Starship Troopers

People seem to think that the Starship Troopers reboot being more faithful to the novel is impossible because the novel is not considered "politically correct" enough to not trigger the more sensitive types, and because Sony Picture Studios is run by Hollywood liberals. Remember though, Sony released the Angry Birds movie which was roundly criticized for promoting xenophobia and having an immigration and refugee skeptic moral at its core, yet it was pretty much the only big moneymakers Sony had last year.

I would actually go so far as to say the best adaptation of the book is Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles. Even though it was released as a tie-in with the movie, the weakest parts of it were, ironically, many of the parts that they had to carry over from the movie, particularly the use of propaganda newsreels. Those felt out of place in the show, because the show is a lot more serious than the movie and more in line with the tone of the book. If you think that a more serious, non-satirical take on the book cannot be done though, I suggest watching both Roughnecks and the japanese Starship Troopers OVA from the 80s. The 80s OVA is by far the most accurate adaptation of the book, although I feel like Roughnecks makes a good compromise between sci-fi action and intrigue while playing straight the book's messages about civil service.

And to the people who claim that the book is a fascist manifesto, the book was actually making an argument against the draft (which Heinlen saw the negative effects of when he served in the Korean War) and the prison industrial complex, both of which are actually fairly liberal ideas. Some people dislike the solutions that Heinlen presented for those problems, but part of the reason for the book's success was that it came out not long before the Vietnam War, which had many people questioning the existence of the military draft.

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As much as I love Phil Tippet's bugs, I want to see the more intelligent, technological bugs from the book. And of course, the power armor which was among the book's biggest contributions to sci-fi yet completely ignored in the movie.

Whether the reboot is good or bad I suspect it's going to cause a shitstorm when it comes out. If it's bad obviously everyone will bemoan it, but if it's good I think it could cause a bit of a civil war within the Starship Troopers fandom because it likely won't be very much like the original.

The original movie is beloved on a superficial level for the fact that it's campy nonsensical fun, and on a more intellectual level you'll find people who love it because it spits in the face of Heinlen's original concept. Obviously that makes it highly controversial for people who like the book though, because it has so little respect for the source material which was already very popular before the moive.

Essentially, you have the book fans in one camp and the movie fans in the other camp. Book fans expect a serious sci-fi war movie with a lot of world building, while the movie's fans want camp and satire. There's no way to please both, and with the reboot having been announced as "a new adaptation" rather than a remake, it sounds more like they will probably be ignoring the original movie for the most part. That will piss off a lot of the original movie's fans, so it had better be a good movie in its own right if it's to succeed.

"This year we explored the failure of Democracy, how the social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and imposed the stability that has lasted for generations since."

Never has this been a truer statement than today's America.

>on a more intellectual level you'll find people who love it because it spits in the face of Heinlen's original concept.

Except is does nothing of the sort, the shitty movie has almost no connection to Heinlein's original novel beyond the title and is a wholly a figment of Verhoeven's talentless imagination.

The collapse of "Unlimited Democracy" was because as soon as people turned 18 they voted to give themselves more free shit and didn't care how it was going to be paid for. Marxist intellectuals later ended up taking over the government, effectively eliminated democracy, and caused a worldwide governmental collapse. America is spoken of in the history books the same way Rome is spoken of today-- a once mighty empire that was eventually destroyed by a lack of checks and balances, and the demand for bread and circuses.

The veterans restored democracy but gave it two limitations to ensure that the failure of unlimited democracy would not be repeated: the right to vote must be earned by civic service and a demonstrated willingness to put one's life on the line for the people, and that only citizens who have completed their 2 years of military service are allowed to vote. The military must obey the elected government, he politicians are pretty much all military veterans, the politicians are elected by the soldiers and veterans which means they are held accountable by the people whose lives are at risk, and it is illegal to turn down a volunteer for military service based on their physical ability. Cowardice and/or insubordination are the only grounds under which someone's military service may be denied or terminated.

Dat Destination Moon ship.

>Except is does nothing of the sort

It does. Verhoeven was obviously taking a jab at him with all the propaganda satire.

Verhoeven hated the book so much that he literally only read two chapters and then told a staff member to just write him a cliffnotes version. The movie started out as a completely different story and it only became Starship Troopers when Verhoeven found out that using the book's title would get him a $100 million dollar budget from the studio.

