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Will The New 'Starship Troopers' Reboot Stay Faithful To The Book? (hollywoodreporter.com)
HughPickens.com shares news from the Hollywood Reporter:
"Columbia Pictures is rebooting Starship Troopers, the 1997 sci-fi film directed by Paul Verhoeven... The studio is not remaking the film but is said to be going back to the original Heinlein novel for an all-new take." The original movie, considered a mixed success at the time of its release, went on to achieve a cult following, and during the DVD boom of the 2000s it became a mini-franchise for the studio, which produced three additional direct-to-DVD movies... "Starship Troopers [the novel] has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist in its creation of a society where democracy has been severely restricted..." writes Graeme McMillan. "The question then becomes: in updating Starship Troopers to make it more acceptable to today's audience, can it still manage to remain faithful enough to Heinlein's original to please the existing fan base?"
The script will be written by the writers of the upcoming Baywatch film starring Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson.
The script will be written by the writers of the upcoming Baywatch film starring Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson.
Deeply unsure about that. I enjoyed that take, however.
Matt
No. Not only no, but HELL NO! Hollyweird will implode into its own singularity before that happens.
"Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist in its creation of a society where democracy has been severely restricted..."
Democracy severely restricted? Nothing like that in the book; separate states have their own governments, and ANYBODY can get Federal citizenship by putting in a 2-year tour of Federal service. You can't buy a franchise, you have to EARN it - but it's open to EVERYONE. If you have one eye and one hand and an IQ of 80, they'll find something for you to do for two years.
I watched Starship Troopers when it came out in the movie theater and had no expectations at all. And I loved it. It was a fun action movie and, at the same time, a fun satire of fascism. And the fact that I enjoyed it harmlessly until the last couple scenes (where it became obvious to me) managed to show me how much I enjoy fascism. Which is an important lesson, IMHO. Especially considering how enjoyable and thus rating friendly Trump currently is. The stuff is awesome.
I was working at a (computer) gaming company when the original movie was first released, and our whole company went and watched it.
These were not stupid people, but I was soooo disappointed after the movie when I realized I was the only one who recognized it as satire.
"It's afraid!" *crowd cheers*
It is a brilliant movie, but to most, it's just an awesome action movie. So sad.
Islam itself is racist - it is an ideology of Arabic supremacy.
Excuse me for my confusion, as I'm a feebly minded AC, but why is the book considered to promote racism and fascism?
It's outright stated that the Citizens gain the right to vote via federal service, and heavily implied that it's the only right they gain by doing so. It's also stated that they will take anyone, be they blind, deaf, or dumb, so the only requirements to vote is a willingness to offer up whatever you actually can for the country. A far cry from the modern take on democracy, that being that obliging people to carry specific ID's or proof of citizenship is overly onerous (Admittedly, in many cases where there are these outcries, it is because the ID's that some sub-sections of the population commonly use are disallowed, often intentionally).
It's also evident that they will take Women for said service, as they are very enthused at the idea of having Carmen enlist, as they typically are better pilots due to their higher G tolerance (And at least in the book, better head for math, as I have not seen statistics for that assertion it made). They also take Juan "Johnny" Rico, from Buenos Aires, so evidently it's not a Aryan supremacist military (Which is decoupled from fascism, but is a commonly used example of a potential agenda), and they are also able to walk around in at least a few cities without anyone mentioning race at all.
So where does the Racism and Fascism come from? Is it only because the society in the book came to the conclusion that the only people who would properly value their franchise were the ones willing to volunteer their lives and pay dearly for it? It's sure as heck not how our societies work, but I can see where it would come from. The movie plays with Fascist and racist imagery much more, and uses it to make a political point, much as Heinlein himself often did (As he was denied the chance to serve in active duty due to tuberculosis, and was also a very liberal political activist for the time, and often campaigned for the democratic party and their candidates, it's hard to say what portions of that work are due to his frustrations with people not valuing their franchise, which portions are for the time liberal values that ages poorly, what may be his own objectionable beliefs, and what is merely there to satisfy the editor or to make the story feel real to him. )
"Black" is not a race either, but making offensive statements about black people is pretty much racism. Islamophobia technically might not be racist, but in practice, those anti-Muslim policies are aimed at Muslims from predominantly Arabic countries. And how is "it's technically not racism, it's just religious intolerance" better, anyways?
