An inherently political work does not deserve to be respected.
It deserves to be answered.
Now, the exclusivity of “name rights” is of course a problem, you don’t want the IP limited to one person’s treatment of it. But there is already other, unthinkingly militarist, Starship Troopers related material, so that problem wasn’t so bad in this situation.
But then, Verhoeven’s movie is Starship Troopers. It just adds an extra layer.
[quote=“zathras, post:102, topic:92571”]
An inherently political work does not deserve to be respected.[/quote]
Why? Some of the greatest works of literature are political, including a fair bit of Shakespeare.
[quote]
It deserves to be answered.
[/quote]Why does that answer need to be in the form of a parody using the same name? Most well known parodies use a unique name to emphasize what they’re doing like “Young Frankenstein” or “Bored of the Rings”.
I’m not going to go looking, but i am in fact sure that there a couple of places where Heinlein does say this. The problem comes up with what Heinlein shows, as the evidence in the link that @smulder links to above indicates.
Oh, I had overlooked smulder’s link earlier. The linked text quite nicely shows that Heinlein said so, but not in the book. His own book contradicts him.
And thus, they may be contradicted and satirized. They do not require the kind of respect that would prohibit people from taking opposite viewpoints.
Starship Troopers, the movie, is not a parody. It is not particularly funny. It shows events similar in spirit to the events of the book. It uses the same basic philosophy for its world. The only “unfaithful” part is that the movie also uses the visual language of fascist propaganda to get the propaganda of the book’s militarist regime across.
And as I pointed out earlier, it is entirely possible to read the book in the same way. You just have to ignore what we know about Heinlein.
I’m still at comment #30, but threads like this are why I continue to come to BB.
I would say it removes several layers, simplifying and distorting. There is far less to the movie than the book; the characters are less developed, the settings less intricate, and the message lacks nuance. It is a boring sledgehammer of a film, displaying little other than Verhoeven’s fondness for portraying sadism and gore.
And the book is not very complex, either…
Had to leave room for the sequels!
(of which there have apparently been 3 - I assume @TobinL, @monkeyoh or @Donald_Petersen may have seen these)
There were sequels? I am both horrified and interested.
ETA : oh dear lord 3 count them 3 sequels. Gonna need more beer if I watch those.
I believe you have already mentioned that you haven’t seen the same movie that I have.
Like any film adaptation, the movie leaves out details.
Like many film adaptations, the movie rearranges things. It is one of the less faithful adaptations in this regard; characters are freely rearranged, combined, etc.
I would argue that the book was not about the exact sequence of battles, and it was not about which soldiers die and which survive, so this is legitimate for any adaptation of the book.
The movie leaves out one layer of the book, the OMG-that’s-a-cool-way-to-kill-aliens layer.
The movie keeps the core political ideas of the book…
… and adds a layer of commentary, that contradicts these ideas.
The movie also managed to be highly prophetic; to this day I can’t tell the difference between what I saw in the theater in 1997 about Earth, Bugs and Klendathu, and what I saw on TV in 2001-2003 about America, Terrorists and Iraq.
What characters?? This is a Heinlein novel we’re talking about. His characters aren’t developed. It’s true that Verhoeven dd not attempt to change that, but you can’t go below zero.
True. Don’t care.
And yet some people consistently fail to get it.
They were sequels to Verhoeven’s film in the same way that Verhoeven’s film was a straight and direct adaptation of the book. Or maybe they are what the mobile infrantrymen from Verhoeven’s film would mistake for a sequel.
Try whiskey instead of beer. Lots of the cheapest brand you can find.
Or let me put it differently.
If you do not recognize the book as disgustingly militarist and proto-fascist, then maybe Verhoeven’s message was indeed too nuanced for you and needs to be sledgehammered into you in a more obvious way.
Like any book, you have taken from it what you wanted to hear. For example take the veteran franchise, our recent history of being taken to war by an administration of chicken hawks argues that maybe veterans might be more reluctant to spend soldiers lives.
I think the whole Fascist thing in the book is overblown, what Heinlein was attempting to evoke was not the Fascist need to create enemies to justify their taking and holding power, but the patriotic pulling together against an enemy that the nation had experienced just the previous decade in the fight against Fascism. And it can be argued that Earth as portrayed is less Fascist than Imperialist, the trouble it finds with aliens seems to be a result of it’s expansionist policies.
Yeah, about those sequels, a great man once said:
“Don’t look at it, no matter what happens!”
I could not disagree more. If Verhoeven had actually read the book, I’d say the movie demonstrates complete lack of understanding of Heinlein’s story, but since Verhoeven says he didn’t finish the book, that’s completely expected…
Uh, no. Clearly you have not read the same book I have!
It’s a story about a person living in a possible future, just like Starman Jones or Red Planet. It’s not an exposition of how you should want to live, never claimed to be one, and was never intended to be one. You, the reader, get to decide if that future is dystopian or not. Unlike a Verhoeven movie, it’s not a mindless, crass explosion of gore and sadism that leaves nothing up to the viewer to decide; it’s a story that can be read in more than one way, because unlike a Verhoeven movie it respects the audience.
I’m trying not to insult you, since I have no problem with other people enjoying things I don’t, but you are kind of telling me I’m too stupid to appreciate Verhoeven, and that my taste in books is politically wrong. It’s hard for me to respond politely.
I beg to differ. I have taken from the book exactly what it said, and formed a political opinion about that that differs from yours and @Medievalist’s. Heinlein’s story is not one of those that can be read and understood in vastly different ways; it is however full of interesting ideas that one can have vastly different opinions about.
True. Militarist is the term I used earlier. That’s a necessary component of fascism. The example of present-day America shows that it is not wholly incompatible with democracy, but tends to lead to constant warfare.
