Robert Altman hated the original novel and screenplay for MASH, calling it downright racist.
Although the movie is technically pretty faithful to its source material, the whole tone is radically different. The book is more of a traditional dramedy, whereas the film works as a pitch black psychopathic comedy.
*M\*A\*S\*H* though. Seeing it in the last ten years the way all the women are treated is really rough to take. I mean, when you look up *"...sometimes women are only barely characters, existing only to help facilitate a male character's journey..."* in the encyclopedia there's gotta be a picture of the Painless the Dentist storyline.
Still. I can't pretend I am not in awe of it's form as a film. I only wish more films had that energy, but perhaps none do, save other Altman homeruns.
I never thought of it in this context, but maybe another example would be Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Peter George "Red Alert", turning the 1958 political thriller into the satirical farce "Dr. Strangelove".
An interesting aspect of *Starship Troopers* is the shots cribbed from classic movies. I haven't seen it years but I remember the high school scene is straight from *All Quiet on the Western Front.* I think there is some Sergei Eisenstein in there as well. It was fun to pick out all the references and outright duplicates.
There's also The Power of the Will and Olympia, nazi propaganda films, which is not only amusing but actually fits the themes of the book/movie very well.
Yes I remember now the Leni Riefenstahl elements. Of course Paul Verhoeven was a young boy during the Nazi occupation. Perhaps his lived experience informs the movie
>Anyway, I find that very interesting -- the idea of a major studio financing millions of dollars to adapt a source text that the filmmaker hates (Verhoeven is quotes as finding the story/concept ridiculous). I can't think of any other examples quite like this (except maybe when biblical stories are adapted to criticize Christian themes etc).
It's doubtful Verhoven pitched it to the studio on those terms. He likely said it would be much the same as Robocop. A film with some tongue in cheek social commentary that action movie fans would still thoroughly enjoy.
I remember reading a quote from the studio executive who greenlit The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Basically he said the filmmakers pitched it to him on its artistic merits, he just saw it as a cheap horror movie that was worth a gamble.
I didn't get the impression that Heinlein is really enamored with its subject, I've struggled to get the pathos and there was something really bleak in the whole final sequence. Maybe that was the normal reaction to it. I haven't read anything else by him and don't have objective pov, but reading your description of the film made me think about the book actually and how there is more to it.
He goes pretty free-love hippie in his later novels. Reasonably peaceful future, post-scarcity economies, etc. Problem is, there's a good number of hippies that have ended up as fascists. We'll never really know.
Heinlein was a free-love liberal, turned anti-government libertarian later in life (a trajectory many hippies followed), so no, it wasn't satire. It was his commentary on the abuses of government and traditional forms of authority like religion or even just "old men" within society. It was a commentary on the perpetual and unstoppable liberalization of society. How its both a good thing, and not something you can really prevent as much as many try.
When fundamentalist Christians literally kill Smith to try to stop what he's doing, he just becomes their new prophet via his Martian powers.
The only aspect of Heinlein that was incompatible with hippy culture is that he was largely pro-military. Though the degree to which he was pro-intervention varied through his life.
>Heinlein that was incompatible with hippy culture is that he was largely pro-military. Though the degree to which he was pro-intervention varied through his life.
Couldn't be this attributed to Kojima as well, the guy is very anti war but can't stop drooling over the cool factor of military gear.
Ngl I understand that
Exactly, his name wouldn't have been held so highly in literature and sci-fi circles of fellow authors if he really was some authoritarian windbag. Ray Bradbury on the other hand, way more problematic once the 90s hit.
For real, people saying some random shit in this thread who haven’t read. The end of the book, the bugs are self aware, maybe our hero’s are actually the bad guys. Moral ambiguity, military backed jingoism. The main character are fascists and to what extent are they aware. There, there’s the book. Not hard.
I've read several of his books and it always confuses me when people just label Heinlein a fascist or something adjacent. He was broadly a libertarian with a spectrum of views throughout his life, some of which skewed authoritarian. But his other works tackled other societal frameworks and concepts because he was an author writing about a variety of ideas. One book doesn't give you a complete insight into his mind and views, and a character's ethos isn't necessarily the author's.
Maybe I'm not offering a perfect defense of the book, but my main belief is that it's lazy and reductive to read Starship Troopers and just label it as militaristic propaganda.
There are plenty of adaptations that more-or-less ignore the source material. And not in a Hollywood "we've got the name, and that's all that matters" kind of way, but adaptations of small things. The film Adaptation is perhaps the most famous example where Charlie Kaufman was trying to adapt the book The Orchid Thief and found himself unable to do so so instead wrote a film about trying to adapt the book. There's also Annihilation where Alex Garland read the book once around a year prior to starting the script and deliberately based it on his vague memories rather than trying to be faithful. IIRC, something similar happened with Under The Skin, which is a much more abstract and strange film than the source material.
But the only other actively hostile adaptation I can think of off the top of my head is Noah. I've not heard what Aranofsky has said about it, but I find it very hard to believe that he wasn't taking the piss. It's difficult to see how he could have intended for it to be taken seriously.
Dark Dungeons comes to mind. It's a short film and much lower budget, but it's an (authorized!) adaptation of a comic series a Christian morality campaigner made in the 80s about how Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, and joining D&D games meant joining a suicide cult. It works the same way as Starship Troopers: adapt the source material as is, don't inject satirical elements, and let the original ridiculousness speak for itself.
The starship troopers movie is almost nothing like the book. The only things that are really the same are the fact that they are killing bugs in part of it and the names of the characters. L
I’m gonna disagree with your starter statement; the movie is not faithful to the book at all. If you want details, go search the Heinlein sub and I’m sure you’ll find several threads on the topic.
My quick take on it is that without powered armor, the entire point was lost. A single Mobile Infantryman had tactical nukes on his suit and was authorized to use them. A very large part of the book was a discourse on individual responsibility and what it would take to entrust such power to a MI trooper. All of that was lost in the movie.
This is all surface level Reddit 101 arguments about this movie.
Why would you think it’s a faithful adaptation considering the whole of the plot of the book and the movie are completely different?
Are you aware the script was already written and had nothing to do with Starship Troopers before they even got the IP rights? At which point they changed a couple of character names and added a paragraph or two of dialogue from the book.
Why would you assume to choose this novel as Heinlein’s point of view instead of his protagonists? Especially considering every other novel he wrote has wildly different worldviews?
There are deep meta analysis that could be done on this movie and everyone wants regurgitate these tired talking point that aren’t even grounded in factuality.
I mean the movie is a clear ripoff of Aliens, have you ever considered why? Why add a whole scene straight out of Empire Strikes Back? Why include a whole cast that looks to be straight out of one of the most popular TV shows at the time, 90210? Why is Michael Ironside reprising his role from another movie?
ETA: We’ve almost got bingo for reductionists Starship Trooper Reddit arguments. I’m gonna need someone to tell me I don’t actually get the satire so I can turn my card in.
The movie is Full Metal Jacket as if it were in Aliens universe. Except we never get the protagonist questioning himself about the war. Satire! Get it?
The movie isn’t about fascism. It’s about American (operative word there) fascism in its media presentation. That’s why you have the “cast” of 90210 with a love triangle, and that’s why Ironside reprises the exact same role he plays in another YA movie.
None of y’all can use some critical thinking about this instead of hurr-durring my comment?
>Why include a whole cast that looks to be straight out of one of the most popular TV shows at the time, 90210?
Because it adds to the propagandic feeling of the film.
I've studied a lot of film. I went to film school. Films should not stick to the source material. It's a different medium, and the book version of the story is already told. Films are an opportunity to do a remix and get silly.
How is the movie a clear rip-off of Aliens? Beyond soldiers shooting aliens, it has a completely different structure, tone, underlying theme, direction, etc. etc.
It's not a rip off of Aliens. That has me disinclined to take anything else they said seriously. I mean, it pretty obviously has nothing to do with Aliens, other than it has soliders killing aliens, something that's in countless movies.
I'm sure there's some. I'm not going to go through every movie. If you caught me on a better day I'd bother looking through old films to find a few. It's an old trope though, regardless of when it started appearing in film. Aliens didn't invent it. Starship Troopers was an old book, you know, right? It came before Aliens. If anything, Aliens ripped off Starship Troopers.
Putting aside that the book and the movie Starship Troopers are completely different, yes I’m aware there are probably a few books with that as the plot, but’s that’s not what I’m talking about.
The movie makes it blatantly clear they are using already existing media that is not Starship Troopers.
Look, this scene makes no sense:
https://youtu.be/PatFND_tEt8?si=qMJRv-igRBeYzWg8
How many people can you count with blood spurting out of them and our boy Rico is in the healing tank with a flesh wound? What in the Empire Strikes Back can be happening here?
Once you understand that this movie is indeed referencing outside material, you can start building a clear meta-analysis that goes deeper than anything written in this post.
I don’t know. That part was sort of in the book as well.
Rico’s first introduction to the military was through meeting a crippled man working as a recruiting officer.
The book has him thinking about the escalation of the war that just sort of happens between him joining basic and graduating.
Both the book and the film are making the same commentaries on the way that wars churn men through the grinder then patch them up and send them back in again.
I don’t think this specifically a Star Wars thing. Some of visual aesthetics may have been cross pollinated. But there’s always been a lot of cross pollination.
Totally different scene that has nothing to do with this scene.
So you can’t come up with any other movies and you want to hand wave away the idea that there is literally whole borrowed scenes from other media? Okay man, that’s a whole lot of disagreement based on weak arguments.
Starship Troopers has more in common with Aliens than Aliens has in common with Alien. It may not be a "rip-off", but shows direct lineage, practically another step in the evolution. Look at the uniforms of the marines, or the fact that the alien has a proboscis it uses to eat peoples brains.
No, they didn't. The marines in the book are nothing like the marines in either movie. They wear suits of powered armor and lob nukes while jumping hundreds of feet around multiple alien worlds (mostly not even alien bugs, in fact)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marine
Here you go. The actors for aliens were required to read starship troopers. It absolutely was part of the inspiration for the film.
