Starship Troopers

Jean Rasczak:
Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom.

Jean Rasczak:
I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order.

Johnny Rico:
I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all.

Dizzy:
My mother always told me that violence doesn't solve anything.

Jean Rasczak:
Really. I wonder what the city founders of Hiroshima would have to say about that. You.

Carmen:
They wouldn't say anything. Hiroshima was destroyed.

Jean Rasczak:
Correct. Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn't solve anything is merely wishful thinking at its worst.

Jean Rasczak:
You once asked me for advice. You want some now? Never pass up a good thing.

Ace Levy:
Shoot a nuke down a bug hole, you got a lot of dead bugs.

Newsreel announcer:
Join the Mobile Infantry and save the Galaxy. Service guarantees citizenship. Would you like to know more?

Newsreel announcer:
Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future.

Newsreel announcer:
They're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.

Newsreel announcer:
We have the ships. We have the weapons. We need soldiers. Soldiers like Lieutenant Stack Lumbreiser...

Lt. Lumbreiser:
Over the target area now, Captain.

Newsreel announcer:
...and Captain Carmen Ibanez.

Carmen:
This is the captain speaking. All personnel prepare for drop.

Newsreel announcer:
Soldiers like Private Ace Levy and Lieutenant John Rico.

Johnny Rico:
Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?

Newsreel announcer:
We need you all. Service guarantees citizenship.

Johnny Rico:
Someone asked me once if I knew the difference between a civilian and a citizen. I know now. A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility. Dizzy was my friend. She was a soldier. But most important, she was a citizen of the Federation.

Sky Marshall Diennes:
We must meet this threat with our courage, our valor, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy NOW AND ALWAYS.

Carl:
We thought there might be a Brain Bug on P.

Carmen:
You knew and still you sent them?

Carl:
We couldn't afford to launch an operation if there wasn't one. You disapprove? Well, too bad. We're in this for the species, boys and girls. It's simple numbers. They have more. And every day I have to make decisions that send hundreds of people like you to their deaths.

Johnny Rico:
Didn't they tell you, Colonel? That's what the Mobile Infantry is good for.

Johnny Rico:
You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?

Jean Rasczak:
You see a bug hole, YOU NUKE IT.

Dizzy:
Rico, I'm gonna die.

Johnny Rico:
No, you're not gonna die.

Dizzy:
It's OK, because I got to have you.

Zander:
One day someone like me is gonna kill you and your whole F***IN' RACE.

Johnny:
M.I. does the dying; Fleet just does the flying.

Ace Levy:
Ain't it great how they want to be your friend right after they rip your guts out?

Jean Rasczak:
Come on you apes. You want to live forever?

Newsreel announcer:
Young people all over the globe are joining up to save the future.

Newsreel announcer:
Everyone is doing their part. Are you?

Carl:
It's afraid. It's afraid.

Ace Levy:
Isn't it funny? They always want to be friends after they rip out your heart and throw it on the floor.

Johnny Rico:
I request retrieval NOW. This place crawls, sir.

Johnny Rico:
Come down on this beacon.

Johnny Rico:
Then I hope you have a crazy pilot. Out.

Newsreel announcer:
They'll keep fighting... and they'll WIN.

Lieutenant Willy:
Remember your training, and you WILL make it out alive.

Jean Rasczak:
They sucked his brains out.

Jean Rasczak:
Welcome to the Roughnecks

Jean Rasczak:
I need a corporal. You're it, until you're dead or I find someone better.

Johnny Rico:
Who are these kids?

Ace Levy:
We got reinforced. Most of them are fresh out of boot.

Johnny Rico:
We're the old men, Ace.

Jean Rasczak:
Warm it up, everything you've got. C'mon you apes, you wanna live forever?

Career Sergeant Zim:
Anytime you think I'm being too rough, anytime you think I'm being too tough, anytime you miss-your-mommy, QUIT. You sign your 1248, you get your gear, and you take a stroll down washout lane. Do you get me?

Ace Levy:
Everybody needs a friend like me.

Ace Levy:
Sir, I don't understand. What goods' a knife in a nuke fight? All you have to do is press a button, sir.

Career Sergeant Zim:
Put your hand on that wall trooper. PUT YOUR HAND ON THAT WALL!

Career Sergeant Zim:
The enemy can not press a button... if you have disabled his hand. Medic!

Ace Levey:
Don't worry, you still got me to kick around.

