A woman with priorities.

[amanuensis1]

Am watching the film of Starship Troopers, which I added to the very top of my Netflix list the other day solely because I discovered that it contained flogging. :D

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

The book is much better. [sigh]

Actually the movie's not bad, it's just not Starship Troopers. I wish they'd renamed all the characters and called it Bug Hunters or something; I'd have enjoyed it quite a lot in that case, with plenty of popcorn.

I strongly recommend that you read the book at some point. Then you'll realize why Heinlein's fans were outraged when the director in a making-of short referred to the book's "crypto-Fascist" society O_O and when he admitted that that one kind of bug shoots plasma-balls out its ass because he, the director, just "couldn't imagine bugs using technology." [facepalm] So, you're making a science fiction movie, why again...?

And the way they treated the Sergeant at the recruiting center, turning him into tasteless comic relief, is a crime.

The only part about the movie I preferred over the book was the way they equalized the gender thing a bit; all prurience aside, I liked that the girls played sports and showered with the guys, and that the characters treated it as no big deal. I really wish the world were like that.

Everything else was a hatchet-job of the book, though. :/

Angie

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I've never read the book, so, taking this as a piece all on its own, it feels like a shiver-inducing piece of "humans good, aliens bad" piece of propaganda--you can feel the darkness that it's hinting at all through. So on that level it was kinda fun.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. And that's what's really annoying about it -- it is a good movie. It's just not Starship Troopers. It's like reading the James Bond books and realizing that the folks who made the movies pretty much lifted the character names and the story titles and made everything else up. :P

Angie

PS -- and yeah, I know your icon is appropriate. [wry smile] Can't help it. ;)