I got the message that it was intended as satire. But intent is not the same as success.
Sony rebooting Starship Troopers
- Thread starter TheNatureRoy
- Start date
Well, it worked for me. Wonderfully well. I doubt Heinlein's insane ideas will make it to film (those who think the Atlas Shrugged movie is indicative of any kind of trend in Hollywood should note that it was (a) independently produced and (b) a box office disaster), nor do I expect a movie as smart as Verhoeven's version.
We'll probably end up with a generic bug hunt movie with as little politics as possible. Not that exciting, really, but I'd love to be surprised.
We'll probably end up with a generic bug hunt movie with as little politics as possible. Not that exciting, really, but I'd love to be surprised.
Verhoeven Starship Troopers was my favorite movie that year. It was obviously satire, and I enjoyed it immensely. I laughed and applauded at the end.
I think the obvious and big difference is that, at least at that point in his career, Heinlein would have entertained debate on a lot of the stuff in the book and was far from sold on the value of remaking the world in its image. He was looking to make a nice living by entertaining - "competing for the customer's beer money," he called it. None of that was true of Rand, who was committed in the most blinkered way to her self-created ideology.
Sindatur said:
Much like how in today's world, everyone is disenfranchised until they reach voting age or attain residency and are legally entitled to vote. There will always be requirements that people have to meet in order to vote.
Actually, in general, though I liked the movie and really liked the book, I distanced myself from its philosophy sometime ago.
The real problem in the ST philosophy is the core assumption of who's worthy of citizenship. IMO, Heinlein's arguments that a person who's completed federal service is somehow dispositioned towards safeguarding the welfare and safety of the body politic is flawed. People can serve years in the military, for whatever reason, and end up being self-centered, inconsiderate arseholes who care nothing for society at large.
An awful lot, maybe even most, of Starship Troopers the novel is lectures to the idiot Boy on history and moral philosophy. It is hard to take seriously the idea that the book was just provocations to entertain the audience and "earn beer money," unless you're convinced that lectures are favorite reading. Also, beer money: From juveniles???
He himself as I recall said it was a tribute to the poor downtrodden infantry. I assure you this was not a topic in which Heinlein had no sincere investment other than a desire to make kids think. The suggestion otherwise is absurd.
Really, the dude already had the Patrick Henry League on his resume. Considering how he imagined politics in such stories as Double Star, Gulf, My Fair City or the to be the most lurid kind of chicanery, double dealing, dirty tricks and spying (good old Dad in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was a spy and a politico) makes me think someone other than a starry eyed worshipper like Patterson should have written his bio. I recall an account of him boasting about knowing the nefarious plan decided by an alleged Communist Party central committee meeting. Which is to say, he claimed he had secret intelligence. By what connections pray tell? I think it was supposed to be after he lost his shirt in a silver mine that he took up amateur politics. Who knew you could recoup business losses in the Upton Sinclair EPIC?
He himself as I recall said it was a tribute to the poor downtrodden infantry. I assure you this was not a topic in which Heinlein had no sincere investment other than a desire to make kids think. The suggestion otherwise is absurd.Really, the dude already had the Patrick Henry League on his resume. Considering how he imagined politics in such stories as Double Star, Gulf, My Fair City or the to be the most lurid kind of chicanery, double dealing, dirty tricks and spying (good old Dad in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was a spy and a politico) makes me think someone other than a starry eyed worshipper like Patterson should have written his bio. I recall an account of him boasting about knowing the nefarious plan decided by an alleged Communist Party central committee meeting. Which is to say, he claimed he had secret intelligence. By what connections pray tell? I think it was supposed to be after he lost his shirt in a silver mine that he took up amateur politics. Who knew you could recoup business losses in the Upton Sinclair EPIC?
^^^Starship Troopers is the book with a little lecture about how war is not just the answer, but the irrefutable answer. I think the demand was to ask the Carthaginian city fathers.
Asking how somebody got their money is always a sensible question. Incidentally, the brag about inside knowledge of the Commies' nefarious plans was in the Patterson bio, volume one of course since the second volume isn't out so far as I know.
