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.

Comments

Right.

[jrq]

The script will be written by the writers of the upcoming Baywatch film starring Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson.

It's Guy Fawkes night, not April Fool's Day!

Re:Right.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Re: Right.

[Half-pint HAL]

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.

Re: Right.

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re: Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent parody of the wolves explaining democracy to the sheep, there, Woodrow. Or was that the other way 'round. Shrug, 6 of one...

The divide-n-conquering puppet masters (yeah, the usual suspects for anyone paying attention to the Men Behind The Curtain) long ago figured out the best way to get folks to dehumanize each other was to sieze control of something, lend it out at interest, tell one bunch it was a levy, and the other, their due. Some will see patriotic duty in service of this charade, some, Archie Bunker stereotypes to be derided and mocked in honest, sincere, and well-meaning people, and ,some, business, political, or community-organizing opportunities so they don't have to do any real work, leaving that to us peons, etc.

Follow the $$$ to the Usurians. It ain't hard.

Re: Right.

[Half-pint HAL]

What I was considering saying was that if anything, that makes ex-military less suitable to make decisions than non-military. I decided against it because it sounded a lot like the same "us and them" that I was arguing against. But the thing is that this is a logical standpoint only, and it is certainly not my personal view that former service personnel should be disenfranchised. I am very much against disenfranchisement of anyone. Does that extend to deposed military dictators? My gut reaction to the suggestion that Hitler (had he not shot himself) should have been allowed to vote in democratic elections is one of utter horror, but on the other hand, Hitler was one man, who gets one vote, so yes, it would be right and fair that he gets the vote.

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.

Re: Right.

[luis_a_espinal]

If you never served your country in any capacity - neither military nor civil service - I don't trust you with voting and nobody should.

That would make you a very un-American asshole, not an educated patriot. Fortunately, the bulk of our Armed Forces understand the true nature of democracy and thus do not share your twisted, wretched view.

Re:Right.

[luis_a_espinal]

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.

Yeah, because literally there are no veterans who have (or at this moment are) voting for Republicans or Democrats. Please take your "No True Scotsman" fallacy and shove it.

Re: Right.

[ShieldW0lf]

You have never been in the military. If you had, you would know that the shit you are saying is complete fiction. I know, because I've been there.

Re: Right.

[DutchUncle]

>>> 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.

This rational approach does not work in practice. It would seem that there are situations in which differing rational people can have rational disagreements, and these typically rise from differing priorities or weights or assessments given to aspects of the situation - which is where the rationality breaks down. Consider the simple example of abortion (and note that this discussion is carefully worded to AVOID taking sides). The core argument balances on whether one considers a zygote to be a fully-qualified human; both sides progress logically from their consideration on that point. That core issue can then be complicated into "at what point" a zygote should be considered a fully-qualified human. The two sides of that core decision, and its extension, CANNOT by their very nature either consider the other to be at all rational. The bases on which the decision is made - the priorities and weights given to different considerations - are postulates rather than theorems. It's not enough to "rationally" dismiss an appeal to tradition or "sacred text", since there is "sacred text" on both sides; OTOH people who accept one "sacred text" typically ignore the earlier "sacred text" (an early form of deprecation). Also the "sacred text" is manifestly true, because it says it is.

Re: Right.

[Jzanu]

Decades ago perhaps was different, but today you WILL spend time shining that fucking rock because you are told to do it. Stupid as it is, senseless as it is, and regardless of the more effective alternatives.

Re: Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

What was your rating or MOS if I may ask?

I'm pushing my fifteenth year now, having managed to spend around a third or so of that assigned to combat duty... my longest shore posting was stint as an instructor at power school... and sure, I've never launched a shot in anger; not my part of the boat, after all. And most of my mates are just more regular guys doing a job. But we occasionally had SEALs aboard (Strictly for training evolutions and equipment familiarization, of course.) and those were some scary, cold-blooded, MOFOs.

Yes. The majority of the service is really just a massive enterprise in moving people and stuff from point A to point B and, of course, to fill out paperwork. But some ratings most assuredly do turn out stone-cold killers.

Re:Right.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Trump lost the vetran vote rather early with his crack about a second-rate real estate mogul knowing more about Syria than the generals.

Re: Right.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That would be because Human beings are not rational.

Oh, and I'd point out that the science of fetalogy, does not rely on sacred texts, unless you consider an ultrasound picture a sacred text, in which case you've got a bigger problem with your cargo cult than whether or not to let abortion be practiced.

Re: Right.

[DutchUncle]

No cargo cult here. The tradition I grew up with was the Old Testament, which suggests that people are born when they're born. Not very complex. And personally I'd say the mother's life - including psychology and impact and everything else - is what takes precedence until that independent point, and it should be the individual mother's decision because she's the one who has to live with the situation either way. To some people, this ignores the clear fact that babies can survive and thrive having been premature - I did, and my niece's daughter seems to be fine - or even delivered earlier by caesarean. The big difference is that I would not impose my sentiment on those people - I'm not INSISTING they make use of this option - but their logic is internally consistent when they seek to impose their sentiment on others, because they reason correctly from an unprovable postulate.

Re: Right.

[DutchUncle]

Nothing new. "If it moves, grease it; if it doesn't move, paint it." Every damn day.

Re:Right.

[dywolf]

Speaking as a veteran, limiting the vote to veterans is one of the stupidest, most dangerous things you can do.

Re:Right.

[dywolf]

Trump lost the veteran vote

Sadly, no he has not.

Re: Right.

[wyHunter]

The national service in Heinlein's book was NOT NECESSARILY military. It could be - the main character was in the military - but it did not have to be.

Re: Right.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Sounds like you're denying the science of fetalology altogether, and going back to sacred texts that existed before the existence of ultrasound. Not very evidence based.

Freedom abused should always be denied. We now have clear evidence of pain back to the 8th week of gestation- far before the "viable" point of 21 weeks- and clear evidence that the mother and child should be considered equals from the moment of conception. Any other point of view denies the last 30 years of research into what goes on in a human womb, and therefore should be discarded.

Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

> Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist

unbelievable. The entire movie is biting satire of the perils of a society always at war and a society with a universally hated enemy. It's brilliant in its insights; coming out in 1997, it presaged the mess that was 9/11 / war in iraq / war in afghanistan / ISIS. It's a flippin awesome movie and I think they should show it in schools to educate about the dangers of mindlessly buying into the war economy.

At last weekend's Comikaze convention in Los Angeles, I had an extended conversation about this with Caspar Van Diem. A cool guy!
I assume the new movie will be a lame rehash of action scenes, without any insights to be had.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dAzED1]

This. HighPickens and EditorDave should feel bad about themselves. Starship Troopers was a very, very obvious satirical piece, *mocking* racism through an analogy so transparent that anyone who does anything related to movie critique and yet didn't see the extremely obvious, overt, mocking of racism and war-for-war's sake, needs to go get a new job. It was over-the-top and ridiculous precisely to show how stupid most (all? meh) wars are. The bugs could think, only attacked because we attacked first, and were even giving humans the benefit of retreating back so an attempt at communication could be made...instead, we sought to exterminate them completely. Is there really anyone who can't see that it's mocking racism? That the bugs are just a replacement for badguy-of-the-month, be it Muslims, or whatever else we've decided to fear and attack?

Re:Awesome satire.

[prisoner-of-enigma]

To this generation, anything vaguely hinting of duty and authority is immediately branded fascist. Anything remotely offensive is immediately branded racist whether race is actually involved at all (for example, being against Islamic extremism is frequently called "racist" despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not a race). We've raised an entire generation of hyper-sensitive, easily-offended, thin-skinned "citizens" who are utterly repelled at the concepts espoused in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers." All this despite such a generation absolutely requiring a cadre of protectors dedicated to the very principles they abhor in order to shield them from the ramifications of their naivety.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Monkius]

Deeply unsure about that. I enjoyed that take, however.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those darn kids on your lawn again?

Re:Awesome satire.

[I'm New Around Here]

Are those darn kids on your lawn again?

A few were on mine, but I shot 'em.

Re:Awesome satire.

[jgfenix]

He is talking about the BOOK. It was clearly said.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Islam itself is racist - it is an ideology of Arabic supremacy.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Maxo-Texas]

Despite being critical, the movie was actually fairly faithful to the book's tone. The characters believed what they were saying and believed in their society. Verderhoven (sp) only turned up the dial an extra 5% to achieve the satirical effect. But the basic material was already there.

Whitewashing the books would be much worse.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

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. )

Re:Awesome satire.

[dAzED1]

which part are you deeply unsure of? That humans attacked the bugs first, and that news snippets during the movie actually spent a couple seconds talking about protestors pointing that out? Or that the whole thing was obvious satire? Spending half a second, I find an interview with the director, where he describes it as satire that mocks fascism. Even the wiki entry for the movie calls it satire - in the very first sentence . Do you seriously not catch that the whole movie is making fun of the US and the cycle of generate fear => throw the military at the problem => generate fear?

Re: Awesome satire.

[jxander]

Well, yeah. You saw what they did to robocop, right

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...anything vaguely hinting of duty and authority..."; Robert Heinlein wrote of Duty:

"Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect."

This concept of 'duty' seems to have little, if anything to do with so-called "authority". Self-proclaimed authority, and its (sometimes literal) worship, on the other hand seem quite worthy of discussion in terms of fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Re:Awesome satire.

[ArmoredDragon]

I was 15 when Starship Troopers came out, I thought it was fun movie to watch, I wasn't really into the more cerebral aspects of it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dAzED1]

Here ya go - they even briefly bring it up during the movie (good satire can't overtly call itself satire while it's being satire) - the only good bug is a dead bug - skip to 2minutes and 9 seconds. It couldn't call itself a spade any more blatantly because, well...when's the last time you saw the Onion saying "hey no really, this is all fake, satirical stuff - don't take it as real, we're mocking things to make a point..." - you won't see Onion doing that, because...it's not supposed to. You're just supposed to use common sense and see that it's satire

Re:Awesome satire.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Nonsense.

Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is based on the book in the same way that Monty Python's Life of Brian is based on the Gospel of Mathew.

Don't get me wrong: the movie was awful and I loved it, it remains one of my favorites; but it wasn't "Starship Troopers", it was "Klendathu 90210" or "Doogie Howser, SS".

Heinlein's book was an unselfconscious Libertarian fantasy, Verhoeven's movie was a sarcastic anti-authoritarian polemic.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dAzED1]

What?!?!?! They even have a "recruitment" video where they talk about a protestor doing something one day, being tried that day, then being publicly executed the next day. Is your commend satire? Or are you just that insane?

Re:Awesome satire.

[Dogtanian]

Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist

unbelievable. The entire movie is biting satire of the perils of a society always at war and a society with a universally hated enemy.

Know how I can tell you didn't read the article? (#) Because it's quite clear that in its original context- rather than the misleadingly-edited summary- that it refers to the original book, not to the film:-

Despite being not only one of Heinlein's best-selling titles and winning the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960, Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist [..]

Verhoeven's [1997 film of] Starship Troopers was anything but faithful to the novel, discarding massive elements of the book's mythology — sorry, those who wanted to see the power armor — and ramping up some of its more outré parts to create something that's as much political and social satire as it is a science fiction action movie.

At any rate Hugh Pickens' original unedited submission is also quite clear that the writer was referring to the original book. The responsibility therefore lies with "EditorDave" who we can assume was the one who cut it down. Admittedly it needed trimming, but it's also an editor's job to make sure that the meaning hasn't been misleadingly altered in the process. (##)

(#) Yeah, I know. I've been on Slashdot approaching fifteen years, and it was a cliche back then.

(##) Yeah, I know. The jokes about editors not doing their job have been a staple of Slashdot as far back as I can remember too. Doesn't excuse it, though.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Dogtanian]

The actual article makes clear that the quote refers to the novel, not the film. So does Hugh Pickens' original submission. The edited version of the summary doesn't.

Re:Awesome satire.

[gweihir]

Indeed. People seem to be unable to recognize satire these days. I though it was really, really well done and really funny in many of its gross exaggerations.

Re:Awesome satire.

[bargainsale]

That doubtless explains why most Muslims are not Arabs, and many Arabs are not Muslims.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Bodhammer]

Where does Liberty and Freedom fit in in your worldview?

Re:Awesome satire.

[pseudofrog]

Are you seriously suggesting that "this generation" is the first to interpret Heinlein's Starship Troopers as pro-fascist or racist? I didn't realize Paul Verhoeven was a millennial.

Re:Awesome satire.

[kenai_alpenglow]

"We'll always go get everyone back before we leave" - Book "Leave 'em behind, he's wounded" - Movie. Just one of multiple examples. Heck, the movie didn't even have the troopers come down in the "eggs"--one thing I was wanting to see in the movie. It was an ok movie, but the only thing it had in common with the book was the names.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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 ...

