Outboard motors, your forgot the part where Captain Aubrey ordered the outboard motors started.
To be fair, the book wasn’t “screwed over” at all; the book is still there, still unchanged, still ready to give you the experience you enjoyed over and over again. No movie adaptation can do any harm to its source book at all.
A movie, any movie, should be judged by what it is; not by what it isn’t. It’s unfortunate that many people who consider themselves fans of Heinlein* have allowed that to prevent them from experiencing the value of a movie that has, actually, a lot of value.
*For the record, I consider myself a Heinlein fan; I think I’ve read everything he ever wrote, some of it multiple times. I even have first editions of *Job *and Friday. I enjoyed, more than once, the book Starship Troopers. I also of course enjoy the movie by the same title. Two different things; not mutually exclusive.
I guess we have to be grateful that the movie wasn’t titled " Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers".
It was indeed, whether you say so or not. I don’t say that it has disappeared – but the film has by no means done it justice. I can ignore it, or experience it, but the fact that it hasn’t eliminated the book doesn’t change my opinion of it.
Terrifel actually made an excellent appraisal of thie film in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=484952&highlight=Starship+Troopers&page=2
As for the question of whether the humans were the aggressors in the novel, in Heinlein’s book that is definitely not the case. However, that IS the situation in Joe Haldeman’s novel The Forever War, which reads like a post-Vietnam treatment of Heinlein’s universe (right down to the combat suits). Haldeman gives us a military which isn’t the perfect military machine of Heinlein’s novel, but has its errors, the biggest of which is not admitting that itys initial assessmemnt of the situation was a mistake that started an interplanetary war, and the refusal to acknowledge that mistake lead to the war continuing for a long time, which with relativistic time dilatio n became an immensely long war. If Hollywood wanted to show the flaws of a future military society using Heinlein’s technology, they could’ve just filmed this book.
I once went to a private function where Haldeman was the guest speaker, and he expounded on his science fiction. This wasn’t a science fiction group, however, and it became clear to me during the Q&A session that none of these people had ever read his books. So i asked him if The Forever War was intended as a reaction to Starship Troopers. To my surprise, Haldeman said it wasn;'t – that he thought he was rewriting “The Red Badge of Courage”. It seems absurd to me, but he said it with a straight face, and it’s been bothering me ever since.
I like to think that Verhoeven was playing a deeper game. (Okay, not really- I’m just fanwanking here)
Service guarantees citizenship, right? However, service in Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers world is suddenly too easy- there aren’t any enemies left. Earth is one big government, and there aren’t any intelligent aliens out there. Command looks around and sees all these soft, pretty kids putting in their time and getting the vote, and understandably starts to get a bit nervous. There’s gonna be a lot of new citizens coming along soon, and none of them have had to work hard for their rights- none of them have had to get their hands dirty, to *earn *the vote, like the veterans in High Command had to do.
What to do? Hey, if we don’t have any bad guys to fight, let’s MAKE some!
So either find a race of bugs out there, or genetically engineer some… then start a war with the critters. Bugs are scary, after all, and make great villains.
Of course, there’s no way in hell the bugs can successfully wage interstellar war. That rock that flattened Buenos Aires? Faked. It was launched by the High Command as a “false flag”, to get public sentiment behind the idea of a war against the manufactured enemy. High Command controls the news with an iron fist, and if they say the bugs launched the rock, that’s what happened, dammit. Paint any dissenters as “traitors” and have 'em shot.
Need more evidence? Look at the tactics used against the bugs. Bombarding the (apparently worthless) bug planets from space would be too easy. Instead, send the wanna-be citizens down in minimal body armor, with zero tactical support. After all, High Command WANTS huge losses- anything to keep themselves in control. Publicize and propagandize the hell out of the “war” to keep up a steady supply of fresh-faced recruits.
When you clear one planet of “the enemy”, make sure you’ve got a few other planets seeded with bugs… after all, there’s no way in hell the bugs can spread to other planets on their own.
This in no way excuses the butchering Verhoeven committed upon the far-superior book, but I like to think it makes the movie make more sense.
How odd. I’ve read a lot of commentary that places The Forever War in that context. I’m with Haldeman on the subject; I read it as his take on a very similar situation rather than a direct reaction to Starship Troopers. Heinlein wanted to explore things from one direction and Haldeman another and that doesn’t require that Haldeman’s book be an “attack” (not to misrepresent you, CalMeacham, but most people frame the comparison that way).
Rick - Thanks for that. Not seen before and I laughed so hard I cried 
Actually, did the movie have ‘psi ops’ as a major point? The Neil Patrick Harris character was assigned to ‘millitary intelligence’ when he enlisted, and if I remember the book correctly something similar did happen to Rico’s best high school friend. That was one of the moments from the movie that did most clearly seem related to the book - the three kids enlisting at the same time, the best friend going to a ‘brainy’ branch, the girl going to pilot school, and the main character going to boot camp to become a grunt. (But a very different kind of grunt, as people have mentioned.)
The book also describes ‘psychics’ and other highly trained or talented support staff, which actually got me wondering about their effect on the franchise system. This is a bit of a sidetrack, but I’d like to hear what you think about my reasoning.
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For the system to work, anyone who enlists into Federal Service has to risk enough that if they serve out their term, they are or have become the kind of person who will vote in accordance with what’s best for the whole society, not what’s best for themselves.
