This is because things that “work” in a book don’t always “work” in a movie. It’s almost impossible to make a scene-by-scene movie of a book - movies aren’t LONG enough, for one thing. You need to limit the number of characters in a movie, so the audience doesn’t get confused or bored. Filmmakers who adapt books try to preserve the most important ideas and feelings, but they can’t really “turn a book into a movie.” I haven’t read the book. The movie was an entertaining and intelligent satire about a militaristic fascist utopia. The Earthlings in the film solve problems with force, assume they are at the top of the universe food chain, and underestimate their opponents. From what I understand Heinlein’s book delved into more detail about the structure of the fascist Utopia, and was more concerned with the question of whether living in one would be so bad after all. The movie didn’t have much time to get these larger ideas across, so did it in subtle visual ways. But the movie does do a good job of showing you what that society values and what those values mean for citizens. The movie also didn’t hit you over the head with the larger questions - if you were too dumb to see the satire, and saw it as a straight action flick, then it didn’t try to correct you.
I loved Starship Troopers, but I guess I may be in the minority in not liking the original nearly as much.
I mean, in the live version Rick Wakeman such an incredibly organ solo. the original was good, but Tony Kaye’s keyboard solo was not nearly as good as Wakeman, and…oh, the movie and the book…gotcha
Sorry
This is because things that “work” in a book don’t always “work” in a movie. It’s almost impossible to make a scene-by-scene movie of a book - movies aren’t LONG enough, for one thing.
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I can appreciate that and I recognize that most movie adaptations fall short of the original book. However a decent director and script writer should at least be able to give one the feeling of the book. The writers/directors of Starship Troopers didn’t even make an effort to be true to the book.
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Well if you had read the book you’d have seen that PV didn’t try to preserve the important ideas and feeling of the book.
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Well I disagree that it was more entertaining then any other mindless action movie and I certainly don’t consider it to be intelligent satire. I thought Robocop was one of his better movies. And heck you get to see funny commercials in that one as well.
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Well I’d read it first before I’d try understanding it.
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Again I disagree. The movie didn’t really show much of anything in my opinion.
Yeah, I just love these movies that all the smart people get while us stupid peons can just marvel at the special effects.
Marc
I’d like to believe that, I really would. But Verhoeven’s other films just don’t show that spark. Maybe I need to see Robocop again or something.
I liked the part right at the end where they’d netted the brain bug and dragged it out into the harsh light of the surface. Dougie Houser, SS puts his hand on it… and it takes Mr master Psychic master several long seconds to figure out “it’s scared.” Whoah, ya think??
-Ben
Read an interview with Michael Ironsides and he said that he’d read the book back when it first came out and said that it really “pissd him off.” He said he later realized that the book was satire. :rolleyes: As has been stated before, the book was not statire. It was merely a look at a possible way of organzing a society that Heinlein wanted to explore. One of the things he comments about in Expanded Universe is that all societies collapse after a while. He thought that the structure of the society in ST might prevent it from collapsing. Much of it was modeled after Switzerland. Last time I checked, no one was calling that society fascist. (Oh, and let’s not forget in ST where Johnny says that he’d never want to fight in an army of draftees. He seemed to think that draftees wouldn’t fight as well as volunteers. Damn! That’s a fascist statement if I ever saw one!)
Yep, a fascist is a fascist is a fascist is a fascist…
MGibson, I’m in no way saying that you are dumb. But A LOT of people didn’t get that the movie was a satire. Including many critics.
And I’m going to read the book now. So there. 
Oh, Jeez.
Yeah, I realize that they have to change plots to transfer a story to the creen sometimes. ST isn’t one of those cases. I know it’s satirical, and I love whats-his-names use of the internet clicking as a way to introduce “sound bites”, like the Newsbriefs he put in RoboCop. But the movie is philosophically vastly different from the book, and if it’s satirizing the spposed fascism and militarism of the book, it’s way off target.
If the wanted to tell a story about how he miltary gets carried away, ignores possibilities for truce and peace by erasing misunderstanding, and use the same military setup as Starship Troopers, why didn’t the just film Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War?
But to claim they’re adapting Heinlein’s book is just completely wrong. I have a copy of the movie because I love it technically, I like the writing, and because I’m so fascinated by a movie so completely at odds with its source material.
The movie:
The movie was crap. It was basically designed to look like a propagandistic action film glorifying war, but be purposely bad and naziesque enough that those in the know can sneer at people who enjoyed it. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that it seems to fail at both. As the Pearl Harbor type of story about friends, love, and war, it seems to actually try to succeed, but not really. Since it just seems trite and formulaic, the satire doesn’t work, as it’s too hard to figure out that they did that on purpose. Also, the blood and gore parts are simply too engrossing and overdone to really show a commitment to the satire aspect.
What really pisses me off, though, is that Verhoeven took a good story and perverted it for his own artistic ends, one of which was to sneer at people who like the story. Especially since he doesn’t criticise the story, just gives it moronic heroes and Nazi-styled uniforms. The entirety of Denise Richards’ role was also pointless and stupid, and not part of the book. I’ve heard that Verhoeven didn’t read the book, so as not to interfere with his artistic vision. This is simply wrong, as it was Heinlein’s artistic vision that Verhoeven was using to make a pile of money.