The places in which the movie does resemble the book are pretty much when Verhoeven is mocking it. There are a lot of scenes lifted from the book but they're pretty superficial, and the original meaning of them is all gone since they're being repurposed to tell the story that Verhoeven wanted to tell. The movie is supposed to be an in-universe piece of propaganda which is why it's so intentionally stupid.

When viewed objectively by a non-leftists it is still a great argument for fascism because when aced with a dangerous and faceless enemy it really is the answer Humanity needs. The galaxy in the setting is full of fascist species.

>When viewed objectively by a non-leftists

how do you take yourself seriously as a human being

>Verhoeven was obviously taking a jab at him with all the propaganda satire.

For it to be satire, Heinlein's novel would have to be actually fascist in the first place.

>When viewed objectively by a non-leftists it is still a great argument for fascism

There is nothing “fascist” about the novel, this is a meme that came about _because_ of the shitty movie, which the illiterate Internet has spread far and wide (as can be seen here in this thread).

Are any of Veerhoeven's post Starship Troopers movies any good? I unironically enjoyed Showgirls.

Wasn't the Power Armour literally put in the sequels?

The book is not pro-fascism because the federation is not fascist. People today have an extremely warped notion of what fascism even is.

The civilization in Starship Troopers (the book) is very open and libertarian. People are allowed to live their lives pretty much however they want and the government doesn't give a shit as long as they aren't hurting each other, stealing or destroying property, or trying to overthrow the government. They have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property rights, well funded public schools. The prison population is tiny because they pretty much only keep you there until it's decided whether or not you're going to get beaten and how many times, and if you're too dangerous to be released back into society (i.e. murderers) then you get executed. America has the death penalty and I think the average reasonable person would not say the US is a fascist state, and Singapore beats people instead of putting them in prison but most people would not call them a fascist state either.

People forget that the entire idea of fascism is hinged on the idea that the federal government is to centrally plan and control pretty much every aspect of life. Mussolini, who was the actual father of the fascism movement, got into power in part because he promised to make the trains run on time. If you actually bother comparing the Federation to a fascist government it becomes clear that the Federation is not fascist. It is not fully democratic or libertarian either, which was kind of the point of Heinlen's thought experiment in the first place. He used the book to explore the idea of a new form of government that has not actually been tried.

If you want an example of an actual fascist state in sci-fi the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k is a more clearly defined example, and even in the case of the Imperium their fascist elements affect the average human citizen less and less the further away from Earth they live.

Verhoeven interpreted the book as fascist after someone on his staff explained it to him since he couldn't be assed to read it himself.

Verhoeven didn't write the screenplay

Hmm. Makes me think the reboot should be in the "real" universe of the movie; I.E., the movie itself would exist as a piece of propaganda in the new Starship Troopers movie.

To clarify, the Verhoven movie could exist as a piece of propaganda in the new movie.

I think that was the Verhoeven's intent

The power armor appears at the end of the third movie, for exactly one scene with some direct-to-DVD quality CG.

If you like the original movie then the third one isn't terrible, but it also seems to miss the point that the original movie is a piece of in-universe propaganda, because it can't make up it's mind whether or not it exists as a movie in-universe or if it's just a dumb B-movie that doesn't care about how much sense it makes. You literally see a government conspiracy unfold where a war protester gets wrongfully convicted and sentenced for a fabricated terrorist attack for a cover story, and it gets brushed off like it's nothing so it can't possibly be an in-universe movie. Yet it still uses all the same conventions and cutaway gags as the first moive to handwave its campiness so I really don't know what they were going for with it other than that it's a half-assed attempt to re-create the formula of an enjoyable but stupid movie.

That's a potential route they could go down, however it could also potentially be limiting to what they can actually do with the reboot. If the bugs are technologically advanced like in the book, it means that the in-universe propaganda depicts them as being dumb animals with no technology, for example, and it also means that Johnny Rico can't be the main character and they'll have to come up with a new character and storyline.

Granted, the storyline in a movie adaptation of the book is going to have to have some improvisation no matter what they do. Whether that means expanding Johnny's story into something more substantial as previous adaptations have done, or creating an entirely new set of characters and just making a new story set in the book's world.

