But in the years since, the director’s vision – of both the state, and the state of blockbuster filmmaking – has proven distressingly prescient. Upon its release, when audiences were more primed for a rah-rah spectacle like Independence Day, Verhoeven’s deeply cynical, intentionally vulgar film was almost completely overlooked and undervalued by audiences and critics. And everyone is doing their part, as Verhoeven’s faux-propaganda interstitial videos tell us (” Would you like to know more?”) But it is all for the greater good: military service guarantees citizenship. In Paul Verhoeven’s masterful 1997 satire Starship Troopers, a near-future fascist world government is at war with an unknowable alien force that everyone simply calls “bugs.” To quash this enemy, the United Citizen Federation sends wave upon wave of young soldiers into hostile outer-space environments to die ultragory heroes’ deaths. Starring Chris Pratt, Betty Gilpin and J.K.Plan your screen time with the weekly What to Watch newsletter.