So There's a Starship Troopers Movie in the Works

You may have seen the somewhat-travesty of a film by that name directed by Paul Verhoeven. Pure 90s Cheese, without any of the redeeming qualities it should have had. But I will let someone else tell you that story. The Exact Words of the Text - by John Carter

I didn't particularly like Heinlein's novel. I tried to read it couple of times, and I honestly can't tell you much about it. I know enough to know that it bears very little relation to the 1997 "satire" by Verhoeven. I like some of Heinlein's work. I even like a fair bit of Military Sci-Fi. The Honorverse by David Weber is one example. I currently reading In Fury Born, also by Weber, though it seems to be taking a strange turn.

But I didn't particularly connect with Troopers.

First, John Carter, from Postcards from Barsoom, gives us the script for how he would have written the first sequence for a Starship Troopers movie. Then we get the following:

And that is how the cinematic adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s seminal military-SF masterpiece Starship Troopers should have started: with all of the pathos, action, and emotional intensity of the novel’s famous first chapter. I’ve taken extensive liberties with the source material, but in my head, this is what the first ten minutes or so of the movie would look like. If it had been a good movie.

But it was not.

Instead, director Paul Verhoeven served up Saved By the Bugs, a cheesy 90’s high-school drama cum college movie which felt more like Beverly Hills 90210 than Full Metal Jacket, liberally slathered with unnecessary sexual drama and drenched in hamfisted satire of the source material, with all of the coolest elements – the powered armour, the orbital drops, the backpack nukes – conspicuously stripped out.

But then Verhoeven wasn't interested in adapting Heinlein's novel, he was writing a "Communism Good" screed.

The reason Verhoeven left out the powered armour is quite simple: it was too cool, and his intention was not to make the Mobile Infantry look cool. His intention was to ridicule the philosophical position that Heinlein put forward in the book: that violence is at the heart of the political, and cultures – or species – who forget this, get rolled by the ones who don’t.

It is a long post or article, but worth a look.

Sony has announced a new adaptation of the novel. It won't have anything to do with the 1997 travesty, that only lives on in memes; it is a meme, after all. It will be a new adaptation of the novel. That still doesn't fill me with much hope, give the trash that has been coming out of Hollywood in the past 7 or 8 years.

Apparently Neill Blomkamp, who directed the stunningly good Sci-Fi District 9 movie is attached to the project. I'm not sure if that is confirmed, or only a rumor. That lends some hope to the project since he does know how to do Sci-Fi. He will still have to deal with DEI. There are still a lot of DEI rules in Hollywood, even if they are calling them something else today.