Directed by Paul Verhoeven / Screenplay by Edward Neumeier

Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven struck box-office gold with 1987’s RoboCop, a futuristic crime thriller doubling as a satire on Reagan’s America. Ten years later, Verhoeven was reunited with RoboCop’s screenwriter Edward Neumeier for a project initially called Bug Hunt at Outpost 7. When it was pointed out that the screenplay bore certain similarities to Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers, it was decided to rework the film as an adaptation. For Verhoeven, this was both a provocation and an inspiration: politically, Heinlein’s novel is unambiguously hard-right, and Verhoeven, whose childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe inform much of his work, resolved to subvert and satirise the source material. The young cast were chosen for their Aryan looks; uniforms and insignias were based on Nazi regalia; and the propaganda broadcasts which punctuate the film employ camera angles and dialogue (“I’m doing my part!”) lifted straight from Leni Riefenstahl’s notorious Triumph of the Will. “I wanted the audience to be asking, are they crazy?” Verhoeven explained. “Do you want this type of society?” On release in 1997, Starship Troopers met with a largely hostile response: critics failed to grasp the film’s deadpan irony, and accused it of endorsing the very fascism it sought to ridicule. It has since undergone a critical reappraisal, and is now noted for its remarkable foresight. The rush to interplanetary war after the destruction of Buenos Aires seems eerily prescient of the response to the 9/11 attacks of 2001, and the deployment of thousands of doomed troopers against an ever-expanding swarm of giant killer bugs every bit as futile as an unwinnable ‘war on terror’. More disturbing still is the vision of a dumbed-down society embracing xenophobia, authoritarianism and the surrender of civil liberties (“Sign up today - service guarantees citizenship!”). Three decades on, Starship Troopers feels more topical than ever.

Framed Dimensions: 400mm x 315mm

Acrylic on 230gsm Winsor & Newton canvas paper

Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby.