5 ms·

I'm surprised the author never even mentions the book by Robert Heinlein. Granted the movie tells a different story than the book but they share the similarity

by error54 13y ago

I'm surprised the author never even mentions the book by Robert Heinlein. Granted the movie tells a different story than the book but they share the similarity in that on the surface they both preach of the virtues and nobility of war but upon closer inspection, we see that they're telling a different story entirely.

jfoutz 13y ago
"The screenplay, by Robocop writer Edward Neumeier, furnished the old-fashioned science-fiction framework of Robert A. Heinlein’s notoriously militaristic novel with archetypes on loan from teen soaps and young adult-fiction, undermining the self-serious saber-rattling of the source text."
- JDulin 13y ago
  Although I haven't read the novel, it would be most meta irony if the article's author was missing the book's subtle societal criticism.
  - jfoutz 13y ago
    The novel is really short. It's good, I enjoy Heinlein's writing anyway. He lays out an interesting model for democracy, but it depends critically on permanent war. It has been a long time since i read the book, but i think the author gives it a fair shake. Nothing really screams unfair representation to me.
    - jholman 13y ago
      > He lays out an interesting model for democracy, but it depends critically on permanent war. That's not true in the fiction, and I can't understand how you would claim that it would "really work that way" or any other claim. In the book, this model of government has existed for a long time, and there has been no war for a long time. So, Heinlein claims that it works without war. But, you know, maybe he's full of shit. (that's devil's advocacy; I'm generally a big fan of RAH.) But on top of that, why would it depend on war? You're born without a franchise, like in modern democracy. But in modern democracy, you get your franchise simply by waiting 19 years (or some other number). In the book, you get your franchise by agreeing to do Federal Service. You apply, you choose a preferred form of service, you do aptitude testing, and you give up control over your own life for N years. When each term is up, you can either re-enlist, or retire. When you retire, you gain full citizenship! There's no requirement that Federal Service be military (Heinlein has claimed in other writing that he intended for "95%" of service to be non-military, but others have noted that this is less-than-clear in the book-as-written). But even if it was all military... Switzerland has a military, with mandatory civil service, but no war.
      - jfoutz 13y ago
        That's a pretty interesting point. I don't remember the book well enough to recall astronauts or firefighters getting the vote. I must have projected some later thought on my reading. In that light, it seems a lot more like the Fifth American Republic (i think that's what they were called) in the Diamond Age. People would be required to show up at a certain place and time and perform some activity. For example, walk in a room, pour poison into a cup, leave the room. Five minutes later, walk back in the room, drink the liquid in the cup. Someone else has the job of emptying the poison and replacing it with water. They never get to see each other, but they build immense trust in their fellow citizens. In any case, thanks, I thought mechanized infantry veterans who had actually seen combat were the only voters in the Starship Troopers system.
  - kstenerud 13y ago
    The novel was far more explicit in its commentary. In fact, most of the novel is the protagonist wondering why they're going from planet to planet, destroying other races as they go. The movie, on the other hand, conceals the irony well enough that it bleeds over into the real world.
mwally 13y ago
I only recently read the book, and I was surprised just how different from the movie it was, and better. The book is a good read.
bradleyjg 13y ago
I don't know about that. Heinlein seems pretty keen on his notion of citizenship through military service, albeit perhaps as a means of preventing "unnecessary" wars rather than enabling them. Either way, it's a pretty terrible political philosophy. That aspect of serious advocacy is completely absent from the movie.
- jff 13y ago
  Not military, just service. Any kind of public service. As they said in the book, they'll have you count caterpillar hairs if there's nothing else to do--anyone can get franchise.
- radley 13y ago
  Serious advocacy of citizenship through military service? One soldier was there just so she should could have children. (Gotta listen during the shower scene.)
  - maaku 13y ago
    He's talking about the book, not the movie.
- ubernostrum 13y ago
  The problem with Heinlein's corpus is there are so many characters who can be read as author avatars representing his views that it's hard to tell if any of them should be read that way.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    I actually think that all of them should be, but in a nuanced way -- that is, they all represent points of view that Heinlein wanted the reader to think about, but not necessarily points of view that Heinlein held, or wanted the reader to adopt.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  What's wrong with that? Universal suffrage for free seems an obviously bad idea.
jholman 13y ago
It's not just a different story; the book has some political points to make which, I think, the movie is trying to directly rebut. Feels a bit tasteless to use the book license for this purpose, to me, but then again I'm a Heinlein fan and I thought Robocop was dumb. One of the big issues in the book is that patriotism isn't just a rhetorical trick to get naive young boys to volunteer for a meatgrinder (though of course Verhoeven and Neumeier are right, it does that too). If no one stands up for a society, then that society is vulnerable to predators. Sometimes it's foreign invasion, sometimes it's internal predators like corruption and profiteering. I think this call to have a little backbone is relevant in every era. (This position is straightforwardly argued by the mouthpiece character, Dubois.) And another issue, a little less prominent but often-criticized, is the idea of only giving the franchise to those who earn it. Heinlein later wrote that he wasn't so much advocating this particular plan for the franchise, (e.g. forwarding an alternative: only give the franchise to mothers!), but that he felt that democracy was going in a bad direction (bread, circuses, demagoguery, and holy-war-style partisanship), and that maybe this "franchise-for-all" premise should be revisited. Why do I think Verhoeven was spitting in Heinlein's face? I probably shouldn't try to paraphrase Heinlein, because he was a complex guy with complex political opinions, but I think he generally favored military strength (though he generally did not favor a strong central government). I'm not as familiar with the Verhoeven oeuvre, but seems to be focused against military-industrial complex (though that's more straightforwardly a Robocop thing), and his anti-war rhetoric is so un-nuanced (it's so slapstick that some people thought it was pro-war) that it's tempting to believe he's anti-all-war (contrasting with people who think the phrase "just war" is meaningful, a group I feel confident includes Heinlein). As I said earlier, I think it's a bit tasteless to try to make a franchise work into a direct attack on the original. For some contrast: IIRC, Haldeman wrote The Forever War in part as a direct reply to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had lots of direct combat experience, too (as contrasted with Heinlein, who I think never saw combat), which partially informed his views on books like Heinlein's. Personally, I think The Forever War is too good at raising new issues to be seen entirely as a reply to anything, but I understand that was a motivator.
- chipotle_coyote 13y ago
  Multiple sources I've come across over the years have claimed that the movie started out as an original property and only became an "adaptation" of Starship Troopers shortly before it went into production, when the studio realized they had an option on Heinlein's book and that it was sorta-kinda similar. (This is much the same thing as what happened to the movie I, Robot, which started out as an unrelated script, I believed called Hardwired.) My suspicion is that Verhoeven -- like Alex Troyas with I, Robot -- knew full well that their movies had very little to do with the source material and put on a game face in interviews. I've always wondered if the movie might not have done better in its initial run without the studio forcing that connection onto it. A film can't really be both a military dystopia satire and a good adaptation of Starship Troopers, any more than a brutal deconstruction of Objectivism would make a good adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> I'm surprised the author never even mentions the book by Robert Heinlein. Granted the movie tells a different story than the book but they share the similarity in that on the surface they both preach of the virtues and nobility of war but upon closer inspection, we see that they're telling a different story entirely. Except that the "we" that see that in the case of the book excludes many of its critics (and, notably, the creators of the movie), and that, in the case of the movie, it doesn't actually take "closer inspection" to see that, since it pretty much hits you over the head with it.

