Posted on 03/23/2025 3:49:43 PM PDT by Angelino97
Neill Blomkamp is going back to Planet P—back to Bug City—to hunt for something no one’s ever seen before: a faithful adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 cut, not least because Verhoeven tried and failed to satirize the subject matter. He denounced Heinlein’s novel as a “very right-wing book,” and claims to only have read two chapters “because it was so boring.” The result was something perhaps even more Heinleinian than a sober adaptation and a spectacular piece of propaganda for the author, with one of the most memorable movie scores to boot.
Now, Blomkamp is giving it a go.
On March 14, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the South African filmmaker will write and direct a new movie that stays true to the source material—at least that’s what the magazine’s sources say.
I’m optimistic about it—anxiously optimistic. On the one hand, Blomkamp is a talented creative with a gift for painting compelling science fiction pictures, using documentary-style filmmaking to drop audiences into not-so-distant futures. On the other hand, Blomkamp has a habit of using his work as a vehicle for commenting on human prejudices. That is fine and good and works well with District 9. But there isn’t much wiggle room for sentimentality in Heinlein’s 1959 classic, at least not with regard to the bugs.
Heinlein explicitly compared the bugs to communists, with whom he was utterly unsympathetic in real life. As a species akin to very dangerous ants or termites, the author could think of no more perfect physical expression of that ideology, no greater threat to human freedom and individualism:
Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commissars didn’t care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo.
Indeed, the first chapter is prefaced with a quote attributed to an unknown platoon sergeant from 1918: “Come on, you apes! You wanta to live forever?” Probably the closest real source for that exhortation is Daniel Joseph Daly, a Marine who won a medal of honor during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 after single-handedly holding off an all-night assault and reportedly leaving 200 dead or dying Chinese fighters on the other side of his barricade. Years later, at the Battle of Belleau Wood, Daly is said to have cried out to his men: “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
Daly would have been the ideal citizen in the world of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. The Terran Federation is structured along extremely hierarchical and militaristic lines out of necessity. It’s ancient Sparta gone interstellar. This is a world in which full citizenship is restricted to those who earn it. Johnnie Rico, the main character, recalls the words of a colonel who may as well be speaking for Heinlein: “Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part … and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”
Unlike Verhoeven, Heinlein was not doing satire in his Starship Troopers. He meant what he wrote; the novel was an exposition of his social and political views. That is why people find it—and him—so controversial. Blomkamp has the opportunity to present these things in good faith, rather than merely attempting to mock them, as Verhoeven tried to do. There are other significant differences between Verhoeven’s adaptation and the novel that could appear in Blomkamp’s take.
Heinlein did not have a blue-eyed, Dutch-extracted Casper Van Dien in mind when he created Johnnie Rico. His real name is Juan, and he’s Filipino. Verhoeven likely didn’t know that, because he didn’t study the material carefully before making his movie.
Van Dien’s friend and eventual love interest in Verhoeven’s film, Isabelle “Dizzy” Flores (Dina Meyer), is a man in Heinlein’s original story, with a small part. Nevertheless, I liked Verhoeven’s improvisation in this case, as her death marks Rico’s transition into a hardened member of the Mobile Infantry—his one true bride.
Blomkamp might also explore the “Skinnies,” another race of humanoid aliens who appear in the book but are totally absent from Verhoeven’s film, and a variety of other sci-fi crowd-pleasers that were missing, like the capsules the Mobile Infantry troopers used to deploy from orbit in a rain of falling steel.
I’m rooting for Blomkamp. With the end of “wokeness” and the resurgence of interest in right-wing thought, there hasn’t been a better time in recent memory for a film that takes Heinlein seriously. Getting it right would make a blockbuster that has something to say. Previous PostMuch Ado About Nothing in Kennedy Center ‘Booing’ Incident
I thought Carmen was the shit when it came out. But as I’ve aged Dizz is definitely the best of them all.
It was a fun movie. They kicked @$$. Hot chicks.
What else do you need?
I agree. I know a couple of direct-to-video sequels were made. One had power suits in it. I wonder how they were?
I remember that
Maybe I'll watch them on one of the streaming apps.
I've never seen the entire movie. To me it was unwatchable and I don't think I missed much. A movie true to the original book would be great, but I realize I am not the target audience. I would love to see the opening raid against the ‘Skinnies’, with capsule drops and powered armor, introduction to Lt. Col Dubois and basic training at Camp Curry. There are strong characters throughout the novel: Fleet Sgt. Ho, Ace, Rico's father, etc. with a neat plot twist at the end.
I'd love to see it done, but I won't get my hopes up.
I’ll second that, although there’d be no way to include all of the heart of it, which is the social and political part...
TANSTAAFL!
Yeah, quit reading when his homo side emerged.
Apparently he was into the whole hippy thing of free love and do it with anything that holds still.
never read another book of his after “Stranger in a strange land”
Could not finish that steaming pile.
SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO READ THE BOOK!
The last paragraph is when.....
The main character wonders if the reports of what they have accomplished will be given to his father in his father’s language,Tagalog, showing the main character is not a lily white as in the movie.
The author used bugs as a metaphor for communists.
Every time my mom spotted and the swatted a bug she called it a dirty democrat.
Haldeman’s books are great, but I’m not sure how well they’d adapt because they are very dense. There’s a lot more intricate plotting and detail than something like Starship Troopers.
My mistake - I was thinking of Joe Abercrombie ‘s work. I’d agree that Haldeman’s Forever War would make a great movie.
Yeah, I think you are probably right. Heck, when the first Dune movie came out decades ago I thought to myself, there is no way you can cram that into a couple of hours and have it still make sense.
I’m not perfect, but I sure got that one right.
I read my first James Bond book from the 50’s a couple of years ago. It was ridiculously simplistic and at a 7th grade reading level. But it was a perfect story for a film. Just like many popular songs are a few chords and seven or eight lines of text, half of them repeated. But look at the words of old Genesis songs. I love ‘em, but they are way too wordy to ever be truly popular for the masses.
It’s why Ringworld can’t be a movie, though maybe it could inspire a simple movie script. But even then, you can end up with what happens in the auto industry: The concept car is amazing, but when you remove an inch here, a couple inches there to make it something mass producable, it completely changes the look to be downright repulsive. As exhibit A I offer the pointiac Aztec. Beautifu concept car, ugly final product.
I think the same thing happens often when putting a beloved book to film. It’s best that it is constructed in your mind, rather than the screen.
Language. The bugs made me want to blow chunks. Too much gore. Savagely whipping a trooper because of a weapons practice blunder. Put him the brig or the firing squad because the main actor killed a buddy because he didn’t engage the safety. Not some whipping that smacked of homo leans.
Were the bugs actually attacking Earth at any point? So why in the heck did they go there to their planet? I remember something about a city called New (?) that was destroyed but was it the bugs? Ok I think it was, but…
If that’s the case, why dump scores of troops into a situation where they’re being slaughtered and maimed and a serious lack of intelligence?
Destroy the daggum planet, reduce its surface to a burnt out cinder like Klatu said would happen to Earth if its population extended its warlike mindless destruction from it’s atmospheric or orbital boundary.
Well here I am either doing a rewrite or a personal novel based on the movie. Not.
I just loathed the movie, it was gross and seemed really stupid.
Am I delusional? I knew he was not Caucasian throughout the book?
7th grade reading level for 1950s 7th graders.
Today, many high school graduates would have trouble getting through it.
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