Yet another movie reboot...

I've read the article before, and the fact the author can say:

The film and the novel are surprisingly similar

Tells me everything I need to know about how far he's willing to reach to draw a conclusion. I'm surprised its not signed Reed Richards.

In the movie Watchmen, I think Snyder did an admirable job for the most part filming the practically unfilmable, and some of it is inspired (anything involving Rorschach, for example) he made one really critical mistake that seems insignificant to most people unfamiliar with the original comic series: he shifts one line from John to Laurie: "nothing ever ends." This is critical because that's the point of the entire story being vaporized: At the end, Adrian asks John if it all turns out ok in the end, and its John that delivers the line to Adrian. Adrian is asking for absolution from the one being he thinks can give it: John. John isn't God, but he's the closest thing to Adrian: someone that knows the future more certainly than Adrian envisions it. But John doesn't give it to him, and Adrian's look at the end says that: John is telling Adrian that ultimately, there is no "ultimate good" because there is no end to the story that you can then tally the good and the evil and weigh them. Adrian believes the ends justify the means, and he's just been told there's no end. Humans just aren't sophisticated enough to make those kinds of decisions, and no matter how smart Adrian is, he can't escape that limitation of human morality.

By shifting the statement to Laurie, it loses all of its meaning. Instead, John is ambivalent to Adrian at the end, which means Adrian ends the story with no doubts at all. And Laurie throws the line as just a quip. A small change in one sense, but nevertheless a very big change in the more important sense.

Starship Troopers makes those kinds of mistakes every few seconds, from beginning to end. Even if you judge it as satire, it makes horrible mistakes constantly which undercut that. Are we supposed to question whether the hyper-patriotism in ST can lead to fascism? Or are we supposed to laugh at the most incompetent space marine force ever filmed? They can't be scary and stupid at the same time: cf: Hogan's Heroes.

True effective satire is either light hearted and comedic, or its played straight but exaggerated. Starship Troopers never makes up its mind, never even tries to make up its mind, and in fact doesn't seem to think it even needs to make up its mind. Its wrong. Starship Troopers is Robocop with the cyborg cop replaced with Inspector Gadget.

And that's assuming you completely forget the book and not make the reasonable assumption that when you market yourself as a movie based on a book, you should make some attempt to preserve at least 0.51% of it so it doesn't round off to zero.


Getting back to the statement I quoted above, let me quote the article:

Uh, no. When Zim goads a student into attacking him and them disables him, that sets up a scene later in the book where that recruit eventually is kicked out for hitting an instructor. Its important because its intended to demonstrate just how different civilian "normal" society is from military life: the recruit is actually *amazed* the instructor is allowed to hit him, and *stupid enough* to admit he hit him back. No such thing happens in the movie, which makes the equivalent scene totally disconnected from the scene in the novel. When Rico is told that violence has resolved more conflicts in history, its a trigger for introspection by Rico like all of his morality class scenes: that's its reason for being there. Absolutely no such thing happens in the movie. The problem with them is not that Verhoeven exaggerates them, its that he eliminates the context for them. And without that context, those scenes become meaningless except for their shock value.

Considering the author of the article is talking about how movie critics just didn't get the movie, its ironic he didn't get the novel at all.


But to be honest, what really bothers me about Starship Troopers at the end of the day is this:

No, the problem is that its not that good of an action movie. Its an action movie where the heroic space marines stand in a circle shooting at one target. Where spaceships orbit a planet in very tight formation so they can't maneuver. Where they watch balls of light explode their fleetmates and it takes a while for it to dawn on them that something might be amiss. I understood the satire part when I first saw the movie in the theater, but the satire was constantly interrupted by the stupid.

If the point is to satirize fascism, the movie should not be making me think "man, fascism is really not getting a fair shake here."

There. Fixed it for you.

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The only thing she nailed is her obsessive belief that a movie needs to be an exact clone of the source material, deferring mediums and artistic reinterpretation be damned. It's clear, you people are purists.

"Wah wah wah! Scene in Watchmen was different so it ruined the whole story! Starship Troopers changed it mooore! WAAAH!"

It's reminding me of an argument with another philistine I knew who insisted that the Lord of the Rings films sucked because they didn't follow the books to the letter. I suppose if you had lived in Britain way back in the day, you would have thrown fits over the fact that Douglas Adams kept changing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when it transitioned from radio play to book to TV series.