The former seems a bit more likely to me, though. Johnny is pretty consistently the main character of the franchise and they'll probably want him to be the audience's eyes into the world, like he was in the book. Hopefully he actually looks like a real military recruit with buzzed hair this time around instead of an Archie Comics character, if the goal is to do a more serious adaptation (which is should be).

Would they make Forever War movie?

Thanks for the insight. I have yet to read the book so I didn't know Rico was a constant.

I'll have to see what all this "technologically enhanced bugs" stuff is all about.

also i imagined battle armour as Tau Crisis suits all the time

>If you like the original movie then the third one isn't terrible, but it also seems to miss the point that the original movie is a piece of in-universe propaganda, because it can't make up it's mind whether or not it exists as a movie in-universe or if it's just a dumb B-movie that doesn't care about how much sense it makes

This was the problem. This would be an insanely difficult to pull off concept without making it a straight up comedy. That's why I thought the third one actually got some things right. No part is serious, not even pretend serious. It's all blatantly ridiculous. And the satire is more relevant and clear (except for the weird religious stuff. I feel like they were trying to make a point but don't know what it was).

>women in the military required to sleep with the men
>in the future, "homolife" is depicted as weird

Even less politically correct than Starship Troopers

Not a fucking chance. The population control in that book is exactly what they're doing now. Can't let the masses find out!

I should mention that the bugs aren't really in the book much. They are introduced towards the end. Most of the fighting in the book takes place between the humans and an intelligent race called the Skinnies, who also appeared in the Roughnecks TV series. Similar to the show, the humans and skinnies eventually stop fighting and form an alliance against the bugs. Which is also interesting, when you consider the accusations people make about the book being xenophobic and / or racist. The humans are willing to mend relations with an alien race they had previously fought with, because at the end of the day the humans and skinnies have far more in common with each other than they do with the bugs.

Supposedly Sony is hoping for franchise potential with the new movie, and I could actually see that working-- the first movie is about the war between the humans and the skinnies, but then the big reveal at the end is the bugs, who are the more familiar foe for people who saw the original movie. Then you have a second and third movie where the bugs are the main enemy, essentially the story of one war told over two parts.

On a side note regarding the book's influence, the Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg from Starcraft are basically expies of the Terran Federation, the Skinnies, and the Bugs with some Warhammer 40k influence thrown in (Protoss are basically a cross between the Skinnies from ST and the Eldar from 40k). The humans and tyranids from 40k are likewise also influenced by the Federation and the Bugs.

Is starship troopers bookino?

My dad read both Starship Troopers and Forever War when he was in high school and he had a hard time remembering which was which at first. He thought that Starship Troopers actually had the women basically being prostitutes for the men but that was Forever War. In the Starship Troopers book they discourage fraternization in the ranks and men and women are kept in separate quarters, unlike the movie where everything is co-ed and they shower together.

Yeah, the movie very obviously wanted to use satire to say something about religion but it couldn't make up its mind as to what, and I don't even know if it's a pro-religion or anti-religion message. It's just awkward and strange that they had it in there at all. Religion isn't even a significant theme in the book other than to establish that the federation has freedom of religion and many people both in and out of the military still practice.

Depends on who you ask. It's a controversial book, but I consider it essential sci-fi reading. The people who don't like it are usually either offended by the political ideas that the book explores, or they open it up expecting a ton of cool action scenes and are disappointed to see that it's mostly conversations about ideas regarding the future military and civics. If you're expecting a Star Wars or Aliens style action/adventure story it's definitely not that kind of book, but I find it to be none the less very interesting, and it's a short book at that.

The true appeal for filmmakers in adapting Starship Troopers is that the book no doubt filled their heads will all kinds of ideas for adventures and action scenes that could be told within that world. That is why there are so many movies, shows, and games that tap Starship Troopers for inspiration. It is a great book, but you have to go in recognizing that it's going to be a book and not a movie on paper.

It's being written by the same guys that did such thrilled by work as Freddy vs Jason, the Friday the 13th remake, and Baywatch.

I'm sure it will be a masterpiece.

I tried to watch the second movie. I couldn't get past the first 5 minutes.

Ridley Scott wanted to do it. It's in development hell.

The second movie is considered utter crap by pretty much everyone. It's a generic Scifi Channel movie that reuses some props and CG models from the first movie, and the plot is taken from an episode of the Roughnecks cartoon.

