Casper Van Dien is loving the Starship Troopers renaissance but still finds it mind-boggling some take it at face value: 'My grandfather fought against the Nazis, and it's not a pro-war film—Everybody f***ing dies!'

Starship Troopers: Extermination has been in early access since last year and, buoyed by the success of Sony's similarly themed Helldivers 2, is coming in hot for a full October launch that among other things boasts the return of Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. Rico is the beating heart of the original movie's ensemble cast, has many of the finest lines, and is kind of the audience's anchor as director Paul Verhoeven blasts off on an excoriating drive-by about social control, war from the space grunt perspective, and man's inhumanity to… well, everything.

The renewed interest in the series and particularly the original movie has, to put it bluntly, run right into some chronically bad discourse. Starship Troopers is satirical in tone, some would say blatantly so, but it's also possible to view it as a straight-up action movie about blasting bugs and not think too much about the rest. PC Gamer had the chance to sit down with Casper Van Dien alongside developers from Offworld, the studio behind Starship Troopers: Extermination, and asked about threading this needle of keeping the fiction plausible while not falling into the trap of glorifying the kind of ideologies it's sending up. 

«It's trying to find that line between satire and fascism,» says Gareth Woods. «So we're not trying to make light of the situation, and I think that's maybe the line that Helldivers goes a little bit differently. It's a bit more fun, tonally a bit more comedic, if your pod crushes your body, you throw in another Helldiver, another guy joins you.

»So we're trying to be more serious, the satire comes from the viewers' appreciation of how ridiculous the situation is with the war machine. It's funny because 1930s style propaganda to us in 2024 seems like 'how could people fall for this, this is such a joke.' Trust your government and all that kind of thing. Propaganda only works when you're not aware that it's working… we have to be very strong in our community sentiment to be able to like shut