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I want Indians scalped because they're barbarians, not just their skin color. Don't call me racist."

Re:Awesome satire.

[BlueStrat]

Islam itself is racist - it is an ideology of Arabic supremacy.

Islam is a form of government that uses religion as it's basis of authority and legitimacy. It is an authoritarian theocracy designed for world conquest.

They stand (and kill) for almost everything the Progressive/Left and most of Western Europe hate. Extreme misogyny, murder of LGBTQ, female genital mutilation, forced religious indoctrination, etc etc etc.

And yet they defend them, call them the 'religion of peace' when they're anything but, import hundreds of thousands of young ME Islamic military-aged males and others into their nations with a laughable excuse for screening and call anyone who questions the wisdom of such a racist xenophobe and worse. This will not end well.

"There's going to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!" - Marvin the Martian

Strat

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those darn kids on your lawn again?

A few were on mine, but I shot 'em.

Wanna Learn more?

Re:Awesome satire.

[lenski]

Being of the "get off my lawn" age, I respond:

Authority must be earned, and upon being properly earned, respected.

Starship Troopers was an important part of my educational reading (not school assigned, but I learned much from it nonetheless...).

I learned to despise what passes for authority in the real human world, because they are utterly devoid of the sense of responsibility that Heinlein's officers and leaders showed in their actions and words. The contrast between Heinlein's descriptions of leaders and what we see today in authority figures could not be more clear.

Heinlein's leaders as described in Starship Troopers generally respected those they commanded, and were not on the take. There is no valid comparison of today's dipshit thieves and Heinlein's world.

Anyone linking what passes for authority today with Heinlein's story is bound to confuse the "wielding power" we see today, which is at best Feudalist and at worst Fascist, with respect-worthy leadership.

I am not sure whether a movie made today could possibly accurately reflect the leadership and social commitment philosophy in the book.

Re:Awesome satire.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I thought that's what I had said. I thought that

Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is based on the book in the same way that Monty Python's Life of Brian is based on the Gospel of Mathew.

was completely unambiguous. The absence of power suits was an Instant Loser for me, in terms of faithfullness to the book, philosophy be damned.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Maxo-Texas]

The power armor was the gimmick. The libertarian proto fascist philosophy was the message.

Power armor would have required Ironman level special effects to pull off.

I read starship troopers many times. It's one of my favorite books. I left the theater feeling the movie was pretty faithful to the book. Making some of the same philosophical points and even repeating many scenes from the book

I even felt Rico's parents seemed kinda nebbishy and made a good point in the argument of service equals citizenship. Basically softheads were excluded from ruling. Softheads who actually served the state had a much more realistic attitude by the time they finished their period of service.

Re:Awesome satire.

[plopez]

Propaganda pieces always present their most vile principles; e.g. the leader principle; in its most idealized, purest, and perfect form. The entire book is like that (As is "Atlas Shrugged" but that's another discussion). There are no flaws in the system as long as you obey you are well taken care of, except for that pesky "being ready to die at the drop of a hat on your leaders command" bit.

Re:Awesome satire.

[plopez]

He was all based around the leader principle.

Re:Awesome satire.

[plopez]

Seriously do you think anyone in Hollywood will even read the book? Skim it maybe at best. Then watch the movie and rework the script to amp up special effects. Done and done.

Re:Awesome satire.

[plopez]

As if anyone in Hollywood reads books.

Re:Awesome satire.

[skam240]

Hahahaha.

Well said.

Re:Awesome satire.

[I'm New Around Here]

You're so smart to figure out that "there is no race, we're all humans", but you still want to use the term 'racism'. And you act like the poster before you is the stupid one.

Re:Awesome satire.

[I'm New Around Here]

He was all based around the leader principle.

Are you referring to the Fuehrer Principle?

Or is there a different principle that is using the English word 'leader' and not the German version of the word.

Re:Awesome satire.

[hcs_$reboot]

Listening to you, S.T. is the new Nostradamus movie style. One can see anything in any movie as long as he (usually) likes it. S.T. is just an average movie, deal with it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

Ftfy:

Generate fear => never ending war => $$$$

Re:Awesome satire.

[Kjella]

Well, if you look at what a "good" Christian from 1916 or 1516 would think of 2016's society he'd be pretty shocked and appalled. The religion we have today is the same religion as the one burning witches at the stake, but the content is malleable because the Bible is full of allegories and euphemisms, not to mention we often plain out ignore certain chapters that conflict with modern society. People think other religions are like their own religion and that their Holy Book is just as much a guideline as our own Holy Book and that they can assimilate modern principles into their religion as easily as we did in ours. Experience from practice suggests that's not the case, but as long as people believe that they don't see the harm.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Awesome satire.

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Like I said, anything remotely offensive is branded racist...or, in your case, bigoted. Can't say anything critical about certain politically-protected groups, now, can we? Even when it's true, speaking it aloud gets you the PC equivalent of the scarlet letter.

Please, find me something incorrect in the poster's statement regard the central tenets of Islam? Homosexuality is a deadly sin, repression of women, religious indoctrination...if this were called "Christianity" instead of "Islam" you'd be calling them backwards, knuckle-dragging, inbred hillbillies who are stupidly worshiping a sky fairy. Alas, bashing Christians is in vogue, just as defending Muslims is in vogue.

Gotta love progressives. Hypocrisy, doublethink, and cognitive dissonance are so entertaining to watch.

Re:Awesome satire.

[CaptainLard]

To this generation, anything vaguely hinting of duty and authority is immediately branded fascist.

Hey look! This guy is from the establishment and trying to control us with regulations and take our guns! Since he wants such a strong government he must be a Democrat!

Re:Awesome satire.

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that the majority of Muslims aren't Arabs, right?

Or maybe not. The level of knowledge of some people here outside fairly limited technical areas is stunning. It's like a forum filled with Rain Man-like idiot savants who can memorize phone books, but have absolutely no knowledge of the world outside their house.

Re:Awesome satire.

[MightyMartian]

Pointing out that a bigoted rant is a bigoted rant isn't bigotry. It's also useful to note that not all prejudice is bad. For instance, being prejudiced against racist ignorant morons who have no fucking idea what they're talking about isn't bad. It's good.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Pseudonym]

To this generation, anything vaguely hinting of duty and authority is immediately branded fascist.

To this generation, the vast majority of institutions and people who have found themselves in positions of authority have shown themselves to be deeply corrupt and generally rotten to the core.

Anything remotely offensive is immediately branded racist whether race is actually involved at all (for example, being against Islamic extremism is frequently called "racist" despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not a race).

Congratulations, you can read an old dictionary. For the record, being against Islamic extremism isn't the problem and never has been. Everyone who isn't an Islamic extremist is against Islamic extremism.

The problem is that the sentiment is more typically expressed as being against Islam in general, and being against refugees (or non-refugee immigrants) trying to get away from Islamic extremism in particular. What would you call that if not "racism"?

We've raised an entire generation of hyper-sensitive, easily-offended, thin-skinned "citizens" who are utterly repelled at the concepts espoused in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers."

What the generation who grew up then doesn't seem to realise is that those "concepts espoused" were quite new at the time. The time between the start of World War 2 and when Starship Troopers was published is shorter than the time between the end of the Cold War and today. It was published just over a year before Eisenhower's speech warning of the military-industrial complex.

Traditional values typically aren't. Conservatives typically don't.

Re:Awesome satire.

[rholtzjr]

We've raised an entire generation of hyper-sensitive, easily-offended, thin-skinned "citizens" who are utterly repelled at the concepts espoused in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers."

I blame it on Barney the Dinosaur ("I love you, you love me.....". I could not get that stupid song out of my head for years).

Re: Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

I think you're right, there is a lot of violence in some muslim countries. But I think the bigger threat to USA is his "war on terrorism" which by definition never ends and requires us to give up more and more of our freedoms.

Think about it. "Iraq war" we won because we caught Saddam. "Afghanistan war" I guess wound down because the Al Quaeda was pretty much broken. But the War on Terrorism has no fixed endpoint. We will be fighting it forever.

Pop quiz hotshot: there has always been terrorism, and there always will be terrorism.

Re: Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

Your larger point is true, but i think the GP was talking about Wahhabi and Sufi extremists sects, which are very much based in the middle east. These are the main generators of the violent extremist muslim ideology.

I'm not even sure what their end goal is. Maybe they don't know. I think they want to impose extreme ideological purity, as defined by their own philosophy, on everyone else. And they are willing to use all manner of extremist violence to achieve it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[lenski]

Can't argue that... The book discussed a utopian ideal that (as you note correctly is much like Atlas Shrugged) cannot exist in reality.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Ol Olsoc]

which part are you deeply unsure of? That humans attacked the bugs first, and that news snippets during the movie actually spent a couple seconds talking about protestors pointing that out? Or that the whole thing was obvious satire?

I have found that a huge percentage of America does not understand satire at all. Satire requires introspection and an ability to think critically, both considered bad by a lot of people.

Probably the best example is Poe's law, which I end up passing through a lot. Where a satire ridiculing an extreme position is indistinguishable from what a person who actually believes that extreme position would write.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Carewolf]

Yeah, sounds like the new movie is going to be serious about being fascist instead of taking the piss out of it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[DNS-and-BIND]

To this generation, the vast majority of institutions and people who have found themselves in positions of authority have shown themselves to be deeply corrupt and generally rotten to the core.

That's no way to talk about Hillary!

Re:Awesome satire.

[Pseudonym]

That's no way to talk about Hillary!

There's an insightful meme going around to the effect that this election is a choice between everything that's wrong about US government and everything that's wrong about US culture. Lest anyone accuse me of false equivalence, one corollary of this is that at least (and, quite possibly at most) Clinton won't make things worse.

Re:Awesome satire.

[ravenshrike]

Remove head from rectum, and read SiaSL, TMiaHM, Friday, and Job.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Boronx]

The article is referring to the book, not the movie. The book is pretty fascist.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Boronx]

Real life is full of dip shit thieves, which is why Heinleins society (important parts of which have already been tried) will never work or even be a good idea.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Cyberax]

"Starship Troopers" is not "remotely" hinting at anything. It _is_ fascist militarist fiction. It's funny that Heinlein himself couldn't even justify it in-novel. Read it again, you'll see a dialog about why they keep voting rights to military - the answer is basically "just because".

The behavior of troopers is also contrary to the modern rules and laws of war.

Re:Awesome satire.

[ravenshrike]

If it were a utopian ideal, then people wouldn't have been leaving the planet in droves(Or did you think all those colonists were just bored?). Indeed, apart from how you gain the franchise and that it is some form of representative democracy, very little specific to the operation of the government is even described in the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Awesome satire.

[tsotha]

The movie didn't have much in the way of "cerebral aspects". Read the book - it's an easy read and not very long.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Oligonicella]

That "something" was murder and the "protestor" was never referred to as such. Otherwise, your memory is great.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Boronx]

Heinlein's society is basically a military controlled utopia. If Fascism had worked like fascist thought it would, it would have turned out something like this. Because its fiction, Heinlein can portray everything turning out fine, but you don't have to believe it.

What happens when those who did not serve want political power nevertheless? What does the military do to stop them? Do we even need to pose this hypothetical? There are thousands and thousands of histories of countries run by a military backed minority.

Someone once said that Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. This is cruel, but at least the majority is satisfied. Heinlein is the same thing, but the sheep and one wolf don't get a vote.

The book doesn't seem racist to me. Maybe they mean that us-or-them attitude the book takes towards alien antagonists.

Re: Awesome satire.

[Time_Ngler]

Especially now that one of presidential candidates is funded by the same people that fund terrorism and hold the oil needed to fight wars with.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Z00L00K]

The movie did put irony into a book that was written as an experiment to see how far that you could stretch some notions in society. Heinlein did that often in his books - trying to experiment with what can humans become when certain rules were applied.

Take a book that has brought society to an extreme not very different from the Nazi Germany extreme and then apply a layer of irony upon that when making the movie. I think that it's going to be hard to actually top that. Many movies that are literal to the books are usually ending up too stiff to be good.

Re: Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

The terrorists want donald trump to win.

Re: Awesome satire.

[David_Hart]

I think you're right, there is a lot of violence in some muslim countries. But I think the bigger threat to USA is his "war on terrorism" which by definition never ends and requires us to give up more and more of our freedoms.

Think about it. "Iraq war" we won because we caught Saddam. "Afghanistan war" I guess wound down because the Al Quaeda was pretty much broken. But the War on Terrorism has no fixed endpoint. We will be fighting it forever.

Pop quiz hotshot: there has always been terrorism, and there always will be terrorism.

"The war on Drugs" had it's role to play in the militarization of police forces. It too has no end and required giving up rights such as overly broad search and seizure laws, mandatory sentencing, etc. The War on terror takes it even further. But, in my opinion, without the war on drugs, the freedoms lost to the war on terror would have shocked people to no end.

