Hey, kids, I have an idea! Let's take a beloved novel, generally deemed a classic of it's genre, and make it into a movie making fun of it and all it stands for and undermining everything its readers love about it!
How's that for a winning combination?
It's not the only book Hollywood bought to undermine. P. D. James' THE CILDREN OF MEN, intended to show the bleak consequences of left wing anti-child social policies (she was "conservative") was turned into a screed against President Bush. Well, at least the movie was kept bleak.
An omnivorous reader of whatever was in my school libraries, I read lots of Heinlein at one time. Admittedly, I was no fan of STARSHIP TROOPERS. A rather raving, anti-military leftist at the time, though the son of a proud Navy veteran of the Korean conflict, I saw in STARSHIP TROOPERS the reason why I'd never serve. I was too free-thinking at the time and still am. Which is why Democrats despise me and others are wary: I decline to follow a party line. Anyhow, I stopped reading Heinlein in favor of genuine literary classics. Whereas Hollywood these days can't seem to read anything above comic-book level (no insult to comic books: I still have all mine from the 1970s by the hundreds and revisit them).
But friends of mine loved STARSHIP TROOPERS (the book) and even decades after reading it they were excited by the idea of a movie about it. They were sadly disappointed.
So, if you love the book, stay away. Or if you hate the book (as I did) yet don't want to see a classic of its genre turned on its head when the lazy scoundrels in Hollywood might have developed a whole new idea (A new idea? Hollywood? Now, that is a laugh!) don't waste your time or money.
How's that for a winning combination?
It's not the only book Hollywood bought to undermine. P. D. James' THE CILDREN OF MEN, intended to show the bleak consequences of left wing anti-child social policies (she was "conservative") was turned into a screed against President Bush. Well, at least the movie was kept bleak.
An omnivorous reader of whatever was in my school libraries, I read lots of Heinlein at one time. Admittedly, I was no fan of STARSHIP TROOPERS. A rather raving, anti-military leftist at the time, though the son of a proud Navy veteran of the Korean conflict, I saw in STARSHIP TROOPERS the reason why I'd never serve. I was too free-thinking at the time and still am. Which is why Democrats despise me and others are wary: I decline to follow a party line. Anyhow, I stopped reading Heinlein in favor of genuine literary classics. Whereas Hollywood these days can't seem to read anything above comic-book level (no insult to comic books: I still have all mine from the 1970s by the hundreds and revisit them).
But friends of mine loved STARSHIP TROOPERS (the book) and even decades after reading it they were excited by the idea of a movie about it. They were sadly disappointed.
So, if you love the book, stay away. Or if you hate the book (as I did) yet don't want to see a classic of its genre turned on its head when the lazy scoundrels in Hollywood might have developed a whole new idea (A new idea? Hollywood? Now, that is a laugh!) don't waste your time or money.