Starship Troopers features some great characters but Dina Meyer's Dizzy Flores is a standout. Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven arrived in Hollywood with his instant classic RoboCop back in 1987. This hyperviolent sci-fi action tale followed a cop who is slain in the line of duty and rebuilt as an invincible cyborg who gradually regains his humanity. The film would also establish Verhoeven's distinct style of blending intense violence, satire, and thoughtful themes.
The director would have a run of huge successes during this era, including Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Basic Instinct. His career hit a speedbump following the response to 1995's controversial Showgirls - which has since been reappraised as a camp classic - so he returned to sci-fi with Starship Troopers. On the surface, the movie is an Aliens style action movie about soldiers battling alien creatures with high-tech weaponry, but it has a more going on under the hood. Verhoeven intended to make a parody of war propaganda movies like Triumph Of The Will, but while it underperformed at the time it's now considered one of his best.
Starship Troopers revolves around main character Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), who joins the Mobile Infantry to be close to his girlfriend Carmen (Denise Richards). While Johnny is a likable - if somewhat - dimwitted hero, he's surrounded by more interesting characters like Neil Patrick Harris' Carl and Michael Ironside's Lt. Rasczak. Arguably the film's standout is Dizzy, played by Dina Meyer (Sequestered).
Dizzy is a former classmate of Johnny's in Starship Troopers and is clearly in love with him. She even joins the Mobile Infantry just to be near him, but she quickly proves herself a capable soldier and leader. While Johnny has trouble committing during training she dives right in and ends up slaying a lot of bugs during the story. She and Johnny later transfer to the Roughnecks unit, led by their former teacher Rasczak, and she again shows courage under fire. She's far from a one-note action heroine, however, with the film giving her its most tragic arc. While she finally gets her wish to be with Johnny, it's clear he doesn't love her in the same way and never will, and she's later killed during a massive bug ambush.
Dizzy's death hits the hardest in Starship Troopers exactly because of Dina Meyer's performance and because she was given so much development. Dizzy is frequently cited as a fan-favorite character, but given her demise, this made returning for sequel's tricky. The most recent entry was anime movie Starship Troopers: Traitor Of Mars, which found a way around this by having Dizzy - voiced again by Meyer - appear to Johnny when he's stranded and surrounded by bugs. This later turns out to a projection sent by his psychic pal Carl.