Re:Awesome satire.

[lgw]

why they keep voting rights to military - the answer is basically "just because".

They don't restrict voting rights to the military - read it again. I could be wrong, but I think most of the serving military couldn't vote, not having finished their first term. You had to have completed some sort of term of service to the community (military was just one option) to earn the vote.

Heinlein himself couldn't even justify it in-novel

The entire book is presented from the point of view of people raised in the society. Therefore, everything about the society, our protagonist and his friends see as normal, because that's what they grew up with. It's neither presented as particularly good or bad, just the way things are. It's never "justified", merely explained.

Heinlein wrote many books about some particular political ideology taken to its logical extreme, in a (mostly) sincere and non-corrupt way, running the spectrum from fascism to libertarianism. They each explored the good and bad elements of that society, for there are always both in any interesting society.

The behavior of troopers is also contrary to the modern rules and laws of war.

There are no "laws" of war, there are treaties, binding only as long as both sides adhere to them. (As an aside, the last enemy the US fought that signed the Geneva convention was the Nazis - everyone since then has behaved worse than the Nazis towards captives and civilians). Do you believe the bugs signed any such treaties?

Or are you talking about the military traditions that set so much of modern military behavior? In a fictional world with its own history and traditions? Most of what played out in the military was exactly as Johnnie expected, suggesting it was fully in line with military tradition.

Re:Awesome satire.

[lgw]

Heinlein's book was an unselfconscious Libertarian fantasy,

Are you confusing it with Moon? Nothing about the society was libertarian - it was straight-up authoritarian. It's often described as fascist, but I think that's people conflating any sort of authoritarianism with fascism.

The big miss of Verhoeven's movie was that it showed the soldiers as poorly equipped and expendable, quite the opposite of the book (where everyone was in powered battle armor, and superior 1-on-1 against a bug soldier).

Re:Awesome satire.

[lgw]

libertarian proto fascist philosophy

You do realize that libertarianism and fascism/authoritarianism are opposite ends of a political spectrum, right? Because you seem pretty confused about this.

Re:Awesome satire.

[lgw]

The book is pretty fascist.

What does that mean? Is a history of Germany in the 30s a book that is "pretty fascist"? The book described a society (authoritarian, but not fascist, there are other sorts of authoritarian governments you know), neither endorsing nor condemning it, instead describing it from the point of view of someone who grew up there, horrifying bits and all.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Cyberax]

They don't restrict voting rights to the military - read it again. I could be wrong, but I think most of the serving military couldn't vote, not having finished their first term. You had to have completed some sort of term of service to the community (military was just one option) to earn the vote.

I actually re-read the portion describing it and they DO restrict rights to those who served in the Federal Service. Though the book does state that most servicemen (as in most real armies) do not see any combat.

It's neither presented as particularly good or bad, just the way things are. It's never "justified", merely explained.

Heinlein quite obviously tries to justify it in-universe and pretty much fails.

I found the relevant piece:

Sally didn't tell it by the book. Finally Major Reid cut him off. "Bring a summary to class tomorrow, three thousand words. Mr. Salomon, can you give me a reason—not historical nor theoretical but practical—why the franchise is today limited to discharged veterans?"

"Uh, because they are picked men, sir. Smarter."

"Preposterous!"

"Sir?"

"Is the word too long for you? I said it was a silly notion. Service men are not brighter than civilians. In many cases civilians are much more intelligent. That was the sliver of justification underlying the attempted coup d'etat just before the Treaty of New Delhi, the so-called ‘Revolt of the Scientists': let the intelligent elite run things and you'll have utopia. It fell flat on its foolish face of course. Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility. I've given you a hint, Mister; can you pick it up?"

Sally answered, "Uh, service men are disciplined, sir."

Major Reid was gentle with him. "Sorry. An appealing theory not backedup by facts. You and I are not permitted to vote as long as we remain in the Service, nor is it verifiable that military discipline makes a man self-disciplined once he is out; the crime rate of veterans is much like that of civilians. And you have forgotten that in peacetime most veterans come from non-combatant auxiliary services and have not been subjected to the full rigors of military discipline; they have merely been harried, overworked, and endangered—yet their votes count."

Major Reid smiled. "Mr. Salomon, I handed you a trick question. The practical reason for continuing our system is the same as the practical reason for continuing anything: It works satisfactorily.

And there's actually a country that's close to what Heinlein dreamed of - it's China. Gaining political power unofficially requires at least some military service... with the expected results: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Or are you talking about the military traditions that set so much of modern military behavior?

Stuff like adherence to Geneva Convention: nuclear bombing a city (with "small" 2kt nuclear weapons), purposefully attacking civilian infrastructure to intimidate the population, that sort of thing. And right at the beginning of the book.

Of course after that Heinlein invents an enemy that is completely alien and unreasonable so that chemical weapons and massive nuclear bombardments against them pose no ethical questions (which is a crime against literature). "Old Man's War" by Scalzi is much more nuanced in this regard.

Re:Awesome satire.

[ceoyoyo]

Stuff like adherence to Geneva Convention: nuclear bombing a city (with "small" 2kt nuclear weapons), purposefully attacking civilian infrastructure to intimidate the population, that sort of thing. And right at the beginning of the book.

So just like WWII then.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Maxo-Texas]

No, having been a libertarian for over a decade, I can see how quickly magical libertarianism can fall into fascism in the real world. There is nothing to block the strongest from taking over under a libertarian system. Starship troopers assumes for some magical reason the government wouldn't abuse it's power when history shows military rule is no protection against the corruption of power.

But it was a great read as a young teenager.

Re:Awesome satire.

[lgw]

What part of Troopers seemed in any way libertarian? The authoritarian government wasn't very corrupt, in-book because the people voting actually cared a lot about that, but it certainly "abused its power", at least from my point of view.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Half-pint HAL]

> Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist

unbelievable. The entire movie is biting satire of the perils of a society always at war and a society with a universally hated enemy.

The book. They're talking about the book Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. To be honest, I don't see how you can really make a film out of a book which was mostly about the thoughts of a guy jumping around in a suit of power-enhanced armour (Warhammer 40K's Space Marines are heavily derived from the Mobile Infantry of the book) firing miniature nuclear warheads at aliens from a distance, but there you go.

Re: Awesome satire.

[Half-pint HAL]

Your larger point is true, but i think the GP was talking about Wahhabi and Sufi extremists sects, which are very much based in the middle east. These are the main generators of the violent extremist muslim ideology.

...which is why it is so wrong to associate the violence with Islam. Associating the whole religion with the actions of a violent few is like blaming Burlington, Vermont for Ted Bundy's actions.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Half-pint HAL]

Prejudice is not bad, it's a core mechanism of the human brain. It is only a problem when we cease to use our higher functions to challenge it. But that's really off-topic, so to bring it back to the topic, that's the problem with Heinlein's original book. It's a long time since I read it, but I don't remember there being anything at all that challenged the idea that the Arachnids were anything but enemies, and the nicknaming of them as "bugs" was never questioned. It was a simple "they started it, let's kill em" plot.

The real danger in the book is that at that time all wars were actually fought between humans (primitive, pre-interstellar wars are hard to picture, I know) and "nasty aliens attack and we are obliged to kill them all" hides the true moral issues that underlie genuine human conflict. This thread occurs in all countries' fiction at some point, but it just keeps bubbling back to the surface in America at the moment. Independence Day and Battle: Los Angeles were the same. Faceless, voiceless, nameless enemies that appear, attack and must therefore be killed. Do not question, merely shoot. In Independence Day, the people who believed in peaceful coexistence were the first to be killed. That's more than a little symbolic. Scary scary psychology.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Half-pint HAL]

"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?

That's far more insightful than the zero score reflects.

The whole concept of racism proliferates racism by reinforcing the flawed belief in "race". There is no such thing as race. For much of last century, it was believed that the humans of the different continents evolved from different ancestral species of homonid -- by talking about races, they were really talking about specieses... and people really, really believed that.

Every time someone says "that's not racist", they're reinforcing some bullshit arbitrary distinction between nonsensical "races". And the worst part of it is, our concept of race is so skewed that you're only white if all you ancestors were, but one bit of black and you're black; for example, Barack Obama is categorised as "America's first black president" rather than "America's latest white president" and people are howling about having a "black" MJ in the latest Spiderman film. Barack Obama and Zendaya both have white mothers, so why do we define their "race" by 50% of their genes?

Racism is racist.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Half-pint HAL]

Stuff like adherence to Geneva Convention: nuclear bombing a city (with "small" 2kt nuclear weapons), purposefully attacking civilian infrastructure to intimidate the population, that sort of thing. And right at the beginning of the book.

So just like WWII then.

Yes. But we are supposed to be OK with that. And I am not OK with that.

Re: Awesome satire.

[cyber-vandal]

You need to stop watching Alex Jones mate. It's rotting your brain.

Re:Awesome satire.

[quenda]

That doubtless explains why most Muslims are not Arabs, and many Arabs are not Muslims.

Arabs are not even a race either. They are a language group, like "Hispanic". Arabs can be white & blue-eyed, black or brown.

Re:Awesome satire.

[drinkypoo]

This. HighPickens and EditorDave should feel bad about themselves. Starship Troopers was a very, very obvious satirical piece, *mocking* racism through an analogy so transparent that anyone who does anything related to movie critique and yet didn't see the extremely obvious, overt, mocking of racism and war-for-war's sake, needs to go get a new job.

What's more, for all the movie's ills and failings, this was the one thing it managed to get right! In the theater I laughed out loud at the ham-handed propaganda techniques used in the film reel inserts in the movie. A lot of people didn't get it. I suspect that a lot of Slashdotters don't even get it. Overestimating people is just as large a failure as underestimating them. What's fascinating is that Paul Verhoeven also made Total Recall, which is another cheesy sci-fi adaptation which manages to retain the central theme and address the main point of the book while also being an explosion-laden cheesefest. I'm more and more impressed by him as time goes by. He may not make great adaptations, but they are fun and also adress the central theme that made the book great.

Re:Awesome satire.

[drinkypoo]

If it were a utopian ideal, then people wouldn't have been leaving the planet in droves(Or did you think all those colonists were just bored?).

I just thought they had a population problem, which is what would happen if you had both unlimited resources and the right to procreate. Indeed, we have one already. (Though our technology in theory will let the planet support even more people than what we have now, we're not using it that way, and we are spending through natural capital at an unsustainable rate.)

Re:Awesome satire.

[drinkypoo]

Heinlein quite obviously tries to justify it in-universe and pretty much fails.

He doesn't try. His character tries. Go look to see what Heinlein's next book is if you don't think that Troopers was meant as satire.

Re:Awesome satire.

[drinkypoo]

Lest anyone accuse me of false equivalence, one corollary of this is that at least (and, quite possibly at most) Clinton won't make things worse.

That's an incredibly stupid thing to say. The status quo is that things keep getting worse for the populace. Clinton is the status quo candidate. Thus, the one thing we can place money upon is that under Clinton, things will get worse. This is not an endorsement of Trump; it is rather a condemnation of your sloppy thinking.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Monkius]

That the book is a satire. In fact, I don't think anyone who has read it thinks it is (though it doesn't take itself very seriously). The movie takes potshots at facism and war propaganda, yes.

Re:Awesome satire.

[drinkypoo]

For instance, being prejudiced against racist ignorant morons who have no fucking idea what they're talking about isn't bad. It's good.

Well, you have there in a nutshell why I don't trust religious people. They're not all racist, but they are all willfully ignorant and most of them are morons. That most people in general are morons does nothing to detract from the argument. Indeed, it strengthens it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Dogtanian]

That wasn't the point being made.

Noah Haders felt able to criticise the article despite it being obvious he'd never actually read it- only someone relying on the misleadingly-edited summary would have taken it to refer to the film, rather than the book.

Meanwhile, his comment was edited up to "5: Insightful" by people who- equally obviously- hadn't read the article either.

Re:Awesome satire.

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, having been a libertarian for over a decade, I can see how quickly magical libertarianism can fall into fascism in the real world. There is nothing to block the strongest from taking over under a libertarian system.

Versus a Democracy, or Republic, or Socialist ideology which can never fall into fascism in the real world... Libertarianism at least tries to maintain some semblance of "power from the people" as opposed to most of the other government ideologies.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no way to talk about Hillary!

There's an insightful meme going around to the effect that this election is a choice between everything that's wrong about US government and everything that's wrong about US culture. Lest anyone accuse me of false equivalence, one corollary of this is that at least (and, quite possibly at most) Clinton won't make things worse.

Things can always get worse.

Re: Awesome satire.

[cyber-vandal]

I live in Western Europe. I've got a better idea of what's going on here than someone on the other side of the Atlantic who doesn't leave their basement. What I think of Islam is largely irrelevant.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Starship Troopers" is not "remotely" hinting at anything. It _is_ fascist militarist fiction.

