Starship Troopers

Factual error: In the English DVD subtitles, during the first commercial at the beginning of the movie, the announcer has a line that reads in the subtitles, "They're doing they're part." The second "they're" should be a possessive "their", not a contraction. (00:00:45)

Phoenix

Factual error: Rico lives in Buenos Aires, which has no hills within a couple of hundred miles. The city shown in the film has hills.

Factual error: The meteor that hits Buenos Aires was fired from Klendathu, a planet that, per the galactic chart shown after the hit, to be a third of the way around the galaxy. That the crew of the Roger Young had time to detect it and avoid it means it was not traveling at any kind of hyper velocity. It means it would have had to have been fired from Klendathu millions of years previously. That is some long range planning.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Not an error, although it's never explained how it's possible to have a near real time war over relativistic distances. We definitely see that the Earth forces can respond to events in 'bug-space' by communicating and sending ships. That the bugs are also doing this is logical.

Factual error: The last thing Rico's parents say before the meteor strikes is, "Looks like rain," as the sky outside gets darker. As a large meteor (large enough to destroy a major city) makes it's appearance in the atmosphere, there would be a flash of light brighter than the sun. Several minutes later a dark dust cloud would rise, but by then everyone in the vicinity would be killed.

Continuity mistake: Toward the end, Carmen Ibanez gets stabbed through the shoulder when she is brought before the big master alien thing. If you were to sustain such an injury, there would be so much swelling, not to mention just destroyed tissue, that you wouldn't be able to move that arm for weeks. Yet a few minutes later, she is seen hefting around a very large assault rifle, and seems to have no difficulty. I guess it's a pretty standard action movie "heroes can temporarily ignore injury in order to save the day" kind of oversight, but it just seems exaggerated in this case, considering how severe the shoulder trauma looked. (01:48:15 - 01:53:40)

More mistakes in Starship Troopers

Ace Levy: Everybody could use a friend like me.

More quotes from Starship Troopers

Trivia: In Heinlein's novel, the Mobile Infantry - true to its designation - used suits of powered armor, which have no appearance in the movie. However, this idea inspired the concept of personal high-tech armor in SF, such as Marvel Comics' Iron Man.

More trivia for Starship Troopers

Question: Is there any reason the humans can't simply use nukes, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, or bioweapons,, any kind of especially powerful, destructive bomb, shot from long distance, dropped from a plane, or better still, orbit, to fight the bugs? Yes, of course there are big downsides to any such action, but this does not strike me as a society restrained, patient, enlightened or with sufficient foresight to care about those.

dizzyd

Chosen answer: They do use nukes (to clear out bug caves) and fuel-air bombs (like they do before landing troops). It's possible biological and chemical weapons don't work on the bugs because of their physiology. Only nukes and Thermobaric weapons work.

lionhead

Answer: Nukes, chemical, and bio weapons would render the planets uninhabitable. Not a goal when they want to colonize.

MasterOfAll

I have already stated these people are not that far-thinking.

dizzyd

More questions & answers from Starship Troopers

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.