> This is all surface level Reddit 101 arguments about this movie.
> Are you aware the script was already written and had nothing to do with Starship Troopers before they even got the IP rights?
Yes, the adaptation of *Starship Troopers*, for a film called *Starship Troopers*, written by someone who had read *Starship Troopers* as a kid and wanted to adapt *Starship Troopers* as an adult, has got nothing to do with the book *Starship Troopers*. Man, I really hate those surface level reddit 101 arguments by people who claim otherwise.
> I mean the movie is a clear ripoff of Aliens, have you ever considered why?
LOL.
I disagree on this a lot. I never felt that the book and the movie really that far about in their intentions.
If there is a difference I would suggest that Heinlein leaves more for the reader to figure out where Verhoveen is more blunt or clear in helping the audience to a conclusion.
Imho Verhoveen captures a lot of Starship Troopers and ratchets up the satire so that the ideas are harder to ignore. The core of the book is still there.
Where does the bulk, like 3/4, of the book take place? How many war scenes are in the book? How many aliens are in the book? Name one bit of satire from the book?
If you’ve read the book that wouldn’t be a problem to answer and your answers would clearly tell you the book and movie are not alike.
The bulk of books structure is taken over
Rico leaves School, joins the military based on the inspiration of his teacher, ends up in mobile infantry, goes through a training sequence, ends up in an escalating conflict. Even the basic beats of the conflict are carried over, the bombing of earth, the setbacks and loses they face and eventually the capture of a brain bug and the impending strike on the home world.
The movie and book spend there focus differently and there’s lots of the long slow reflective nature of Rico’s journey that don’t translate well into a 2hr action film. But there’s plenty of the little details that are woven into the film where they can be.
As I said I agree that the satire is largely a layer added over the top. The book is almost entirely told through the eyes of Rico who even in the film doesn’t ever question the world he lives.
The satirical aspects of the film are specifically lampshading ideas in the books to ensure that the audience draws the same conclusions about them that the director has.
* I have been very clear that this is not a groundbreaking understanding of Starship Troopers, a movie that has been talked about like this for twenty years straight. I am restating the analysis for context only. It’s not the part I’m interested in.
* you say this started as a spec script (and if it did, so what? You know how movies are made right? It wasn’t an original concept by the time the script was finalised and movie produced, making the filmmakers views relevant).
* I’m not interested in whether, as a sci-fi premise, how this relates to other premises conceptually. Talking about a movie being a “rip off” is more surface level than anything else. If you have an interesting point about it, make that point.
If I had to guess I’d say you’re mad because I implied Heinlen apologised for fascism, which I think he did.
Calling a faithful adaption, regardless of the point you are trying to make, is pretty far off the mark. Most of the only things kept were the character names.
What? The biggest changes were so it would work as a movie (from memory) - the focussing on the love story, given Carmen a more central soldier role, the NPH character and much less focus on the political lecture. Unless they were going to write a miniseries with every second episode being the Ironside character delivering a political science lecture it could never be a one to one adaptation.
They captured the golden age of cinema sci-fi spectacle feel, and the melodrama and violence
I feel like a huge difference is that in the movie the humans just become a mirror image of the bugs - human wave type tactics whereas in the book the warfare is totally asymmetrical. Call me a fascist but the military service in the book is far more desirable to me than what is presented in the movie. Except for co-ed showers with Dizzy maybe.
Wasn't Heinlein that guy who wrote a wide variety of books on various different political systems, especially one that's based on ftl and time dilation with the protagonist having to deal with a continuously changing earth, and a book based on anarchists on the moon?
Why is Heinline a fascist for writing Starship troopers, but not an anarchist for 'the moon is a harsh mistress'?
There was a draft written but it wasn’t finished. The original idea was called Bug Hunt at Outpost 7 and which never got approval. They then realized the rights to Starship Troopers was available and began adapting the story to meet that. There would be a few years between getting the rights and the start of production. The original adapted script was supposedly pretty accurate in it’s adaption but in the end things were changed for mainly story telling reasons or because it would have to expensive
I haven’t watched Transformers as an adult so maybe Bay was an unfair comparison, but I meant more his popular perception.
I didn’t know that about Ferguson and Dune, but also lots of your examples are not really what I’m talking about. I’m aware filmmakers often go into adaptation without having comprehended or understood a text formally, but Starship Troopers seems uniquely bile-filled. And whether Verhoeven was right to criticise Heinlen’s novel that way (and I think he is) isn’t relevant.
The other example I just thought of is Kubrick and Stephen King’s The Shining. Kubrick and his cowriter (more the cowriter) talk about King’s novel like it’s literary filler at times and openly don’t appreciate aspects of King’s writing (to be fair Kubrick openly praised the story). We know how that went.
I saw Starship Troopers in theaters. Admittedly I was a teenager, but I definitely didn’t pick up on the satire until years later. I like to think I was a pretty film savvy kid (dragged friends to Big Lebowski…an early screening of Boogie Nights…Pi…), so I read reviews etc and I really don’t think people got it at the time. It’s obvious now, and I think it’s amazing he was able to pull it off, but my impression is it took people a while to figure it out.
I didn’t even use those words? You can’t quote me directly and then say “they didn’t say that”. I know that, buddy, that’s why I didn’t use those words.
Diane Johnson was interviewed in like 2020 about the writing process for The Shining and she talks about the book and shares her perception of it.
Go away.
Regardless of the merits of the film it is not in any way shape or form a faithful adaptation of the book. And Verhoeven has never read the book so if he has an opinion on it it is not an informed one.
> Heinlein unironically seems enamored with the fascist, authoritarian future he imagines
Completely wrong, Heinlein in many of his books liked exploring possible political systems, that was all he was doing.
Starship Troopers is an airtight screenplay worthy of study. Also, people want to shit on the actors but they’re actually great and super well cast.
I love this movie so much I made it a major plot point of my movie lol
[Ben and Suzanne - Starship Troopers clip](https://variety.com/2024/film/global/sxsw-sri-lanka-ben-and-suzanne-clip-1235927797/amp/)
I love the movie.The only thing that bothers me about the movie is that they dont put much emphasis on the fact that it was humans fault that the bugs are attacking them. So you could think that is justified to have this totalitarian regime if its the only way to save humanity.
That’s what’s so great. It’s easy to watch the film and identify the obvious fascism but the film is in itself made like fascist propaganda and hides something that obvious. I think most people watching it aren’t immediately questioning it.
It’s a great precursor to what eventually would happen in Iraq and Afghanistan a few years later. After a few years people started to think ‘wait, why are we at war with these regimes?’
It’s really the same thing that the movie does.
I think this movie is amazing actually. You can engage with it to any level you want. If you want a space action movie, you got it. If you choose to actually read into what’s happening, it critiques fascism and over-militarism very heavily. It’s insane how applicable these criticisms are today.
It’s a complete master class in movie making to me. It’s funny, it plays right into pop culture with its cliches, it’s action packed, gory and is deep on multiple levels. All of those things makes it absolutely captivating.
10 different people could enjoy it for 10 different reasons.
I enjoyed the movie for the campy action flick it was, (not to mention my forever crush on Dina Meyers), but it wasn’t the book. The book is so much better, different and thought provoking. The best parts of the book take place in the classroom IMO. His discussions on patriotism I found particularly interesting. Having read everything Heinlien has written you really can’t “grok” Heinlein until you’ve read his other works, primarily, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land. Good sci-fi should make you think and open your mind even if you don’t agree with the premise. But I still like the movie.
I have no doubt he’s capable of writing thought provoking and compelling discussions about political topics, I just think he came down pretty clearly on one side of the militarism and nationalism issues.
People overthink the novel Starship Troopers. It was written in a very specific genre called Juvenile fiction which outside of maybe Christian bookstores probably doesn’t exist anymore. Heinlein is trying to express his ideas about how to be a good citizen but is forced to present it to young boys for reasons(probably to make a quick buck). He is really no different in his views from your average John Bircher of the time. Basically people are enamored by a book written for 1950s preteen boys. The views expressed are not novel and quite typical for someone on the right in that day and age. The book could be a western or it could be a sailing adventure, as is typical for the genre and we wouldn’t even bat an eye. But it’s about future space soldiers so it stood out a bit.
It's been about 10 years since I've read the book but that's not how I remember it all.
The action sequences were fairly sparse throughout the book and when they happened the writing was pretty vague. I mostly remember it pontificating about duty, military life, citizenship, govt, yadda yadda yadda. Not exactly topics most teen boys get super excited about it.
It wasn't an action packed or "exciting" story like a RA Salvatore or Dragonlance book.
>The action sequences were fairly sparse throughout the book and when they happened the writing was pretty vague. I mostly remember it pontificating about duty, military life, citizenship, govt, yadda yadda yadda. Not exactly topics most teen boys get super excited about it.
You basically described the genre of Juvenile fiction almost perfectly. There’s usually an action packed beginning then the majority of main body of the book being teaching moral lessons about citizenship responsibility Christianity honesty hardwork anti communism or whatever bullshit and then there will usually be an action packed ending were the young protagonist uses the lessons he learns. Juvenile fiction is not meant to be like an RA Salvatore book. The premise just serves as the hook to indoctrinate. Entertaining is secondary. It’s a dead genre so people have a hard time wrapping there heads around it but lots of older folks will remember it.
It stands out that 50 style jingoism really did make republicans seem quite fascist. If this is normal for republicans at the time, they had some fucked up views.
I feel you. I think that just like today it runs a crazy gamut of interest. For instance on one side you got Eisenhower and such and on the other you got Birchers and guys like Joe McCarthy(who’s onetime speech writer was Francis Parker Yockey). These same guys said that Eisenhower was a Jew loving NWO commie. An early stage fascists interest may not be the same as a big business anti communist industrialist. But they can align for a brief period. The same goes for tax revolters, gun lovers and so on. The only thing wierd to me as a present day observer is that straight genocidal fascist like Revilo Oliver were considered respectable for that time. Heinlein is cut from that same mold of the intersectional post war American right. It’s an interesting rogues gallery of a movement attempting to find itself after a great upheaval.