You can't make that accusation stick. That's like complaining about a flood, and someone accusing you of preferring droughts. I don't dislike rain, but I'm still going to complain when enough of it falls to sweep houses away.

Starship Troopers doesn't get a few things wrong. It gets almost nothing right. And its not a bad action movie because it doesn't stick to the book. Its a bad action movie because the action is bad. Good action would still not follow the book because the book doesn't actually have that much action really. But it could still at least be good action.

The problem is that it doesn't take obsession to point out ST's flaws. It doesn't really take any more thought than I normally spend obeying traffic signals and much less than I spend setting up iTunes playlists. Transformers has a stupid story and some offensive elements but it has good action. That judgment has nothing to do with any fancy artistic analysis. The fancy artistic analysis is coming from the people who want to elevate Starship Troopers beyond its craftsmanship. It would take me less effort to prove Meet the Spartans was a critical sociological statement.

Most of the people who thought Starship Troopers was a dumb movie have never read the novel. I don't think its a bad movie because it doesn't follow the novel. I think its a bad movie that just happens to insult the fans of a classic science fiction novel for no good reason except for giggles. It would be just as bad if the novel was erased from history. It would just be far more inexplicable as to why anyone made it.

Well, there is something to be said for at least being recognizable next to the source material.

That's like dropping a wedding ring into a cage with 9 guys in it, have them wrestle around for an hour, then have the shortest one chuck it into a fire and calling the film "Lord of the Rings".

Or taking that old video of Glenn Danzig getting his jaw jacked and calling it "Rocky".

The SST films had a superficial patina of the source material, mainly names and basic concepts like the bugs and military citizenship. Beyond that, it showed either a complete lack of understanding (or complete disdain) for the original material.

Granted, some of the juxtapositions made in the film were amusing. But, on the whole, SST was just a mess, with the sequels getting progressively messier.

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No, it doesn't need to be an exact clone. But it should share at least enough DNA as to be a member of the same gorram species. Two of my favorite movies, L. A. Confidential and Road to Perdition, are both adaptations and neither one is anything even close to a clone of the original. (L. A. Confidential in particular just shares some names and events with the original -- the book is unfilmable. The author actually appears on the DVD extras saying his agent (sarcastically) congratulated him on finally writing a book that was impossible to adapt.) Some of the worst adaptations have been ones that followed the original too closely. (The second Harry Potter movie comes to mind.)

Here is a review of The Movie That Does Not Exist by someone who actually knows what he's talking about.

Oh, and Snyder's problem with Watchmen is that like most people, he just fundamentally doesn't get it.

The shortest one should grab it and then jump into the fire. Then it would be canonical.

I think both are filmable for different reasons, but both became filmable by the same technique: focus. LA Confidential the movie is an attempt to capture the feel of LA Confidential the complex spaghetti plot rollercoaster with only the limited amount of detail you can fit on screen. Road to Perdition focuses on the father-son story and tones down everything else around it so its not too jarring for general audiences. Focus is what directors have to use to jettison some details, change others, and condense a novel into a film. And its never perfect, just like translations between languages are never perfect.


I don't fault him too much for that: I think he gets some of it, and he at least tries to be respectful to the material, but I just don't think he was careful enough. And his attempt to replicate the visuals of the book meant in certain critical areas he missed the feel by trying too hard to replicate the visual: the "book four" chapter trips exactly where I suspect Scott McCloud would say it was doomed to trip up: the book leveraged the fact that it was a discrete paneled page, so an animated version of it would by definition not work. It plays with the perception of time too much, which is its brilliance. Its genuinely "pictures and words" that are not just superior to the video version of the same content, but can't be replicated merely by video that tracks the pictures.

I see the forums are acting up again, and glitched out my post. On a lighter subject related to "purist" adaptations, I was talking to a friend this weekend about the various recent wide audience adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. In particular, the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies, the BBC Sherlock series, and the series House. One interesting point of discussion was the curious coincidence that within a five month span (by airing) Holmes fakes his death while apparently defeating Moriartiy to protect Watson in Game of Shadows, Sherlock fakes his death to protect Watson in The Reichenback Fall, and House fakes his death to help Wilson (aka Watson) in the series finale of House. Kind of a weird coincidence, if it is a coincidence.