True. The charge is not that Heinlein deliberately tried to evoke Fascism, but a kind of militarism that I consider hardly preferable. “The nation” was not alone in experiencing a “patriotic pulling together”, the other side had experienced exactly the same. And I honestly believe that the world will be a better place when we have finally managed to universally discredit the idea of this “patriotic pulling together”.
The screenwriter did finish the book, though. And nobody has yet explained to me where the movie demonstrates lack of understanding of the story.
You haven’t insulted me. But you keep telling me that Verhoeven’s movie is flat and primitive, a “mindless, crass exposition of gore and sadism”, so I had to choose between accusing you of missing something and admitting that I was hallucinating when I enjoyed the truly great satire there. I chose the former. Sorry about that.
As for respecting the audience - I never felt particularly respected as a Heinlein reader.
Way too often, Heinlein’s novels contain that “mentor” character who espouses some political theory, and the main character who ends up thoroughly fascinated and convinced. Sometimes, there are characters who get a short say on opposing viewpoints, but Heinlein never bothers to honestly develop their arguments, and they end up being ignored by the protagonist. Heinlein’s books are different enough from each other that it’s often hard to tell what his actual opinion was, but each of his books definitely has an opinion that it tries to push on the reader.
Heinlein’s ideas are always interesting, sometimes even pure genius. He doesn’t have a reputation as one of the greats for nothing. But most of the time, I also disagree with his ideas to the point of feeling visceral disgust. But yes, that’s what’s great about Heinlein: he has ideas, and while he tends to argue them rather one-sidedly, I as a reader still get to make up my own mind.
As for the movie, well, it has an opinion, too. But note that the movie never really says that it’s all propaganda. You actually still get to decide whether it’s really propaganda or whether Riefenstahl’s visual style simply has become more popular for honest government communications in the future. You get to decide whether it’s true that the Bugs were just defending themselves, or whether they are an aggressive species, after all. You get to decide whether humanity is winning the war or whether that’s just propaganda. And so on.
So am I saying your taste in books is politically wrong? No, feel free to enjoy Heinlein. I do, too. But Starship Troopers contains a set of political/philosophical propositions - and I stand by saying that agreeing with them is politically wrong.
There’s nothing wrong with your critical analysis of the book and author. The disagreement comes from the shanghaiing of the work for a film with a different viewpoint. I know this is pointless but I guess I’ll repeat my argument with a different author. It would be easy to make a film of ‘Henry V’ that is antiwar, and ridicules the values of nobility, valor and comradery in the service of war that is central to the play. There’s much to explore and criticize there in an unnecessary war of vanity. But it would no longer be true to Shakespeare’s work and should not be presented as such.
By this logic, you must therefore also be against modern works such as Sherlock, Battlestar Galactica, and Westworld, as they’re modern reimaginings of older works by new authors which use the same name but don’t remain “true to the original author’s work”.
This retelling of stories with a different slant is a normal part of how culture works and propagates and evolves. This is how stories remain relevant to modern audiences as the culture shifts over time.
Granted, this sort of “retelling using the same name” practice is less frequent now under modern trademark laws than it used to be, but it still often happens when rights can be acquired or purchased or are in the public domain. And there’s nothing duplicitous or malevolent or untoward about it. It’s just what storytellers do. It’s what people do. It’s what civilization does.
Now, as to your specific example: I absolutely guarantee that there have been productions of Henry V which are antiwar. In fact, the Kenneth Brannagh film version of it was actively promoting an anti-war message. Have you seen it? It’s a little difficult to believe you’d make an argument like this one if you’d seen it, so I assume you haven’t. You should. It’s pretty good.
In any case, these variations keep Shakespeare fresh and relevant, and the Shakespeare community is hugely welcoming to them, even when they mess with the original text and intentions (as best we can interpret them, based upon the text).
So I have just one question: why do you feel that Heinlein’s words need more protection and reverence and sanctity than Shakespeare’s?
Have people seen Without a Clue ?
Great premise, great cast, mediocre script.
A squandered opportunity but still a fun little film.
I came very close to mentioning that film, then decided to limit myself to things sharing the same title as their source works. 
I’d call it satire, rather than a serious retelling of the story. Fun film, though!
Another work I came very close to mentioning was Tom Stoppard’s brilliant Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. But upon reflection I decided that it’s really commentary upon the traditionally-told Hamlet (and the artifice of fiction in general), as opposed to a skewed retelling of Hamlet.
I have seen the Branagh Henry, and don’t feel it messes with the play, the text is intact IIRC and that keeps it within bounds. Most stagings like the Richard III I mentioned keep the text intact.
While I could argue TV series aren’t worthy of the same reverence, I won’t. But I’m not a big fan of remakes, it tends to signal lazy producers who don’t want to work hard enough to create a successful original work, it’s rarely loving homage. At least if you’re remaking a literary work like the recent unsuccessful Ben-Hur, there’s a little more cover. But notice how rarely there’s a remake of a unsuccessful adaption of a classic work?
I wonder if the small audience of people brought to Westworld by having seen the original film was really that significant. In fact my thought has been that it was risky recycling a setting that in 1973 had been at the core of American cinema & TV for decades, The Western, where everyone watching knew the tropes, that is now extremely marginal in 2016. How many Westerns did Millennials grow up watching?
EDIT: I’ve said upthread I have no problem with parody or satire as long as it doesn’t purport to BE the original work. That said I recently saw ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’. What a bizarre play, I’m afraid I’m just not cool enough to appreciate it properly. My 82 year old mom was bewildered.
How am I the first to point out that the movie’s biggest flaw is no powered armor?