There's nothing fascist about that society. Facists believe that democracy is obsolete, but in that society anybody can vote - provided they first serve - and voting is very important. Voting is not tied to sex, or race, or land ownership, or wealth. That society is far more democratic than Athenian democracy (where only 15-20% of the population could vote), and more democratic than any society where voting is based on wealth or land ownership (such as many democratic societies throughout history).

Universal suffrage has not been and does not need to be a defining characteristic for a society to be viewed as a liberal democracy - because throughout history the vast majority of liberal democracies have not had it, and there are still liberal democracies that do not have it today. For example, in 2008 in the USA we find 5.8 million people were not allowed to vote as a result of with felony convictions, and another 11 million do not get to vote as a result of being "illegal" aliens (even if they have lived here for decades).

Labeling that society fascist is simply a way to reject the ideas without having to resort to logic or reason. It's knee-jerk reactionism.

Re:Awesome satire.

[ravenshrike]

You say rights, plural. What's the second one? The franchise is the only right given to Service veterans in the book. You could call preferential job treatment in certain job sectors a right, except given it requires a 20 yeah run, that's not applicable to the majority of citizens.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

> rather than "America's latest white president"

A characteristic that ALL presidents shared at one point or another.

Re:Awesome satire.

[HornWumpus]

You can prejudge based on facts (you never have complete facts).

I am prejudiced against crack heads and tweakers for example. I don't have to know they are thieves, I assume it. That's prejudice, but it's completely reasonable.

Re: Awesome satire.

[Time_Ngler]

I was actually talking about Hillary. The Clinton foundation accepted donations from Qatar and tried to hide it, and according to wikileaks, the government of Qatar is funding ISIL.

http://mobile.reuters.com/arti...

From https://wikileaks.org/podesta-...

we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence >> assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, >> which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and >> other radical Sunni groups in the region.

Re:Awesome satire.

[cwsumner]

Are those darn kids on your lawn again?

The kids that were on my lawn were sent over to Iraq, and have not come back...

Re:Awesome satire.

[SvnLyrBrto]

> The entire movie is biting satire

I have little doubt that was at least part of Paul Verhoeven intention. His execution left much to be desired though. So I could easily forgive someone who watched it and thought it was just an extraordinarily poor attempt at rendering Heinlein's work onto the screen. Even if he'd done as good a job at satire as he did with, for example, Robocop; that would still miss a lot of the point of the book though. Heinlein's novel was very much more nuanced than the "military good, war good, only good bug is a dead bug" screed that Verhoeven seems to have taken away and wanted to tear down.

Remember, Paul Verhoeven has had a very much "hit or miss" career. When he did good... Robocop, Total Recall... he really nailed it. When he did bad... Showgirls, Starship Troopers... he knocked out some real stinkers.

Re:Awesome satire.

[cwsumner]

... I actually re-read the portion describing it and they DO restrict rights to those who served in the Federal Service. Though the book does state that most servicemen (as in most real armies) do not see any combat. ...

In the book, "Federal Service" includes many things besides Military. What we call First Responders, things like Forest FireWatch, Space exploration, Disaster Rescue, many things that most don't want to do but has to be done.

Re:Awesome satire.

[cwsumner]

Stuff like adherence to Geneva Convention: nuclear bombing a city (with "small" 2kt nuclear weapons), purposefully attacking civilian infrastructure to intimidate the population, that sort of thing. And right at the beginning of the book.

So just like WWII then.

Yes. But we are supposed to be OK with that. And I am not OK with that.

The characters in the book were ok with it. The citizens in WWII were ok with it. You are not one of the characters in the book.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Cyberax]

Actually it doesn't. The book itself doesn't name any other occupations in the "Federal Service". Later author's comments expand it, but not the book itself.

Re:Awesome satire.

[cwsumner]

Satire is what happens when someone wants to make Innovative Art, but doesn't know how, and then gets despirate.

Never do satire, especially when people can't see your face. It will only make people thing you are a bit stupid... ;-)

Re:Awesome satire.

[Shirley Marquez]

Perhaps the original post has been edited. It now says that the novel has been accused of promoting fascism and being racist. The film is clearly a satire of militarism - which was why many Heinlein fans hated it, they felt it was a perversion of the author's intent. It sounds like the filmmakers are aiming to do a sort of Heinlein Light - softening the fascist and racist aspects while retaining the book's positivity toward military service and its take on the responsibilities of citizenship. I don't know whether it's possible to achieve that balance or whether the original source is too flawed under the lens of current day politics.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dywolf]

they call it racist because its also usually seen, and opposed, on ethnic grounds, which is pretty close to "racist". and religionist and ethnicist aren't really words in use yet.

and really, what you're describing, is really just your own nostalgia at not being able to be openly and publicly prejudiced anymore.
we're not thin skinned because we disagree with the open use of slurs, nor is disagreement with such usage naiveté.
instead we are better people for it, as is the nation.

as no, we don't require a cadre of protectors we disagree with.
this may be news to you, but many of us are veterans and police officers and other guardian type folks.

Heinlein's book is largely garbage. among his works, it's probably one of his weakest. the main redeeming quality, beside some fairly entertaining space opera, is when it's main character is viewed as an example of good leadership (hence it's presence on the Commandant's Reading List). and I don't think he wrote it to be a treatise on government; he simply chose a background setting that fit the story he wanted to tell. but calling its backdrop fascist is accurate.

in short, shutup dude, you don't know what youre talking about.
the kids are gonna be alright, just like you were, despite your forbears making the same dire predictions.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dywolf]

if it were valid criticism you'd have a point.
but its not.

its naked bigotry and outright lies based in ignorance and falsehoods trying to cloak itself under the guise of "criticism" despite having no valid claim to that word.

no, hundreds of thousands of "middle eastern fighting age males" are not being imported.
no the screening isn't laughable (but your ignorance is).

no, those weren't central tenets anymore than grabbing a random line of law out of Exodus makes it a central tenet of Christianity.
by focusing on just those parts of Islam you reveal your own ignorance about everything else in the religion, labeling an entire religion on the basis of a few extremists who falsely claim the religion and base their world view on just a few sentences of the book. that's no more valid than labeling all Christians as homophobes and bigots on the basis of the Westboro Baptists obsession with homosexuals deriving a single line of the Old Testament.

Its not hypocrisy to defend their right to exist against the ignorant, such as yourself, who say they have no such right, even as we criticize their shortcomings (the real ones) which we do. but notice we don't criticize all of Islam for the failing of one country. Iran has compulsory Hijab. that's bad. France has tried to ban the hijab. That's ALSO bad. The Taliban's interpretation and implementation of womens rights (ie, none) is bad. But not all Islamic countries are the same, and there have been more female heads of state from Islamic countries than western European's have (note the exclusion of central and south America cause they also have had several).

In fact, most of the things you complain about and try to paint as applying to ALL of Islam really only apply to a few people in a few countries who are abusing their power. Should we denounce all democracies because the NSA was reading everyones email? Should we denounce all christianity because a handful of priests abused alter boys and were shielded by their bishops? Prior to the Iranian Revolution and the Taliban's defeat of the Mujahedeen and subsequent takeover of Afghanistan, both those countries were fairly secular and even westernized nations.

Re:Awesome satire.

[dywolf]

one could make the argument that Heinlein intentionally chose a very alien enemy to highlight and embody how we dehumanize our enemies through propaganda to make them seem less than human. remember, Heinlein lived through WWII, so he saw the way the Japanese and Germans were depicted. especially the Japanese (since there were still far far more people of German descent and even with family still over there who might call BS on going too far). and we continued to do the same in regards to communist Russia.

Re:Awesome satire.

[wyHunter]

Indeed but to the same people that say this being anti-Jew is considered "Good." Disgusting.

Re:Awesome satire.

[painandgreed]

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.

Due to the obvious lack of heavy weapons, armor, any sort of tactics, etc used in fighting the bugs, I figured they were being sent out against the bugs by the government to get killed. Using small arms like they did against the bugs was pretty much the wrong tool for the problem. The point to using a weapon is to be able to kill, or at least neutralize the threat from, the opponent with a single use of it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[wyHunter]

No, you are 100% wrong. Active duty soldiers cannot vote - re-read the book. They 'vote' by staying in the military and supporting the system under which they live by making their drops etc. Plus the national service required to earn the franchise might not be military. Re-read the book. When your race (the human race) is fighting against another race (not the human race) that is trying to destroy you utterly you might find that rules of war go out the window. Just saying.

Re:Awesome satire.

[wyHunter]

The difference between China and ST is that the residents - non citizens - had civil rights and property rights - and last i noted in the ST there was not 'mobile execution vans' going round killing criminals.

Re:Awesome satire.

[wyHunter]

Did you READ THE BOOK? As opposed to watching that movie that had almost nothing in common with the book?

Re: Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

Which doesn't say that Clinton is funded by Qatar. The Clinton Foundation accepted a very large donation. I'd think the government of Qatar thought they'd get special access to the Secretary of State. I'd need more evidence to know if they got it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

Islam is a form of government that uses religion as it's basis of authority and legitimacy

Islam is a religion, not a form of government. Muslim countries tend to be authoritarian, but they aren't a single theocracy (well, ISIS purports to be the theocracy, but obviously isn't). Muslims tend to think that mixing religion and government is a good idea, which I intensely disagree with, much like a lot of Christians even now.

Female genital mutilation is not a Muslim practice, although it seems to be predominantly in Muslim countries. If it were part if Islam, it would be much more widespread. There's lots of Muslims that believe in "honor killings" and the like; do you think they'd hesitate to mutilate young girls if it was part of their religion?

I'm not fond of Islam, and I'm not fond of most of the Muslim societies I know of. However, they are humans, and have human rights, and right now a large number of them are bona fide refugees.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

Race is primarily a social construct, and so is whatever a society defines a race as. This has varied over time, as well as what groups are classified as.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

Given areas to colonize, you will get colonists who just don't like it at home.

I thought that the most interesting departure from reality was not the scientific-looking stuff, but having an objective morality simple enough to prove stuff with. At one point in the book, Rico is assigned to write, in symbolic logic, how high a priority recovering prisoners should be after a war. Despite this, the form of government is selected "because it works", with only veterans being able to vote (although "veteran" in this case includes people with completely nonmilitary service).

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

The right to vote is restricted to those who have completed their terms in Federal Service, but that's much more than just the military. Rico wanted to be in the military, and the story is from his point of view, so the rest of the service is mostly glossed over.

It's still a bad idea, but it's a somewhat different bad idea than many people think.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

In the part about Rico's preferences, he puts down military occupations only, deciding that if he can't even get into the Mobile Infantry he didn't care what they had him do, but there's a couple of random nonmilitary possibilities mentioned.

It was clear that a person could sign up and serve his or her term no matter what, although they'd have trouble finding a use for a blind and deaf paraplegic. A recruit that washed out in MI basic training refused to accept a medical discharge, and was still removed from the training camp.

There's relatively little mention of non-military service in the book, but it's not a sociological treatise, it's Rico's point of view.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

Heinlein's society is basically a military controlled utopia.

The form of government is left very vague. It's some sort of democracy where only those who have completed a term of service (probably non-military) can vote. In the few glimpses we get of non-military life, there is a required course in History and Moral Philosophy, which, in Rico's school, is taught by a military veteran, but other than that I don't remember military control.

What happens when those who did not serve want political power nevertheless?

They are politely told to sign up like everyone else with the franchise. The idea is that a term of service is an easier way to get the vote than organizing revolution. That's the whole idea behind the form of government: it's not that people who have served are better in any way, but that people who want to change things will find it practical to serve their term.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

Democracies try to maintain some semblance of "power from the people", and that includes socialist ones. Libertarianism is hardly unique here.

Re:Awesome satire.

[david_thornley]

I haven't seen it. A friend of mine who liked the book told me that the movie was shot from the point of view of the bugs, who depicted themselves as people and those big scary MIs as monsters.

Re:Awesome satire.

[strikethree]

Is there really anyone who can't see that it's mocking racism? That the bugs are just a replacement for badguy-of-the-month, be it Muslims, or whatever else we've decided to fear and attack?

But of course, none of this had anything at all to do with the book. The movie just grabbed a few items from the book and tried to write a whole new narrative; therefore, it should have never been called Starship Troopers based on Heinlein's book. It should have been called anything else at all. I was so disappointed when walking out of the theater. It may have been a good movie, but I never noticed. I was expecting the movie to, in some way, actually relate to the book.

History and Moral Philosophy? WTF is THAT?

Re:Awesome satire.

[strikethree]

You are aware, I trust, that the majority of Muslims aren't Arabs, right?

The majority of Muslims are not white and/or eurocentric; therefore, it does not matter if they are A-Rabs or Malaysian. They are not "us". That is all that counts... (I know you can not see my eyes rolling right now but that is ok)

Re:Awesome satire.

