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 ...
ping
Good book, but the movie sucked.
According to Heinlein, his desire to write Starship Troopers was sparked by the publication of a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on April 5, 1958 calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapon testing by the United States. In response, Robert and Virginia Heinlein created the small "Patrick Henry League" in an attempt to create support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. Heinlein found himself under attack both from within and outside the science fiction community for his views. Heinlein used the novel to clarify and defend his military and political views at the time."
Some people grok...
Some can’t...
The movie was only tangentially based on the book... there is a Johnny Rico (from the Philippines in the book, not Buenos Aires), and there are “Bugs”... but the intent and messages are vastly different between the two media.
The wife and I went to the RiffTrax Live showing this pretentious clown mentioned in his screed. It was absolutely hilarious and rightly skewered the movie. Even most of the film’s stars went to see it and loved it. There were no protests about the RiffTrax crew not “getting it.”
One of the greatests minds EVER. Here are a few of my favorite thoughts of his. They help me out a LOT when the world is depressing me:
“I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein
“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
AMEN, Brother! AMEN!
We did too. Haven’t laughed so much or so heartily in the movies for years.
Not that I didn’t appreciate Dina Meyer’s boobs as much as any other red-blooded American boy, but the book was better and smarter. Speaking of which, as far as Verhoeven’s work goes, “Robocop” was better and smarter.
On the other hand, Neil Patrick Harris in that uniform...how’s it that it took me ten years after that flick came out, about the time Neil came out, to hear the nickname “Doogie Himmler”?
ping
The movie is an abomination. The director admitted that he despised the philosophy espoused in the original book by Heinlein.
>> right-wing militarism
Leftwing agitprop covering the increasing statism we’re seeing under this Marxist regime.
Eat it, Calum Marsh.
IF that’s what the movie was all about, it completely diverged from the society of personal responsibility envisioned by Heinlein.
Always fascinates me to see journalists that do absolutely no homework on what they’re writing about. The book is a 3 hr read max; at least read the book an do some bio reading about Heinlein, idiot.
Calum Marsh? Perhaps short for calumny
A movie I did not want to watch again.
Actually, it was pretty obvious the movie was a satire, at least to anyone who actually read the Heinlein book.
Oh, and the movie stank on ice.
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