There can be no Starship Troopers sequel, even if it’s direct-to-video, because THERE WAS NEVER A STARSHIP TROOPERS MOVIE FOR IT TO BE A SEQUEL TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. If there had been, and had been the sort of film that rumor suggests, it would have been regrettably necessary to cut off Paul Verhoeven’s head and place it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some degraded and contempt-filled artistic visions come at too high a price. This obviously did not happen, so clearly there was no movie. Simple.
Shame on the Sci-Fi Channel for encouraging this hoax – as for Amygdala, well, it’s obviously not Gary’s fault that Sci-Fi’s telling fibs, of course.
UPDATE: In comments, Constant Reader Gary Farber of Amygdala gives us this link to a review of the Not A Movie that is brutal, cruel, hysterically funny and true, true, true.
Well, since the first Star Wars movie was episode IV, why can’t the first ST movie be a sequel?
Ok, point.
Alright, after the last one, there had better be mass executions on the horizon for the people who funded this one. I might forgive them if they remember to put in the friggin’ giant robots with Nukes this time!
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/ATMOVIEClassics.HTM
Steven Dutch has what I consider the best critique of this film out there.
Call it Starship Troopers, but base it on a different novel. It is about time we had a movie based on Haldeman’s Forever Wars.
PS: I don’t understand the passion over this. It is not my favorite Heinlein novel, and was a pretty funny movie about fascism and bug wars. I suppose if you love ST as some sort of libertarian tract, but I prefer Moon is a Harsh Mistress for that anyway.
Come on! Doogie Howser telepathically communicating with the bug queen? Come on! Classic.
Hmm ST reminds me of anime films, in the respect that they try to reinterpret the settings and characters from the manga they are based off.
ST IMHO was a rather good reinterpretation, but if you were expecting to see a straight translation to film, it would prolly be dissapointing.
It has been my experience that the folks who buy into Heinlen’s apparent world-view hate Verhoeven’s movie, and many of the rest of us think the film is really clever social commentary, served up in the form of a spectacular action movie.
Anyway, I’m sure the sequel will have none of the original’s virtues, just as the followups to Robocop completely ignored the strengths of the original.
Now, all thinking geeks really should be up at arms about this monstrosity: http://www.avp-movie.com/
Wasn’t one truly awful Alien sequel enough?
Gromit
Disliking the stupid aspects of that movie-that-wasn’t-made has nothing whatever to do with “buying into Heinlein’s worldview,” or with libertarianism. The politics of the book aren’t libertarian, and I’m not a libertarian; the political system in the book is silly, and Heinlein stacks the deck to explain it.
The movie is idiotic because the characters constantly act in idiotic ways, and the “military” in it is less competent than a street gang, or an average Girl or Boy Scout troop. In the future, machines that fly have ceased to exist, as have hand grenades, bazookas, tanks, mortars, artillery; a Civil War troop with cannons would mop the field of these folks, whose only tactic is run in circles, scream and shout.
See here for an astute and hilarious review.
“It occurred to me that if you’d given me two grenades, a Thompson submachinegun, and a twenty-minute start, that I could have taken on the Mobile Infantry. So could you.”
Deeply, deeply, deeply true.
moe
Jim Macdonald is a good writer.
His other “Red Mike” reviews are also pungent and amusing; it’s a crying shame he seems to have given up doing, or posting, them.
I do particularly like the way the spaceships in the-movie-that-isn’t tend to sink when hit by the alien’s Magic Weapons (how those also get across interstellar space, and hit cities, is also pretty cool; not).
. Oopsie.
Science fiction franchises that take themselves far more seriously than ST are chock full of such ridiculous stuff. I think a real criticism of the film would focus on its messages or its cinematic merits rather than on silly details like the accuracy of their weapons. Were the film trying to portray a plausible scenario without liberal artistic license, those sorts of complaints might make a modicum of sense, but as such it just looks like the movie rubbed the reviewer the wrong way but he doesn’t quite have the insight to articulate why. This happens to me sometimes, too. Anyway, some examples:
Star Trek: The galaxy is littered with planets with earthlike gravity and atmospheres, and that are covered with trees, grass, and flowering plants, not to mention being inhabited by human beings with slightly different noses or foreheads. Beings who have resulted form entirely separate evolutionary processes are capable of mating and producing fertile offspring. This is only the tinyest tip of the iceberg. Lets not even get started on the military tactics used in those films/television shows.
Alien: All the equipment is extremely low-tech. Guns still fire metal slugs, CRT’s are still widely used, cameras transmit analog signals, circuit boards still use current-day components, fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems appear not to have advanced in the slightest.
The Matrix: Do I even need to touch this one? The machines created a 1990’s world for the humans to live in. It remained the 1990’s for the duration of those centuries. The machines decided to create a “prison” world in which human beings have access to computer technology? Did they simply not think this through? Why not, say, the bronze age? Wouldn’t the agents have fared much better against spears and swords? And even if you accept the preposterous notion that machines that have access to fusion power have any place for living beings in their power supply, why not use cows instead? They could be put in a digital world full of grassy plains to munch on, and would never rebel. Admittedly, I never saw the last film where all these problems might have been explained.
