Pondering Starship Troopers.

[AyashiKaibutsu]

that is a good point, that style they used for the movie, it has nothing to do with the book/story, the person who wrote the screenplay came up with that out of his butt or something

It did make for a good movie all it's own though.

 

[Linflas]

you gotta read the book
if you are thinking this much about the story, by all means, read the book
and then read more Heinlein
he is the best sci-fi author , evar

This. Without a doubt my favorite author.

 

[manimal]

Heinlein and Dick make the genre to me.


I wonder now that james cameron has solves the cgi problems of large scale cgi we can see a faithful adaptation of the mobile infantry suits. Gundams can kiss my ass. A group of mobile infantry mechs jumping a quarter mile and landing near you would be kick fracking ass...

 

[Druidx]

Fantastic book, horrible movie.

 

[SandEagle]

i hated this movie so much.

 

[rasczak]

Maybe it's explained earlier in the movie but I haven't seen the whole thing, just various bits during the occasional repeats on television. Anyway, why is there no counter-battery fire from orbit? Here you have Earth in the future, with a militaristic worldwide culture. It has the technology to send dreadnaughts to another planet in response to a hostile act from another species. While the capital ships are in orbit above the hostile species homeworld, some larger bugs shoot plasma as some kind of flak to destroy some of the capital ships. How can those nontechnological bugs detect and accurately target ships a few hundred miles above? Why doesn't the fleet move out of range once they find out they can be hit (surely those plasma jets have a limited range). Why doesn't the fleet computers & sensor grids detect the plasma launches, calculate their origin and the capital ships main armament immediately nuke/vaporize/railguns the location of the launcher in counter-battery fire?

We're talking about a militaristic society with technology well above our own, surely their tactics are equally as refined. Why use troopers on the ground when you can mass-drive the bugs homeworld in retaliation for them launching an asteroid at yours? How can nontechnological bugs affect an asteroid orbit and calculate its trajectory to the point of having it hitting Earth after a voyage of surely years if not millenia?

Or is this all but a dreamlike metaphor so none of the 'reality' is of import?

*humbug*

How do you think would we really act if we were an advanced militaristic society and one of our cities got obliterated? Methinks the military would react with extreme & efficient prejudice, like turning the planet's surface into glass.

Some might say this would make for a short movie but the film could be about the journey there, how the decision is made, the building of the ships, who gets chosen, etc... Think a militaristic retributional version of Contact. Then again that doesn't fit the 15yo boy model for a summer blockbuster.

if possible, read the book first. The movie really doesn't do it justice.

 

[purbeast0]

movie >>>>>>>>>>>>>> book

for ANY story.

 

[SandEagle]

movie >>>>>>>>>>>>>> book

for ANY story.

exactly. 2 hours. >>> 200 pages

 

[Linflas]

exactly. 2 hours. >>> 200 pages

AKA mindless activity >>> engaged mind.

 

[FoBoT]

It did make for a good movie all it's own though.

i agree, i didn't hate the movie. but you gotta look at it like a spin off of the book, since it is quite different

 

[clamum]

lol, this was my favorite movie when I was like 14-15 years old and it had just come out in theaters. I keep hearing suggestions to read the book so I need to remember to do that.

 

[QuantumPion]

other than the bug effects by tippet, the movie was ass.

the book was about a semi benign/workable fascist world government system that was protected by a interstellar capable military.

the bugs were aliens that attacked earth and its colonies, but they were clearly sentient, had ships, and had fully diplomatic/political alliances with other aliens(i.e. complete society). the warrior types had small-arms energy weapons weren't mindless drones sent to be zerg fodder.

the mobile infantry (MI) were soldiers in powered armor suits with portable nuke weapons whose primary role was occupation of any planet that wasnt to be orbitaly nuked. they had energy weapons and got around by jet assisted Hulk-type jumping.

the movie couldnt afford this and verhoeven focused on making a satirical and simplistic war movie.

the bugs in the movie were more based on the bug aliens in John Steakley's Armor

Yeah the book was more like Mechwarrior - drop a squad of 3 super powerful, highly trained war machines down to assault the enemy. The book turned it into civil-war era meat grinder. I'm surprised Verhoeven didn't have the marines marching in ranks and firing single-shot muskets. That movie was an abomination of the book.

 

[ringtail]

``

 

[ringtail]

``

 

[dawp]

movie >>>>>>>>>>>>>> book

for ANY story.

exactly. 2 hours. >>> 200 pages

I take it neither one of you read the book.

 

[AdamK47]

I thought it was one of the best movies when I was 17 or 18 years old. Viewing it again at 32... not so much. It's worthy of many eye rolls.

 

[DigDog]

film doesn't have power armor, book does. humans rely on small units of power armor troops to secure key points thus controlling planets with minimum troops.

so, not really realistic but hey, it's a sci-fi book. the thing is, the book is a parody of fascism, more than hardcore science fiction a-la Asimov or Clarke. It mimicks the spartan myth, were only military personnel have a right to citizenship and vote, mocks government propaganda (of which you only see one side in the film), and paints a different picture of the protagonist - who is totally thick and buys into all the state-supremacy crap.

suggested reading:
Glory Road (heinlein's best, no doubt).
The Door into Summer
The Cat who Walked Through Walls

 

[Juddog]

I don't know if anybody mentioned this, since I skipped most of the thread, but you should read the book.

 

[FoBoT]

The Door into Summer

this was the first Heinlein book i read, got me hooked

 

[JTsyo]

same reason that they don't use tanks and artillery instead of just infantry.

 

[pelov]

So you're watching Starship Troopers starring Casper van Dien and you start to wonder why some bits of it don't make sense. He's like a sci-fi Dolph Lundgren. You can safely assume that whatever movie Casper van Dien is in will not make any sense whatsoever.

 

[Pheran]

Everyone that is ripping on the movie just doesn't get it. Verhoeven does some very nice satires. The main problem is that you have to forget that the movie has anything to do with the novel, because it doesn't. John Scalzi (author of the excellent Old Man's War series) did a nice review of Starship Troopers.

Useless trivia fact: the company I worked for at the time this movie came out is in the Starship Troopers credits.

 

[BladeVenom]

The book is a classic. Probably the first to use powered armor with jump jets, night-vision, heads up display, etc,. The one race they fight are the bugs. Although there were 3 races in the books; the third was called the Skinnies. Think of how often you see 3 very different races fighting in games today.

Any military sci-fi since has been influenced by the book. The main concepts from Warhammer 40,000 and Starcraft are from Heinlein.

 

[Train]

Everyone that is ripping on the movie just doesn't get it. Verhoeven does some very nice satires. The main problem is that you have to forget that the movie has anything to do with the novel, because it doesn't. John Scalzi (author of the excellent Old Man's War series) did a nice review of Starship Troopers.

Useless trivia fact: the company I worked for at the time this movie came out is in the Starship Troopers credits.

To be fair, I didn't actually think the movie sucked. If I hadn't read the book and had expectations going in, I would have liked it for what it was. I was dissapointed some of my favorite themes from the book were left out or replaced.

I kinda wish someone would redo it in a more true-to-the-book fashion. Verhoeven's work would still stand alone as a good movie. Similar to how Dark Night and Tim Burton's Batman are both good movies about the same thing, told through very different moviemaking styles. It's ok to like both versions of Batman.

 

[ShawnD1]

I wonder how the people going nuts over a movie deviating from a book feel about Blade Runner. Worst movie ever?

I haven't read that book but yes that was the worst movie ever. It's literally 2 hours of watching Harrison Ford drink himself to death. The story never goes anywhere.