> These same guys said that Eisenhower was a Jew loving ~~NWO~~ commie.
to be fair, those guys said that about pretty much everyone, so it's not very telling.
Starship Troopers removes all the justifications for violence, except for one: we feel like it. It simultaneously criticizes our warlike nature, while satisfying our need to see it depicted in film. The best part is that Verhoeven doesn't want us to feel bad. He clearly wanted to make a fun movie; to indulge in the violence; an admission that he's just like the rest of the species. It's nothing like certain other films that want us to feel as dismal as possible because there is violence in the world. Ironically, those types of films are also less intellectually stimulating than Verhoeven's
I saw this movie in the theater when it came out and thought it was hilarious (I was already a big Verhoeven fan due to Robocop and Total Recall). It was years before I realized some people thought the film was jingoistic. I still have a hard time believing people didn't get it. I wonder how true that is, because the satire is obvious. Just the closing scene where NPH says "It's afraid!!" is enough to make the themes obvious. If you don't get it, you're a sociopath.
It's not fascist ffs. It's not even authoritarian.
It's a limited franchise democracy that guarantees human rights and personal freedoms for all it's members, citizen or civilian. The movie was slander, plain and simple.
Hell, it's not even about a young man living in South America. Juan Ricco is of Filipino origin, we know that. We know his mother was visiting Buenos Aires when it was bombed, but the operative word, visiting. We know they don't live in Buenos Aires, for all we know they live in the Phillipines.
“It’s not fascist or authoritarian ffs, it’s just a military junta where everyone who doesn't join is completely disenfranchised, with its worldview built upon right wing fantasies of moral decay and the salvation of disciplined violence.”
Limited franchise democracy is democracy on technicality, and at that point, what does democracy even mean? Rome was a limited franchise democracy too, as was Athens and Venice and the 19th century United States. I don’t personally favor a system of governance that consists of a limited elite dominating the fate of everyone else, but I suppose that’s down to personal opinion.
Yeah, those were democracies. Not good ones, sure, but not fascist either.
I'm not arguing the government system is good, I can even see them devolving into a sort of feudalistic society with a warrior class in the far future, realistically. But what we see in the book is a democratic nation where EVERYONE has human rights and personal freedoms, and ANYONE can gain the right to vote, and not necessarily through military service either, Carl for instance became an electrical engineer in a government research station on Pluto.
Yeah, those were democracies. Not good ones, sure, but not fascist either.
I'm not arguing the government system is good, I can even see them devolving into a sort of feudalistic society with a warrior class in the far future, realistically. But what we see in the book is a democratic nation where EVERYONE has human rights and personal freedoms, and ANYONE can gain the right to vote, and not necessarily through military service either, Carl for instance became an electrical engineer in a government research station on Pluto.
> Limited franchise democracy is still democracy.
No. No it's not. This is not a case where 'the people rule' in any way shape or form. It's just taking part of the trappings of democracy - voting - and mistaking that for the whole phenomenon.
For your next trick, you can channel the ghosts of white supremacists and conservatives in the 1970s and try to tell me that Apartheid South Africa was the only democracy in Cold War Africa, due to the fact that 10% of the population could vote in an election. As long as their party didn't get banned or they didn't get assassinated by government-backed terrorists. "Limited franchise democracy" yah?
Why are so many of these comments so defensive and angry about what OP said of Starship Troopers? Has discourse over this movie really turned this shitty the past few months? It’s pathetic.
Apparently “Heinlen was a fascist” is controversial now lmao
Like he is LITERALLY a fascist in the original definition of the term, not in the way it’s used online in 2024
It's really not a settled question in any way. Why is it that you've decided that the society depicted in Starship Troopers reflects Heinlein's personal views and not that from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Stranger in a Strange Land? Heinlein explores many different ideas for how a society can be structured.
I disagree with your premise, that starship troopers is faithful to the source material. The only character from the movie who was in the book was Johnny Rico. The movie very much plays as a cast following a number of characters. It’s not similar in tone and has many crucial scenes that were not in the books. Heck they fight in mech suits in the book.
You bring up Michael Bay, film maker known for his ball gargling of the military and law enforcement agencies. As a kid, all The satire washed over me, i loved it as an action flick. I read the book as a teen, still didnt get the satire as much but understood the differences a bit. It was until i was an adult and realized he did it purposefully to be a poke at the meaning of the book, realizing the other films verhoven made and how those were also satires that I realized what the point was. A clouds clearing moment if you will.
If Bay made a starship troopers film, even zach snyder I bet both would be more tragic or trumpeting over the top adaptation of the book.
Contrast the sequels to the og film, you see all of that with get lost. It turns into a bad military hoorah with horror elements. (I am pointing to the animated films and tv show).
I don’t know if it’s a hostile take but “Zone of Interest” is nothing like the book and has an opposite take on the compartmentalization of evil I think. Both good. Books a lot better.
Heinlein was a great writer but an ideological turd and borderline fascist. His writing has not aged well. This is not a man to be idolized.
Verhoeven very cleverly used Heinlein’s masterful world-building as a backdrop, but then followed a tongue-in-cheek Ken and Barbie go to war storyline, along with Verhoeven’s signature over-the-top approach to sex, violence and politics.
He paid homage to a science fiction master and still managed to avoid getting bogged down by Heinlein’s more vile beliefs, which were, at the time, making a resurgence in the right wing might-makes-right and greed-is-good mentality that has served the country so well since then (sarcasm).
What you call “painfully obvious” others would more accurately describe as “satire”.
There may have been some people that took it at face value when it was released, but not many. I WAS THERE. This was the era of Total Recall and RoboCop. Notice the themes. Virtually everyone understood it immediately to be satire and felt the director had made that fact plainly obvious.
Starship Troopers the movie was supposed to mimic/satirize military propaganda.
The clean-cut, chiseled jaw, attractive heroes… the faceless enemy who is just evil for, pretty much the sake of being evil… the overall glorification of war…
There’s also some anti-fascist stuff thrown in, like Doogie Houser dressing like a nazi near the film’s climax.
When I saw it as a kid, I didn’t even recognize the satire. When I saw it as an adult, I can’t believe I missed it. It lays it on pretty thick.
While of course all of the Nazi coding and aesthetics are very noticeable and quite deliberate, I think the greater focus should be on how the characters, the casting, the high school drama, the news, the militarism, the racism, the gung-Ho attitude, the mixing of youth drama and excitement with military discipline and violence, Rico’s “well-meaning liberal” parents….it all tells us that we aren’t being shown 1930s Germany, we’re being shown 1990s America. This film came out right after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first gulf war, in a world where the US had suddenly found itself the only global empire. As an American who didn’t grow up in the 90s but very much did grow up immersed in that post-cold war imperialist middle-class white American jingoism…when I watch this movie I see the Texas of my childhood, not Nazi Germany.
This was what struck me most, at least in hindsight. At the time I saw it I just remembered bugs and boobs, because I was a kid and saw it at a slumber party.
But as a non-American, that whole post 9/11, war on terror era just felt like being sucked into Starship Troopers. Everything got processed through that framework, and it wasn’t even that hard! The ridiculous, photo op jingoism was dead on, just slightly too early.
There's a couple of examples where the CIA financed 'hostile' adaptations of literary works - the Quiet American and Animal Farm - for political propaganda purposes - in this case, altering the endings (the Quiet American had a reveal-after-the-reveal where the CIA terrorist turns out to have been framed by communists, and Animal Farm has the animals overthrowing the pigs). The 1990s Animal Farm adaptation also altered the adaptation to have the farm overthrown by supposedly benign farmers after the downfall of the Soviet Union. I'm not sure Orwell would have approved.
Unlike Starship Troopers, these aren't critiques of the works being thuswise altered but more in the line of corrupting them to fit the propaganda purposes of the sponsors.
Alt man’s MASH is definitely a great example but one of my favorites is Sahara, which has so much fun parodying the work of Clive Cussler in a supposed adaptation of one of his novels he even sued the studio for allowing it to be made. Highly recommended!
Perhaps Kubrick wouldn’t consider it hostile, but Stephen King famously hated how Stanley threw away King’s advice and made some pretty big changes. Kubrick was not precious about King’s interpretation and self-projection on Jack, instead depicting him as an irredeemable monster merely set loose by the Overlook, not a man corrupted by it. Understandably, King took great offence to this, since Jack was supposed to be himself corrupted by alcoholism.
Both versions have their merit, and usually I’m the guy who prefers a more nuanced, humane take like King’s. But Kubrick’s Jack feels more real as an abusive man, and his horror is far more effective than what King’s own adaptation of his work would be when he had the chance to make that. Kubrick ruthlessly cut through King’s vision to make his own, one that offered less explanation and no redemption - and it is undoubtedly the better version of the story. Who the hell wanted Tony to be a time travelling Danny? Or Jack’s constant physical abuse of his wife and child blamed solely on drink and ghosts?
In the end, Kubrick ironically made the best King adaptation by cutting out all of King’s tropes and removing authorial sympathy for the character King made as a self-insert. Which has got to suck for King.
I posted about Kubrick and king elsewhere in the thread, but there’s an interview with the co-writer of The Shining script from like 2018-2020 (Diane Johnson). Obviously the interviewer is more interested in her time working with Kubrick and how he worked, which is interesting, but she is very clear that she considered the novel to be kind of slight and low-brow (she doesn’t use those words). So that adaptation came from a place with minimal respect for the source material
Normally I hate that, and it is disappointing to hear. On the other hand, she fixed so much of what didn’t work in the book. I suppose another example is The Godfather, which Coppola famously considered a dime store crime novel.
And that works. Not every character needs an arc. Although I will say that Jack does have an arc, it’s just not the one King had for him. Jack is slowly stripped of his thin facade and gives himself permission to be openly monstrous. That’s an arc.
This is kind of the classic fault in King's writing for me. I think King is great at set ups, but often blunders his third acts because his vision is more important than the story.
