My favorite novel. So there.

[athelind]

I mentioned Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers in a response to a post just now, and felt the need, as I always do nowadays, to add the disclaimer, "Not to be confused with the abominable movie."

This at last triggered in me sufficient morbid fascination to check the IMDb listing for said flick.

On the trivia page, I found the following:
"Paul Verhoeven admits to never finishing the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and becoming both bored and depressed."

That explains much. Wonder what Edward Neumeier's excuse is?

...oh gods. They're making a sequel.

Comments

[drleo.livejournal.com]

...oh gods. They're making a sequel.

With none of the cast from the original, at that. I'm sure that's going to reek pretty mightily.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

...why would the cast make a difference?

When you're talking about vomit, does it really matter what the color of the chunks is?

[drleo.livejournal.com]

It's just not a good sign when a sequel has none of the original cast, in my experience. I actually kinda liked the first movie, but I never read the book.

[captainblye.livejournal.com]

Heh, that's why you liked the movie. ;]
I tend to agree with Athelind, in that had it been named ANYTHING other than Starship Troopers, it would have been a decent action flik.

[trede.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed the movie, sure it was a brainless special effects blast, but it was definitely fun ^ ^

But yeah, I liked the original novel a whole lot more.

Philistine!

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Jeezus, if it doesn't have a goggle-eyed British kid in it, do people read any more?

It's one thing to "re-interpret" a movie for the screen. It's another thing to dumb something down. For example, the faster-than-light fire-farts of the bugs was totally an invention for the movie. Only Hollywood could take the ultimate book about powered-armor ... and make a movie without powered-armor in it.

Of course, it's really sad when someone works 15+ months on a movie, yet can't be bothered to finish the book.

Re: Philistine!

[drleo.livejournal.com]

I read, thank you very much. I just haven't read that book. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy the movie on its own.

But yes, the screenplay writer (or whoever it was) not finishing the whole book is inexcusable.

[bluerain.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the story about Tim Burton's angry denial of the allegation that he had stolen some scene or other from a comic book. He sniffed that he didn't read comic books.

Kevin Smith observed "that explains Batman."

[silussa.livejournal.com]

As I told my roommate after seeing the film, "it's a good movie, just don't compare it to the book, because it isn't."

Personally, I think the best screen rendition was Sony's "Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles", which did vary a LOT from the book, and was never quite finished, but certainly got closer to the spirit of the original.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

My whole bitch is that it's so not the book that they shouldn't have bothered to base it on it in the first place. And to take entire paragraphs out of context, turning them around to mean exactly the opposite of what they did in the original.

If they wanted to make an anti-fascist parody of Starship Troopers, why didn't they just buy the rights to Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero?

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd never thought of Starship Troopers as being fascist.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

but wossname, verhoeven was so proudly declaring
"And I made sure to include Heinlein's politics from the novel"

I didn't see it in the theater, borrowed a coworkers DVD, and god was that movie loathsome and totally anti what the books message was.