by error54 13y ago

jfoutz 13y ago

"The screenplay, by Robocop writer Edward Neumeier, furnished the old-fashioned science-fiction framework of Robert A. Heinlein’s notoriously militaristic novel with archetypes on loan from teen soaps and young adult-fiction, undermining the self-serious saber-rattling of the source text."

JDulin 13y ago
Although I haven't read the novel, it would be most meta irony if the article's author was missing the book's subtle societal criticism.
- jfoutz 13y ago
  The novel is really short. It's good, I enjoy Heinlein's writing anyway. He lays out an interesting model for democracy, but it depends critically on permanent war. It has been a long time since i read the book, but i think the author gives it a fair shake. Nothing really screams unfair representation to me.
  - jholman 13y ago
    > He lays out an interesting model for democracy, but it depends critically on permanent war. That's not true in the fiction, and I can't understand how you would claim that it would "really work that way" or any other claim. In the book, this model of government has existed for a long time, and there has been no war for a long time. So, Heinlein claims that it works without war. But, you know, maybe he's full of shit. (that's devil's advocacy; I'm generally a big fan of RAH.) But on top of that, why would it depend on war? You're born without a franchise, like in modern democracy. But in modern democracy, you get your franchise simply by waiting 19 years (or some other number). In the book, you get your franchise by agreeing to do Federal Service. You apply, you choose a preferred form of service, you do aptitude testing, and you give up control over your own life for N years. When each term is up, you can either re-enlist, or retire. When you retire, you gain full citizenship! There's no requirement that Federal Service be military (Heinlein has claimed in other writing that he intended for "95%" of service to be non-military, but others have noted that this is less-than-clear in the book-as-written). But even if it was all military... Switzerland has a military, with mandatory civil service, but no war.
    - jfoutz 13y ago
      That's a pretty interesting point. I don't remember the book well enough to recall astronauts or firefighters getting the vote. I must have projected some later thought on my reading. In that light, it seems a lot more like the Fifth American Republic (i think that's what they were called) in the Diamond Age. People would be required to show up at a certain place and time and perform some activity. For example, walk in a room, pour poison into a cup, leave the room. Five minutes later, walk back in the room, drink the liquid in the cup. Someone else has the job of emptying the poison and replacing it with water. They never get to see each other, but they build immense trust in their fellow citizens. In any case, thanks, I thought mechanized infantry veterans who had actually seen combat were the only voters in the Starship Troopers system.
- kstenerud 13y ago
  The novel was far more explicit in its commentary. In fact, most of the novel is the protagonist wondering why they're going from planet to planet, destroying other races as they go. The movie, on the other hand, conceals the irony well enough that it bleeds over into the real world.

