Hall of Fame: Johnny Rico
I can still remember the first time I saw the trailer for Starship Troopers. I was sitting in the theater waiting for Mars Attacks! (I saw it twice!) and I was whisked away to a future world where Denise Richards was really smart, everyone in Argentina was white, and giant arachnids were attempting to take out Earth using giant cosmic asteroid bombs. Some wild shit, no doubt. What did it for me watching that trailer all those years ago was just how epic the movie felt. The music sounded fantastic, the CGI bugs looked great, and there was an amazing hero by the name of Johnny Rico.
Rico doesn’t start the film out as a badass military leader. He’s just your normal, everyday star player on the team, dating the hottest girl in school, just trying his best to score with her before she runs off to join the equivalent of Trump’s Space Force. Rico isn’t driven by the desire to change the world. Instead, he’s driven by the almighty desire to get some poontang.
Sorry Johnny, but it’s true. No tail on Earth could possibly turn Rico into the bug-killing legend that he would become. That is until he added a dash of Dina Meyer to the equation and we saw his proficiency at killing bugs go up 100 fold. By the end of Starship Troopers Johnny has risen in command the likes no one has seen since Audie Murphy. He goes from a regular Joe to leading the Roughnecks as their new Lieutenant… in one mission! Rico isn’t just a bystander, though. He leads from the front and gets a fair amount of bug guts on his boots. Rico is a true hero for the Federation because he doesn’t really buy into their bullshit propaganda. He fights for his friends. He fights for his species. And most importantly, he fights because he still wants another crack at Denise Richards.
The limited budget was a big knock on the third film in the series titled Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, but bringing back the heroic Johnny Rico was the best move that they could have made. Rico elevated what would have been another subpar movie into one that I consider a must watch for fans of the original. It is certainly not perfect or even on the same level as the first film but it does a number of things right: Rico returns, giant mech fighters, and more arachnid killing action! The film even returns to the satirical nature that loony director Paul Verhoeven brought into the first one. You’ll see more of that and a good amount of killing that should have been in the second Rico-less film, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation.
The evolution of Johnny Rico continued in 2017’s Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars. He’s a grizzled Colonel training troopers on the terraformed planet of Mars now. Sucks to be him. The most important thing to note about the troopers from Mars is that they’re lazy and not good for much when it comes to combat. Col. Rico had only just begun training them in his badass ways when a surprise bug attack on the planet forced him and his newbs into action. The film rehashes so many things from the superior first film that it gets a little tiresome watching it at times. They re-introduce characters that have little to do with the plot in a bid for that nostalgia we all feel for them. They should have just stuck with their guns, and by guns, I mean Johnny freakin’ Rico!
The Starship Troopers franchise lives and dies with Johnny Rico. I would love to see a six episode series on Netflix about Rico’s Roughnecks running around the galaxy blasting bugs. His character has fully embraced his role in the Federation without selling out to it. He’s seen the politics that cause the deaths of his troopers and he’s much more comfortable holding a rifle than pressing a button from a distance. The naïve Johnny Rico has really filled the boots of his former mentor Lt. Rasczak well. He has one simple rule; everyone fights, no one quits. If you don’t fight he’ll kill you himself. If you can’t get behind leadership like that then I don’t know what to tell you. Let’s welcome the Federations bravest badass Johnny Rico to the Bulletproof Action Hall of Fame!