[strikethree]

(As an aside, the last enemy the US fought that signed the Geneva convention was the Nazis - everyone since then has behaved worse than the Nazis towards captives and civilians)

Hm. I will grant that burning people alive is pretty horrid but putting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people into trains without food or water and without concern for their survival (after all they were only going to get gassed. gotta love that zyklon b) seems to be against the Geneva Conventions. The Nazis also used the Jews for sexual pleasures so the forced marriages and outright rapes by subsequent aggressors can not really be considered "worse".

Re:Awesome satire.

[cwsumner]

That also means that much of the "flack" about the book is from people that did not understand what the book was saying, but assumed they did.

That's why people with military experience tend to feel better about it, the military teaches people to be more careful with things! ;-)

Re:Awesome satire.

[BlueStrat]

It's funny you mention that since all the same criticisms of Islam are also valid when leveled against Christianity. Christianity also puts God's law above the laws of men. Christianity is also replete with massacres against unbelievers. Remember when Moses told his followers to kill all the men and older women, and keep only the virgin women? Good times!

The difference between Christianity and Islam is that Christianity went through a reformation and many large US Christian denominations even have female pastors, and some include LGBTQ as well. Almost all believe that God meant it when he said "Vengeance is mine" and the vast majority are quite pacifistic and nonviolent in most circumstances. There are no 'honor killings' or fatwas issued. Nobody is threatened or killed for leaving Christianity. The vast majority who do object to non-hetero sex are of the "hate the sin but love the sinner" type.

Islam has not seen a similar reformation to adapt to modern society and still largely operates from a 6th-century set of morals, laws, principles, and practices. On the whole as it currently stands, Islam is totally incompatible with the modern world. Islam must either reform itself or risk being reformed or destroyed by the rest of the world. One of the two IS going to happen. It's up to believers in Islam to choose. So far, they have chosen violent conflict.

Religion must be eliminated if we are to go forward together as a species. Not outlawed and systematically destroyed, but simply educated away.

The problem is twofold; first, it is human nature to form religions/believe in supernatural forces. Short of some sort of mind-control you will fail, as the Chinese fail. Second, a functioning society that is not a prison/police state requires a common moral framework among its' citizens for peace and order to be maintained, and religion has been the only system to achieve it to any meaningful and useful degree. This is particularly true the more free and open the society is, as in such societies, restraints on personal behavior are most often self-imposed.

Strat

Re:Awesome satire.

[RespekMyAthorati]

The term "race" really has no precise, globally accepted definition.

Re:Awesome satire.

[RespekMyAthorati]

and read SiaSL

What does the Southern Illinois Adult Soccer League have to do with this?

Re:Awesome satire.

[RespekMyAthorati]

There is no such thing as race.

It's just a word in the English language, and as such has multiple meanings.
Associating a particular individual with a particular race is pretty much impossible,
but there are groups of people whose ancient ancestors came
mostly from Africa, East Asia, South Asia, northern Europe. That is a perfectly valid way to define the word "race".

Re: Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

I know you're talking about hillary, but I'm talking about donald trump.

Re:Awesome satire.

[keithrc]

You completely missed the most important part of that quote: "Starship Troopers [the novel] has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist" The novel and the movie are very different in this regard. Verhoeven took an unironic novel about fascism and turned it into a satire.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Noah Haders]

I think if you read the quote in its full context you would have seen that while the author thought he was talking about the novel, infact he was talking about the movie and mischaracterizing it. You have to get inside people's heads to truly know what they mean...

Re:Awesome satire.

[Hognoxious]

Neither does "art". But we know it when we see it.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Coren22]

Arguably, the movie didn't take it as far as the book, the book was even more over the top satire.

Trigger warning

[William Baric]

to make it more acceptable to today's audience

Yeah, because today's audience prefers to be in a nice echo chamber rather than having to face something that could challenge their ideas.

Re:Trigger warning

[Anonymous Coward]

My take is they want to make a big budget action film with very little dialogue and lots of explosions, because it will do well in markets other than the US.

The original film satirized the command and control authoritarianism of the leaders - I assume they don't wish to contradict or parody authoritarian leaders in nations where this new film may do well.

And it won't have Michael Ironside.

Re:Trigger warning

[umghhh]

You mean audiences in US of A do not like explosions?

Re:Trigger warning

[I'm New Around Here]

No, he meant it's cheaper to subtitle or voice-over if there is a minimum of spoken dialogue.

Re:Trigger warning

[lgw]

I really don't think "challenging ideas about an authoritarian government" would play well in China, do you? Do you think they're trying to make a good movie, or make a profit? I have the lowest expectations for this one - but it they put everyone in power battle armor, I'm there.

In the meantime, the badly-animated 3D cartoon is actually pretty good SF, and far closer to the book (though stuck with the premise of the movie, they at least added a few large power suits to the mix).

That was kind of the point

[plover]

Heinlein didn't picture a "Service guarantees citizenship" society just to have it whitewashed away by today's PC standards. Any reboot that ignores the societal aspects may as well be filmed by Michael Bay, and just go straight to CGI exploding aliens; it won't be true to the book in any way.

Re:That was kind of the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the book was a great thought-provoking read, in that it was morally honest.

The movie was definitely fun, but not really honest, apart from a couple of scenes. Not surprising considering the director didn't even read the entire book. The director behaved precisely the way a fascist reading something that made them uncomfortable would (he didn't read it, and called it crap).

One concept that certainly didn't translate from the book to the film was that serving didn't necessarily mean toting around a weapon. It meant putting your blood, sweat, and tears into service for society. There was also the telling commentary on who deserves blame for a crappy society in the book, with the example of the untrained puppy.

I only wish the politicians here actually had skin in the game with these wars. About the only ones I sort of trust about these wars are those who have served or have kids serving.

My guess is that a society like the one in the book would actually be less fascist, and less war-mongering than what we have now.

An equally good idea that Heinlein had was the concept that everyone votes to go to war or not. All those who voted yes, are the first ones drafted. If you believe that going to war is necessary, then you should put your own ass on the line.
 

Re:That was kind of the point

[lenski]

Good points, I agree. Too bad reality does not and can never measure up.

What makes the book a piece of fiction rather than "serious commentary" is the idea in the book that leaders of society could be worthy of respect, wielding their authority responsibly. What I've found in way too many years in Corporate America is that we see all of the authority and none of the responsibility.

Thus, a nicely thought-provoking read is left behind in my childhood, overrun by reality.

Re:That was kind of the point

[plopez]

"Be all you can be, a private taking out the garbage. That's all you can be."

Re:That was kind of the point

[sphealey]

= = = One concept that certainly didn't translate from the book to the film was that serving didn't necessarily mean toting around a weapon. It meant putting your blood, sweat, and tears into service for society.= = =

Of course, if "society" decided to undertake an interstellar war of indefinite duration after you signed up for, e.g. the research station on Pluto, you were stuck for the duration. And not able to vote (for example, against continuing the war) until you were discharged, which would be... after the end of the war.

sPh

Re:That was kind of the point

[Boronx]

The book is crap. Somebody talented like Verhoeven doesn't need to read the whole thing to figure that out.

The idea that service is the only path to citizenship, is both wrong and backwards.

First, the military will fuck with your head if they think that will make you a better soldier. Second, they will propagandize you to the hilt if it will keep morale up.

Lastly, the world needs as many outlooks as possible. Diversity means strength. This is true in thought as well as genetics.

Re:That was kind of the point

[Oligonicella]

Because of course, you were completely unaware of this proclivity of the society you lived in and went to Pluto in a state of ignorant, terminal naivete.

Re:That was kind of the point

[Catbeller]

The point that is eternally missed is that the required service *did not have to be military service*. For those who could not or would not serve in a defense capacity, there were other jobs to do in endless other capacities. After all, everyone isn't a potential martial artist aged 18. The idea is you put yourself in service to your society. The other main idea is that people do not value what they do not earn and perceive to be worthless: the right to vote. Which today is abundantly clear, given the small percentage who bother to vote.

Re:That was kind of the point

[drinkypoo]

The movie was definitely fun, but not really honest, apart from a couple of scenes. Not surprising considering the director didn't even read the entire book. The director behaved precisely the way a fascist reading something that made them uncomfortable would (he didn't read it, and called it crap).

The Director was Paul Verhoeven who also directed Total Recall, another good-natured romp which nonetheless captures the central tenet of the book upon which it is based. Total Recall was (in part) about whether you can trust reality at all. Meanwhile, Troopers was a satire about fascism. If you look at Heinlein's body of work as a whole, that becomes abundantly clear. People called him a fascist (and still do! idiots) for writing Troopers, ignoring that he also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. These are books, people. Works of fiction. They're not missives.

My guess is that a society like the one in the book would actually be less fascist, and less war-mongering than what we have now.

The whole point of the book is that it was more fascist and more war-mongering, and that these things go together.

Re:That was kind of the point

[Lotus456]

People called him a fascist (and still do! idiots) for writing Troopers, ignoring that he also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land.

He also wrote the nonfiction treatise Take Back Your Government (original title: How to Be a Politician).

on the jump

[turkeydance]

hope it works out to visualize the book

Re:on the jump

[Richard_at_work]

Its "on the bounce", not "on the jump" ;)

Or do a different Heinlein book

[MichaelSmith]

Friday would be my preference.

Re:Or do a different Heinlein book

[ColdWetDog]

The Baywatch director might have managed that one. Although cats are tough.

Re:Or do a different Heinlein book

[ColdWetDog]

I understand neither women nor cats. Although there are lots of things I disagree with RAH about, on that we agree.

Re:Or do a different Heinlein book

[John.Banister]

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.

Re:Or do a different Heinlein book

[MichaelSmith]

Yes, definitely. One of his best books. Alternately I would look at one of the juveniles, like Farmer in the Sky or Have Spacesuit will Travel. Both have stood the test of time and would form the basis of a great book.

I would love to see Stranger made into a movie or series but I have no idea how it would work out.

Re:Or do a different Heinlein book

[John.Banister]

It'd be easier to do justice to one of the juveniles in a 2 hour movie. I can think of a few SF movie making teams that have it in 'em to do one of those successfully. Whether they'd want to would be a different question. I don't know how much interest there'd be in the portrayal of a 1950 view of the future, where one of the attractions would have to be that it was showing a 1950 view of the future. The temptation to satirize the implied "America great again" message inherent in seeing that from where we stand today could prove overwhelming, as could the viewer temptation to perceive satire regardless of intent.

Re:Or do a different Heinlein book

[dywolf]

Orphans of the Sky.
its a chase plot, and those are easy to adapt to the screen.
and you get commentary on religious dogma too.

or The Green Hills of Earth.

Why would it

[rossdee]

The 1997 film wasn't faithful to the book

The MI weren't in amoured suits.

They got the characters of the teacher (of history and moral philiosophy) and the Leiutent mixed up

RAH must have been spinning in his grave.

The award of best Heinlein adaptation goes to The Puppet Masters with Donald Sutherland as 'the old man

Re:Why would it

[alvinrod]

The 1997 film wasn't even based on the book, but was from an unrelated script called Bug Hunt at Outpost 9. About the only thing it has in common with the book is the title and that humanity is fighting some bug monsters. Apparently someone decided to buy the rights to the name so it could be marketed more easily and they incorporated a few concepts from the book.

However, it was still an enjoyable film even if it wasn't a faithful book adaptation. Even today, I'm skeptical that a faithful adaptation could work as a movie, so at best we get a vacuous CGI action movie.

Re:Why would it

[MichaelSmith]

The Puppet Masters with Donald Sutherland as 'the old man

Its a low bar then. That was a horrible movie. Almost as bad as Varley's Millennium.

Re:Why would it

[umghhh]

Whether anybody can call themselves anti-fascists (and do not succumb to be an complete ass terrorizing everybody to the extend to justify being call a faxcist themselves) is one thing. I do not know much about V. but he did not read the book. If so he could not really make any inversion of it either.
Armored suites not being anything to be used? Well have you ever looked at your SWAT teams or even normal police officers? They look like robots already. I tend to think that when we reach the point to have drones and microrobots doing all the policing then our race will be cleansed - not because of evil AI but because it will become easy for a psychopath to give an order.

Re:Why would it

[0xdeadbeef]

The 1997 film wasn't even based on the book, but was from an unrelated script called Bug Hunt at Outpost 9.

You people are so easily trolled. That was the working title, not an original script. Do you actually think the guy who wrote Robocop had never heard of Heinlein or Starship Troopers?

