Oh please. Bill the Galactic Hero is a satire of Starship Troopers.
The movie was a lame hacky attempt by a pathetic self aggrandizing liberal hollywierd screenwriter (or a comittee of the same) to overlay his own pathetic ideologies and weak criticisms of a work he neither understood, nor probably even read. Calling it a "satire" is just an equally lame attempt to explain away the crappy insult to the audience (not to mention R.A. Heinlein) that resulted. It was hardly "brilliant" by any definition.
I understand that fans of the novel didn't like it. But director Paul Verhoweven is a satirist. The whole thing was made in the form of a fascist propaganda movie. It's a big goof. The characters were played by blond blue eyed bleached Aryan types. All by design. It's also a formally adept piece of filmmaking. Remember the same director made Robocop.