Am I making my point sufficiently clear? Next this guy will be picking out the inconsistencies in “Spaceballs”.
Gromit
Gary, thank you for that link! I hadn’t seen most of those movies, but for the couple I had, the guy is hysterical: “Not that they choose particularly good weapons. These guys have a real fondness for air-to-air missiles when trying to shoot ground targets. If there was a contest for “most ineffective weapon to use on a 400 foot reptile,” a heat-seeking air-to-air missile would at least get honorable mention. Somehow, with just two AIM-9 Sidewinders, our guys knock the top off the Chrysler building. A Sidewinder has about a two-pound bursting charge. How did they do that? Later, when they need to blow up a building, they choose Harpoons, which are anti-ship missiles. Apparently ten minutes with a copy of Jane’s was beyond them.”
*still giggling*
“Science fiction franchises that take themselves far more seriously than ST are chock full of such ridiculous stuff.”
Starship Troopers is not a “science fiction franchise”; it’s a gripping book, with a highly controversial political system; it is otherwise notable for its attention, overall, to compelling plausibility and realism in its details, if not its politics and use of standard tropes such as FTL travel.
Your point, Gromit, seems to be that most science fiction films are tripe; that’s certainly true, but it doesn’t follow that one should sit back and accept that situation, given how considerably less dire the situation is regarding written sf.
Yeah, Star Trek and Matrix use ridiculous ideas, the former all the time. No one takes them seriously. Heinlein, say what one might about his works, is generally worth taking seriously, just as lots of good science fiction is. A movie from a serious book deserves to be reasonably authentic and at the same level of sensibility of the book/story; not judged against the generally crap standard of sci-fi movies.
To say otherwise is to say that science fiction movies are inherently crap, and that to desire them to be otherwise is silly. I don’t accept that. It’s also not true. (See 2001, 2010, Gattaca for counter-examples.)
Jesurgislac, I’m glad you and Moe liked my recommendation of Jim Macdonald; if you look at their full web page, you[ll see that both Jim, and his partner Debra Doyle, are pro sf/fantasy writers of longstanding; although some of their work is for the juvenile audience, much of it is not; although I wouldn’t characterize them as brilliant writers, they do good work.
Back on “Red Mike,” the reviews of Event Horizon, Behind Enemy Lines and 1945 also stand out in my memory.
The movie is idiotic because the characters constantly act in idiotic ways, and the “military” in it is less competent than a street gang, or an average Girl or Boy Scout troop. In the future, machines that fly have ceased to exist, as have hand grenades, bazookas, tanks, mortars, artillery
Of course, in the book’s future, machines that fly have largely ceased to exist, as have bazookas, mortars, artillery and especially tanks.
Not to mention the fact that the MI is clearly guilty of war crimes.
Back on “Red Mike,” the reviews of Event Horizon, Behind Enemy Lines and 1945 also stand out in my memory.
Just finished reading them. I scared my cats, I laughed so loud. Excellent.
“Admittedly, I never saw the last film where all these problems might have been explained.”
Yes, they might have been. They were not, however.
“Of course, in the book’s future, machines that fly have largely ceased to exist, as have bazookas, mortars, artillery and especially tanks.”
Yes, quite. Two words: power armor. Armed with missiles, nukes, and everything else that makes the above superfluous and superceded.
It was acceptable and understandable, if distressing, that the filmmakers felt that CGI power-suits were too expensive at the time, and that despite their being at the heart of the book, they could be removed while the rest of the story carried on. That could have been done. It is not acceptable that they proceeded to substitute crazed nonsense as a replacement.
You could film Moby Dick with another kind of ship substituted for a whaling ship; perhaps Ahab is obsessed with a flounder; you couldn’t film it by merely substituting a rubber dinghy and carrying on catching whales with it.
I don’t require that anyone agree with my aesthetic opinions, of course; your mileage may vary.
“Of course, in the book’s future, machines that fly have largely ceased to exist, as have bazookas, mortars, artillery and especially tanks.”
Yes, quite. Two words: power armor. Armed with missiles, nukes, and everything else that makes the above superfluous and superceded.
Yes, I remember the power armor. I’m not suggesting that present-day tanks would still exist, I’m suggesting that there should be tank-equivalents. With more armor and more firepower than you can load into a power-armor suit.
Never mind that even against *present-day* technology, a guy bouncing along in a power-armor suit is likely to get knocked out the sky…
Ridiculous!
Everyone knows that in the future all combat will be conducted by tenuously balanced bipedal mecha at melee range.
And the Wave Motion Gun, of course. But reluctantly.
“. I’m not suggesting that present-day tanks would still exist, I’m suggesting that there should be tank-equivalents. With more armor and more firepower than you can load into a power-armor suit.”