Re:Why would it

[Type44Q]

I'm skeptical that a faithful adaptation could work as a movie

Easy recipe: simple, straightforward script based on the book; R. Scott or Cameron to direct; Giovanni Ribisi and Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead roles... throw in Sigorney Weaver as a ship captain somewhere and James Earl Jones as your admiral; bugs by H.R.Giger; powered armor courtesy of Votoms; presto: formulaic and effective; what's not to like?? ;)

Re:Why would it

[Catbeller]

Did ANY of you ever bother to read the damned book?

Re:Why would it

[dwye]

The movie had the naked coed shower scene; the book had more message than something by Ayn Rand.

Which would you expect kiddies to concentrate upon?

Re:Why would it

[dwye]

It wasn't a very good book, to be fair. Just a slightly more grim one of his Juveniles.

It was very faithful to the book, though.

I cheered for the bugs

[david.emery]

The special effects were pretty cool, but Verhoeven totally missed the point of the book.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[umghhh]

He did not read it so he could not miss it. Still satire or not the film is just an interpretation of the book and is thus different. I know people that went for the film for explosions and guns etc and considered this a silly flick that you can forget minute you left the cinema. There are people that interpreted fascism into the film. There are others that have seen strong anti-fascism in it. I think the movie was great because it offered all these different way to see it. For most of the movies that is difficult. I am not sure V. actually wanted to make it this way. He still did.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[david.emery]

So how the fsck do you make a movie of a book you haven't read, and have -any credibility-? It's one thing to "adapt for the cinema", it's a whole nuther thing to steal the title and a couple character names and ignore the intent of the book.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[I'm New Around Here]

... because Heinlein just lacked the required critical faculties.

That's right. Heinlein was a simple idiot who stumbled upon storylines that he didn't understand, and wrote novels of things he had no ability to comprehend.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[Carewolf]

... because Heinlein just lacked the required critical faculties.

That's right. Heinlein was a simple idiot who stumbled upon storylines that he didn't understand, and wrote novels of things he had no ability to comprehend.

Yes, actually understanding how things work, gets in the way of creative writing. Any pot-smoking writer can tell you that, but a non-pot smoking one might not realise that it is his own stupidity and ignorance that give him creative freedom.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[Boronx]

You nailed it.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[sheramil]

So how the fsck do you make a movie of a book you haven't read, and have -any credibility-?

Jodorowsky said he hadn't read "Dune" when he decided to make a film of it. Perhaps you should ask him.

haha, Jodorowsky's "Starship Troopers". god knows what he'd make of it.

Re:I cheered for the bugs

[david.emery]

The move version of Dune proves my point, I think :-)

Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[kenwd0elq]

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.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[mykepredko]

Nice to see a comment from somebody who's actually read the book.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[ShooterNeo]

And if you survived in a war against a near peer interstellar enemy. In the books I vaguely recall that the bugs weren't primitive or stupid and were a deadly foe. If NATO had fought the Soviets, with nukes left off the table, there would have been massive death tolls on both side. (yeah, NATO would probably have "won" in the end...at which point the nukes start flying and gg)

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[skam240]

The racist part of that description got me a bit. Now granted, it's been ages since I've read the book but I don't remember anything racist about it. As you say, Federal citizenship was open to everyone, you just had to serve.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Better than leaving it to the type of people who think that Trump and Clinton are saviors.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Cyberax]

So I guess you're also for limiting the 2nd Amendment protections? After all, only military should own guns.

If you actually read the book you'd find a passage about the reason for this system. And the answer in the novel is "just because". But yeah, giving voting rights only to people who spend 2 years in a totalitarian (by design) organization under all kinds of pressure surely would produce the greatest democracy ever. After all, when a putsch happens military always establishes a perfect democracy with respect of human rights.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[ravenshrike]

There were effectively two wars going on, one against the bugs, which were a threat that was completely incommunicado with the Terran Federation until the capture of a brain bug, and the other with the Skinnies, who went from allies of the Bugs to allies of humanity. There was no explanation as to why in the novel.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Boronx]

Yes, and all the people who don't serve will be content with no power, and they won't turn into an overtaxed underclass boiling over with resentment and revolution. Why? Because Heinlein said so.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[rbrander]

..except the book said only 5% of "federal service" volunteers made it into the military. The rest did all the other of society's tough jobs (bedpans and invalid care, remote mines, etc) to earn their votes.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Cyberax]

I don't remember this passage. Care to point the chapter?

And in reality lots of countries have mandatory military service yet there's little correlation with the level of democracy. Both utter hellholes and highly successful democracies have draft and/or mandatory civil service.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Catbeller]

Governments are by definition power. They aren't a reading society.

You spend two years serving. Not as a zombie, not as a brainwashed monkey. You could ring the bell and leave at any time during your service. Even active military could resign before a drop, and the only punishment was the loss of the vote and full citizenship.

You simply did a necessary job and proved you could understand the need to put the welfare of your fellow wo/men over your own. The very opposite of Ayn Rand's sloppy love letters to sociopaths. The job could be anything that was sometimes dangerous, unpleasant, but necessary and no one would want to do.

The situation in the novel described a spacefaring society that had actual, real, gosh-darned alien races that were attacking the Terrans, so a military was warranted.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Uberbah]

But yeah, giving voting rights only to people who spend 2 years in a totalitarian (by design) organization under all kinds of pressure surely would produce the greatest democracy ever. After all, when a putsch happens military always establishes a perfect democracy with respect of human rights.

Sort of like our current system, where the only people who don't have to worry about a lifetime of poverty from paying student loans over medical school are:

1) Children of 1%ers to whom a couple hundred thousand dollars is gambling money

2) Poor schlubs who volunteer for the military - and make it into military medical school

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Uberbah]

You simply did a necessary job and proved you could understand the need to put the welfare of your fellow wo/men over your own.

More like a simply unnecessary job, one that subjected you to systemic indoctrination and peer pressure. Like the poor shlubs who got drafted into Vietnam, and were placed in the position of gunning down innocent villagers minding their own business and watching their friends in the platoon get shot by snipers.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[sheramil]

There were effectively two wars going on, one against the bugs, which were a threat that was completely incommunicado with the Terran Federation until the capture of a brain bug, and the other with the Skinnies, who went from allies of the Bugs to allies of humanity. There was no explanation as to why in the novel.

perhaps it was an allegory for the Spanish Civil War. Terrans = Fascists, Bugs = Anarchists and Skinnies = Communists.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[ET3D]

The main problem with the book, and other Heinlein stuff, is that it only works assuming that people generally have good intentions. Heinlein tends to have simplistic characters, which work well in his worlds, and therefore some people unfortunately imagine that what he suggests would work well in real life.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[fgouget]

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.

So anybody EXCEPT tetraplegics, disabled, and anybody who opposes the war. And you think that's democracy. Sad!

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[dwye]

. . . and the other with the Skinnies, who went from allies of the Bugs to allies of humanity. There was no explanation as to why in the novel.

The Terran army landed of the Italian mainland, metaphorically speaking.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[dwye]

The people who don't serve will just sit around smoking weed or meth, bitching about being oppressed, and making money like mini-Trumps, according to the book.

Rather like the Equites class in the Roman Republic, who hadn't the expensive lifestyle requirements that the patricians had, and could concentrate on trade, instead.

Of course, to use the Roman analogy, this assumes that the patricians don't go all Sulla and take over the state to eliminate their enemies, permanently.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[RockDoctor]

In the books I vaguely recall that the bugs weren't primitive or stupid and were a deadly foe.

For most of the book, almost nothing was known about "the bugs," including what their capabilities were. At several points in the book, events looked as if "the bugs" were learning from the humans, as the humans were trying to learn from the "the bugs".

Heinlein was, in part, looking at the questions of "What if we met an enemy that was as good as us? How much effort would we put into 'jaw jaw' instead of 'war war'?" And as a military man, Heinlein was quite sure that humanity would put a lot more effort into 'war war' then into 'jaw jaw'.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Squach]

From Wikipedia - Heinlein made a similar claim, over two decades after Starship Troopers's publication, in his Expanded Universe and further claimed that 95% of "veterans" were not military personnel but members of the civil service and that only retired veterans could vote or hold office.[48]

And, the important point of federal service was that it was elective, not mandatory - it was something people chose rather than something they were forced to do.

Re:Will Starship Troopers Follow Heinlein's Book?

[Baron_Yam]

Actually, in the book they'd take *anyone*, on the basis that a disabled desk jockey freed up someone able-bodied to fight.

All could serve within their capacity to do so.

what could possibly go wrong?

[bloodhawk]

Sounds like they are giving it the Ghostbusters, Total Recall, Godzilla treatment. How about the concept of if you find the original too fucking offensive then stay the fuck away from it rather than trying to reimagine it as a steaming pile of shit.

so then

[Anonymous Coward]

" The script will be written by the writers of the upcoming Baywatch film starring Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson."

Macho marines running down dark corridors in tight red swim suits?

Re:so then

[umghhh]

No suites - this will be a nice pr0n movie!!!
Cannot wait to see it!

Re:so then

[ColdWetDog]

Worked for Sean Connery, sort of.

Verhoeven's version is too smart for its own good.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

I'm afraid that if someone produces a sincere, straightforward film adaptation of the novel, the result will be unintentionally hilarious. At least Verhoeven's take is satirical on purpose. Verhoeven's original project "Bug Planet" probably would have been a good movie, too, even if they hadn't opted to get the Heinlein license after the similarities to Starship Troopers became apparent. My point in bringing that up is this: Verhoeven's people had a movie idea, and it wasn't just "adapt a novel". The idea "young beautiful people fall in love, fight aliens, become Nazis" was the kernel, and they built a great movie around that. I'm not sure "make Heinlein's book into a movie" is in and of itself such a great idea. I would need to know more before I thought it was good or bad. Would you like to know more? (Click here.)

Re:.... Politically Correct Starship Troopers?

[I'm New Around Here]

Only the shitty movie had that. The novel had a far more subtle message.

so have the script wirters actually read the book?

[kallen3]

Have the script writers actually read the book and understood it or are they just going to go by the movie and what today's self entitled individuals want? Just try to tell someone now that they have to put in 2 years of civil service to vote or hold certain jobs and they will claim it is facist, racist, sexist or some type of istism as 2 years of any type of service would interfere with their lives.

Starship Troopers is one of my favorite films

[Britz]

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.

out of step with contemporary audience needs?

[jgfenix]

Then you can't make a movie based on any book older than 20 years old. Those proslavery romans, those misogynist Knights of the Round Table (and no, Xena didn't defeat those pigs) ...

A rare admission

[taustin]

"The studio is not remaking the film but is said to be going back to the original Heinlein novel for an all-new take."

So, by "all-new," they admit that it won't be based on the actual novel. Because that wouldn't be new.

A more accurate description would be, as always, "Based on the title of a popular novel we didn't read."

Re:A rare admission

[dwye]

Or it might be like the remake of Campbell's "Who Goes There" that DIDN'T have sentient carrots and scientists going over to the other side, but DID have Wilfred Brimley and Kurt Russell.

Of course not

[cfalcon]

Of course it won't. It won't be anything like the book. A modern movie has to film some percent in China so they can get a release there, and the book discusses a future that is not particularly bright for several reasons, and it does not do so critically- it portrays it in the same way that a story that takes place in the middle ages has feudalism- as an unfortunate effect of the setting. I'd be literally shocked if it was true to the book. There's a reason all these amazing writers only have their best stories told after they are dead and can't say no- they are utterly shit on in the translation.

Re:Of course not

[skam240]

The Lord of the Rings movies, while not without flaws, were really rather good and pretty true to the books. Likewise with Phillip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly, which considering the treatment his work usually gets by Hollywood, truly surprised me with how close to the original source material it was. Especially since it was a Keanu Reeves movie.

I agree the odds are against it, especially considering the budget required to make it look good and the writing credentials of the script writers, but it is possible for it to be fairly true to the books.

Re:Of course not

[drinkypoo]

The Lord of the Rings movies, while not without flaws, were really rather good and pretty true to the books.

You and I saw different movies if you think they were true to the books. Faramir, srsly. Yet, like the movies we're discussing now, they were true to the central theme of the books. Some details were changed, but the central theme was not changed at all.

Re:Of course not

[RockDoctor]

A modern movie has to film some percent in China so they can get a release there,

Do you have evidence to back up this assertion?

Re:Of course not

[skam240]

They're just about as true as one can realistically expect from a movie based on a book.

Re:I give up.

[umghhh]

I think you can get that. Looking how hostile political debates have become in the West I think a war is inevitable.

Re:I give up.

[PopeRatzo]

I give up. "Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist ..." ... ...

Liberals and their poisonous madness must be forever abolished, by force of arms of necessary.

Does somebody want to tell him or should I?

Do Not Fear the Arachnids!

[Anonymous Coward]

The God Emperor Trump will lead us to absolute victory!

"Faithful"

[wonkey_monkey]

Will The New 'Starship Troopers' Reboot Stay Faithful To The Book?

Should it have to?

