Nearly 30 years after Starship Troopers blasted its way onto cinema screens, Casper Van Dien remains one of the most recognisable faces of ’90s action cinema. Johnny Rico may forever be part of his legacy, but Van Dien certainly hasn’t stopped working, with hundreds of screen credits behind him and a new action film, Ruthless Bastards, pairing him with fellow ’90s favourite Sean Patrick Flanery.
Joining Movieland to discuss the film, Van Dien immediately lights up when talking about working opposite the Boondock Saints star.
“I shot it with Sean Patrick Flanery, who I love. I had so much fun working with him,” Van Dien says. “It was just like this buddy thing with him and I, and we just clicked. I guess we’re the two ruthless bastards, per se, in this.”
Although their paths had crossed numerous times throughout their careers, Ruthless Bastards finally gave the pair the opportunity to properly work opposite one another.
“He’s so on top of everything. The guy’s an amazing martial artist. He’s a great family man, loves his kids, and has been dedicated to this craft for so long,” Van Dien says. “This was the first time we were just clicking off each other.”
That chemistry even extended to changing material while shooting, with Flanery suggesting different approaches to scenes and dialogue.
“He’s rewriting a lot of the things that we were doing and going, ‘Hey, how do you feel about this?’ I loved everything he did. Working off him was just incredible. I could have done the whole film just him and I. I would love to work with him again.”
There’s also a wonderfully strange history between the two actors. Both were building careers throughout the ’90s and occasionally found themselves competing for the same roles. Van Dien revealed that one of his most famous non-Starship Troopers roles almost belonged to Flanery.
“My Tarzan, he had to turn down because he had gotten another movie. So I only got Tarzan after him because he was offered it first,” Van Dien laughs. “He would have been the Tarzan instead of me!”
Van Dien also remembers growing up professionally during an extraordinary era for action cinema, watching stars including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme dominate the big screen while training alongside accomplished martial artists and performers himself.
That brings us, naturally, to Starship Troopers.
Released in 1997, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action satire initially divided audiences and critics, but its reputation has exploded in the decades since. For Van Dien, the fact that Johnny Rico continues to resonate with audiences remains something special.
“You can only hope. You can only dream,” he says. “When I shot Starship Troopers, I knew how big it was as a film. I was surprised that it didn’t get accepted and understood as well as it is now back then.”
Van Dien believes the film’s satire has only become more relevant with time, and its enduring popularity follows him virtually everywhere.
“There isn’t a day that goes by that, if I go out in public, somebody doesn’t yell a quote at me. ‘Johnny Rico!’ ‘Welcome to the Roughnecks!’ or ‘Kill ’em all!’ It’s always such a great thrill for me.”
One of Van Dien’s favourite memories from the film, however, came with considerable pain: Rico’s unforgettable battle with the Tanker Bug. Van Dien spent three-and-a-half days filming on a massive practical rig approximately 25 feet in the air, attached to wires as the structure moved beneath him. During one take, he fell hard enough to damage his teeth and leave himself dazed. On the next take, things somehow became worse.
“It caught me again and I’m going down, and I threw the butt of the gun underneath my ribs. I cracked three ribs. I spit blood and it hit the camera.”
Despite the injuries, Van Dien kept filming.
“I didn’t want to tell anybody I was hurt because I didn’t want to get replaced,” he admits. “It was brutal. But that would probably be one of my favourite scenes, even though it’s one of the most painful, because somehow through all the adversity, I was able to get through it.”
The film’s groundbreaking visual effects remain another source of pride. Van Dien remembers the enormous amount of work that went into making the Arachnids feel like physical creatures rather than cartoons.
“They wanted them to look gooey and bloody and moving. They put more detail into all of that. They wanted them not to look cartoony, but to look real.”
Van Dien would happily return to the universe if another film came calling.
“I would love it if they wanted me. I would do my part, of course.”
In the meantime, he’s already returned as Rico through video games, including Starship Troopers: Extermination. Better still, Van Dien actually plays the game online and streams on Twitch, giving fans the surreal opportunity to fight alongside Johnny Rico himself.
“People come on and play with me and they’re like, ‘I can’t believe I’m killing bugs with you!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna kill them all!’”
After almost three decades, Casper Van Dien clearly hasn’t grown tired of Rico’s Roughnecks. And when Movieland asks the inevitable final question, is there such a thing as a good bug? Van Dien smiles.
“I think dragonflies are good bugs. But I would say the only good bug is a dead bug, if you’re talking the big giant bugs from Starship Troopers.”
Watch the extended version of this interview on our YouTube channel.