mwally 13y ago

I only recently read the book, and I was surprised just how different from the movie it was, and better. The book is a good read.

bradleyjg 13y ago

I don't know about that. Heinlein seems pretty keen on his notion of citizenship through military service, albeit perhaps as a means of preventing "unnecessary" wars rather than enabling them. Either way, it's a pretty terrible political philosophy. That aspect of serious advocacy is completely absent from the movie.

jff 13y ago
Not military, just service. Any kind of public service. As they said in the book, they'll have you count caterpillar hairs if there's nothing else to do--anyone can get franchise.
radley 13y ago
Serious advocacy of citizenship through military service? One soldier was there just so she should could have children. (Gotta listen during the shower scene.)
- maaku 13y ago
  He's talking about the book, not the movie.
ubernostrum 13y ago
The problem with Heinlein's corpus is there are so many characters who can be read as author avatars representing his views that it's hard to tell if any of them should be read that way.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  I actually think that all of them should be, but in a nuanced way -- that is, they all represent points of view that Heinlein wanted the reader to think about, but not necessarily points of view that Heinlein held, or wanted the reader to adopt.
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
What's wrong with that? Universal suffrage for free seems an obviously bad idea.

jholman 13y ago

It's not just a different story; the book has some political points to make which, I think, the movie is trying to directly rebut. Feels a bit tasteless to use the book license for this purpose, to me, but then again I'm a Heinlein fan and I thought Robocop was dumb. One of the big issues in the book is that patriotism isn't just a rhetorical trick to get naive young boys to volunteer for a meatgrinder (though of course Verhoeven and Neumeier are right, it does that too). If no one stands up for a society, then that society is vulnerable to predators. Sometimes it's foreign invasion, sometimes it's internal predators like corruption and profiteering. I think this call to have a little backbone is relevant in every era. (This position is straightforwardly argued by the mouthpiece character, Dubois.) And another issue, a little less prominent but often-criticized, is the idea of only giving the franchise to those who earn it. Heinlein later wrote that he wasn't so much advocating this particular plan for the franchise, (e.g. forwarding an alternative: only give the franchise to mothers!), but that he felt that democracy was going in a bad direction (bread, circuses, demagoguery, and holy-war-style partisanship), and that maybe this "franchise-for-all" premise should be revisited. Why do I think Verhoeven was spitting in Heinlein's face? I probably shouldn't try to paraphrase Heinlein, because he was a complex guy with complex political opinions, but I think he generally favored military strength (though he generally did not favor a strong central government). I'm not as familiar with the Verhoeven oeuvre, but seems to be focused against military-industrial complex (though that's more straightforwardly a Robocop thing), and his anti-war rhetoric is so un-nuanced (it's so slapstick that some people thought it was pro-war) that it's tempting to believe he's anti-all-war (contrasting with people who think the phrase "just war" is meaningful, a group I feel confident includes Heinlein). As I said earlier, I think it's a bit tasteless to try to make a franchise work into a direct attack on the original. For some contrast: IIRC, Haldeman wrote The Forever War in part as a direct reply to Starship Troopers. Haldeman had lots of direct combat experience, too (as contrasted with Heinlein, who I think never saw combat), which partially informed his views on books like Heinlein's. Personally, I think The Forever War is too good at raising new issues to be seen entirely as a reply to anything, but I understand that was a motivator.

chipotle_coyote 13y ago
Multiple sources I've come across over the years have claimed that the movie started out as an original property and only became an "adaptation" of Starship Troopers shortly before it went into production, when the studio realized they had an option on Heinlein's book and that it was sorta-kinda similar. (This is much the same thing as what happened to the movie I, Robot, which started out as an unrelated script, I believed called Hardwired.) My suspicion is that Verhoeven -- like Alex Troyas with I, Robot -- knew full well that their movies had very little to do with the source material and put on a game face in interviews. I've always wondered if the movie might not have done better in its initial run without the studio forcing that connection onto it. A film can't really be both a military dystopia satire and a good adaptation of Starship Troopers, any more than a brutal deconstruction of Objectivism would make a good adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> I'm surprised the author never even mentions the book by Robert Heinlein. Granted the movie tells a different story than the book but they share the similarity in that on the surface they both preach of the virtues and nobility of war but upon closer inspection, we see that they're telling a different story entirely. Except that the "we" that see that in the case of the book excludes many of its critics (and, notably, the creators of the movie), and that, in the case of the movie, it doesn't actually take "closer inspection" to see that, since it pretty much hits you over the head with it.