All I know is that when the original came out, my clique and I watched it two times in the theater and we hung out the car windows on the way home because it was so much fun.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

It's common for studios to hire cheap shitty writers for a first draft before they know who's directing the movie. There will be rewrites when a director gets signed on.

without considering its politics, the book itself is about 80% talking head snoozefest

Literally watched this film for the 1000th time like 3 hours ago.
Forgot how much I love it.
Also reminded me that Denise Richards is the most beautiful woman on the planet.

you're a minority then because literally no one watched it

It had a budget of $100 million and only made $120 million, which means it didn't even break even at the box office. VHS and DVD sales are the only thing that really saved it, and it's because of the VHS and DVD sales that it got 2 direct-to-video sequels and 1 CG OVA.

I honestly don't know how the Roughnecks TV series came into existence, but I consider it to be a happy accident that it did. Oddly enough the show technically had the same target demographic as the book ("young adults," i.e. older kids and teens), but in terms of branding it was tied in with an R-rated movie full of gore and tits and all sorts of other things that young children wouldn't be allowed to see. It was also syndicated and came on at 6 AM.

I never would have seen Roughnecks if I hadn't been trying to catch the premier of a new Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon which I ultimately discovered none of my channels were actually carrying, but fortunately I caught an episode of Roughnecks in the process-- which really, is kind of like reaching for a turd and getting a bar of gold instead.

She just looked like a slut to me.

Carmen and Zander were both annoying cunts in the movie. Zander in particular had the most punchable face in the movie.

>the politicians are elected by the soldiers and veterans which means they are held accountable by the people whose lives are at risk

IIRC, Rico mentions you don't get to vote until you get out, so it's just veterans who are voting.

Yes, but veterans are more likely to be aware of what's at stake than the soldiers. The system also means that the military cannot put pressure on soldiers to vote any specific way, since they can't vote until their term of duty is finished.

>not politically correct
>doesnt glorify violence for violences sake
>has to be one of the first times in modern sci-fi that had a non-white character
>at the very least was sure to be the first to have a flip protagonist
>said protagonist was even written in a specific way to "defeat" racist knee jerk reactions

i love how liberals call it racist just because a white male wrote it. even worse than judging a book by its cover

liberals are the ones who pat themselves on the back for once talking with a nigger in a starbucks while calling anyone doing actual good work racist

Derp I meant vets are more likely to be aware of what's at stake than the *civilians* because they've been in the military and have had to make personal sacrifices to do so. The soldiers are more directly affected by war than the veterans, but the veterans can empathize with the soldiers better than a government made entirely of civilians would be able to, because they were all soldiers once too.

>politicians are pretty much all military veterans, the politicians are elected by the soldiers and veterans

Confirmed for not having actually read the book.

People think it describes a militaristic society because they've read the blurb and the main character does his Federal Service via the military, then read a bunch of shitty leftist articles about how it promotes militarism or fascism.

This isn't the case.

For a start, their military is tiny, and exceptionally elite. The Mobile Infantry are such a small force they don't even have a dedicated logistics element, they deploy their entire strength into combat. Their Navy is not much more numerous. If you needed to have military service to be a Citizen, 99.999% of the population would be Civilians and the system would collapse.

The vast, vast majority of Citizens aren't veterans and have never served in the military. They do their Federal Service in some other area, maybe they spend four years working in a sewage plant, or changing catheters in a hospital. They don't get their citizenship from the military, because 99% of people aren't capable of passing their military's training, they've essentially boiled their armed forces recruitment down to special forces-tier candidates.

Serving members of the military CANNOT vote. Even once they've finished the term of their Federal Service, if they decide they want to stay in the military, they forfeit their right to a franchise until such time as they are discharged. This is the only Federal Service role that has this restriction.

They're actually a far less militarised society than the modern USA, given the tiny portion of their population that actively participates in the armed forces and the restriction on serving military voting.

The society described in the book is not fascist at all, and both hysterical leftists and naziboos should actually read the fucking thing before trying to hold it up as either a negative or positive example of that system.

>troopers
>guns

try again

user, you know what to do!

...

There were multiple people who Rico speaks who during his training who are described as "civilian contractors" though, including an on-base doctor who gives Johnnie his physical exam. Simply serving the government in some way isn't enough to get citizenship. People like emergency responders (police, firefighters, ambulance drivers etc.) would in all likeliness receive citizenship under such a system as well since they put themselves at risk for the sake of serving the people.

