Posted on 11/09/2013 1:46:38 PM PST by EveningStar
When Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers hit theaters 16 years ago today, most American critics slammed it. In the New York Times, Janet Maslin panned the “crazed, lurid spectacle,” as featuring “raunchiness tailor-made for teen-age boys.” Jeff Vice, in the Deseret News, called it “a nonstop splatterfest so devoid of taste and logic that it makes even the most brainless summer blockbuster look intelligent.” Roger Ebert, who had praised the “pointed social satire” of Verhoeven’s Robocop, found the film “one-dimensional,” a trivial nothing “pitched at 11-year-old science-fiction fans.”
But those critics had missed the point. Starship Troopers is satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism. The fact that it was and continues to be taken at face value speaks to the very vapidity the movie skewers.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Know just what you are saying, trebb. While in an intellectual and philosophical point of view I can see the point that carnal relations in the future between siblings some two thousand odd years apart in age may be a foregone matter of no consequence, but it still rankles my morals set in stone back in the 1950s.
Maybe if I live to the age of The Senior... 
I may change my mind-- But I doubt it.
Yet you have to admit, Maureen Johnson Smith Long was one hot... 
momma!
I like the film. It’s a satire of action films...the audience unthinkingly roots for bland automatons and at the end they realize they were watching fascist propaganda.
What if the book sucked? Jaws, The Godfather, The Shining...
If I find her e-mail address I’ll invite her to post here. She looks like a conservative to me.
Got to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000539/... 
and click on the red circled link... 
and have at it!
The restraining order... 
won't allow me to do it
click to a youtube interview of her upcoming DVD release of Dead in Tombstone No bad for a 44 year old... 
not bad at all!
then i only spent two dollars on a used book which i can return and not thirty eight thousand hundred million by two billion more for a movie ticket
She has a hot face, no doubt. Still, at the time of ST, I only had eyes for Denise and wanted more of her and less of Dina. I thought Dina came off too butch in “Troopers” and they made her even uglier in “Star Trek: Nemesis.” I hated that they started making Romulans look like Klingons.
How's that working out for ya now... 
that Charlie Sheen has had his way with her?
But if the truth be told... 
I had the hots for her back then, too--
Gadzooks-- That sure came around to bite us in the ass... 
didn't it?
Well, she’s still not bad looking... but I wish she had given Charlie a wide berth. Same with Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. She’s only now getting her soul back from Xenu.
Apologies if this wasn't clear.
Sorry, if I was quick on the gun, Bloody Sam-- But in my defense, I hold Bob Heinlein mile high above anyone who ever puts ink to paper and as to Dune, I never got into the novel fully as Frank Herbert's writing style did not endear nor encourage me. Even though I did really look forward to the 1984 film to take the good parts and make one hell of a flick, I was so sorely disappointed as David Lynch wrote & directed a full bore bore.
They created these enormous, elaborate sets and setting yet all the real action seemed to take place in a cheap studio about the size of a one bedroom apartment's living room--
And the acting? Well, let us leave that wooden dog asleep.
I did not even try to watch the 2000 TV Mini-Series. Maybe... 
I should have--
A recent documentary, The Story of Film (yes, the interminable one with the Ulster narrator with the unbearable intonation) featured a writer of the film letting us all know that it was satire -- brilliant satire according to the narrator of the documentary.
I just thought it was smug and the film makers were full of themselves. Maybe it's like Steven Colbert. He's not that funny and certainly not very deep, but if you don't like what he tries to satirize, you'll like him and even find him very funny.
That was it. I knew it had been awhile since I read it.
Yeah, with Chi-coms as villains, there’s no way it will ever be made into a film.
Not to mention the fact that the good guys construct a race-selective weapon which kills only Asians!
Mark
She’s hot for any age.
Not always. I know Disney’s The Little Mermaid is actually quite a bit better than the original tale, getting the intended theme of self-sacrifice down FAR better than the original tale did (not to mention made the lead character a lot more sympathetic if you ask me. Sorry, but 1. I find it extremely irritating that God would fail to give a species that wasn’t just sentient, but sapient as well, at the very least something similar to an immortal soul if not an immortal soul itself, and 2., I just found the mermaid in that story to be very unlikeable, especially when many of her actions have dire consequences for her family, she left for a very selfish reason regarding pursuing a soul, and unlike Ariel, she doesn’t even ATTEMPT to make amends for what her actions caused her family even when she committed suicide. And she gets a soul? Had it been me who wrote the book and in Andersen’s shoes, I’d probably have her cast down to Hell for what she did.). I guess I could also cite Jaws and Forrest Gump, even though they weren’t exactly my cup of tea either in book format or film format.
That all being said, we can definitely agree that the book version was MUCH better than the crappy film adaptation in the case of Starship Troopers. Heck, it wasn’t even intended to be an adaptation of Starship Troopers the novel, it was originally a completely unrelated film called Bug Hunt on Outpost Nine.
Speaking of which, my Dad went to see that movie with a friend of his, and when they got to the co-ed shower scene, my dad and his friend could only say “That wasn’t in the book!”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.