never misinterpreted on my side of the pond.
“Well, you guys have a very sick, dark, perverse sense of humour, and I f**king love it,” he laughs. “In America, it went over the heads of a lot of people. Not everybody. It went over maybe 60 percent of the audience, which is unfortunate. In England, that was not the case.
“It was so wonderful to see. They had the right promotion with the right attitude, and they understood the dark, sick perverse humour. They really got it.”
“28 years later, we’re still talking about it. When I go up and down the street, someone will yell a quote at me."
While filming, Van Dien didn’t think that its messaging was very subtle, and mentioned this to director Paul Verhoeven. “He said ‘Shut up, Casper, it is subtle!’ Then when it came out in America and went over their heads, I had to go back and go, ‘You’re right… it is subtle.’ But not in every country! Not in England.”
Most audiences eventually got the message. In fact, some consider it to have been prophetic.
“Unfortunately, the political commentary is still extremely relevant,” he says. “This is a film that the left and the right have both claimed as their own, and they’ll have arguments about it. But the thing is, they can have a passionate argument about it, but still love the movie.”
How Extermination Fits Into The Starship Troopers Series Thematically
Van Dien describes himself as a centrist, and with that in mind, does take away a more apolitical message from Starship Troopers, on top of its overtly political themes. “The Federation cares more about [the war] than they do the people,” he says. “But Johnny Rico, he joined up for a girl, and then he found himself becoming a good soldier. He’s good at what he did. He didn’t question much.”
He says that Rico has been through growth by the time of Extermination, and cares for the troopers, not the Federation. And it’sthismessage that Van Dien says is captured in Extermination, and he wants this to be embraced by the multiplayer community too. He wants players from all backgrounds to feel a sense of camaraderie as they play, not loyalty to a military, and he believes the game encourages that with its PvE combat.
“You have to work together in the game, and you don’t want to lose anybody. Because if you lose somebody, you’re not gonna have the guns to fight the bugs. It doesn’t matter what they are,” he explains. “That’s the way I think we should be, because we need all the unique perspectives of people in general, in life.”
He hopes this curbs toxicity in the multiplayer space too, admitting that he’s hated that about shooters in the past. “I know there’s a lot of that in games, because people feel emboldened. There doesn’t seem to be any of that in [Extermination] right now, with what I’ve experienced.
“If you’re out for yourself, probably not going to make it,” he continues. “You need to be able to have differences and still be able to get along, and that’s what I think the game teaches.”
But it isn’t just this message of teamwork that has Van Dien excited for Extermination. Put simply, he’s just happy to get another piece of Starship Troopers media.
“Starship Troopers, the original, I thought was a great movie. I thought it was amazing. The other Starship Troopers, we didn’t have the budget [or] the time,” he explains.
“You have to work together in the game, and you don’t want to lose anybody."
“These people,” he says, gesturing to the developers behind us, “have taken all five Starship Troopers movies and they’ve been able to fix what we weren’t able to in the other ones.
“A video game can fix problems if it’s done correctly and if they have the right intention. And these people had the right intention.”
Of course, Starship Troopers didn’t need another video game to help it stay relevant. In fact, despite all of its sequels and spin offs, people only tend to bring up the first movie when it’s being discussed.
“28 years later, we’re still talking about it,” says Van Dien. “When I go up and down the street, someone will yell a quote at me and then go, ‘I’m so sorry. I just love the movie’. I get it.”
Van Dien says that it even inspired someone to join the military - something I find quite surprising, to put it mildly. In other cases, people just share memories of watching it with their parents.
It will be curious to see how Extermination fits into this conversation. While its multiplayer offerings are available in early access right now, it still has a lot to prove as it heads into its full launch on October 11. At that point, its single player component will be made available, which is where you get to hear Van Dien reprise his role as Rico.
While no other Starship Troopers spin-off has stuck the landing before, Extermination is launching at a time when it might just work. It’s PvE, it supports 16 players at once,and- if it gets the satire right - it will come to us at a time when audiences are far more receptive to it than in 1997.
At worst, it’s another fun shooter that lets us run around and shoot bugs. And who knows? Maybe we’ll even get the real Rico dishing out orders over voice chat.
Starship Troopers: Extermination
WHERE TO PLAY
Starship Troopers: Extermination allows up to sixteen players to team up and take on endless waves of Arachnids. A co-op FPS from Offworld Industries, you must battle to free a colony on the planet Valaka.