If you think Heinlein's incidental portrayals of politics, including explicit defenses of the Pendergast machine in Kansas City, were simply common sense, I can hardly see why you'd be surprised at questioning his motives. Except that one doesn't question Robert A. Heinlein.
Asking how somebody got their money is always a sensible question. Incidentally, the brag about inside knowledge of the Commies' nefarious plans was in the Patterson bio, volume one of course since the second volume isn't out so far as I know.
If you think Heinlein's incidental portrayals of politics, including explicit defenses of the Pendergast machine in Kansas City, were simply common sense, I can hardly see why you'd be surprised at questioning his motives. Except that one doesn't question Robert A. Heinlein.
Stj, I want a 'like' button for all of your posts in this thread so far!
^
Likewise.
As bad as Atlas Shrugged (the book) is, it's at least something I was able to finish, although it took me a few months to get through the Galt speech. The Turner Diaries isn't just repellent, it's boring, a thinly veiled manual for racial terrorism hung together on the slightest of story-like threads. I got into around thirty pages of the free pdf that racist websites distribute before I gave up.
That's a fundamentally different kind of requirement, though. It treats voting as a right of citizens and citizens as the legal, naturalized residents of a country. As someone born into the franchise, what you need to do to be able to vote is simply to not die in the first eighteen years of your life.
Heinlein sets voting as a privilege, and a privilege given to people who only do certain kinds of work. There's lots of work that's basically essential to how any society works, but working in Earth's factories, farms, restaurants, etc. while necessary, is unrewarded. It'd be glib to say 'all power to the soldier's soviets', but Heinlein is definitely guilty of selectively valuing labour here.
Likewise.
Given the market, I'm betting the film will water Heinlein's ideas down so as to be inoffensive, if not simply abandoning the 'ideas' part of the novel entirely and make it a straight up movie about a guy who joins the army to kill bugs in outer space. Atlas Shrugged the movie was, I understand, the pet project of a devoted Objectivist. This on the other hand is a movie made by Hollywood screenwriters who already have a summer movie or two under their belts.
As bad as Atlas Shrugged (the book) is, it's at least something I was able to finish, although it took me a few months to get through the Galt speech. The Turner Diaries isn't just repellent, it's boring, a thinly veiled manual for racial terrorism hung together on the slightest of story-like threads. I got into around thirty pages of the free pdf that racist websites distribute before I gave up.
That's a fundamentally different kind of requirement, though. It treats voting as a right of citizens and citizens as the legal, naturalized residents of a country. As someone born into the franchise, what you need to do to be able to vote is simply to not die in the first eighteen years of your life.
Heinlein sets voting as a privilege, and a privilege given to people who only do certain kinds of work. There's lots of work that's basically essential to how any society works, but working in Earth's factories, farms, restaurants, etc. while necessary, is unrewarded. It'd be glib to say 'all power to the soldier's soviets', but Heinlein is definitely guilty of selectively valuing labour here.
The first Verhoeven movie was a brilliant satire on the book and on human militaristic society. But you needed to have a taste for such tongue-in-cheek approach.
Almost prescient to the event of 9/11 and subsequent Iraq/"war on terror". But I guess it's true for any war. Propaganda, demonization of the enemy, playing victims to keep the moral high ground, pressing violence as the only solution , etc. As the movie was calqued with Nazi propagenda techniques.
Although the irony of the first movie may have went over the head of some viewers who didn't see the irony of supporting our heroes who are actually the bad guys invading another planet of demonized bugs by heavy propaganda. You could certainly watch the movie on many level.
It's easy to make a completely different reboot of Starship Troopers. Hopefully, it's not turned into another American pro-war movie that the first movie was parodying with tongue in cheek.
"He's afraid!"
Almost prescient to the event of 9/11 and subsequent Iraq/"war on terror". But I guess it's true for any war. Propaganda, demonization of the enemy, playing victims to keep the moral high ground, pressing violence as the only solution , etc. As the movie was calqued with Nazi propagenda techniques.
