Starship Troopers has continued to remain a cult-classic sci-fi movie that features a group of teens who undergo rigorous training to prepare themselves to fight off gigantic bugs that are invading Earth. While the movie on its own is an underrated sci-fi project in the cinematic world, many would be surprised to know why an insect was particularly chosen to be a villain.
But, before diving into how Bugs initially got finalized as the movie’s antagonist, one must know that the movie’s development began as a separate project called, Bug Hunt at Outpost 7, written by Ed Neumeier. That was when the Bugs’ history originated!
Why ‘Bugs’ Were the Antagonists in Starship Troopers?
“I wanted to do a big, silly, jingoistic, xenophobic, let’s-go-out-and-kill-the-enemy movie, and I had settled on the idea that it should be against insects.“ He continued, “I wanted to make a war movie, but I also wanted to make a teenage romance movie.”
Neumeier further explained his inspiration behind putting hostile alien species ( known as the Arachnids or Bugs) as antagonists in the movie. He suggested that the idea seemed to have originated from his wife.
In the same interview, he spilled the beans sharing,
“One of my original inspirations was my wife’s catatonic fear of insects.”
As the movie features intense action scenes and massive battles against the alien creatures, the film co-producer shared how the Bugs were different from its original source description.
The Gigantic Alien Enemies in Starship Troopers Were Different from its Original Description!
While the movie is a loose adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s novel of the same name, Neumeier revealed that the hostile species were different from what the source imagined.
In the same interview, he shared,
“Paul [Verhoeven] said, ‘I just can’t see a bug with a gun in his hand.’ ”
The insects from the movie were about seven feet tall, flaunting a 15-foot leg span and enormous jaws. There were also 30-foot-long “tanker” bugs and 80-foot-long “plasma” bugs as the screenwriter continued,
“They’re like insects as sharks–all they do is come up to you and kill you.”
Talking about the creatures’ enormous strength, he added,
“They have a ground speed of 35 mph. Their mode of attack is overwhelming force. My science teacher in seventh grade said, ‘The Chinese, they’ll march at you like zombies, with wooden sticks in their hands, and even if you had a machine gun in your hand they’d overwhelm you!’ That’s what I think about the bugs.”
As for how the original script went on to become the novel’s adaptation, it is quite an interesting tale. When the screenwriter pitched his script to movie producer, Jon Davison, he realized how his script was strikingly similar to Heinlein’s novel. Instead of continuing the writer’s story, they decided the adapt the novel instead.
Initially, Davison believed that the film adaptation rights for the novel would have already been purchased which led the former to continue tweaking his Bug Hunt at Outpost 7 script, which he later retitled Outpost 7. After TriStar Pictures executive Chris Lee rejected the idea, the duo pitched for Starship Troopers adaptation and convinced the studio to get the movie rights. With that, the writer revised his Outpost 7 script to fit with the novel, that became Starship Troopers.
Starring Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, and Denise Richards alongside others, Starship Troopers is available to stream with Prime Video’s AMC+.
