Guns of Pop Culture: “Starship Troopers” & the Morita Mk I

Starship Troopers started as a novel by Robert Heinlein about a future society that embraced fascism and fought around the galaxy, eternally, to maintain human supremacy.

But the film departed from the book substantially. 

It ended up being a satire of fascism and embraced fascism’s most absurd aspects. At the time, people didn’t seem to understand the satire, and it was taken at face value.

The ridiculousness was misunderstood and often held against the film. 

The film follows Johnny Rico as he signs up for Federal Service to become a citizen. He’s assigned to the Mobile Infantry and undergoes a harsh indoctrination into war. 

A Man and His Rifle 

After an attack on Rico’s home of Buenos Aires, he’s deployed to the home planet of the bugs, where he’s part of the Mobile Infantry.

He carries the standard infantry rifle, the Morita Mk I. This massive, futuristic-looking blaster is a bullpup platform because all guns in the future are bullpup. Obviously.

This isn’t just a rifle…it features an underslung pump-action shotgun that’s handy for those close encounters.

The Mobile Infantry’s dubious tactics have them seemingly moving as one large mass and firing full auto all the time to disassemble the seemingly mindless, rage-filled bugs. 

Those dubious tactics and full auto fire don’t bode well for Rico and company. The attack is a disaster, although Rico fights valiantly.

He disassembles one bug with multiple blasts from his underslung shotgun before being severely wounded. 

Rico makes it through the first battle, and that allows us to see several different models of the Morita series of rifles. There is a carbine used by officers that lack the shotgun and has a shorter barrel and forend.

We also have a sniper variant or just a scoped variant of the standard Morita. 

The film doesn’t have much realistic gun handling and often devolves to firing full auto from the hip. However, some aimed fire is used here and there.

Rico makes good use of the shotgun in two scenes, but that’s about the only time we see one in action. 

I can’t blame them.

After watching the live fire training scene, it’s evident that these troopers are poorly trained in hilariously unsafe conditions.

They also have and use portable nuclear launchers on the regular, so why they issue rifles to fight bugs is a mystery to me. 

The Morita Mk1 in Real Life 

The Morita Mk1 is a classic sci-fi movie weapon where the armorers took a real weapon and dressed it up.

In this case, it was the AC-556 — a selective fire variant of the Mini-14.

The shotgun that rides…. well, shotgun, is an Ithaca 37. 

Most of the “shotguns” were apparently props, with only a few working models for the scenes where the gun is required to fire blanks.

The AC-556 rifles were tossed into Muzzelite MZ14 stocks to convert them to a bullpup format. 

Although its’ worth noting the bullpup kits were heavily modified for the film. The entire front half is a custom fabrication for the movie. The longer handguard and extended carry handle are much different than the standard Muzzlelite kits. 

Adding an Ithaca 37 wasn’t easy either, and that certainly required some tuning of the gun and stock kit to work. Armorers also lopped off the front sight of the stock because, I guess, in the future, we don’t need front sights. 

Choosing an Ithaca 37 makes sense. The gun ejects out of the bottom, and that’s a necessity for this setup. The scene where Rico is firing the shotgun very clearly shows the distinct front end of the Ithaca. 

The film has no concerns with magazine or ammo considerations. I don’t think we ever see the Mobile Infantry reload.

Rico even fires two more rounds than the Ithaca can hold. The production reportedly fired 300,000 blanks through the AC-556 rifles. 

Final Thoughts

I love Starship Troopers, both the movie and the book.

The Morita Mk I is an insanely cool creation, and I give credit to the film’s armorers for creating a unique and workable prop gun for this sci-fi satire masterpiece. 

What do you think of Starship Troopers? Let us know in the comments below. For more Guns of Pop Culture, check out our Fun Category.