A lot of folks went to see Starship Troopers expecting it to be the book. When instead it was a humorous, satirical film more like Robocop and Total Recall, they hated it instead of appreciating it as something very different from the book. It was done by writer Ed Neumeier (also a writer on Robocop) and director Paul Veehoven (also a director on Robocop and Total Recall).
Starship Troopers began as a movie called "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7" by Ed Neumeier. According to him: "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 finished writing it and pitched it to TriStar, who initially didn't want it. He knew the general theme was like Starship Troopers, and Starship Troopers had name recognition. So, the team bought the rights to Starship Troopers, reworked the script to add more Starship Troopers elements, but kept it mostly along the lines of their "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7" idea. Details and references to all of this are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film)
There is so much hilarious stuff in that movie:
-- Doogie Howser MD as an SS Mengele character
-- A drill instructor who is like cult favorite senior drill instructor Hartman
-- Satirical propaganda ads for kids
-- The scene where they push a cow into the alien cage with a big "censored" over it
It's the sort of humor that gives Robocop and Total Recall their laugh-out-loud moments.