Keep in mind that just because the actual combat unit soldiers are very few in number under the system, does not mean the military is small, and they have no shortage of recruits. My brother is in the military and there are a great many jobs that are required to be filled by soldiers that do not involve combat. The number of soldiers that the US uses for combat is actually very small compared to the number of soldiers as a whole, and most of them are in supporting roles. In the book no-one can be turned down for military service on the grounds of "we don't need you" either, and there are apparently plenty of people signing up.

A "term" in the book is only described as "2 years or as needed," which is actually very short compared to modern standards. When my brother signed up he had 4 years active and 2 years inactive, and he signed on for a few years extra when his term was complete.

In the book, someone who is very hard to replace, like a Mobile Infantry trooper (marauder suit pilot), is going to be required to stay on for longer than 2 years. Someone who is handicapped and has to have a menial job invented for him to be useful is only going to be asked to stay on for 2 years, and then they'll be considered a veteran. The implication I got is that people who only qualify for menial, low-specialization work are only going to be in the military for 2-5 years before they get spat back out to make room for someone else, while someone elite like Rico would be asked to serve longer.

Apply a morphine pen for the pain that is clearly overwhelming you at this point, then casevac you so that, with a combination of first-rate medical treatment and advanced prosthesis, you can return home and live a full and rewarding life Sir?

>Actually kills a casualty simply because they request it whilst in absolute agony
>As if they're capable of making a lucid decision at that point
>Doesn't even attempt pain management

0/10 would not serve alongside

>My brother is in the military and there are a great many jobs that are required to be filled by soldiers that do not involve combat.

Heinlein is very specific that there are no rear echelon roles in the Mobile Infantry.

Everybody fights.

It was how he imagined future armies would operate, the nature extension of the desire for smaller, more professional armies during his time.

>there are scenes that appear in both the OVA and the movie but they're not in the book
>the movie ripped off the OVA that came out a decade earlier

>In the book no-one can be turned down for military service on the grounds of "we don't need you" either

Yes there is, you have to pass a vigorous selection process before you even reach basic training, then you have to pass said training, which has some ridiculously high drop-out rate.

If you fail, you get shunted to a non-military job for your Federal Service or you can just quit and stay a Civilian. You can't be denied Federal Service. You can certainly be denied entry to their extremely small and elite military.

They constantly go on about how they can't afford dead weight. You're confusing Federal Service with military service, which is something that qualifies you for a franchise, but not the only thing.

Federal Service exists to determine those who are willing to sacrifice and endure hardship for the right to vote, not provide manpower for a large military like modern conscription is.

>there are apparently plenty of people signing up.

There a loads of people signing up for Federal Service. Again Federal Service =/= Military.

Well I read it wrong and I admit my fault. I'm not even in disagreement with you though-- the book isn't about fascism, and this only drives the point further.

Rasczak in the book is not spoken of much, but he's known as having never left a man behind.

Rasczak in the TV show was a badass and if a bug tore off his legs, he'd have gotten robotic ones and been back on the field as soon as he could walk again. He already lost and arm, so he could make due without his legs.

Rasczak in the movie shoots a guy who's being attacked by a bug instead of shooting the bug, and then when his legs get torn off he tells Johnny to shoot him even though they're already on the evac pad. It's amazing he even completed a single tour without eating a bullet.

(I know it's pointless to complain about stupid writing in a movie that's supposed to be stupid, but I hold to it that the movie is the worst adaptation of the book.)

>muh dumb bugs

The bugs in verhovens movie were intelligent, the whole point it was made ambiguous to the viewer just as it was unsure to the federation

>muh power armor

if you want to see fully CGI battles that cut to the faces of the actors faces with glowy lights on them individually in helmets talking over radio , watch ironman you capeshit fag

You do realize that there is more than one way to visualize power armor in a movie, right?

And moreover, the "mobile" in "mobile infantry" refers to the fact that they are pilots as much as they are soldiers. They're not just disposable meatbags-- they are the federation's equivalent to Navy Seals. They get sent in when the Federation needs shit done and nothing else will cut it but a walking weapons platform piloted by someone who survived the most intense training that the Federation has.

