Visiting the Starship Troopers
In a post a few days ago, I referred to the movie "Starship Troopers" when theorising (read 'dreaming') about alternatives to voting for political representation.
A colleague who read the post sent me the following email:
Dear Mr Flying Pig,Not just a comic book movie.
"If you have seen Paul Verhoeven's movie Starship Troopers, you have seen merely Heinlein's story with almost all the philosophy carefully removed."
"Starship Troopers was originally to have been one of Heinlein's juvenile books, but the violence made it unfit for that duty. Instead, it is the book that earned Heinlein the mislabel "fascist." Understandable. Heinlein uses Troopers as a vehicle for his autocratic ideals. Daring stuff for the standards of 1959 (when Troopers first saw print) and still so today. "
Starship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein
Ace (New York): 1959.
Paperback: 208 pages.
ISBN: 0-441-78358-9Found this interesting reading:
"The Nature of "Federal Service" in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers", by James Gifford
http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf
He's lent me the book. I'll let you know how I find it.
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it depends on how you define 'comic book movie'. I think it's one of the best films I've seen, funny, violent, clever, and, having not read the book (yet) i don't know about it being devoid of Heinlein's philosophy, but I do know that there's a lot of ideas in there which bear thinking about.
Hollywood goss: Casper Van Dien, who plays Rikoh in the film, had to be told that the film, and the role he was playing, were completely serious, because he couldn't understand any of the humour.
classic.
Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed the movie, too. Picture perfect actors playing military characters, violence so over the top it was funny, outragious 'burgs,' good special effects, and one of the dumbest endings I've ever seen in a movie.
The book's not quite the same as the movie, strangely enough. More later.