I’m totally obsessed with Helldivers 2. I can’t stop playing it. When the servers go down, I wait for them to come back up. Because waiting is better than giving up. I can’t get enough. So, naturally, when I move away from my gaming PC, I’m wondering what movies could I watch that can scratch the Helldivers itch when I’m AFK. Here’s my list of favourite movies that are really like Helldivers 2 in some way, shape or form.
Starship Troopers
I have to start here. The similarities between Starship Troopers and Helldivers 2 is absolutely undeniable. Both feature warfare against insectoid aliens. Helldivers does also offer war against machines, but still – the point remains. The tone of Helldivers is also wildly similar to that of the satirical Starship Troopers.
Now, when I was younger, I loved Starship Troopers because the big guns went boom and the aliens went splat. Now I love it for the satirical view of pro-military nations and fascism. While many missed the satirical takes in the Paul Verhoeven film adaptation, the older me absolutely loves it.
The result is that both this movie and this game use war to explore and critique various aspects of human society, including militarism, propaganda, nationalism, and the glorification of violence. They often achieve this through satire and dark humour, prompting reflection on the real world through their fictional narratives.
Just look at how both the movie and game open to get a feel for how they land the same concept.
Simply put, Starship Troopers is the ultimate movie to watch when coming down from your latest Helldivers 2 drop. And hell, it’s just a great movie to watch before going down the Nazi meaning rabbit hole of Starship Troopers too.
Event Horizon
A lot of Helldiver fans will probably disagree with me on this one. But your ship in the game left me wanting to watch Event Horizon again. Now, an important caveat here is that I watch Event Horizon every year. Again, it’s one of my all-time favourite movies.
Beyond the ship bringing up memories, this film and game probably couldn’t be much more different. Event Horizon is a tense horror, while Helldivers is a lighthearted shoot-em-up. But I wanted to mention it, and mention it early. One big plus is that the pace of Event Horizon is much slower, so you can rest after blowing up some bugs.
Aliens
Very important to note this is the second movie in the original Alien Trilogy. The reason that matters is because it’s the second movie that mainly takes place on a planet. During that second movie, Ripley battles a xenomorph creature on a planet. It’s all not too dissimilar to the Helldivers taking on a planet of bugs.
Aliens is also arguably the greatest sci-fi film ever made, so regardless of the similarities, I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy watching this anyway!
District 9
It didn’t come to me immediately, but I did eventually think of District 9. One of my favourite movies, that I always forget about.
District 9 is all about an alien race coming to Earth seeking refuge. The most obvious different here is that this was never meant to be a conflict scenario. The aliens, who are very bug-like, arrived on Earth out of necessity. They never intended to harm humans, but eventually a conflict developed because of how humanity treated the “bugs”, more derogatorily known as “prawns”.
While there are vast differences between District 9 and Helldivers 2, I’ll gladly take this as a prompt to go watch one of the best sci-fi movies of all time one more time.
Edge of Tomorrow
This is as close as I’ll ever get to recommending a Tom Cruise movie, I promise. Edge of Tomorrow is a futuristic sci-fi movie that involves the main character dropping into a war zone repeatedly. While humour isn’t at the forefront, there are a lot of militaristic motifs and the like throughout.
If you die in Helldivers, you can usually come back and continue to fight – just as is the main storyline of Edge of Tomorrow.
The enemies are slightly different in Edge of Tomorrow in comparison to Helldivers 2, but you could argue they’re almost a combination of the two! I’m going to admit it. I enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow. So there.
Halo The Series
Gamers will know the role of Master Chief. One of the most iconic game characters of all time, the lead of Halo. Now, Halo has been given the series treatment on Paramount+. Both this and Helldivers are action-packed, futuristic shoot-em-ups with gaming-entertainment crossover genetics. I say that because if Starship Troopers never happened I don’t think Helldivers would happen either.
Perhaps the most direct connection between Halo and Helldivers are the Halo’s Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs). Both these and the Helldivers are quite comparable in job specs and enough to warrant a place on this list for Halo.