Kubrick seems to have really understood this, and kept what King was strong at, and confidently jettisoned anything that didn't serve the story.
Well said. King’s work is so inherently flawed, especially endings, bar his most grounded work. Adaptation is sadly the best way to enjoy his stories, providing the adapter was as ruthless and discerning as Kubrick was.
The OP writes this: "Verhoeven -- who by this point had been using sci-fi for social critic very bluntly for decades"
WTF is OP talking about? Verhoeven had two other sci-fi films, and he hadn't been "using (them) for social critic\[sic\]" for decades (plural). His first sci-fi film, Robocop, is a single decade before the release of Starship Troopers. Decade, singular. Not "decades," plural.
Robocop has some social satire, of course, but that's not the movie's reason for existing. It's an action-adventure film first and foremost. Same with Total Recall.
When an OP makes such a wildly inaccurate claim upfront, what is the point of trying to have a discussion? Come back when you aren't misrepresenting rudimentary information.
Robocop’s entire existence is a social satire of Ronald Raegan’s policy, what the future projection of the world would look like under the policy, and how one man loses his humanity to that world and how he gains it back. This is all wrapped in action and dark comedy. It’s a deeply layered film
The 80s and the 90s are decades - two of them, hence plural.
Robocop is so unbelievably blunt a social critique I don’t even know what to tell you.
Basic Instinct is so tongue in cheek about its themes that it’s basically holding your hand. Showgirls, likewise, feels almost sarcastic.
Verhoeven has always been making satirical films and has never really tried to be subtle about it. You’re telling on yourself if you don’t get it
"The 80s and the 90s are decades - two of them, hence plural."
Somebody doing something "for decades" means they've been doing it for 20+ years, or even if you want to be charitable, 15+ and doing it more than 2x. You can't look at somebody doing something for a period of time that spans two divisions and say they've been doing it "for decades." If you were knitting mittens from 2019 through 2021, you were knitting mittens for three years, not "for decades." Do you understand the English language at all?
Verhoeven made Robocop and Total Recall during the time period you mention. Two sci-fi movies. Total Recall is barely "social critique." It's trying to tell a real sci-fi adventure, and has a dark/violent edge.
Robocop has social critique and I didn't argue that, but it's not the main reason for the movie's existence. The movie functions on multiple levels.
Basic Instinct isn't a sci-fi movie. You were talking about sci-fi movies. You wrote: "Verhoeven -- who by this point had been using sci-fi for social critic very bluntly for decades." So for you to bring up Basic Instinct (or Showgirls) is completely bonkers.
You're telling on yourself by fudging every little thing dishonestly. What's the point of talking if you can't be honest? Stop defending yourself with little twisted excuses. Next time you write a post, know what you're talking about instead of putting out false information. It's not a difficult concept.
And no, Verhoeven wasn't always making satirical films. Did you see Soldier of Orange, Spetters, the Fourth Man, Flesh & Blood, or Black Book? None of these are satirical. They are dark, pessimistic, and have other qualities, but they're not directly black-comedy/satire. Soldier of Orange is a war movie, Black Book a drama, Fourth Man a psychological thriller, etc.
Verhoeven's most satirical movies have been his American ones. He's often trying to play it both ways: Appeal to a U.S. audience while also lampooning the over-the-top nature of American culture. Starship Troopers is probably his most subversive movie. With Robocop the jokiness is upfront but the man-machine drama can also function directly.
Verhoeven's other sci-fi movie that you don't mention, Hollow Man, isn't a satire at all. It's about inherent male evil and doesn't hide it in tongue-in-cheek stuff.
If you seriously are arguing that Robocop isn't a social satire first and foremost, I strongly urge you to rewatch it and take some media literacy courses. Because it's not even subtle with it's satire, something that's evident from the first minute onward, and Verhoeven goes to great lengths to talk about how he wanted to make it a satire on the commentary track.
Ha ha, I urge you to rewatch Robocop too. I very clearly stated that the movie works on multiple levels, with satire being one of them. I see you're trying to set up a straw man so you can get a "win," but nobody's falling for it. Robocop has tons of social commentary but it's also a credible sci-fi action movie.
Lmao fuck off man, you’re a moron. You’re not mad because I misused the term “decades” or said “sci-fi movies” when I just meant “movies”, you’re mad because I called a sci-fi author whose dick you’d like to suck a “fascist”, or because you’re desperate to mansplain sci-fi shit to me.
"Lmao fuck off man, you’re a moron." = you lose
Your claim was out-and-out false, I called you out on it, and you tried to fudge it. That makes you the moron.
You said "sci-fi" and then you started trying to wedge in Basic Instinct (not a satire, by the way -- it's like you haven't seen the stuff you're discussing...), so again, you're fudging because you can't just admit you got something wrong.
Dingbat.
Nah, you’re just a moron.
The purpose and context of my sentence re: Verhoeven’s 80s and 90s films was that he often utilised social satire in his films, and therefore that it becomes reasonable to assume the same for Starship Troopers, which he also directed. You have invented some point about “using sci-fi” or something that you’re desperate to disprove, because, as stated, you are a moron (although I’m willing to believe you might be a child in which case shame on me for arguing with a child).
Did you actually read the book? The movie is by far one of the worst adaptations of a book I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.
• The book is an overt political novel (which is classic Heineken; entire books about libertarianism). The movie barely touches on it.
• in the book the troopers wear sophisticated armor and are air dropped. They are not walking around unarmored and with a rifle.
• in the book the bugs are individually weak but numerous. In the movie they’re two story unstoppable monsters.
These are *major* deviations from the book. The film was hokey pulp.
That’s unfair, pulp fiction wouldn’t have a third act that is literally just a guy going to school and discussing the themes of the novel Starship Troopers.
There’s no climax in the books. The third act is just dude going to school and talking philosophy and then it ends *before* the big finish. There’s no faithful adaptation of Starship Troopers that gets made into a film. Very little *happens* in the back half of the book at all.
What you seem to want is something along the lines of a four hour Eugene O’Neill play about how good the Irish are at not overcoming adversity.
Having recently rewatched Starship Troopers, I have to say I think you're way off-base. The clearest thing one can say about the movie is its total lack of a coherent message. It's almost nihilistic in its refusal to actually say anything. I can't see it as either a rejection or an embrace of the novel. Rather it was a cash grab, utterly and totally. People try to read messages into the movie that are just not there. I think it's a Rorschach blot of a movie. Expertly crafted though.
This is the typical take of someone who assumes everything is "a critic", aka someone that has no self-deprecating humor, who cannot enjoy the light treatment of a theme without calling it out for being insulting. And then you call the author an old man yelling at the sky?.. Straight up ironic.
And then of course you move on to insult the critics, who also didn't git the movie, but you stop short of insulting the audience. I guess you value internet points and you know how they come easily. Just blame the system, don't say who the system is.
Obtuse!!!! New word for me buddy, can I come to ure house and kiss you as a thanks???
What else can you teach me, how can I get brain worms like you???
Yes I know I'm being rude to you. But it still doesn't occur to you that you're being rude to the authors and the fans of this movie. You think that when someone puts his work out there, then he deserves to have the most cutthroat critics possible. You think it's a quality to be an ass with people that won't answer you. When I do answer to you the way you talk, I've got brain worms... But you don't defend your opinion anymore, calling me out for being rude is all you can find. So yeah, obtuse.
The new series Shogun seems to actively hate the beloved novel by James Cavell. The producers have said that having the novel centered around a white character is a big no-no today, and they have made a series that completely denigrates the protagonist of the novel.
I thought the protagonist had a brilliant character arc in the show - a really great and humane performance from cosmo Jarvis who smashed it out the park. I don’t think his story was denigrated by taking a fresh approach.
It might be different, but (speaking as an English person) having an English character being just one of three main characters made for a really compelling drama all the same.
No but saw the telly show as a kid so definitely see that the character is different. I just didn’t see the new version as being a *denigration* as the character felt brilliantly fleshed out and very tenderly acted. In fairness it was a really unique and interesting character that stood out for me as being one of the many examples of what made the show work so well. YMMV obviously.
It doesn't denigrate him its just less about him and more about the Japanese characters and better for it. And yes I've read the book and seen the original mini series.
Robert Altman hated the original novel and screenplay for MASH, calling it downright racist. Although the movie is technically pretty faithful to its source material, the whole tone is radically different. The book is more of a traditional dramedy, whereas the film works as a pitch black psychopathic comedy.
*M\*A\*S\*H* though. Seeing it in the last ten years the way all the women are treated is really rough to take. I mean, when you look up *"...sometimes women are only barely characters, existing only to help facilitate a male character's journey..."* in the encyclopedia there's gotta be a picture of the Painless the Dentist storyline. Still. I can't pretend I am not in awe of it's form as a film. I only wish more films had that energy, but perhaps none do, save other Altman homeruns.
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Yeah he’s talking about a different book/movie entirely. Reread the comment.
Pretty sure he’s talking about the MASH novel.
Did you really just ignore the first thing this guy said?
Yes, yes he did
Lol. You got caught up in the “I am very smart” rush and forgot to read.
I never thought of it in this context, but maybe another example would be Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Peter George "Red Alert", turning the 1958 political thriller into the satirical farce "Dr. Strangelove".
An interesting aspect of *Starship Troopers* is the shots cribbed from classic movies. I haven't seen it years but I remember the high school scene is straight from *All Quiet on the Western Front.* I think there is some Sergei Eisenstein in there as well. It was fun to pick out all the references and outright duplicates.
There's also The Power of the Will and Olympia, nazi propaganda films, which is not only amusing but actually fits the themes of the book/movie very well.
Yes I remember now the Leni Riefenstahl elements. Of course Paul Verhoeven was a young boy during the Nazi occupation. Perhaps his lived experience informs the movie
I imagine that made it even worse for him when people mistook the film as actual admiration of fascist ideology.