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This sounds good in terms of Mobile Infantry grunts, who definitely risk ‘buying the farm’ on engagements for the good of the people back home, and I can see it also working well enough for those who don’t qualify for millitary service and get assigned on dangerous ‘warm body’ assignment in inclement locations, or the girls serving in the Navy and risking being shot out of space or whatever.
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But it seems as though Federal Service also requires people who are talented enough that their lives cannot be risked lightly, simply because those talents are too valuable. Probably for a psi sensitive like the ones who mapped out the bug tunnels that Rico went down into, Federal Service means a still significant risk of death or injury, working under inclement conditions, and less pay than they might be able to get working in the civillian sector. Is that a fair tradeoff for their own franchise? Are they getting ‘bought off’ with franchises, even if they’re not ideal voters, because the federal service needs them so badly? Is it possible to get them working for the Feds as ‘civillian contractors’, more highly paid and better working conditions but with no rights to the franchise?
That’s all I’m wondering about, really. Would appreciate any thoughts.
It also explains why the movie is stupid when you look at it only on its only merits, and don’t even bother to compare it to the novel.
Yes, I’d assume that was right. I haven’t got the book here but it’s made clear the forces make use of civilian contractors as needed - I think it comes up during Johnny’s time at OCS.
Yes, but the Psi guys are officers, which would seem to indicate that they’re neither civilians or contractors. Rico gets warned by his sarge that though they’re not Infantry officers, (and that they make everybody in that kind of branch ‘officers’ to make them feel important,) he should still show them the respect due their rank. Or something like that.
Carl joined to be a researcher (in the book). His specialty was electronics, not psychology. He was also killed off-screen about 2/3 through the book. This is mentioned when Carmen shows up at Johnnie’s OCS formation and asks the Commandant if she can take Johnnie off-base for a few hours.
Right, okay, I guess I thought that was ‘close enough’ at the time. 
It’s been a while since I saw the movie.
I always wondered why the military just didn’t wait a few months, and equip every MI solider w/ that mountain-blasting plasma weapon they show the solider using in the military recruitment ad they show in the last scene of the movie…
ummm cause they were idiots?
Indeed. The Mobile Infantry as depicted would have had a hard time fighting off Pickett’s Charge. A WWII mechanized brigade would have rolled over them without even noticing the speedbump. This is the real problem with lissener’s contention that it’s a good movie if you let it stand apart from the book.
There is a potentially interesting and possibly good movie that could have been made as a satirical take on the fascist militaristic aspects of Heinlein’s political philosophy set in the context of the human vs bug war. But it would require a complete rewrite of the actual movie’s script to scrub out all the extreme stupid in it. Getting rid of some of the Hollywood cliches like the love triangle and the hero saves the damsel in distress sequence would be good too. The plot holes, inconsistencies, and general idiocy in the movie as it stands completely overwhelm any potential satirical message.
Except they’re all targets of the satire as well. In other words, Verhoeven probably agrees with you. But it’s not intended as a serious SF movie at all. As I’ve said before, when you identify the stupid in a Verhoeven movie, you’ve probably indentified Verhoeven’s point.
That’s a nice scam Verhoeven’s got going then: anything he does right he can take credit for for doing right, anything he does wrong he can take credit for by saying he was doing it on purpose as satire.
If your satire or parody is indistinguishable from really shoddy sci-fi, you suck.
If you want to satirize Heinlein as military-worship-may-as-well-be fascism, you cannot have the military do things that make the audience say, time and time again, “But that’s just stupid. Why wouldn’t they…?” On the other hand, if you want to satirize militaristic sci-fi conventions for being tactically and/or strategically stupid, you cannot simultaneously be sending someone up as a fascist for making too big a deal of military competence as an organizing principle for the state. If you try to squeeze both of these messages into a single film, you will necessarily fail spectacularly at one of them, or more likely both.
The only way this movie could be a successful satire is if it were not satirizing Heinlein at all. You have to read it as Lightnin’ does upthread - that High Command is intentionally using horrifically bad military tactics so that there are vast numbers of casualties, and this will be used to feed propaganda making the Bug War out to be a life-and-death struggle to drum up nationalistic pride and fervour. Really they could just nuke the site from orbit and it’d be all over, but that wouldn’t further their political goals.
This could potentially be a satire of the mindset behind the so-called War on Terror, what with a similar use of fear to maintain political control and incompetent strategy used to prolong the struggle unnecessarily (assuming for the moment that you would accept that view of things). Except that the movie predates all that, and the recent US military adventure of note had been the most severe asskicking since Cannae. Moreover, it would also require everyone but High Command to be complete Grade A morons, as the failure to deploy heavy weaponry, utilize any sort of reconnaissance or surveillance, etc., is a point which bugs (heh) even casual movie watchers with no background of military doctrine or even casual reading of military history. To be an interesting satire, it would have to be more subtle in the intentional failure department.
In short, the movie you suggest it to be is not possible, as it is a contradiction in terms. The several potentially good movies that are somewhat like the movie you describe it also fails to be, for various reasons largely already elucidated in this thread.
It’s been a while since I read the book, but yes, I believe there are civilian contractors. The problem you’re missing, it seems, is that the government in SS really wanted people to voluntarily join Federal Service. It had to be strictly voluntary, because as they are trained, and after they retire, they realize to vote for what is best for the country/planet, rather than just for themselves.