Re:depends

[MichaelSmith]

The one singular redeeming scene was the naked co-ed shower scene

Surely that was a reference to The Number of the Beast.

1997 Movie was awful

[jfdavis668]

I was actually amazed that the movie followed the plot of the book as much as it did. But, traveling across the galaxy to fight bugs with assault rifles at 10 ft range was absolutely stupid. This is a book where soldiers fight in powered armor suits, parachuting from space and tossing tiny nuclear bombs around! Think Iron Man meets Star Wars! The plot about service to society as well as the basic training plot were critical to understanding the point of the book. The movie nearly cut out the heart of the book. I hope the reboot doesn't just turn into another action movie.

Re:1997 Movie was awful

[dbIII]

This is a book where soldiers fight in powered armor suits, parachuting from space and tossing tiny nuclear bombs around!

True, there's an entire huge category of Japanese Animation more closely inspired by the book than the movie was.

Re:1997 Movie was awful

[drinkypoo]

This is a book where soldiers fight in powered armor suits, parachuting from space and tossing tiny nuclear bombs around! Think Iron Man meets Star Wars!

That would be both expensive and difficult to connect with because of the scales involved. That sort of thing translates a lot better to a video game than to a movie. A sort of Halo meets Mechwarrior would be welcome. The Lost Planet games had moments of glory where you really felt like you were piloting something and where there was a big battle with a lot of combatants, but nothing really warlike in scale.

Where is my Assault on Klendathu FPS?

Re:1997 Movie was awful

[CmdrTamale]

And there was the 6 part anime OVA "Uchuu no Senshi" [Starship Troopers]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(OVA)

which leads up to a romantic conclusion, with Johnny Rico declaring (confessing) his love for [I forget who].

Not very much like the book, either.
--
Sign in a restaurant in Cyprus: âoeWe have no Wi-Fi. Talk to each other.â

Re:1997 Movie was awful

[Carewolf]

I was actually amazed that the movie followed the plot of the book as much as it did. But, traveling across the galaxy to fight bugs with assault rifles at 10 ft range was absolutely stupid. This is a book where soldiers fight in powered armor suits, parachuting from space and tossing tiny nuclear bombs around!

Because that makes so much more sense?

When depicting stupid, they might as well go with more relatable stupidity.

Re:Blinkered audience

[vel-ex-tech]

Nobody lauds the shower scene emphasizing that men and women truly did live and fight in the same unit. Why is that?

Because the vast majority of people are dipshits.

Johnny Rico

[Archfeld]

The main character Johnny Rico was part Filipino in the original book.

Re:Johnny Rico

[ceoyoyo]

And he was born and raised in Buenos Aires.

Re:Johnny Rico

[Archfeld]

Yes, that part was still used in the movie, but I'd say there was no way anyone could mistake Casper Van Dien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... as a Filipino of any sort of descent.

Re:Johnny Rico

[SvnLyrBrto]

You sure? I could swear I remember Rico being raised in the Philippines in the book, and BA only coming into play because his mother was on vacation there and died when the bugs hit it. His father most definitely stayed in the Philippines and survived the whole book tho.

Re:Johnny Rico

[Archfeld]

Merely highlighting another way in which the movies were drastically different than the book, both in tone and content.

want to know more ?
http://www.heinleinsociety.org...

Re:Johnny Rico

[wyHunter]

I don't think it was ever discussed where he was born in the book. I know his mother was killed when BA was destroyed by the bugs but it never said, one way or the other, whether he was born in BA. Certainly he didn't LIVE in BA.

Re:Verhoeven's version is too smart for its own go

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

I'm afraid that if someone produces a sincere, straightforward film adaptation of the novel, the result will be unintentionally hilarious. At least Verhoeven's take is satirical on purpose. Verhoeven's original project "Bug Planet" probably would have been a good movie, too, even if they hadn't opted to get the Heinlein license after the similarities to Starship Troopers became apparent. My point in bringing that up is this: Verhoeven's people had a movie idea, and it wasn't just "adapt a novel". The idea "young beautiful people fall in love, fight aliens, become Nazis" was the kernel, and they built a great movie around that. I'm not sure "make Heinlein's book into a movie" is in and of itself such a great idea. I would need to know more before I thought it was good or bad. Would you like to know more? (Click here.)

I see from Comment Moderation that I've been accused of trolling for the parent comment. Anyone who is offended care to explain? I don't get it. Who have I offended?

Its one of those shows

[future assassin]

that should be left alone. Personally I love the show and the CGI, my kids loved it too when I played it for them. Its got action, cool CGI and some cheese for the ultimate SCIFi Action Flick.

Re: .... Politically Correct Starship Troopers?

[I'm New Around Here]

Says someone who doesn't know the meaning of the word.

Bring the remake.

[Charcharodon]

Loved the book, and loved the movie, each for different reasons.

Would love to see a movie that was very true to the book, though I think a lot of liberals heads would explode at the concept of service meaning picking up a gun and standing between danger and society. That you can't vote or hold office till you serve and as a "civilian" (non-citizen) are only allowed to have 1 child.

Imagine if that was the world today. Nearly all the Democratic part and most of the Republican party would be fired from office/ineligible to vote.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Catbeller]

Odd, as almost every single conservative Republican officeholder in Congress ducked military service, whereas the cowardly liberals have dozens. Reagan did propaganda films in Hollywood, Bush W decided he didn't feel like flying anymore and discharged himself.

Re:Bring the remake.

[breeze95]

Loved the book, and loved the movie, each for different reasons.

Would love to see a movie that was very true to the book, though I think a lot of liberals heads would explode at the concept of service meaning picking up a gun and standing between danger and society. That you can't vote or hold office till you serve and as a "civilian" (non-citizen) are only allowed to have 1 child.

Imagine if that was the world today. Nearly all the Democratic part and most of the Republican party would be fired from office/ineligible to vote.

Loved the book, and loved the movie, each for different reasons.

Would love to see a movie that was very true to the book, though I think a lot of liberals heads would explode at the concept of service meaning picking up a gun and standing between danger and society. That you can't vote or hold office till you serve and as a "civilian" (non-citizen) are only allowed to have 1 child.

Imagine if that was the world today. Nearly all the Democratic part and most of the Republican party would be fired from office/ineligible to vote.

And you are a fan of this? You think this level of fascism is a good thing? To each his own...I guess.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Uberbah]

Would love to see a movie that was very true to the book, though I think a lot of liberals heads would explode at the concept of service meaning picking up a gun and standing between danger and society.

To which the liberal would say:

1) No American has died to defend American soil since the war of 1812

2) Your gun nuts with their dick extenders are part of the problem. Not the solution.

Re:Bring the remake.

[DNS-and-BIND]

You have no idea what "fascism" means. Please stop using that word. In the words of the immortal Inigo Montoya:

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Re:Bring the remake.

[PennyHassett]

'Would love to see a movie that was very true to the book ... as a "civilian" (non-citizen) are only allowed to have 1 child.' ... I don't remember that and I've just grepped through the text and can't find it. Anyone tell me where it is? OTOH I do remember Johnny talking about a class-vote that decided that every child should have their own room and I can't find that either. I sometimes wonder if there is more than one version of this book. Samuel Delany is reported have read a passage in the book in which Johnny looks into a mirror and sees his own chocolate brown face; my version doesn't have that but does say that Johnny's family spoke tagalog at home.

Re:Bring the remake.

[drinkypoo]

Would love to see a movie that was very true to the book, though I think a lot of liberals heads would explode at the concept of service meaning picking up a gun and standing between danger and society.

You can't stand between danger and society by picking up a gun, only between danger and yourself. The gun, when used as intended (especially military weapons which really are designed specifically for shooting people) is a dangerous thing. That's not an argument against guns, I own several. I own lots of other dangerous things as well. I have cars and machine tools and drones and hand tools and flammable and toxic chemicals and tanks of propane and the list goes on, really.

The thing is, the people who negotiate peace are standing between danger and society at least as surely as those who pick up a gun to repel its enemies. In the long term, even more surely, because picking up a gun and shooting someone just leads to having to do more of that in the future.

In the balance, of course, it is still better to shoot someone who is trying to shoot you than to get shot. But the best thing is to stop them from wanting to shoot you.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Charcharodon]

Nice bias there.

Currently there are 80 veterans in the House. 17 are Democrats.
Currently there are 26 veterans in the Senate. 14 are Democrats

Turns out Bush was a RINO (progressive) so we no longer claim him as a Republican. If you really hated his foreign policy you are going to love Hillary's even less. Turns out hers is EXACTLY the same as his only instead of only starting a war in Afghanistan/Iraq, she is going for the whole region (Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan) and is currently picking a fight with Russia.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Charcharodon]

No I don't like Fascism, aka Socialism, which is more or less the system we already have in the US.

Frankly we don't need to vote on much as it is. The basic rights are all taken care of. So not much voting needed there. So what do we vote on? That's right social programs, welfare (corporate/individual), and regulations. Things that are the foundation for Fascism (Socialism). (Social/welfare programs and corporatism)

IF we are stuck with said system then you should have to earn the right to wield such authority (violence) which was a point in both the movie and the book.

So you what you are saying is you like Fascism without responsibility. To each his own...I guess.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Charcharodon]

1861-1865 Civil War

1898 Spanish American War

WWII Both the Nazis and the Japanese entertained ideas of landing forces on both coast to conduct terror attacks and sabotage. The heavily armed population is generally accepted to have had an impact on not putting those ideas into action. That and the hoards of US troops already pushing back in both theaters made it impractical to do so.

Of course we wouldn't have had to fight WW2 if there hadn't been so many damn pacifists in Europe and the US that let the Nazis rise to power and expand their territory. One or two small military smack downs as soon as they tried pushing the boundaries would have ended the whole thing before it got started.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Charcharodon]

I may be mixing it up. The movie definitely had it set up for 1 child per civilian family. Not sure if that was in the book.

Johnny Rico was not a white boy in the book. They may have changed it in later editions of the book. I read it back in the 80's.

Re:Bring the remake.

[Charcharodon]

Yes you are technically correct, but it was more about earning the privilege of wielding the power of the collective. In a Fascist(Socialist) country your vote can harm others (you can vote to inflict laws, take away freedom/property, etc) You had to put your ass on the line before you were allowed to do so. Your personal individual danger maybe only symbolic in terms of society, but for you individually it is not.

You are correct about the best thing is to stop them from wanting to shoot at you in the first place. Being a pacifist will never stop evil people from trying to harm you, but the threat of massive violent, deadly retaliation will nearly always work. When it doesn't you do the next best thing and kill every last f-ing one of them....and then they won't try to shoot you anymore.

Re:Bring the remake.

[RockDoctor]

WWII Both the Nazis and the Japanese entertained ideas of landing forces on both coast to conduct terror attacks and sabotage. The heavily armed population is generally accepted to have had an impact on not putting those ideas into action.

Bulshit.

On the alleged influence of the "armed population", not on whether or not the Germans/ Japanese/ Italians had any plans for landing saboteurs on either coast.

Sabotage and/ or infiltration programmes depend on secrecy, not fire power. Being recognised is normally time to bug out and fade away. That worked for the resistances in France, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, and Poland - until they engaged with a military (or police : same difference) force, they kept as low a profile as possible. Then hit and then faded away.

I would suspect that the main reason for the Germans and Japanese not landing appreciable sabotage/ fifth column efforts in America was the same as for them not being noticeably successful in Britain : they couldn't find enough turncoats willing to stay brought. That raises (again) another significant question about how much contact the Italian fascists had with the Mafia. And of course, whether the Mafia stayed brought, or took the bribes then shopped the agents anyway.

Re:Bring the remake.

[RockDoctor]

as a "civilian" (non-citizen) are only allowed to have 1 child.'

That sounds more like "Ender's Game" than a Heinlein. Heinlein (as an author) was all for having as many children on his daughters and mother as possible.

Then again, Heinlein's main characters were almost always members of the 1% (honourable exceptions to "Citizen of the Galaxy" and "Farmer's Freehold", possibly others).

Re:Bring the remake.

[cwsumner]

Admiral Yamamoto rejected the idea, saying "We cannot land on the mainland of America, every blade of grass would have a rifle behind it!"

Re:Bring the remake.

[sabbede]

Don't forget that many members of Congress, and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had children serving as well. False claims about that were also circulated.

Re:Bring the remake.

[sabbede]

I don't think you know what Fascism is, what it means, or what the underlying political philosophy is. Ditto for Socialism.

Re:Bring the remake.

[david_thornley]

No I don't like Fascism, aka Socialism

If you really don't know the difference, I'd suggest reading up on those concepts. In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, corporate overlords had a lot of power, since Fascism is a degenerate political system based on Capitalism. It also tends to be nationalistic and irrational, appealing more to emotion, and it doesn't care about voting. Socialism is another economic system, without corporate overlords, which tends not to be nationalistic and is generally rational (if not necessarily correct) and at least nominally democratic. While typically left-wing, it has been pushed by a few apparently right-wing movements (the Showa restoration fans in Japan were certainly right-wing, and I can make a good case for Bellamy's Nationalism). It has also been the basis for degenerate totalitarian political systems, but pretty much anything can be.

