Two podcasts reviewing Starship Troopers

QAA Podcast (nee’ Qanon Anonymous), Premium Episode 238 and Unclear and Present Danger 2025-09-14 episode, cover Starship Troopers in very different ways.

The QAA Podcast folks (Liv Agar, Travis View, Julian Feeld and Jake Rakatansky) discuss both book and 1997 movie through the lens of Marxist ideology and video games.

Unclear and Present Danger, which consists of Jamelle Bouie, NYT columnist and John Ganz writer for The Nation, watch and review the original 1997 movie. Unclear and Present Danger focuses on the politics of thrillers and action movies of the 1990s, so Bouie and Ganz have a lot to say about the politics.

After listening to these podcast episodes, I watched the movie. I saw it in a theater in 1997 when it was first released. I wasn’t too impressed at the time. I wasn’t sure if it was satirical, or if since the movie’s budget didn’t allow armored suits, and it was just done on the cheap.

Bouie was 10 when he first watched it, Ganz about 12. Rakatansky was 15. Bouie read the book in high school, well after he watched it. Rakatansky’s family had a policy of reading the book before seeing a movie, so he kind of read it first. I think Agar read the book in preparation for the podcast episode. Unfortunately, Travis View didn’t have a lot to say this episode, and Julian Feeld was a little disruptive.

Bouie’s view is that the movie is best thought of as an in-universe propaganda movie. This is a great idea. I re-watched the movie after hearing this, so I definitely had it in mind. Bouie may very well be correct.

Bouie and Ganz suggest that the Federation government took advantage of a asteroid hitting Buenos Aires - the Bugs weren’t really aggressive.

Liv Agar’s visceral disgust with Heinlein is kind of off putting, but is in complete contrast to Bouie’s having watched the movie several times out of pure enjoyment. Bouie also has consumed a lot of Starship Troopers content, mentioning that there was a 1990s animated series that was a little closer to the book. This turns out to be Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles from 1999. If I calculate correctly, Bouie was 12 when he watched it.

Jake from the QAA Podcast, drew a lot of parallels from Starship Troopers (the movie) to the video game Helldivers 2. Jake and Liv agreed it was a good video game, but that it was just as fascist as the movie.

All people, both podcasts, agreed that the movie was a satire of fascism, and that if you missed that, you were a fascist yourself, or pretty dense. In my defense, I’ve seen a lot of third rate sci fi movies. Star Crash comes to mind. I did think there was a good chance that Starship Troopers was a shitty movie because it had a very, very, low budget, and you really shouldn’t read too much into it. I think that goes for the book, too. Heinlein wrote it in 3 weeks or something.

Everybody also liked Michael Ironsides as Mr/Lt. Raczak. They missed Dean Norris. He played the commanding officer of Rico’s boot camp, and Hank Schrader, Walter White’s brother-in-law in Breaking Bad.

Everybody in these podcasts missed Raczak straight ahead killing one of his command. Clearly Raczak thought it was a mercy killing, but it was weird and out of place.

The Book’s Lt Raczak’s informal motto “Everybody drops, Everybody works” got turned into “Everybody fights, Everybody dies” in the movie. Again, both podcasts missed it.