“Never mind that even against *present-day* technology, a guy bouncing along in a power-armor suit is likely to get knocked out the sky…”
Well, you know, ST was written prior to 1958; it’s a bit unreasonable to expect that Heinlein should have predicted every eventuality of the future; as it was, his record is arguably better than every other writer, and he was certainly inferior to none (lots of stuff in his books is no longer the bizarre “science fiction” it once was; it’s just reality; like water beds, and a phone you pull out of your pocket; this was impressive stuff in 1948).
Heinlein’s assertion in the book was that power suits would wipe the floor with tanks, and that speed and mobility would beat heavier armor and bulk; this gets sufficiently into the realm of the hypothetical that it seems to me that while one might enjoy arguing such points, letting the man have his fictional point in a work intended to be fiction, not prediction, is more than allowable.
Ditto, we can assume the suits were stealthy.
The point, however, is not to argue that he was predicting the future accurately; that’s not the job of science future; it is to predict the future plausibly. (For that sort of sf, of course, which is hardly the only kind.)
“Everyone knows that in the future all combat will be conducted by tenuously balanced bipedal mecha at melee range.”
You remind me painfully of the agonies we went through with multiple drafts of the Robojox script (originally written by Joe Haldeman), and trying to come up with money to pay Bob Thurston to rewrite the novelization to keep it vaguely connected to the ever-changing scripts the movie company kept claiming were locked down.
As I recall, after more than a year of madness, we cancelled the book and wrote the whole thing off (at Avon).
The movie was crap, but at least it didn’t pretend to be from a good book.
Your point, Gromit, seems to be that most science fiction films are tripe; that’s certainly true, but it doesn’t follow that one should sit back and accept that situation, given how considerably less dire the situation is regarding written sf.
Ironically, that isn’t my point in the slightest. My point is that the plausibility of science fiction should be taken into account in direct proportion to the extent to which the works take their own plausibility seriously. The Matrix trilogy started as a fun movie based on ridiculous ideas that were easily overcome by suspension of disbelieve. However, “Reloaded” started a rapid downward spiral when it tried to actually get the audience to think about its ridiculous premise. The first film was not tripe. The second most definitely was.
Likewise Star Trek. While my opinion is that it is largely tripe for other reasons (writing, acting, cinematography etc.), it only gets itself in trouble terms of suspension of disbelief when it goes too far trying to explain the silly science of the show. Concepts such as cloning and evolution are consistently mangled. In one episode a pair of crew members end up “out of phase” with the rest of the ship, allowing them to walk through walls, yet they don’t likewise pass through the floor and are obviously still “in phase” with the air, since they don’t asphyxiate. I guess their idea is that if they throw enough technobabble at the audience they will simply lose track. I find the technique misguided.
The film “Starship Troopers” on the other hand does very little to try to explain the science of how their world works, and wisely so. Bugs throw rocks through space at Earth. Earth pours millions of soldiers into the military meat-grinder. Like the propaganda films after which it is modeled, it only tells the audience what it needs to know–Earth is in danger from inhuman enemies and our young heroes are going to get the job done. Of course it might be wiser just to carpet those planets with nukes, but this film isn’t commenting on the wars of the future. It is commenting on the wars of today, when soldiers have to be sent into hostile, unfamiliar places like the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq to capture enemy leaders, and despite our superior firepower they still come back maimed or in body bags.
So, again, if you dislike the message of the movie, or you resent its use of the “Starship Troopers” title, that’s one thing, but picking on the technical details in such a deliberately silly and obviously satirical work is pretty unfair. Not to compare the two in terms of artistry, but did you read “Animal Farm” and ask why the farmer couldn’t simply take back his farm by force?
Gromit
Gromit: please stop making sense in the middle of an argument, you bastard. It’s entirely unfair.
Sorry, I’ll try not to let it happen again. 😉
Gromit
And trust me, I really enjoy plausible Sci-Fi. It is just such a rarity that I long ago stopped actually looking for it. I think “Gattaca” was a quite good example. It is a highly stylized film, but the science involved is, from what I recall, quite accurate. And while I am willing to forgive some lapses in a good film, I truly detest bad science in movies that make the science itself the issue, such as “The 6th Day” or “Lawnmower Man.” Both films, in addition to being truly wretched cinema, completely distort the technologies against which they are trying to warn us. That’s simply reprehensible.
Gromit
There’s a great new astrobiology blog, run by newspaper editor Rob Bignell, at http://alienlifeblog.blogspot.com/. It includes roundups of the latest news from the various scientific fields that form astrobiology, but more interestingly includes a daily analysis of how a different “Star Trek” alien might have evolved. So far, he’s looked at the salt vampire, Klingons, Gorns, Talosians, Species 8472, Thasians, Balok, the Guardian of Forever, the Old Ones, the Horta and the Alfa 117 canine, just to name a few.