Also, the military tactics are so incredibly bad it’s painful to watch.
And for the record, I think Robocop is the greatest movie of the 1980’s, and one of the best of all time.
The book:
I think Heinlein was playing with the idea of a society perfected for the purpose of making war. Sort of a future Sparta. Obviously there are aspects of the society that he sympathized with, such as the emphasis on personal responsibility. To say that this book, of all his books, is the one society he wanted most is a baseless assertion.
The song by Yes:*
Never found any philosophical or political meaning in it, but Steve Howe’s guitar solo at the end is simply incredible. One of the best of all time.
Oh, and I should toss in that the book and the movie share the same sort of relationship as Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, in that there are a bunch of striking similarities, but no good reason to believe they’re specifically related to one another.
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I know you didn’t and I didn’t mean to come of as though I was insulted. If the movie was meant to be a satire and so many people didn’t get it then that’s a sign of a bad movie in my book.
It isn’t my favorite but I think you’ll find that it bears little resemblence to the movie. And it is short so you shouldn’t take to long to read it.
Marc
You know, I think the same think about Dickens and “A Tale of Two Cities.” what an incredible story he had, but I’ll be damned if the telling didn’t suck ass. 
It’s a shame, in some way, that the book/movie dichotomy doesn’t let the movie stand on its own feet. Why am I reminded of people thinking that “Last Action Hero” was a terrible action flick?
mag, I don’t think your opinion of the movie will change after reading the book, FWIW.
Marc, “If the movie was meant to be a satire and so many people didn’t get it then that’s a sign of a bad movie in my book.” Heh, some of us refer to those dealies as “cult classics.” I know people who still, mysteriously, hate “Heathers.” I blame Flouride in the water, myself.
Well, Verhoeven stated that, before making the movie, he deliberately did not read Starship Troopers, so as not to limit his artistic vision (and, as anyone who has seen Showgirls can testify, Verhoeven can’t afford to limit his artistic vision by so much as a pixel). If he was directing a satire of the novel anywhere but in his own mind, then, it was purely by accident.
Starship Troopers, the novel, asks some interesting philosophical questions (as usual, Heinlein offers answers, but doesn’t pretend that they are the answers). Starship Troopers, the waste of film stock, does not.
Well you don’t have to make a good movie for it to become a cult classic. Rocky Horror Picture Show immediatly comes to mind. Have you ever seen Battlefield Earth? That movie is so bad I get a kick out of watching it.
Marc
PS: I really liked Heathers.
First, the telling was meant to be read in serial form, I believe.
But more importantly, it’s not like there was some really good Tale of Two Cities story that Dickens stole and made suck. He made his own story suck, which isn’t as bad.
OK, so Verhoeven wanted to make a movie satirizing a militaristic society. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with, is the fact that he stole the title and the names of a few characters from a perfectly good novel, which was not by any stretch satirical. What, his artistic vision was so important, that he couldn’t waste any of it in thinking up a new title?
On the subject of the book itself:
I’ve heard this mentioned many times, Lemur866, but I have to say that I’m at a loss as to where it comes from. The last time I read the book, I was specifically looking for any evidence of this, but found the contrary. The service is not necessarily combat, but it is in the military. Remember Juan making out his list of service choices? He starts with all of the Navy positions, then lists all of the Army positions, culminating with the M. I. He doesn’t even bother listing any other choices, and implies that they’re all just suicidal guinea pig slots. It seems to me that if he could have listed “postman” as an alternative to “testing spacesuits on Venus”, he would have.
Yes, but what happens to Carl? He isn’t sent to the MI or the Navy, he becomes a researcher on Pluto and is killed by the bugs there. And when joining up, Juan asks the doctor if he was a doctor before he joined up or if they decided he should be a doctor and they trained him for it. But the doctor tells Juan he’s a civilian. Meaning that Juan thought it would be perfectly possible to be assigned the job of doctor. And Juan lists a bunch of intelligence and logistics (he studied logic in school, you see…) positions too.
Juan cares more about the military jobs, since they have the highest profile. And of course when you are engaged in a war with the Bugs, I imagine that there are a lot more slots for the military.
Also, remember when he asks the recruiting sergeant if they ever reject someone with the physical? The sergeant tells him that if someone comes in blind, deaf, and in a wheelchair, they’d probably find him something silly to do like counting the fuzz on caterpillars by touch.
Meaning that the recruiting board assigns you a job based on your skills and potential. That could be military or something else. But you can’t join and NOT choose the military, you have no choice about what you are assigned.
I believe the specific figure 19/20 doesn’t come from the book itself, but rather from Expanded Universe where Heinlein complains that people didn’t understand the book. While the book certainly gives the impression that many/most people who join end up in some sort of military outfit, it is definately stated that some people don’t.
Oh, one more thing. I do think that while many jobs wouldn’t be strictly military, you would definately be under military-style discipline. Of course, you could quit at any time except during combat if you thought your boss was being a jerk. And the only penalty was that you would never be able to vote or hold political office.
Isn’t there also a mention in the book that Rico thought his teacher, Lt. Col. DuBois, had probably gotten his service in as a ditchdigger or something? I’ll check my copy of the book tomorrow for specifics, but I don’t seem to recall that the non-military positions were particularly dangerous.