Sunday, December 3

The real Starship Troopers Controversery


Sony has recently granted Starship Troopers a third movie. We all now the schlocky movie with Casper Van Dien but what about the book it was supposedly based on? It was written by Robert A. Heinlein in 1959. Now, the movie wasn't supposed to be based on the book but looked so much like it, they decided to take elements and dialog from it. Now Heinlein was a Naval officer and lots of his views, some which critics believe are strongly his and the book minus plot. There is a lot of philosophical differences between the book and the movie. The book is strongly militaristic and somewhat fascist and against communism.

In contrast, the Federation's wardrobe in the movie is very Nazi-like because director Paul Verhoeven is against Nazis as well from his childhood even though his neighborhood wasn't directly attacked but suffered some. Also, the movie is the only one I know that is gender blind, women and men take showers without qualms about gender roles and a black woman takes high rank with no problem. Where in the book, the women were mostly in the navy. Remember how weird it was that Casper's character name was Rico? Well he was originally Filipino in the book. And Dizzy was a guy, not a girl. The animated series Roughnecks was a mix of both the movie and book but retained Dizzy as a girl. It was unfortuantely was canceled before it could conclude and the company that produced has since folded.