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

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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: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: 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.