Although the irony of the first movie may have went over the head of some viewers who didn't see the irony of supporting our heroes who are actually the bad guys invading another planet of demonized bugs by heavy propaganda. You could certainly watch the movie on many level.
It's easy to make a completely different reboot of Starship Troopers. Hopefully, it's not turned into another American pro-war movie that the first movie was parodying with tongue in cheek.
"He's afraid!"
Starship Troopers has three things going for it compared to Atlas Shrugged:
1) It's political philosophy is at least interesting to discuss and you can bring up real world examples of it in practice (the old Greek City-States). Unlike Atlas Shrugged which is a dull philosophy whose best real world example is Somalia.
2) The society it describes is much more realistic and AS.
3) It is much, much better written. I will read ST every once in a while because I just enjoy reading it. AS is a giant chore of poorly written slop.
Double Star is a fun book, one of my favorites of Heinlein's. Okay, maybe my favorite.
RAH did have an interesting political history, with his involvement in Democratic politics in California and support of Upton Sinclair. He had the oversimplifying tendencies of a engineer, where human relations and systems are concerned, but rarely displayed the behavior of the committed ideologue for very long - people who believed too wholeheartedly and unquestioningly in any political or religious organization or idea seemed to give him the heebie-jeebies...so of course he didn't have much truck with socialists for too long, either.
Troopers certainly has the virtue of relative brevity.
RAH did have an interesting political history, with his involvement in Democratic politics in California and support of Upton Sinclair. He had the oversimplifying tendencies of a engineer, where human relations and systems are concerned, but rarely displayed the behavior of the committed ideologue for very long - people who believed too wholeheartedly and unquestioningly in any political or religious organization or idea seemed to give him the heebie-jeebies...so of course he didn't have much truck with socialists for too long, either.
Troopers certainly has the virtue of relative brevity.
If you believe the humans are the bad guys (and, thus, that the bugs are good), then how do you explain what happened at Port Joe Smith in the film?
Oh, there's no question that the sympathies of the film makers are not with the humans in Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. There's quite a large dollop of anti-colonialism in there, which one would of course expect. That all of the human characters are vapid, superficial and emotionally labile to the point of exhibiting characteristics of HPD is not accidental.
As opposed to earning the franchise by achieving some special status. Yeah, I can see the flaw in my argument now.
Kegg said:
I hadn't thought about that, comrade, but I can certainly agree. Looks like the Terran Federation is a something of a communist meritocracy.
The philosophy is a little twilight zoneish but to me that's the best part. It sets up wierd and unique rules and guideline perameters that are treated as normal by the characters. That's what science fiction is. It's an altered reality. It doesn't matter how bizarre or different those rules are as long as the characters abide by and believe in them willingly. I like it's Star Trek approach too and Space Cadet approach of war is the answer to everything. One for all, all for one. Big love lost, little war won. Yea, it also treated the hero's with scathing critical commentary of dehumanisizing contempt and disregard and disrespect which was really the best part because we know better. The bug was right to be afraid though especially if people are willing to believe that that's the way things really are. He might have been the good guy after all.
Last edited:
One can hope.
As they said in the movie the Mormons extremists despite government warning decided to establish themselves (a colony) deep into arachnid territory. Their territory. They invaded a foreign territory already inhabited by bugs.
Obviously in the movie, we can't feel but support our humans heroes because they are our guys and the movie is ironically made like a "typical" "patriotic"/propagandist war movie. That's the power of propaganda.
Those people live in a military dictatorship!!
When asked about the adage that says violence doesn't solve anything. The answer is that violence is the ultimate power to which every other power are derived!!
You got military guys distributing guns and munitions!! to kids as if they were candy! Moms jumping in joy seeing her children squashing bugs on the pavement. Death penalty execution on TV. Heavy class system were it seems people who are not rich enough got no choice of going into the military if they want to do anything in life! Even having babies!
When the giant bug is finally captured at the end, they jump in joy because the bug is "afraid"!
Those humans dress like Nazis!
Verhoven is talking about it on the DVD commentary.