Power armor is one of the most significant contributions that the book made to the realm of science fiction, and the movie didn't have it. That would be like Star Wars with no lightsabers.

The bugs in the book have technology, including energy weapons and FTL tech. Maybe the point the movie was trying to make was that it was absurd to blame the bugs for the meteor that hit Buenos Aires side they would not even have the means, but they are clearly portrayed as being especially dangerous hive animals rather than being as intelligent and advanced as they are in the book.

I get that it's hard to get Asian leads in American movies with the studio climate being as it is, but if they have a minority lead actor in the reboot it could soften the blow for people who are ready to pounce on the movie and attack it for being "pro-Trump propaganda" or whatever bullshit they'll say to try and to discredit it. There are a lot of people out there who to this day believe the novel does not deserve to have a movie unless it's spitting on Heinlein's ideas.

heinlein was a faggy lefty though. did you read troopers or any of his other books?

also a half flip would be too white for liberals. they would have to get the ugliest and blackest nigger they could find to be happy. he would also have to have a white girlfriend so that their white guilt can be satisfied for a few seconds

Heinlein was a libertarian. He was socially liberal but more conservative in other ways.

he was just conservative in comparison to the literally hippies of his day

stranger in a strange land was hard to get through

I wish people would stop promulgating this bullshit.

Verhoeven found the book boring, so he left the script largely in the hands of Ed Neumeier, the writer of Robocop. Neumeier was determined to stay true to the core of Heinlein's story and present a model society that just happened to be a military dictatorship. Verhoeven agreed and peppered up the script with some jabs at Nazi propaganda films based on his childhood experiences, but also the recruitment campaigns of the US military during the Gulf War. The Carmen/Dizzy/Rico/Zander love square was also his contribution. Neumeier and Verhoeven left the classroom civics lecture in the film as a direct shoutout to Verhoeven, their intention was simply to present his ideas.

It had a nice piece on why you need to discipline your autistic kids.

We should have followed his advice.

Verhoeven's movie is deeply cynical though. It's nothing like what Heinlein intended in his book, and its use of the civics classroom scene is not a "shoutout" to Heinlein but rather a jab at him.

Bullshit. The script was nearly finished before anyone realized the war with bugs looked like they were ripping off ST. They bought the rights, threw in hateful shit that slandered Heinlein's ideas, and dumped it in theaters.

They did not start out making ST.

>people think Heinlein is a facist

read Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land was meant to be a parody.

You weren't meant to take Smith's or Harshaw's or the Martian's philosophies seriously at all, it was meant to be intentionally vapid and facile.

>Stranger in a Strange Land was meant to be a parody.

i really wish that were true but i dont believe you at all

Neumeier completely rewrote it. Bug Hunt at Oupost 7 merely got the film funded after a year's delay and got Verhoeven on board.

Would you have been approved to be a neodog handler?

My dog never slept in bed with me because my mom didn't want ticks and dog fur getting on the furnature, but I slept on the floor with him quite a few times which I think shows more commitment.

>more intellectual level

let's not pretend liberals are intellectual because they "get" that the film is sarcastic

>"This story is supposed to be a completely free-wheeling look at contemporary human culture from the nonhuman viewpoint of the Man from Mars (in the sense of the philosophical cliche)…No sacred cows of any sort…But, in addition to a double dozen of minor satirical slants, the two major things which I am attacking are the two biggest, fattest sacred cows of all, the two that every writer is supposed to give at least lip service to: the implicit assumptions of our Western culture concerning religion and concerning sex"

>Heinlein was surprised that some readers thought the book described how he believed society should be organized, explaining: "I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers ... It is an invitation to think – not to believe"

>except for the weird religious stuff. I feel like they were trying to make a point but don't know what it was
The federation started to use it as another means of control.

Sounds like the Forever War was what they wanted to make originally

Problem with the novel isn't political correctness and it being triggering, it's that the moral of the story isn't one that resonates with a lot of people.

I'm not suggesting it. Realizing that the Starship Troopers movie is extremely dark and cynical is something that requires only the tiniest bit of critical thinking. You'd have to be the kind of person who watches Marvel movies obsessively not to see at least that much, although granted Marvel movies are quite popular and there's a lot of people who just think Starship Troopers is a big dumb action movie.

