Someone pointed out on a bulletin board one quote from the movie that's not in the book.
A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility.Obviously one of the screenwriters had actually read the book and got most of the message. Either that or it's like the infinite number of monkeys typing eventually managing to reproduce the works of Shakespeare.
Given that the screenwriter missed the part of the message about standing between civilization and the barbarian hordes I'm more inclined to the latter explanation than the former.
I enjoyed the movie and was surprised that it embodied so much of the book, not in plot, but in spirit. They did do a fair job of presenting the viewpoint of the Michael Ironside's character which I was not expecting.
ReplyDeleteAnd they had some neat visual/cinematic touches (no, driving capships like go-carts wasn't among them...).
But yes, it was B-grade. And if you were looking for power suits and nuclear bombs that wreck cities, look elsewhere.
But I thought the spirit of the book was there in ways I wasn't expecting.
Of course, that may have been my singularly low expectations that are responsible for that...
I don't think the spirit of the book was there, I think the screenwriter and the director used obvious tactics to defuse the message as much as possible, the dress uniforms look like SS uniforms. The patronizing news reels "Would you like to know more."
ReplyDeleteBug Hunt is a great B movie, but Starship Troopers was a travesty.
I tried to watch it for itself, as if it were completely unrelated to the book. It turns out that it's not only a hideous mutilation of the book, it's also unwatchably bad in its own right. I rented it as part of a two-for-a-dollar deal and seriously considered asking for my $0.50 back. On a movie rating scale of 1 to 100...well, "watching a blank screen for two hours" has to be zero, and SST-the-Travesty is below that.
ReplyDeleteMan, I'm glad I'm not half as judgemental as you two!
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