As far as being hyper-sensitive, easily-offended, and thin-skinned, somehow I think it's really the people defending nasty bigoted beliefs that are playing the victim card, here ...
Harsh Mistress came to mind first for me. The more I think about either story, the more I think they'd each do better as a mini-series on Netflix. Too much of the world building would have to be cut out in something that's just a couple of hours, and one hour of a Friday movie would doubtless be fight scenes.
Yes, the poster messed up but the book isn't really fascism as we know it either.
Politically it is the Roman Republic in space which is not a bad model to use in SF and Heinlein turned it into a more believable space empire than anyone else I can think of (others generally don't go into detail and use it for plot) . Yes I where the word fascism comes from but Heinlein's space Romans do not resemble the English definition.
As for pinning the views on the author (despite various characters even giving justifications and explanations in the text), his book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" has politics that is almost the opposite (and just as believable in the situation.
The thing that annoyed me the most about the movie, which had about as little to do with the book as Abrams version of Trek had to do with others, is that the troops just ran around like sheep getting killed by bugs instead of working together like in the book.
True, there's an entire huge category of Japanese Animation more closely inspired by the book than the movie was.
Given this recent election season, I think an unabashed film about a society where the vote is restricted to veterans only makes a heck of a lot of sense. Certainly better than the idiots who have voted for Republicans or Democrats.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you never served your country in any capacity - neither military nor civil service - I don't trust you with voting and nobody should.
In the American Civil War, it was discovered that human beings really don't like pointing guns at other human beings -- the vast majority of shots fired during the war were deliberately fired into the air or the ground. So in order to create an effective fighting force, militaries the world over now subject recruits to humiliating, dehumanising treatment and instil in them a deep hatred of "the other". It works well in combat, but it has knock-on effects. For one thing, civilians in an overseas warzone are the same "them" as the other army, so become the "enemy" by default. This alone explains about 95% of atrocities committed against civilians during wars in the last century.
How is this relevant here? Because it has effects when the soldiers return home. The mindset in the parent post is one of us vs them, and if you're not one of "us", you're one of "them". It's a very dangerous position to take, because it allows the arbitrary dehumanisation of anyone you like, and the recasting of people with different opinions as "enemies".
It doesn't have to be that way. Instead we can respect everyone's right to an opinion, and assume their opinions are formed in good faith. If we disagree with their opinions or their reasoning, then we can discuss and explain. Telling them their opinion doesn't count isn't productive.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
How is this relevant here? Because it has effects when the soldiers return home.
Specifically, the odds of domestic abuse go way, way up. We teach them to be shitheels and then we act surprised when they act like shitheels. There's also the issue that the military is a lot more desperate for recruits these days. Garbage in, garbage out. I do believe in rehabilitation, but that's not what the military's indoctrination is about. It's about making assholes into bigger assholes. Meanwhile, we create such animals we don't even let them have rights any more. No, really. The UCMJ forcing enlisted (or even former enlisted) into military courts is unconstitutional right on its face.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Disenfranchisement of felons in the US in principle seems acceptable, even though I am personally against it in principle. But then when you analyse it, it's unworkable. When you look at who ends up disenfranchised, there's a clear bias against non-WASPs. African-Americans and Latinos are more heavily affected than white people, and not just because they commit proportionally more crimes (that's a flawed statistic that ignores the correlation of social class with crime and the lack of social mobility for non-whites) -- it's because they get heavier sentences than whites for similar crimes, and in certain cases (e.g. drug possession) this can mean the difference between a sentence leading to disenfranchisement and one without.
Any other means of restricting the franchise is going to exhibit a similar unintended bias. Exclude military and you exclude groups that are overrepresented in the military; limit to ex-military and you exclude many other groups. Universal franchise is cleanest.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'