Re:Bring the remake.

[david_thornley]

Which novels had main characters that were part of the 1%? Double Star is one, and Time Enough for Love, and you can make an argument for Stranger in a Strange Land, but that's three novels and I'm coming up with numerous in which the main character is far from the 1%

Re:Bring the remake.

[RockDoctor]

Which is why the first thing one does before landing an amphibious assault force is to remove any blades of grass by bombardment with high-explosive shells from your seaborn and airbrn forces.

Mass invasion is a different thing to landing sabotage / Fifth column forces. Neither Germany nor Japan was within some thousands of mile of close enough to non-Alaskwiian USA mainland for it to be a plausible scenario. Possibly you might wish to enquire why Ghengiz Khan didn't invade Japan by sending forces to California (from Szechuan) and invading from there.

recap on Islam

[harvey the nerd]

It might be better to call Islam a slaver's codex with a religion and a nasty genocidal streak. Their "holy books" seem to spend more time on how to enslave, mistreat or murder other people than on Mohammad or Allah.

Re:you met him, talked to him

[Noah Haders]

No it's true! He was at the Comikaze expo in LA last weekend. I met him, but didn't get a photo cuz that was like $40.

Not a fan of the movies

[buss_error]

Heinlein's books that have been made into movies strayed a long way from the master's works. The movies are nothing more than a money grab. The books are much better.

Re:Not a fan of the movies

[dwye]

The books are much better.

With the exception of The Count of Monte Cristo, when is that not true?

Writers of Bay Watch - seriously?

[frnic]

Well, we can always hope the re-re-boot might be better.

Hollywood Reporter Article Written by Idiot

[skam240]

Given the controversy surrounding Starship Troopers the book — and, to be blunt, some of the flaws of the book itself, which reads much like polemic with (too) many scenes taking place inside classrooms with characters expressing the author's militaristic worldview to the reader as if they were one of the students — it's difficult to imagine a faithful screen version of Starship Troopers finding much success with modern audiences. Indeed, the very prospect seems oddly reminiscent of Ender's Game, a similarly beloved — and controversial — sci-fi novel that received its own movie version in 2013.

The Ender's Game failure was due very much to its NOT sticking to the book. It was an incredibly shallow movie because rather than focus on the humanism that the movie was literally about it focused on whatever flashy special effect could be applied to it. Yeah, that single battle room scene felt right out of the book but the battle room scenes served a greater purpose in the book.

The book Ender's Game would never have become the classic that it is if it was just about showcasing cool action scenes. As some one who was in accelerated academic programs but also felt a bit isolated because of it, the book was a perfect match.

(Disclaimer: I don't consider myself brilliant and / or tragic. I'm just explaining the book's draw for me.)

Re:Hollywood Reporter Article Written by Idiot

[skam240]

Awe damn it.

"...because rather than focus on the humanism that the movie was literally about it focused..." = "...because rather than focus on the humanism that the book was literally about it focused..."

Re:Verhoeven's version is too smart for its own go

[Carewolf]

I'm afraid that if someone produces a sincere, straightforward film adaptation of the novel, the result will be unintentionally hilarious. At least Verhoeven's take is satirical on purpose. Verhoeven's original project "Bug Planet" probably would have been a good movie, too, even if they hadn't opted to get the Heinlein license after the similarities to Starship Troopers became apparent. My point in bringing that up is this: Verhoeven's people had a movie idea, and it wasn't just "adapt a novel". The idea "young beautiful people fall in love, fight aliens, become Nazis" was the kernel, and they built a great movie around that. I'm not sure "make Heinlein's book into a movie" is in and of itself such a great idea. I would need to know more before I thought it was good or bad. Would you like to know more? (Click here.)

I see from Comment Moderation that I've been accused of trolling for the parent comment. Anyone who is offended care to explain? I don't get it. Who have I offended?

You have offended the resident fascists, they don't like it when you call them nazis (or fascists for that matter).

Give that fascism is quite en vogue these days ...

[quax]

... I am sure they'll be doing fine.

Re:I give up.

[Boronx]

What would be the point?

Re:sorry, but there was nothing "smart" about it

[Boronx]

The movie works pretty well on that level. Certainly its world of endless war, relentless propaganda, soldiers as the clean shaven heroes we all look up to, leaders, cool looking leaders who have our best interest at heart, even if they have to ask others to make a sacrifice, looks familiar. It is missing the corporate angle.

Re: .... Politically Correct Starship Troopers?

[Catbeller]

Semantics was one of Heinlein's passions. The idea that the word "fascist" would lose its actual meaning would sadden and infuriate, but not surprise him. That he would be called one would earn the mouth-breather a well-earned verbal beatdown. The man was the opposite of a fascist. Infuriating.

F Hell, do ANY OF YOU READ A DAMNED BOOK?

[Catbeller]

SERIOUSLY. One of you read it. ONE. Yet you all seem to think you know all about it.

Re:F Hell, do ANY OF YOU READ A DAMNED BOOK?

[hyades1]

Get off your high horse. I've read it twice, once as a kid and once when I was older. I doubt I'm the only one here who can say that.

Re: .... Politically Correct Starship Troopers?

[Uberbah]

That he would be called one would earn the mouth-breather a well-earned verbal beatdown. The man was the opposite of a fascist. Infuriating.

Uh huh. Unless he was like a modern Democrat, who claims to oppose things like criminal banks, bullshit wars and illegal spying, yet love politicians like Obama and Hillary that adore illegal spying, bullshit wars and criminal banks.

It doesn't matter what you say you support. It matters what you actually support at the end of the day that matters.

That is not quite true

[aepervius]

People like me do not mind that you insult/disparage/hunt/kill extremist islamist terrorist. What we find racist is when somebody jump from "extremist islamist terrorist" to "the moslems". That is it generalize to the whole islam. E.g. all those pretending that islam is a religion which makes people violent, or that inherentely all moslem are violent etc...

yes it is facist

[aepervius]

"Democracy severely restricted? " that is the facist part, citizenship only open to those having gone thru military (federal service). You haven't gone through the service ? Then you are not a citizen with degraded rights. Saying it is open to everyone does not make it more democratic.

Re:yes it is facist

[Squach]

"Democracy severely restricted? " that is the facist part, citizenship only open to those having gone thru military (federal service). You haven't gone through the service ? Then you are not a citizen with degraded rights. Saying it is open to everyone does not make it more democratic.

Would that make 17th century England fascist, since the franchise was rather restricted? Does fascism = limited franchise?

Consider the actors involved

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

The book has a lot of classroom learning, told in the way of flashbacks, that show how society functions.
There is very little action in the book, compared to the discussion of society.
Can you imagine Dwayne Johnson sitting in a classroom behind a desk learning about morality?
The actors chosen show you what kind of film this will be. A Michael Bay style CGI fest about as exciting or engaging as the new ID:4 was...

Re:Verhoeven's version is too smart for its own go

[drinkypoo]

I see from Comment Moderation that I've been accused of trolling for the parent comment. Anyone who is offended care to explain? I don't get it. Who have I offended?

Do not try to make sense of the Slashdot moderation system. That way lies madness. All you need to know about it is that it is broken by design because you can either moderate in a discussion or you can comment but not both. The problem with this is that the people best qualified to moderate are also the people best qualified to comment. The system should permit you to moderate in discussions in which you comment, so long as you do not moderate in threads in which you comment.

Suffice to say that moderation is frequently abused, and leave it at that, because going down any road is pointless.

Re: Juan for All, All for Juan

[Nidi62]

Starship troopers 3 really lost me with the whole "no religion" thing, since in the book they made sure to point out that every single individual unit had a soldier pulling double duty in a religious capacity and that all religions were welcome and expression of religion was in fact encouraged.

fail..

[SuperDre]

Not much confidence in the 'reboot' after reading who will write the script...

Re:so have the script wirters actually read the bo

[RockDoctor]

Have the script writers actually read the book and understood it

Have you considered the possibility that they read the book and understood it in a different way to how you did?

Heinlein does strike me as a right-wing nut job with some serious incest hangups, but he does occasionally show some signs of different, less stereotyped, thinking.

Pity this idea wouldn't work (probably)

[RockDoctor]

Considering that Joe Haldeman's "Forever War" was written as a riposte to "Starship Troopers", it would be really interesting to see the same crews (director, writers, actors, SFX, possibly even props) do both "Starship Troopers" and "Forever War" for back-to-back release.

OTOH, there continue to be rumours that Ridley Scott is working on a script for the Forever War, which is good news in itself, but bad news for this idea.

So, anyone know a good Filipino actor?

[eric_harris_76]

If they're going to stay true to the book, they're going to need at least one, to play Juan Rico.

Re:Verhoeven's version is too smart for its own go

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

You have offended the resident fascists, they don't like it when you call them nazis (or fascists for that matter).

Hmm. That would be shooting the messenger. I didn't make up that "Beautiful young people fall in love, fight aliens, become Nazis" summary. That's from the supplemental materials from the laserdisc of Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. Anyone offended, don't blame me. I recall this being the summary the production crew worked with when first creating this movie. If you find this offensive, there's some piece of this story somewhere that you need to understand better. Anyway, I didn't call anyone a Nazi, and I don't like the accusation of trolling.

Paul Verhoeven

[sad_]

Does Hollywood have something against Paul Verhoeven? All his movies are being remade (robocop, total recall, now starship troopers), while they are all perfectly fine. If anything, there's a bunch of OTHER movies which could perhaps benefit from a remake, so why pick on Verhoeven?

Re:Paul Verhoeven

[SuiteSisterMary]

I don't think they're picking on Verhoeven, so much as Verhoeven historically did great movies that are good candidates for remakes.

It's like saying Moby Dick was obviously a crappy novel, because so many people are 'trying to do it better.'

Good, the other film was shit.

[sabbede]

I don't really have anything else to add. Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus.

Rasczak Roughnecks!

[DarthVain]

First off the movie Starship Troopers (1997) wasn't all that true to the book anyway (as mentioned by many), so if the reboot is or not is sort of irrelevant. I enjoyed the movie a lot and have seen it many times. I'd say one of the primary reasons was the over the top nature of political satire which is common for books of that era/genre but sadly missing from pretty much all movies for a number of reasons (most modern movies want to be as middle of the road and PG13 as to not alienate any potential demographic that would get in the way of making money and viewership). Having a movie with the courage to go there these days might be unlikely. Movies like Deadpool might change some peoples minds in that it was widely successful despite limiting itself to an R rating. That said, if it did manage to go there it would be all the more great in that only so few go there these days. I'd say the second thing that was good it that the acting in in what actually pretty good given the context of the movie. The best of which I thought was Michael Ironside as Rasczak. If they can cast the movie well that will also be a big deal. They may have their work cut out for them however as that kind of movie likely won't attract a lot of interest from many actors. In many cases it seems that once some actors get known for that work, they are stuck in that genre forever and it turns out not to be the most successful path an actor might take. Anyway I'd probably check it out no matter what simply to see how it turns out...

what?

[wyHunter]

The book was racist? When citizens had names of numerous races in them? Democracy was exercised by people who chose to do national service. You were not restricted from national service, but you had to serve your term. Oh wait, I forgot, this goes against the SJW creed that anything that requires achievement is racist, sexist, etc.

Re:what?

[hyades1]

You ignore vastly changed cultural realities that would have had Heinlein write an entirely different book if he were alive today. When he wrote Starship Troopers, families needing two working parents just to provide the necessities of life for their children were unheard-of. And the social contract of the time ensured that if somebody went off to perform national service and earn their right to vote, they would be compensated well enough that their family could bear their absence economically.

In today's world, we have had it beaten into us that none of that would be true. When Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers, the United States had a middle class. Today it has an upper class, a poverty-stricken lower class, and a lot of people struggling desperately to avoid slipping off the last rung of the ladder.

a solution...

[Archfeld]

I personally think that anyone that is coming from a combat zone should be reassigned to a non combat zone for a term prior to be released back into mainstream society. We expect people to go from be shot at and returning fire in a combat zone to passive without difficulty and that is already proving to be very difficult. If combat vets from the war zones were reassigned to non combat zones while still under military discipline for a period to 'decompress' prior to being cut loose completely and all of them were required/given counselling and some retraining back to the civilian world it would help those that need it most while not singling them out for getting/seeking help. I have nothing but respect for the volunteers that serve in our countries military, the way our country treats them when they are done is sad and in many ways shameful.

going back to the original for a brandnew take

[KingBenny]

thats one way of selling it
as in : does an e-book contain less wisdom than the paper version ?