To the film's credit, everything about it is extremely deliberate, from the fact that the main characters look like Ken and Barbie dolls to how the lighting looks like a 90s sitcom to how retardedly over-sized the guns are. It's supposed to be crap and there is something subversively clever about that, but at the same time watching it makes me groan because I feel like the book deserved a much better and more respectful adaptation.

Robocop, Conan had cartoons also brah.

Looking at how elections have been going this past year I'd say audiences would be more open-minded to a new Starship Troopers adaptation than a lot of people would have assumed a few years ago. It's not 2015 anymore and being politically incorrect can come with many rewards.

Conan was never really considered a specifically "adult" franchise until the movie came out. It was pulp and kids loved pulp. They even went so far as to make Conan the Destroyer PG because the money people wanted kids to be able to watch it, although that was ultimately to the movie's detriment because it was terrible and it flopped.

Robocop was very controversial for its time because it was an R-rated movie with a children's TV show adaptation. The Aliens animated series also got canceled before it aired, and the toyline for it ended up having its packaging re-designed to tie in with the special edition release of Aliens in the early 90s. However, both of those movies were more popular in comparison to their budgets than Starship Troopers.

I would say Starship Troopers is not at all appropriate for kids not just because of the gore and sex, but because a kid isn't going to be able to realize that the movie is making fun of itself. A lot of adults weren't able to understand that, either. The cartoon is more appropriate for kids because it plays the source material straight, but with the movie if a kid takes it at face value they are going to get a lot of messed up ideas from it, and it's hard to explain it to a child when they're not old enough to understand sarcasm. In the movie the federation is basically the villain but kids aren't going to understand that.

...

That's what he really looks like though.

That isn't a disavowal of the culture presented in Stranger in a Strange Land at all. It's an apology to many readers in the market with gentle sensibilities for the then radical philosophy that was being presented by the book.
He's practically begging his readers to take Harshaw and Smith seriously in that statement, urging them to set aside the prejudicial cultural mores that make the hedonism and communalism it depicts so offensive. Heinlein's body of work, when you strip away the plots and futuretech window dressings, was a series of futurist manifestos describing what he saw as an inevitable trajectory of culture, moving toward societies based on wealth rather than scarcity. Stranger in a Strange Land was only a peek at that paradigm; if you want to see Heinlein's vision of the future fully realized, read Time Enough for Love. Jubal Harshaw was a self-insert for Heinlein, his mouthpiece in a near future moving toward utopia. Lazarus Long, on the other hand, was Heinlein's full-on Gary Stu, Jubal Harshaw in an ideal lionized form, though that got a bit strange when they meet in The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, or The Door Into Summer, whichever it was.
It's a really disingenuous take on his writing to pretend he wasn't earnest, and to dismiss it as parody to try to sell it to people who would otherwise be offended by it..

The book is literally about a fascist utopia you dumb dumb

How come Sup Forums is normally full of shitposting but we can actually have an intelligent and thoughtful discussion about Starship Troopers?

You gotta love that 80s pop ballad soundtrack from the OVA.

youtube.com/watch?v=PT1afUWV8N8

>government in Starship Troopers is not fascist!
>Heinlein actually uses the fasces symbol to describe it

To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives – such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day. Force, if you will! – the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force

oh no America has turned fascist

>you will never live in a fascist utopia

On paper fascism sounds great-- the central government manages everything and everyone is required to contribute, and everything works perfectly because the people in charge are perfect and fair.

The Federation isn't fascist though, because they do not centrally manage and control everything, and everyone who works for the state volunteers. The people in Starship Troopers actually enjoy a remarkable amount of freedom, but in the movie(s) they added a bunch of shit about the government brainwashing people to join the military and using war as a means of controlling people.

Interesting. Do you have any citations to back that up?

Because honestly, Harshaw seems to be presented as a vacuous, solipsistic hypocrite for much of Stranger in a Strange Land. I can appreciate this may be your personal takeaway from Heinlein's writing, but honestly on the basis of the tone of the novel and quotes from the man himself I'd have to assume he intended to present both sides, human and martian, as equally ridiculous poles of extremity.

The Thing
Robocop
Starship Troopers

Anything else I'm missing? These alway seem to be the holy trifecta of good Sup Forums discussion.

I love the OVA in general, need to watch it again.