OK. To start with, my opinion: This is the worst adaptation of a written work and will remain so until someone does a remake of MacBeth with the Royal Shakespearean company - except for Pauly Shore in the title role.
Starship Troopers without powered armor is like Star Wars without lightsabers.
Not to mention you see them charge in a group, FIRING FROM THE BACK as can be seen by level (not up) rifles and muzzle flashes (waited to see the front lines dropping from behind shot in the back) to HAND-TO-HAND ranger with the monsters, who often had NO projectile weapons. Does this guy go on bear hunts, see a bear, and CHARGE it?
..and being outwitted by them.
Well put, sir!
They should have paid him, but not with REAL money.
I remember reading a description of a sci-fi convention where both Steakley and Heinlein were going to be. Everyone was one pins and needles, since they’d figure that Heinlein would tear Steakley to pieces for ripping off Starship Troopers. They were all left open-mouthed and agape when Heinlein went up to Steakley and said something like, “Yours is the best damn book I’ve read on war from the grunts perspective.”:eek:
Are you sure? That’s the exact same story I heard, only it was Haldeman, not Steakley. Spider Robinson, (IIRC) Jerry Pournelle and (IIRC) Harlan Ellison confirm the Haldeman story(He’d just won the Hugo in 197…6(?) for Forever War.)
I think Steakley wrote Armor in 1982 or so, which was after Heinlein stopped going to conventions (I think).
Not 100%. It’s been awhile since I read that and I’m not even sure of where I read it. You may very well be right, or the account I may have read might have been in error.
You got me thinking…I actually think Pauly Shore would be great as MacBeth. He’s about the right age (actually a little old), and he can do crazy pretty well. It would be the perfect role for him to break through into drama.
Who cares about majority? I got the satire the first time I saw the movie too, and thought it was hilarious. I haven’t read the book, have no interest in reading the book, and don’t care a whit about what people who love the book think about the movie. I like it, I got it, I think it’s funny, and, while it’s no Brazil (my all-time favorite film), I enjoy it every time I see it.
Oh and, responding to something earlier in the thread, I thought it was pretty obvious that the bugs didn’t really attack Buenos Aries. We wanted their planet and needed a good excuse to go blow their shit up. That’s what I got out of it anyway.
It seems I am not an intelectual after all because 5 minutes into this movie the only thought my astonished mind could think was something like… “Wow this movie is very bad”.
And yet I enjoyed, the way you enjoy the inevitable. Yes the movie sucks, actors are horrible…except that Dixie chick, she was perfect (I mean as woman, I make no judgment about her ability to act because she bought me the moment she undressed); the director was on pot and the scriptwriter was fresh out of college (or even High-School). But I enjoyed it.
I will say that when I finished watching it the third time, suddenly an idea came to me: “Perhaps this is all a joke the director is playing us”. At that moment I realized that I just have had to many beers and I went to sleep. The crazy things you think when you are almost drunk.
It’s always been my suspicion, too, that the bugs didn’t really ‘attack’ Buenos Aires. As for ** Equipoise ** and the implications made, that’s an entirely different kind of debate. Suffise it to say that I think it’s a ‘timely’ movie too.
But it is to the book what McDonald’s French Fries are to the rancid oil in an abandoned Long John Silver’s Fryer, assuming rats have infested the shelf above the oil and defecated in it every day for years.
The book is the second most godawful piece of crap I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading (Asimov’s The Stars, Like Dust is the first). Not only are its politics absurdly oversimplified, not only are the characters barely one-dimensional, but the action scenes are terribly written. There’s more excitement in the phone book.
I do think the director intended the movie to be a satire, but I think he didn’t always remember that. Parts of the movie were obvious satires, and were pretty funny; other parts played like a straight-up war movie.
Compare it to a brilliant war-movie satire: Dr. Strangelove. There’s hardly a moment in that movie where the satire isn’t sustained. But there’s lots of Starship Troopers that’s just a rather stupid action flick.
I think Verhoeven is a director of modest merit who bought the rights to a book of no merit whatsoever. He did the best he could with the book, but that wasn’t particularly good.
If you’ve not read the book, you really should. It’s as substantial as a dried dog turd. You should be able to polish it off in a single evening, and it’ll hopefully help you appreciate what Verhoeven was working with.