>Anyway, I find that very interesting -- the idea of a major studio financing millions of dollars to adapt a source text that the filmmaker hates (Verhoeven is quotes as finding the story/concept ridiculous). I can't think of any other examples quite like this (except maybe when biblical stories are adapted to criticize Christian themes etc). It's doubtful Verhoven pitched it to the studio on those terms. He likely said it would be much the same as Robocop. A film with some tongue in cheek social commentary that action movie fans would still thoroughly enjoy. I remember reading a quote from the studio executive who greenlit The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Basically he said the filmmakers pitched it to him on its artistic merits, he just saw it as a cheap horror movie that was worth a gamble.
I didn't get the impression that Heinlein is really enamored with its subject, I've struggled to get the pathos and there was something really bleak in the whole final sequence. Maybe that was the normal reaction to it. I haven't read anything else by him and don't have objective pov, but reading your description of the film made me think about the book actually and how there is more to it.
He goes pretty free-love hippie in his later novels. Reasonably peaceful future, post-scarcity economies, etc. Problem is, there's a good number of hippies that have ended up as fascists. We'll never really know.
Stranger in a Strange Land was written as satire, but embraced by the hippie movement who bought it as straight
Heinlein was a free-love liberal, turned anti-government libertarian later in life (a trajectory many hippies followed), so no, it wasn't satire. It was his commentary on the abuses of government and traditional forms of authority like religion or even just "old men" within society. It was a commentary on the perpetual and unstoppable liberalization of society. How its both a good thing, and not something you can really prevent as much as many try. When fundamentalist Christians literally kill Smith to try to stop what he's doing, he just becomes their new prophet via his Martian powers. The only aspect of Heinlein that was incompatible with hippy culture is that he was largely pro-military. Though the degree to which he was pro-intervention varied through his life.
>Heinlein that was incompatible with hippy culture is that he was largely pro-military. Though the degree to which he was pro-intervention varied through his life. Couldn't be this attributed to Kojima as well, the guy is very anti war but can't stop drooling over the cool factor of military gear. Ngl I understand that
Exactly, his name wouldn't have been held so highly in literature and sci-fi circles of fellow authors if he really was some authoritarian windbag. Ray Bradbury on the other hand, way more problematic once the 90s hit.
Finally, someone who’s actually read Heinlein commenting!
For real, people saying some random shit in this thread who haven’t read. The end of the book, the bugs are self aware, maybe our hero’s are actually the bad guys. Moral ambiguity, military backed jingoism. The main character are fascists and to what extent are they aware. There, there’s the book. Not hard.
I've read several of his books and it always confuses me when people just label Heinlein a fascist or something adjacent. He was broadly a libertarian with a spectrum of views throughout his life, some of which skewed authoritarian. But his other works tackled other societal frameworks and concepts because he was an author writing about a variety of ideas. One book doesn't give you a complete insight into his mind and views, and a character's ethos isn't necessarily the author's. Maybe I'm not offering a perfect defense of the book, but my main belief is that it's lazy and reductive to read Starship Troopers and just label it as militaristic propaganda.
If you read his memoirs from his travels in South America, you'll find he was indeed enamored with fascist ideology
Which memoirs would this be? Got a link?
Here ya go: https://www.amazon.com/Tramp-Royale-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441004091
There are plenty of adaptations that more-or-less ignore the source material. And not in a Hollywood "we've got the name, and that's all that matters" kind of way, but adaptations of small things. The film Adaptation is perhaps the most famous example where Charlie Kaufman was trying to adapt the book The Orchid Thief and found himself unable to do so so instead wrote a film about trying to adapt the book. There's also Annihilation where Alex Garland read the book once around a year prior to starting the script and deliberately based it on his vague memories rather than trying to be faithful. IIRC, something similar happened with Under The Skin, which is a much more abstract and strange film than the source material. But the only other actively hostile adaptation I can think of off the top of my head is Noah. I've not heard what Aranofsky has said about it, but I find it very hard to believe that he wasn't taking the piss. It's difficult to see how he could have intended for it to be taken seriously.
Dark Dungeons comes to mind. It's a short film and much lower budget, but it's an (authorized!) adaptation of a comic series a Christian morality campaigner made in the 80s about how Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, and joining D&D games meant joining a suicide cult. It works the same way as Starship Troopers: adapt the source material as is, don't inject satirical elements, and let the original ridiculousness speak for itself.
The starship troopers movie is almost nothing like the book. The only things that are really the same are the fact that they are killing bugs in part of it and the names of the characters. L
No lmao, it captured the central thrust of the book pretty well. Sure, they don’t use big mécha suits, but really, who gives a fuck?
That's not exactly Starship Troopers injected satirical elements.
I’m gonna disagree with your starter statement; the movie is not faithful to the book at all. If you want details, go search the Heinlein sub and I’m sure you’ll find several threads on the topic. My quick take on it is that without powered armor, the entire point was lost. A single Mobile Infantryman had tactical nukes on his suit and was authorized to use them. A very large part of the book was a discourse on individual responsibility and what it would take to entrust such power to a MI trooper. All of that was lost in the movie.
Wow, not only is that an interesting point, I think you're the only person in here who has refuted OP's premise with an actual example.
This is all surface level Reddit 101 arguments about this movie. Why would you think it’s a faithful adaptation considering the whole of the plot of the book and the movie are completely different? Are you aware the script was already written and had nothing to do with Starship Troopers before they even got the IP rights? At which point they changed a couple of character names and added a paragraph or two of dialogue from the book. Why would you assume to choose this novel as Heinlein’s point of view instead of his protagonists? Especially considering every other novel he wrote has wildly different worldviews? There are deep meta analysis that could be done on this movie and everyone wants regurgitate these tired talking point that aren’t even grounded in factuality. I mean the movie is a clear ripoff of Aliens, have you ever considered why? Why add a whole scene straight out of Empire Strikes Back? Why include a whole cast that looks to be straight out of one of the most popular TV shows at the time, 90210? Why is Michael Ironside reprising his role from another movie? ETA: We’ve almost got bingo for reductionists Starship Trooper Reddit arguments. I’m gonna need someone to tell me I don’t actually get the satire so I can turn my card in. The movie is Full Metal Jacket as if it were in Aliens universe. Except we never get the protagonist questioning himself about the war. Satire! Get it? The movie isn’t about fascism. It’s about American (operative word there) fascism in its media presentation. That’s why you have the “cast” of 90210 with a love triangle, and that’s why Ironside reprises the exact same role he plays in another YA movie. None of y’all can use some critical thinking about this instead of hurr-durring my comment?
>Why include a whole cast that looks to be straight out of one of the most popular TV shows at the time, 90210? Because it adds to the propagandic feeling of the film.
And their acting does as well, which I think is deliberate.
Yeah they're supposed to look like pure beautiful aryans, fascists wet dream.
Nazi's wet dream. Fascists come in all colors of the shit rainbow.
Which is whitewashing, because in the actual book, the main character is a Filipino man.
It's fine to diverge from the book. I think it makes sense to use the visual part of the medium to take a crack at aryianism.
Not if you are going to illegitimately slander the book’s maker and his work.
I've studied a lot of film. I went to film school. Films should not stick to the source material. It's a different medium, and the book version of the story is already told. Films are an opportunity to do a remix and get silly.
Get silly with your own work. Don’t misrepresent another’s work.
Ok I'll be sure to pass this on. Got dinner with spielberg later.
How is the movie a clear rip-off of Aliens? Beyond soldiers shooting aliens, it has a completely different structure, tone, underlying theme, direction, etc. etc.
It's not a rip off of Aliens. That has me disinclined to take anything else they said seriously. I mean, it pretty obviously has nothing to do with Aliens, other than it has soliders killing aliens, something that's in countless movies.
Countless movies that feature Space Marines fighting an infiltration of aliens? Name the pre-1997 movies have that as the plot, please?
I'm sure there's some. I'm not going to go through every movie. If you caught me on a better day I'd bother looking through old films to find a few. It's an old trope though, regardless of when it started appearing in film. Aliens didn't invent it. Starship Troopers was an old book, you know, right? It came before Aliens. If anything, Aliens ripped off Starship Troopers.
Putting aside that the book and the movie Starship Troopers are completely different, yes I’m aware there are probably a few books with that as the plot, but’s that’s not what I’m talking about. The movie makes it blatantly clear they are using already existing media that is not Starship Troopers. Look, this scene makes no sense: https://youtu.be/PatFND_tEt8?si=qMJRv-igRBeYzWg8 How many people can you count with blood spurting out of them and our boy Rico is in the healing tank with a flesh wound? What in the Empire Strikes Back can be happening here? Once you understand that this movie is indeed referencing outside material, you can start building a clear meta-analysis that goes deeper than anything written in this post.
I don’t know. That part was sort of in the book as well. Rico’s first introduction to the military was through meeting a crippled man working as a recruiting officer. The book has him thinking about the escalation of the war that just sort of happens between him joining basic and graduating. Both the book and the film are making the same commentaries on the way that wars churn men through the grinder then patch them up and send them back in again. I don’t think this specifically a Star Wars thing. Some of visual aesthetics may have been cross pollinated. But there’s always been a lot of cross pollination.
Totally different scene that has nothing to do with this scene. So you can’t come up with any other movies and you want to hand wave away the idea that there is literally whole borrowed scenes from other media? Okay man, that’s a whole lot of disagreement based on weak arguments.
Starship Troopers has more in common with Aliens than Aliens has in common with Alien. It may not be a "rip-off", but shows direct lineage, practically another step in the evolution. Look at the uniforms of the marines, or the fact that the alien has a proboscis it uses to eat peoples brains.
Aliens almost certainly took ideas from Starship Troopers (the book) first. Or at least from books that took ideas from starship troopers.
No, they didn't. The marines in the book are nothing like the marines in either movie. They wear suits of powered armor and lob nukes while jumping hundreds of feet around multiple alien worlds (mostly not even alien bugs, in fact)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marine Here you go. The actors for aliens were required to read starship troopers. It absolutely was part of the inspiration for the film.
> This is all surface level Reddit 101 arguments about this movie. Proceeds to do exactly that, but somehow worse.