Jean Rasczak:
All right let's sum up. This year in history, we talked about the failure of democracy. How the social scientists of the 21st Century brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans how they took control and imposed the stability that has generations since. We talked about the rights and privileges between those who served in the armed forces and those who haven't, therefore called citizens and civilians.

Jean Rasczak:
You. Why are only citizens allowed to vote?

Jean Rasczak:
No. Something given has no value. When you vote, you are exercising political authority, your using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities re derived.

[first lines]

Newsreel announcer:
Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future.

Soldier #1:
I'm doing my part.

Soldier #2:
I'm doing my part.

Soldier #3:
I'm doing my part.

Young kid:
I'm doing my part too. [other soldiers laugh]

Newsreel announcer:
They're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.

Newsreel announcer:
Every day, Federal scientists are looking for new ways to kill bugs.

Colonel Carl Jenkins (listed as "Federation Scientist"):
Your basic Arachnid warrior isn't too smart, but you can blow off a limb... [shoots an Arachnid warrior's limb off] and it's still 86 percent combat effective. Here's a tip: Aim for the nerve stem, and put it down for good.

Lt Jean Rasczak:
Rico, you once asked me for advice. You want some now?

Cpl John Rico:
Yes, sir!

Lt Jean Rasczak:
[glancing over at Dizzy, dancing with another soldier] Never pass up a good thing!

Cameraman:
You're on.

Military reporter:
We've just landed on Klendathu on an area they call Big K(MI soldiers run past him as they are routed by the Bugs) with the 6th Mobile Infantry Division. It's an ugly planet, a Bug planet! A planet hostile to life as we know- (gets attacked by a Bug) AAAAAAHHHHH!! HELP ME!

Someone really humped the bunk

Johnny Rico:
This is for all you new people: I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don't do your job, I'll shoot you myself. Do you get me?

Lieutenant Jean Rasczak:
This is for all you new people: I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don't do your job, I'll shoot you. Do you get me?

Lieutenant Jean Rasczak:
Hold here! Hold what you got!

Carl Jenkins:
We've got one of their Brains now. Pretty soon we'll know how they think.

Carl Jenkins:
One day it will all be over. And everyone will forget that this was the moment. This was when it turned. It wasn't the mighty fleet, it wasn't some fancy new weapon. It was a drill instructor named Zim, who captured a brain.

Sgt Zim:
I wonder if there's a handful of guts in the whole bunch of you. Now, who here thinks they got what it takes to knock me down?

Propoganda:
THEY'LL KEEP FIGHTING. AND THEY'LL WIN!

John Rico:
Hey, Kitten! What's going on?!

Kitten:
War! We're going to war!

Dizzy Flores:
Mobile Infantry and Fleet don't mix.

“20 Years Ago, Starship Troopers Showed Us What Happens When Fascism Wins” (November 7, 2022):
Starship Troopers has the most rock-dumb and dirt-simple plot of any science fiction feature in recent memory: Humanity is at war with gigantic creepy-crawlies from outer space, and a crew of determined youngsters must do battle with them.

“20 Years Ago, Starship Troopers Showed Us What Happens When Fascism Wins” (November 7, 2022): But try this: Watch Starship Troopers through the lens of somebody in the world in which it’s set. Imagine you’re watching this as a denizen of this legitimately scary society. As Republican candidates for president in 2016 went on about possibly repealing birthright citizenship—a legal precedent established centuries ago that stands unquestioned in nearly every country in the New World—this a movie from 20 years ago paints a perfect picture of what a society without it would look like. The film’s newsreels and secondary characters repeat that “Service Guarantees Citizenship,” meaning that if you voluntarily enlist in the military, you are granted citizenship. Nowhere in this sunny propaganda film of an action movie is there any mention of what not being a citizen means. This is a world where the fascists have already won. All society is geared around and idealizes the military. In the film’s opening scenes, when Johnny and friends are finishing high school, we’re given glimpses into what this is doing to society. Their teachers are disfigured and unhinged war veterans. Michael Ironside plays an amputee who fills his students’ heads with war propaganda, flatly telling them that violence is the solution to political disputes, and maybe you should ask Hiroshima how being a peacenik works out, huh?

“20 Years Ago, Starship Troopers Showed Us What Happens When Fascism Wins” (November 7, 2022):
It’s in Starship Troopers that Verhoeven does his job too well, essentially throwing a desperate warning at the audience that says, “The right action movie director can even make fascism look just this cool, guys.”