Incidentally, I've liked all three interpretations to some degree. I loved House from the start, although its certainly had ups and downs since. I like the Robert Downey Jr. Holmes. And I really like the Sherlock series, although I think the second episode of season two is a much weaker episode than the book ends.

Read. The. Book.
Decent enough... sure, just no Starship Troopers.
When I first saw the movie I loved it and still do... all that over the top violence and the bugs don't look too bad either. Then I read the book and realized that while it is sci-fi and about a war with an insectoid alien species too that's pretty much everything it has in common with the movie.
You are missing the point here. In every story are key-moments which you just shouldn't change... at least not when you want to name your movie adaption after the source material.
For example:
What if Uncle Ben would've told Peter Parker the "with great power" line and then just kept living?
Then Parker wouldn't have been guilt tripped to become Spider-Man...
Nah, that's stupid. For our movie he becomes a hero simply to get laid.

See what I did there?
Sure, it could still be a good movie but it definetly wouldn't be Spider-Man; or just by name only.

Besides, it's a fact that Verhoeven didn't read Starship Troopers prior to filming it... to not corrupt his artistic vision (his own words).
Most sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you failed there, not Arcanaville.

Wow, you people don't sleep!

No, I'm not a purist. I understand that books and movies are different mediums that often need changes for a translation to be effective. I loved the Hitchhiker's Guide in book, Radio and TV versions (used to own all three, but my Radio cassettes got lost) -- but I disliked the recent movie. Loved Lord of the Rings movies. I understand some of the criticism of Watchmen, but I really liked the movie and thought that the giant squid would have been dumb in a movie.

But in Starship Troopers, from the very beginning I saw foot soldiers with machine guns up against giant armored bugs where the soldier had to pump hundreds of rounds into the bug to kill it. That was just dumb. Haven't they ever heard of armored vehicles? Drones? Explosives? Air Strikes? Maybe the message was a disregard of the lives of soldiers, but the message got lost in the dumb. That scene of the foot soldiers encircling a bug while they fire their machine guns into it while not hitting each other was the ultimate example of how dumb the whole thing was. I had no desire to see the sequels. I did, however, watch the CGI series on line once, and thought it was better than the movie. Better, less wooden acting . . . .

As far as the story itself goes, not really.

The social commentary fueling the story IS surprisingly similar, though.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Did you actually watch the movie or even read the book?

The bugs don't live above ground. They live thousands of feet if not miles below the surface.

Armored vehicles are useless because they

1. Can't fit down the bug holes.

2. They are deathtraps on the surface because the bugs can easily tunnel underneath them creating traps for them to fall into where they can easily be destroyed.


Drones can't go down bug holes because the twisting and turning through solid rock and earth blocks all communication transmissions.


Air Strikes against what? The bugs live miles underground. Air strikes are only effective if the bugs can be tricked out onto the surface. They only come up to fight infantry.


Explosives. Did you miss the scenes in the movie where Rico blew up a huge bug the size of a house with a grenade? Or when they fired a nuke down the bug hole? Or when they rescued Carmen from the Brain Bug they were carrying a warhead?


The whole point of the Mobile Infantry in the novel was that everyone was in Power Armour. They didn't need armored vehicles. Each soldier was a tank all by himself. A tank that was launched from space to assault a planet from orbit like Airborne Rangers. A tank that could "jump" hundreds of meters at a time.

Only infantry (in Power Armour) had a chance of rooting their brain bugs out of their underground nests until more powerful weapons were invented.

"I'm a 30 second bomb!!! I'm a 30 second bomb!!! 29...28...27..."

If there was ever a movie that required remaking, it's Starship Troopers. My only regret is that I won't see Dina Meyer nekkid again. Keep it true to the book, please.

Also, ST is not so much fascism as a Libertarian wet dream.

On the contrary, I certainly do. However, I was thinking of the wrong Heinlein novel when I wrote that (The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress). ST does have some Libertarian themes (most of Heinlein's stuff does). Apologies for the confusion.

No, I'm making my own point. None of the "weapons" that were mentioned would have been of any use. Power Armour was the only weapon that gave the humans a fighting chance. That's why the infantry scenes looked stupid.

Ehh... I don't really see it.

Interesting... in both, we have a requirement of serving in the military in order to be able to be allowed to friggin' vote. In both there's rampant racism and endless wars. If this is not fascist, what do you call it?