Ahh Starship Troopers... The movie that completely reversed the point of the book...

Well that answers my first question: "There was a Starship Troopers 2?"

Poor Casper Van Dien. He appears to be the only one still around.

@DocGratis: Another travesty of science fiction writing being perverted into a sci-fi movie with little relation to the original work. Asimov and Heinlein get killed at the movies... Clarke seems to make out all right... I wonder if anyone will make a decent Rendezvous With Rama?

I'm still shaking my head that they made the movie without the jump suits!!?? Wha?

And like Doc Gratis said, it missed the point of the book.

The fact that there was a STII and now will be a STIII shows how shallow Hollywood and movie goers are. Engage action, disengage brain. Enjoy.

hold on a sec. are we talking about the same "starship troopers" (1997 / Directed by Paul Verhoeven)??? This absolutly brilliant piece of satire and irony?!

@AhnyerKeester: a stereotype that I fall into occasionally.

Haven't seen the trailer for this, but I'm interested...

@NEFARIOUSNEWT
How about David Fincher? - [www.chud.com]

Just what we need, more space nazis.

@NefariousNewt:

Looks like Rendezvous with Rama movie for 2009.

[www.imdb.com]

@NEFARIOUSNEWT: I'm not sure Clark thinks he made out all right. His memoir of the making of 2001 makes it sound like he and Kubric were on entirely different pages throughout the entire project.

Uh, yeah I don't know what you guys are talking about with Starship Troopers sucking. Verhoeven made brilliant film commenting on the trappings of fascism, and a military state, brought on by an unnecessary war. The fact that it was viewed as military porn just proved his point - if you put good looking people (and purposely bad actors) in a military uniform, and try to cloak the hidden message under "cool" space battles and weapons, everyone will miss the point.

The original screenwrite is directing this, so I have SOME hope (I think it also has a budget of USD 20 million).

@bennydesign & @PVIII: I only watched it the once, and didn't catch the brilliance at all, but I've heard many people say it's a work of secret genius, so I may try it again sometime.

I think the visceral negative reaction to the movie has to do with how sublimely excellent Heinlein's book is, and how its "power with responsibility" message is so divergent from what the movie seems to be promoting. That said, the book has often been misread as a pro-military fascist tract, so if the movie's misread, too, then they do have something in common.

@Bob Bruhin: Yes, but the movie came out all right and was a stunning work for the time. Heinlein and Asimov can't really protest the treatment of their work.

@PVIII: I don't think the directing made for good commentary. I think the principles of the book shone through to people who read it first...

The movie seems to be the think the book shows the foibles of...

@moff: I do agree that the book has been misread in that sense.. I guess there is the possibility that missing the brilliance... Still one would think that knowing what the message of the books is I should be more able to pick it up in the movies not less likely..

@DocGratis: I think they're just two very different beasts, and that if you're going to enjoy the movie at all, you need to approach it as if you'd never read the book. (At least, even though I've only seen the movie once, all the people I know who like it haven't read the book, and all of them who've read it hate the film.)

In fairness, I think it'd be tough to capture the book as written on film. It's not a complicated message, but it's preachy in a way that works in a first-person narrative and probably would be off-putting on the big screen.

Ok I re-read Starship troopers recently, and it just seemed like a "boy's adventure" novel. I guess I'm not subtle enough?

@92BuickLeSabre: That was my reaction as well. "There was a Starship Troopers II?!"

@NefariousNewt: I just left a comment like this on the Childhood's End post. Rama would make a better movie.

@AlfaCharger: And, I didn't know Rama was being made into a movie. Good news, I hope!

@bennydesign: Brilliant or Genius is a bit of exaggeration, but yea, that movie. Don't worry, though, 2 and 3 are just standard sci-fi fetish military porn.

Starship Troopers 2 wasn't actually a bad movie, as far as generic, gritty action-y movies go. I'd actually say if you've got a whole saturday and nothing to do, give it a watch.

yeah, there was a starship troopers II. it was really bad.

i am annoyed at it for being so damned loud that i couldn't sleep thru it at the 24 hour sci-fi movie marathon a couple of years ago, and thus fell asleep at the end of charly (which is a cheezy movie, but one i was more interested in seeing than starship troopers II).

... have you guys heard of "the apple"? it's the OTHER disco musical movie that came out in 1980. but one with HIPPIE GOD. AND BEARD GLITTER. set in that futuristic year of 1990-something (96? 92? something like that).

i think the 'thon had that the same year as they ran primer. the previous year had had robot stories. and a few years before that, "happy accidents", a cool small scale time travel movie with vincent d'onofrio.

Where are the drop pods and power armor?
Those were my favorite parts of the book.

@AhnyerKeester:
I'd heard that it was budget limitations that forced Verhoeven to choose between powered armor and lotsa bugs. I guess we know which way he went.

I suspect people that don't get Starship Troopers don't get Robocop, either.

@gybryant: No. RoboCop was fuckin' awesome.

@gybryant: I loved Robocop! "I'll buy that for a dollar!"

@gybryant:
I watched all 3 robocop movies again two weeks ago....well the first 2 anyway...i could not force myself to sit through the 3rd one....blech!

I'll be damned if part one doesn't still hold up to this day!

"Madame, you have suffered a traumatic experience. I will notify the nearest rape crisis center."

@WickedGlee: Old-school trivia -- that line was inspired by Cyril Kornbluth's short story "The Marching Morons," actually! "Would you buy it for a quarter?"

Starship Troopers 2 was lame but I thought the perimeter purge weapon was pretty sweet.

There was also a brief Starship Troopers cartoon series but I'm not sure if it was ever broadcast. I got a vhs for .99 cents of the first three episodes or so.
I for one liked Verhoeven's string of films that parodied the Reagan Bush years. Another character that I think really stands out as a still-relevant figure is Paul Reiser's from Aliens, as the amoral yuppie twit with the brand new LL Bean gear headin' out to the country to make him a deal, using the Marines as his muscle.

I didn't "get" Starship Troopers(the film) when it first came out in 1997. It was tonally wromg for that period in history. I see it now and I am struck with both how profound it really is. Plus it actually manages to mock the post 911 world while having been made 4 years brfore 911. Brilliant really.