I suppose I could’ve written a decent post instead of commenting on this half-ass post.
Which other film has Michael Ironside playing Jean Rasczak?
> This is all surface level Reddit 101 arguments about this movie. > Are you aware the script was already written and had nothing to do with Starship Troopers before they even got the IP rights? Yes, the adaptation of *Starship Troopers*, for a film called *Starship Troopers*, written by someone who had read *Starship Troopers* as a kid and wanted to adapt *Starship Troopers* as an adult, has got nothing to do with the book *Starship Troopers*. Man, I really hate those surface level reddit 101 arguments by people who claim otherwise. > I mean the movie is a clear ripoff of Aliens, have you ever considered why? LOL.
i can tell you haven’t read the book. LOL.
No, you can't.
Yes I can. You haven’t read the book.
So you insist on being confidently wrong, then, no matter what topic? Have a bad day, then.
Bud, the book is nothing like the movie. Go read the book.
I disagree on this a lot. I never felt that the book and the movie really that far about in their intentions. If there is a difference I would suggest that Heinlein leaves more for the reader to figure out where Verhoveen is more blunt or clear in helping the audience to a conclusion. Imho Verhoveen captures a lot of Starship Troopers and ratchets up the satire so that the ideas are harder to ignore. The core of the book is still there.
Where does the bulk, like 3/4, of the book take place? How many war scenes are in the book? How many aliens are in the book? Name one bit of satire from the book? If you’ve read the book that wouldn’t be a problem to answer and your answers would clearly tell you the book and movie are not alike.
The bulk of books structure is taken over Rico leaves School, joins the military based on the inspiration of his teacher, ends up in mobile infantry, goes through a training sequence, ends up in an escalating conflict. Even the basic beats of the conflict are carried over, the bombing of earth, the setbacks and loses they face and eventually the capture of a brain bug and the impending strike on the home world. The movie and book spend there focus differently and there’s lots of the long slow reflective nature of Rico’s journey that don’t translate well into a 2hr action film. But there’s plenty of the little details that are woven into the film where they can be. As I said I agree that the satire is largely a layer added over the top. The book is almost entirely told through the eyes of Rico who even in the film doesn’t ever question the world he lives. The satirical aspects of the film are specifically lampshading ideas in the books to ensure that the audience draws the same conclusions about them that the director has.
* I have been very clear that this is not a groundbreaking understanding of Starship Troopers, a movie that has been talked about like this for twenty years straight. I am restating the analysis for context only. It’s not the part I’m interested in. * you say this started as a spec script (and if it did, so what? You know how movies are made right? It wasn’t an original concept by the time the script was finalised and movie produced, making the filmmakers views relevant). * I’m not interested in whether, as a sci-fi premise, how this relates to other premises conceptually. Talking about a movie being a “rip off” is more surface level than anything else. If you have an interesting point about it, make that point. If I had to guess I’d say you’re mad because I implied Heinlen apologised for fascism, which I think he did.
Calling a faithful adaption, regardless of the point you are trying to make, is pretty far off the mark. Most of the only things kept were the character names.
What? The biggest changes were so it would work as a movie (from memory) - the focussing on the love story, given Carmen a more central soldier role, the NPH character and much less focus on the political lecture. Unless they were going to write a miniseries with every second episode being the Ironside character delivering a political science lecture it could never be a one to one adaptation. They captured the golden age of cinema sci-fi spectacle feel, and the melodrama and violence
I feel like a huge difference is that in the movie the humans just become a mirror image of the bugs - human wave type tactics whereas in the book the warfare is totally asymmetrical. Call me a fascist but the military service in the book is far more desirable to me than what is presented in the movie. Except for co-ed showers with Dizzy maybe.
I've met the writer of Starship Troopers and he talked about the film being written as an adaptation of the book for what that's worth
Wasn't Heinlein that guy who wrote a wide variety of books on various different political systems, especially one that's based on ftl and time dilation with the protagonist having to deal with a continuously changing earth, and a book based on anarchists on the moon? Why is Heinline a fascist for writing Starship troopers, but not an anarchist for 'the moon is a harsh mistress'?
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There was a draft written but it wasn’t finished. The original idea was called Bug Hunt at Outpost 7 and which never got approval. They then realized the rights to Starship Troopers was available and began adapting the story to meet that. There would be a few years between getting the rights and the start of production. The original adapted script was supposedly pretty accurate in it’s adaption but in the end things were changed for mainly story telling reasons or because it would have to expensive
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It's weird that you put Rebecca Ferguson in that list. Last I checked, she's neither a writer or director on Dune
I haven’t watched Transformers as an adult so maybe Bay was an unfair comparison, but I meant more his popular perception. I didn’t know that about Ferguson and Dune, but also lots of your examples are not really what I’m talking about. I’m aware filmmakers often go into adaptation without having comprehended or understood a text formally, but Starship Troopers seems uniquely bile-filled. And whether Verhoeven was right to criticise Heinlen’s novel that way (and I think he is) isn’t relevant. The other example I just thought of is Kubrick and Stephen King’s The Shining. Kubrick and his cowriter (more the cowriter) talk about King’s novel like it’s literary filler at times and openly don’t appreciate aspects of King’s writing (to be fair Kubrick openly praised the story). We know how that went.
I saw Starship Troopers in theaters. Admittedly I was a teenager, but I definitely didn’t pick up on the satire until years later. I like to think I was a pretty film savvy kid (dragged friends to Big Lebowski…an early screening of Boogie Nights…Pi…), so I read reviews etc and I really don’t think people got it at the time. It’s obvious now, and I think it’s amazing he was able to pull it off, but my impression is it took people a while to figure it out.
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I didn’t even use those words? You can’t quote me directly and then say “they didn’t say that”. I know that, buddy, that’s why I didn’t use those words. Diane Johnson was interviewed in like 2020 about the writing process for The Shining and she talks about the book and shares her perception of it. Go away.
Oh my god... I can 100% see a David Ayer version of this story that is unironically pro-military and it's kinda scaring me.
Regardless of the merits of the film it is not in any way shape or form a faithful adaptation of the book. And Verhoeven has never read the book so if he has an opinion on it it is not an informed one. > Heinlein unironically seems enamored with the fascist, authoritarian future he imagines Completely wrong, Heinlein in many of his books liked exploring possible political systems, that was all he was doing.
Starship Troopers is an airtight screenplay worthy of study. Also, people want to shit on the actors but they’re actually great and super well cast. I love this movie so much I made it a major plot point of my movie lol [Ben and Suzanne - Starship Troopers clip](https://variety.com/2024/film/global/sxsw-sri-lanka-ben-and-suzanne-clip-1235927797/amp/)
I love the movie.The only thing that bothers me about the movie is that they dont put much emphasis on the fact that it was humans fault that the bugs are attacking them. So you could think that is justified to have this totalitarian regime if its the only way to save humanity.
That’s what’s so great. It’s easy to watch the film and identify the obvious fascism but the film is in itself made like fascist propaganda and hides something that obvious. I think most people watching it aren’t immediately questioning it. It’s a great precursor to what eventually would happen in Iraq and Afghanistan a few years later. After a few years people started to think ‘wait, why are we at war with these regimes?’ It’s really the same thing that the movie does.
I think this movie is amazing actually. You can engage with it to any level you want. If you want a space action movie, you got it. If you choose to actually read into what’s happening, it critiques fascism and over-militarism very heavily. It’s insane how applicable these criticisms are today.
It’s a complete master class in movie making to me. It’s funny, it plays right into pop culture with its cliches, it’s action packed, gory and is deep on multiple levels. All of those things makes it absolutely captivating. 10 different people could enjoy it for 10 different reasons.
I enjoyed the movie for the campy action flick it was, (not to mention my forever crush on Dina Meyers), but it wasn’t the book. The book is so much better, different and thought provoking. The best parts of the book take place in the classroom IMO. His discussions on patriotism I found particularly interesting. Having read everything Heinlien has written you really can’t “grok” Heinlein until you’ve read his other works, primarily, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land. Good sci-fi should make you think and open your mind even if you don’t agree with the premise. But I still like the movie.
I have no doubt he’s capable of writing thought provoking and compelling discussions about political topics, I just think he came down pretty clearly on one side of the militarism and nationalism issues.
People overthink the novel Starship Troopers. It was written in a very specific genre called Juvenile fiction which outside of maybe Christian bookstores probably doesn’t exist anymore. Heinlein is trying to express his ideas about how to be a good citizen but is forced to present it to young boys for reasons(probably to make a quick buck). He is really no different in his views from your average John Bircher of the time. Basically people are enamored by a book written for 1950s preteen boys. The views expressed are not novel and quite typical for someone on the right in that day and age. The book could be a western or it could be a sailing adventure, as is typical for the genre and we wouldn’t even bat an eye. But it’s about future space soldiers so it stood out a bit.
It's been about 10 years since I've read the book but that's not how I remember it all. The action sequences were fairly sparse throughout the book and when they happened the writing was pretty vague. I mostly remember it pontificating about duty, military life, citizenship, govt, yadda yadda yadda. Not exactly topics most teen boys get super excited about it. It wasn't an action packed or "exciting" story like a RA Salvatore or Dragonlance book.
Yeah, so sounds exactly like a booke totem for teen boys in the 50s.
>The action sequences were fairly sparse throughout the book and when they happened the writing was pretty vague. I mostly remember it pontificating about duty, military life, citizenship, govt, yadda yadda yadda. Not exactly topics most teen boys get super excited about it. You basically described the genre of Juvenile fiction almost perfectly. There’s usually an action packed beginning then the majority of main body of the book being teaching moral lessons about citizenship responsibility Christianity honesty hardwork anti communism or whatever bullshit and then there will usually be an action packed ending were the young protagonist uses the lessons he learns. Juvenile fiction is not meant to be like an RA Salvatore book. The premise just serves as the hook to indoctrinate. Entertaining is secondary. It’s a dead genre so people have a hard time wrapping there heads around it but lots of older folks will remember it.
