# Wait... are they actually making Starship Troopers right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 10, 2012, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470 "2012-05-10T03:15:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/21 "2012-05-10T14:25:08Z")
The series is called _Roughnecks_, I think. It’s actually much closer to the book than Verhoeven’s cinematic abortion was, but still not solid. The graphics for the movie, and the fact that it’s evidently a Part IV makes me think that it’s not really related to the series. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/22 "2012-05-10T21:34:14Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Yeah, if the movie had actually been made properly, it would have cleaned up in the box office. Now the whole damn topic is poisoned. Then again, since they’ve “rebooted” Superman, Spiderman, Batman, X-Men (etc…) maybe there is still hope for the Troopers. They could do it by adapting John Steakley’s _[Armor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_(novel))_. Hopefully that would work better than his _[Vampire$](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire$)_, with or without John Carpenter’s “[assistance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires_(film))”. Heck, maybe they could even do _[The Forever War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War)_. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/23 "2012-05-10T22:21:05Z")
Can we still have the Nazi uniforms and coed showers? ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/24 "2012-05-10T22:40:07Z")
[http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=32603](http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=32603) Is this the same project already being discussed in the thread or something else? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/25 "2012-05-10T23:54:37Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > What I want most from a _Starship Troopers_ movie and what Verhoeven’s piece of shit completely failed to provide is protagonists I can respect and root for. Heinlein’s book had soldiers that were civilised, educated and competent. Verhoeven didn’t like that, so he resorted to blatant character assassination. Exactly. Heinlein’s book was not primarily about combat. The war was just a frame for him to use to write about how the society he created functioned in wartime. And Verhoeven threw out all the stuff about that society - which was the primary point of the book. It would be like somebody making a movie version of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and changing it so the story was set in Sweden and everyone in the cast was white. That way the audience could focus on the trial without getting distracted by any racial issues. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2012, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/26 "2012-05-11T03:06:40Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I had hoped we’d never get to the day where a movie’s producers _admit_ they’re just producing a two-hour cutscene from _Call of Warfare: Duty Field: Modern Battle 6: Splinter Theory 3_. It’s just a pity Verhoeven didn’t admit he’d done that – then he could have slapped a videogamey title on it and avoided poisoning the well for a genuine adaptation of the novel. (Though it would be appropriate to admit that he’d gotten a few ideas from the dust jacket of the book and fork over a check to the estate.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/27 "2012-05-11T19:33:11Z")
> [@](#): > > (Though it would be appropriate to admit that he’d gotten a few ideas from the dust jacket of the book and fork over a check to the estate.) Not really, no. All he got from the book was the revolutionary idea of soldiers fighting in space. Which clearly, nobody but Heinlein had ever done before. ---
**Author:** ![Ashley\_Pomeroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c68b51/32.png) [@Ashley\_Pomeroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashley_Pomeroy)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2012, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/28 "2012-05-13T14:34:33Z")
> [@](#): > > Starship Troopers is based on the novel by Robert A Heinlein and it was then adapted to live action movies with Ed Neumeier’s scripts. This time out, we wanted to go fresh and not replicate either the novel or the previous live action films. We functionally asked ourselves who we were making the film for – who loves vast space battles, vicious hand-to-hand, dazzling CG, and a character-driven, military-based story arc? Basically anyone that’s playing the current popular console video games. To me, the battle scenes from the first Starship Troopers movie felt like a team death match from an FPS game and that vibe definitely carried forward to the development of this film. Lots of action, lots of collaboration between soldiers with specialized skill sets. We were discussing writers and Joseph suggested a great writer who has worked on some of the Sci-Fi action games, Mr. Flint Dille. I have to say it disappoints me that someone who can’t write a decent sales pitch is now producing a film; I understand that the skills involved in producing and writing a film are very different, but still. I can’t imagine it being any good. I mean, “we functionally asked ourselves”? What? Did they mean _fundamentally_? “The former movies did not fully decrypt the power suits from the original novel by Robert A Heinlein” - _decrypt_? And not, for example, depict? Cheap shots, yes. But they make me feel happy. And that’s what matters. The scriptwriter has [a Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Dille), which reads like a badly-padded CV. There’s a tendency for the little people on the absolute periphery of Hollywood to have over-inflated puff-pieces on the IMDB, which makes them look _even worse_ than if they just had a few lines. 'cause if you’d written the between-mission text for the last two entries in the _Desert Strike_ series, you wouldn’t make it a large part of your shopfront. The pitch could be rewritten as: > [@](#): > > We managed to get the rights to the name, but were unable to use any of the story elements from previous adaptations of the property. The only writer with any kind of track record who took us seriously, Mr Flint Dille, also wrote the screenplay for the franchise-killing _Fievel Goes West_, but he assured us between swigs of cognac that the film tanked because the studio didn’t market it properly and those bastards in the studio didn’t want a non-Disney animated film to succeed because Disney has _tentacles_, man. He also wrote the between-level text for the last two entries in EA’s _Desert Strike_ series, and he assured us he was a close personal friend of Frank Miller. Look, if we make it cheaply enough, it can’t fail to turn a profit! Seriously, remember _Desert Strike_? With the helicopter? That was cool. Also, we met a chap at a comics convention who has done some sketches of a power suit - he assures us that the finished versions will be totally badass. We haven’t got a fucking clue what the film’s going to be about, but it’s going to rock! ---
**Author:** ![Feyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/fbc32d/32.png) [@Feyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feyrat)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2012, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/29 "2012-05-13T15:56:41Z")
> [@psiekier](#): > > They could do it by adapting John Steakley’s _[Armor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_(novel))_. Boy, I’d kill to see someone do a GOOD movie of Armor… ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470/30 "2012-05-13T16:13:17Z")
> [@Ashley\_Pomeroy](#): > > “The former movies did not fully decrypt the power suits from the original novel by Robert A Heinlein” - _decrypt_? [It means to create an upgraded, uncroaked unit.](http://www.erfworld.com/wiki/index.php/Decrypted) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-are-they-actually-making-starship-troopers-right/621470.md?page=1)