6 ms·

Odds are that, if you read the book first, you'll probably hate the movie. They really are totally different. Personally, I don't believe fidelity to the source

by beloch 13y ago

Odds are that, if you read the book first, you'll probably hate the movie. They really are totally different. Personally, I don't believe fidelity to the source is necessary for an adaptation to be successful. Plenty of films have been made that are slaves to the source and are terrible as a result! Great films are often made from bad books, so why can't great films just be different from the great books they're based on? I do think there's room for a more faithful adaptation of the book, but that doesn't change the fact that Verhoeven's film is brilliant and hilarious. If you go in expecting it to be faithful to the book (or you're a bit of a hawk yourself to begin with), I can see why you might interpret it as a serious, but bad flick. Great films aren't always intended for all audiences however! If Verhoeven can be faulted, it's for making "Hollow Man". Now that flick sucked!

deleted 13y ago
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thaumasiotes 13y ago
> Great films are often made from bad books People never believe me when I bring up Shrek as an example of this.
gojomo 13y ago
Knowing that the movie was coming prompted me to read the book first, having seen it discussed fondly. I enjoyed the book, but was surprised by its unfashionable celebration of martial values: in particular a viewpoint about the necessity and inevitability of war. They couldn't possibly get that into a modern mass-market sci-fi action flick, I thought. But Verhoeven did! And he managed to work in overlapping layers of both respect and criticism for the militaristic source material. He makes the jingoism and quasi-fascism alternately seem attractive, clownish, revolting, and necessary. Preserving some of the book's rhetorical case for warmaking, even though Verhoeven also simultaneously mocks that case, is a subversive achievement as interesting, and in a way as faithful to the book's ideas, as a film featuring more of the "super suits" and infantry-tactics would have been.
- wobbleblob 13y ago
  Verhoeven said in an interview that he never read the source material, only the screenplay. (sorry, no source online) Fair enough - he was making a movie, not a book report for Heinlein fans.
  - gojomo 13y ago
    Verhoeven may have said that. Whether it's true is another matter; he could have been trolling the book's fans. For a project that supposedly started as another entirely unrelated movie, by a director who hadn't read the book, it managed to fit in a lot of the book's particular rhetoric and plot points.
wobbleblob 13y ago
Verhoeven has a history of making completely ridiculous, tasteless movies, with poor scripts, atrocious acting and over the top special effects. I don't blame people for missing the parody in Starship Troopers, because Verhoeven has consistently made such movies in absolute sincerity throughout his career. I suspect all the praise for Starship Troopers belongs with the writer of the screenplay, and that Verhoeven never had the remotest clue that he was making anything more than another dumb action movie.

by beloch 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

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thaumasiotes 13y ago

> Great films are often made from bad books People never believe me when I bring up Shrek as an example of this.

gojomo 13y ago

Knowing that the movie was coming prompted me to read the book first, having seen it discussed fondly. I enjoyed the book, but was surprised by its unfashionable celebration of martial values: in particular a viewpoint about the necessity and inevitability of war. They couldn't possibly get that into a modern mass-market sci-fi action flick, I thought. But Verhoeven did! And he managed to work in overlapping layers of both respect and criticism for the militaristic source material. He makes the jingoism and quasi-fascism alternately seem attractive, clownish, revolting, and necessary. Preserving some of the book's rhetorical case for warmaking, even though Verhoeven also simultaneously mocks that case, is a subversive achievement as interesting, and in a way as faithful to the book's ideas, as a film featuring more of the "super suits" and infantry-tactics would have been.

wobbleblob 13y ago
Verhoeven said in an interview that he never read the source material, only the screenplay. (sorry, no source online) Fair enough - he was making a movie, not a book report for Heinlein fans.
- gojomo 13y ago
  Verhoeven may have said that. Whether it's true is another matter; he could have been trolling the book's fans. For a project that supposedly started as another entirely unrelated movie, by a director who hadn't read the book, it managed to fit in a lot of the book's particular rhetoric and plot points.

wobbleblob 13y ago

Verhoeven has a history of making completely ridiculous, tasteless movies, with poor scripts, atrocious acting and over the top special effects. I don't blame people for missing the parody in Starship Troopers, because Verhoeven has consistently made such movies in absolute sincerity throughout his career. I suspect all the praise for Starship Troopers belongs with the writer of the screenplay, and that Verhoeven never had the remotest clue that he was making anything more than another dumb action movie.