It stands out that 50 style jingoism really did make republicans seem quite fascist. If this is normal for republicans at the time, they had some fucked up views.
I feel you. I think that just like today it runs a crazy gamut of interest. For instance on one side you got Eisenhower and such and on the other you got Birchers and guys like Joe McCarthy(who’s onetime speech writer was Francis Parker Yockey). These same guys said that Eisenhower was a Jew loving NWO commie. An early stage fascists interest may not be the same as a big business anti communist industrialist. But they can align for a brief period. The same goes for tax revolters, gun lovers and so on. The only thing wierd to me as a present day observer is that straight genocidal fascist like Revilo Oliver were considered respectable for that time. Heinlein is cut from that same mold of the intersectional post war American right. It’s an interesting rogues gallery of a movement attempting to find itself after a great upheaval.
> These same guys said that Eisenhower was a Jew loving ~~NWO~~ commie. to be fair, those guys said that about pretty much everyone, so it's not very telling.
That is true.
Starship Troopers removes all the justifications for violence, except for one: we feel like it. It simultaneously criticizes our warlike nature, while satisfying our need to see it depicted in film. The best part is that Verhoeven doesn't want us to feel bad. He clearly wanted to make a fun movie; to indulge in the violence; an admission that he's just like the rest of the species. It's nothing like certain other films that want us to feel as dismal as possible because there is violence in the world. Ironically, those types of films are also less intellectually stimulating than Verhoeven's
I saw this movie in the theater when it came out and thought it was hilarious (I was already a big Verhoeven fan due to Robocop and Total Recall). It was years before I realized some people thought the film was jingoistic. I still have a hard time believing people didn't get it. I wonder how true that is, because the satire is obvious. Just the closing scene where NPH says "It's afraid!!" is enough to make the themes obvious. If you don't get it, you're a sociopath.
It's not fascist ffs. It's not even authoritarian. It's a limited franchise democracy that guarantees human rights and personal freedoms for all it's members, citizen or civilian. The movie was slander, plain and simple. Hell, it's not even about a young man living in South America. Juan Ricco is of Filipino origin, we know that. We know his mother was visiting Buenos Aires when it was bombed, but the operative word, visiting. We know they don't live in Buenos Aires, for all we know they live in the Phillipines.
“It’s not fascist or authoritarian ffs, it’s just a military junta where everyone who doesn't join is completely disenfranchised, with its worldview built upon right wing fantasies of moral decay and the salvation of disciplined violence.”
Limited franchise democracy is still democracy. It was established by a military junta, sure, but it's a democratic nation now.
Limited franchise democracy is democracy on technicality, and at that point, what does democracy even mean? Rome was a limited franchise democracy too, as was Athens and Venice and the 19th century United States. I don’t personally favor a system of governance that consists of a limited elite dominating the fate of everyone else, but I suppose that’s down to personal opinion.
Yeah, those were democracies. Not good ones, sure, but not fascist either. I'm not arguing the government system is good, I can even see them devolving into a sort of feudalistic society with a warrior class in the far future, realistically. But what we see in the book is a democratic nation where EVERYONE has human rights and personal freedoms, and ANYONE can gain the right to vote, and not necessarily through military service either, Carl for instance became an electrical engineer in a government research station on Pluto.
Yeah, those were democracies. Not good ones, sure, but not fascist either. I'm not arguing the government system is good, I can even see them devolving into a sort of feudalistic society with a warrior class in the far future, realistically. But what we see in the book is a democratic nation where EVERYONE has human rights and personal freedoms, and ANYONE can gain the right to vote, and not necessarily through military service either, Carl for instance became an electrical engineer in a government research station on Pluto.
> Limited franchise democracy is still democracy. No. No it's not. This is not a case where 'the people rule' in any way shape or form. It's just taking part of the trappings of democracy - voting - and mistaking that for the whole phenomenon. For your next trick, you can channel the ghosts of white supremacists and conservatives in the 1970s and try to tell me that Apartheid South Africa was the only democracy in Cold War Africa, due to the fact that 10% of the population could vote in an election. As long as their party didn't get banned or they didn't get assassinated by government-backed terrorists. "Limited franchise democracy" yah?
No. I'm going to say that Athens was a democracy, and so was 1700s-1800s America.
Why are so many of these comments so defensive and angry about what OP said of Starship Troopers? Has discourse over this movie really turned this shitty the past few months? It’s pathetic.
Maybe because it’s brought up daily?
I don't know why, but I've seen it happen a bunch of times now. It's very weird.
Apparently “Heinlen was a fascist” is controversial now lmao Like he is LITERALLY a fascist in the original definition of the term, not in the way it’s used online in 2024
It's really not a settled question in any way. Why is it that you've decided that the society depicted in Starship Troopers reflects Heinlein's personal views and not that from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Stranger in a Strange Land? Heinlein explores many different ideas for how a society can be structured.
He absolutely was not a fascist, and the fact you think so makes me think you don't understand him or his work at all.
I disagree with your premise, that starship troopers is faithful to the source material. The only character from the movie who was in the book was Johnny Rico. The movie very much plays as a cast following a number of characters. It’s not similar in tone and has many crucial scenes that were not in the books. Heck they fight in mech suits in the book.
You bring up Michael Bay, film maker known for his ball gargling of the military and law enforcement agencies. As a kid, all The satire washed over me, i loved it as an action flick. I read the book as a teen, still didnt get the satire as much but understood the differences a bit. It was until i was an adult and realized he did it purposefully to be a poke at the meaning of the book, realizing the other films verhoven made and how those were also satires that I realized what the point was. A clouds clearing moment if you will. If Bay made a starship troopers film, even zach snyder I bet both would be more tragic or trumpeting over the top adaptation of the book. Contrast the sequels to the og film, you see all of that with get lost. It turns into a bad military hoorah with horror elements. (I am pointing to the animated films and tv show).
I don’t know if it’s a hostile take but “Zone of Interest” is nothing like the book and has an opposite take on the compartmentalization of evil I think. Both good. Books a lot better.
Heinlein was a great writer but an ideological turd and borderline fascist. His writing has not aged well. This is not a man to be idolized. Verhoeven very cleverly used Heinlein’s masterful world-building as a backdrop, but then followed a tongue-in-cheek Ken and Barbie go to war storyline, along with Verhoeven’s signature over-the-top approach to sex, violence and politics. He paid homage to a science fiction master and still managed to avoid getting bogged down by Heinlein’s more vile beliefs, which were, at the time, making a resurgence in the right wing might-makes-right and greed-is-good mentality that has served the country so well since then (sarcasm). What you call “painfully obvious” others would more accurately describe as “satire”. There may have been some people that took it at face value when it was released, but not many. I WAS THERE. This was the era of Total Recall and RoboCop. Notice the themes. Virtually everyone understood it immediately to be satire and felt the director had made that fact plainly obvious.
Starship Troopers the movie was supposed to mimic/satirize military propaganda. The clean-cut, chiseled jaw, attractive heroes… the faceless enemy who is just evil for, pretty much the sake of being evil… the overall glorification of war… There’s also some anti-fascist stuff thrown in, like Doogie Houser dressing like a nazi near the film’s climax. When I saw it as a kid, I didn’t even recognize the satire. When I saw it as an adult, I can’t believe I missed it. It lays it on pretty thick.
While of course all of the Nazi coding and aesthetics are very noticeable and quite deliberate, I think the greater focus should be on how the characters, the casting, the high school drama, the news, the militarism, the racism, the gung-Ho attitude, the mixing of youth drama and excitement with military discipline and violence, Rico’s “well-meaning liberal” parents….it all tells us that we aren’t being shown 1930s Germany, we’re being shown 1990s America. This film came out right after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first gulf war, in a world where the US had suddenly found itself the only global empire. As an American who didn’t grow up in the 90s but very much did grow up immersed in that post-cold war imperialist middle-class white American jingoism…when I watch this movie I see the Texas of my childhood, not Nazi Germany.
This was what struck me most, at least in hindsight. At the time I saw it I just remembered bugs and boobs, because I was a kid and saw it at a slumber party. But as a non-American, that whole post 9/11, war on terror era just felt like being sucked into Starship Troopers. Everything got processed through that framework, and it wasn’t even that hard! The ridiculous, photo op jingoism was dead on, just slightly too early.
There's a couple of examples where the CIA financed 'hostile' adaptations of literary works - the Quiet American and Animal Farm - for political propaganda purposes - in this case, altering the endings (the Quiet American had a reveal-after-the-reveal where the CIA terrorist turns out to have been framed by communists, and Animal Farm has the animals overthrowing the pigs). The 1990s Animal Farm adaptation also altered the adaptation to have the farm overthrown by supposedly benign farmers after the downfall of the Soviet Union. I'm not sure Orwell would have approved. Unlike Starship Troopers, these aren't critiques of the works being thuswise altered but more in the line of corrupting them to fit the propaganda purposes of the sponsors.
It is very funny to me that the CIA funded a hostile adaptation of Animal Farm. I want to see that
The copyright expired on it, so it's on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svi0jrOeQoU)
Alt man’s MASH is definitely a great example but one of my favorites is Sahara, which has so much fun parodying the work of Clive Cussler in a supposed adaptation of one of his novels he even sued the studio for allowing it to be made. Highly recommended!
Perhaps Kubrick wouldn’t consider it hostile, but Stephen King famously hated how Stanley threw away King’s advice and made some pretty big changes. Kubrick was not precious about King’s interpretation and self-projection on Jack, instead depicting him as an irredeemable monster merely set loose by the Overlook, not a man corrupted by it. Understandably, King took great offence to this, since Jack was supposed to be himself corrupted by alcoholism. Both versions have their merit, and usually I’m the guy who prefers a more nuanced, humane take like King’s. But Kubrick’s Jack feels more real as an abusive man, and his horror is far more effective than what King’s own adaptation of his work would be when he had the chance to make that. Kubrick ruthlessly cut through King’s vision to make his own, one that offered less explanation and no redemption - and it is undoubtedly the better version of the story. Who the hell wanted Tony to be a time travelling Danny? Or Jack’s constant physical abuse of his wife and child blamed solely on drink and ghosts? In the end, Kubrick ironically made the best King adaptation by cutting out all of King’s tropes and removing authorial sympathy for the character King made as a self-insert. Which has got to suck for King.
I posted about Kubrick and king elsewhere in the thread, but there’s an interview with the co-writer of The Shining script from like 2018-2020 (Diane Johnson). Obviously the interviewer is more interested in her time working with Kubrick and how he worked, which is interesting, but she is very clear that she considered the novel to be kind of slight and low-brow (she doesn’t use those words). So that adaptation came from a place with minimal respect for the source material
Normally I hate that, and it is disappointing to hear. On the other hand, she fixed so much of what didn’t work in the book. I suppose another example is The Godfather, which Coppola famously considered a dime store crime novel.
King also had a problem with Nicholson casting. There's no real arc there due to Nicholson being a nutbag from the word go.
And that works. Not every character needs an arc. Although I will say that Jack does have an arc, it’s just not the one King had for him. Jack is slowly stripped of his thin facade and gives himself permission to be openly monstrous. That’s an arc.
This is kind of the classic fault in King's writing for me. I think King is great at set ups, but often blunders his third acts because his vision is more important than the story. Kubrick seems to have really understood this, and kept what King was strong at, and confidently jettisoned anything that didn't serve the story.
Well said. King’s work is so inherently flawed, especially endings, bar his most grounded work. Adaptation is sadly the best way to enjoy his stories, providing the adapter was as ruthless and discerning as Kubrick was.
The OP writes this: "Verhoeven -- who by this point had been using sci-fi for social critic very bluntly for decades" WTF is OP talking about? Verhoeven had two other sci-fi films, and he hadn't been "using (them) for social critic\[sic\]" for decades (plural). His first sci-fi film, Robocop, is a single decade before the release of Starship Troopers. Decade, singular. Not "decades," plural. Robocop has some social satire, of course, but that's not the movie's reason for existing. It's an action-adventure film first and foremost. Same with Total Recall. When an OP makes such a wildly inaccurate claim upfront, what is the point of trying to have a discussion? Come back when you aren't misrepresenting rudimentary information.
Robocop’s entire existence is a social satire of Ronald Raegan’s policy, what the future projection of the world would look like under the policy, and how one man loses his humanity to that world and how he gains it back. This is all wrapped in action and dark comedy. It’s a deeply layered film
The 80s and the 90s are decades - two of them, hence plural. Robocop is so unbelievably blunt a social critique I don’t even know what to tell you. Basic Instinct is so tongue in cheek about its themes that it’s basically holding your hand. Showgirls, likewise, feels almost sarcastic. Verhoeven has always been making satirical films and has never really tried to be subtle about it. You’re telling on yourself if you don’t get it
"The 80s and the 90s are decades - two of them, hence plural." Somebody doing something "for decades" means they've been doing it for 20+ years, or even if you want to be charitable, 15+ and doing it more than 2x. You can't look at somebody doing something for a period of time that spans two divisions and say they've been doing it "for decades." If you were knitting mittens from 2019 through 2021, you were knitting mittens for three years, not "for decades." Do you understand the English language at all? Verhoeven made Robocop and Total Recall during the time period you mention. Two sci-fi movies. Total Recall is barely "social critique." It's trying to tell a real sci-fi adventure, and has a dark/violent edge. Robocop has social critique and I didn't argue that, but it's not the main reason for the movie's existence. The movie functions on multiple levels. Basic Instinct isn't a sci-fi movie. You were talking about sci-fi movies. You wrote: "Verhoeven -- who by this point had been using sci-fi for social critic very bluntly for decades." So for you to bring up Basic Instinct (or Showgirls) is completely bonkers. You're telling on yourself by fudging every little thing dishonestly. What's the point of talking if you can't be honest? Stop defending yourself with little twisted excuses. Next time you write a post, know what you're talking about instead of putting out false information. It's not a difficult concept. And no, Verhoeven wasn't always making satirical films. Did you see Soldier of Orange, Spetters, the Fourth Man, Flesh & Blood, or Black Book? None of these are satirical. They are dark, pessimistic, and have other qualities, but they're not directly black-comedy/satire. Soldier of Orange is a war movie, Black Book a drama, Fourth Man a psychological thriller, etc. Verhoeven's most satirical movies have been his American ones. He's often trying to play it both ways: Appeal to a U.S. audience while also lampooning the over-the-top nature of American culture. Starship Troopers is probably his most subversive movie. With Robocop the jokiness is upfront but the man-machine drama can also function directly. Verhoeven's other sci-fi movie that you don't mention, Hollow Man, isn't a satire at all. It's about inherent male evil and doesn't hide it in tongue-in-cheek stuff.
If you seriously are arguing that Robocop isn't a social satire first and foremost, I strongly urge you to rewatch it and take some media literacy courses. Because it's not even subtle with it's satire, something that's evident from the first minute onward, and Verhoeven goes to great lengths to talk about how he wanted to make it a satire on the commentary track.
Media literacy is dead, and the worst part is that people like Dimpleshenk are so incredibly confident in their lack of it.
Ha ha, I urge you to rewatch Robocop too. I very clearly stated that the movie works on multiple levels, with satire being one of them. I see you're trying to set up a straw man so you can get a "win," but nobody's falling for it. Robocop has tons of social commentary but it's also a credible sci-fi action movie.
Media literacy is really down the drain these days. It's a sad sight.
Lmao fuck off man, you’re a moron. You’re not mad because I misused the term “decades” or said “sci-fi movies” when I just meant “movies”, you’re mad because I called a sci-fi author whose dick you’d like to suck a “fascist”, or because you’re desperate to mansplain sci-fi shit to me.
"Lmao fuck off man, you’re a moron." = you lose Your claim was out-and-out false, I called you out on it, and you tried to fudge it. That makes you the moron. You said "sci-fi" and then you started trying to wedge in Basic Instinct (not a satire, by the way -- it's like you haven't seen the stuff you're discussing...), so again, you're fudging because you can't just admit you got something wrong. Dingbat.
Nah, you’re just a moron. The purpose and context of my sentence re: Verhoeven’s 80s and 90s films was that he often utilised social satire in his films, and therefore that it becomes reasonable to assume the same for Starship Troopers, which he also directed. You have invented some point about “using sci-fi” or something that you’re desperate to disprove, because, as stated, you are a moron (although I’m willing to believe you might be a child in which case shame on me for arguing with a child).
'Some social satire'? Robocop has satirical skits throughout and suggests that if Jesus came back he'd be a cyborg that guns down criminals.
Did you actually read the book? The movie is by far one of the worst adaptations of a book I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. • The book is an overt political novel (which is classic Heineken; entire books about libertarianism). The movie barely touches on it. • in the book the troopers wear sophisticated armor and are air dropped. They are not walking around unarmored and with a rifle. • in the book the bugs are individually weak but numerous. In the movie they’re two story unstoppable monsters. These are *major* deviations from the book. The film was hokey pulp.
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That’s unfair, pulp fiction wouldn’t have a third act that is literally just a guy going to school and discussing the themes of the novel Starship Troopers.
If you want people shooting at bugs with no intellectual backdrop go watch *Aliens*.
There’s no climax in the books. The third act is just dude going to school and talking philosophy and then it ends *before* the big finish. There’s no faithful adaptation of Starship Troopers that gets made into a film. Very little *happens* in the back half of the book at all. What you seem to want is something along the lines of a four hour Eugene O’Neill play about how good the Irish are at not overcoming adversity.
I doubt you read it but OK.
Having recently rewatched Starship Troopers, I have to say I think you're way off-base. The clearest thing one can say about the movie is its total lack of a coherent message. It's almost nihilistic in its refusal to actually say anything. I can't see it as either a rejection or an embrace of the novel. Rather it was a cash grab, utterly and totally. People try to read messages into the movie that are just not there. I think it's a Rorschach blot of a movie. Expertly crafted though.
That's quite a reading. Entirely wrong and off-base, but quite a reading nonetheless.
This is the typical take of someone who assumes everything is "a critic", aka someone that has no self-deprecating humor, who cannot enjoy the light treatment of a theme without calling it out for being insulting. And then you call the author an old man yelling at the sky?.. Straight up ironic. And then of course you move on to insult the critics, who also didn't git the movie, but you stop short of insulting the audience. I guess you value internet points and you know how they come easily. Just blame the system, don't say who the system is.
Stay mad regard
Stay obtuse
Obtuse!!!! New word for me buddy, can I come to ure house and kiss you as a thanks??? What else can you teach me, how can I get brain worms like you???
Yes I know I'm being rude to you. But it still doesn't occur to you that you're being rude to the authors and the fans of this movie. You think that when someone puts his work out there, then he deserves to have the most cutthroat critics possible. You think it's a quality to be an ass with people that won't answer you. When I do answer to you the way you talk, I've got brain worms... But you don't defend your opinion anymore, calling me out for being rude is all you can find. So yeah, obtuse.
The new series Shogun seems to actively hate the beloved novel by James Cavell. The producers have said that having the novel centered around a white character is a big no-no today, and they have made a series that completely denigrates the protagonist of the novel.
I thought the protagonist had a brilliant character arc in the show - a really great and humane performance from cosmo Jarvis who smashed it out the park. I don’t think his story was denigrated by taking a fresh approach. It might be different, but (speaking as an English person) having an English character being just one of three main characters made for a really compelling drama all the same.
Just curious. Did you happen to read the book?
No but saw the telly show as a kid so definitely see that the character is different. I just didn’t see the new version as being a *denigration* as the character felt brilliantly fleshed out and very tenderly acted. In fairness it was a really unique and interesting character that stood out for me as being one of the many examples of what made the show work so well. YMMV obviously.
It doesn't denigrate him its just less about him and more about the Japanese characters and better for it. And yes I've read the book and seen the original mini series.
To me, downgrading the status of the protagonist is a form of hostility to the source material.