You cannot dismiss Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 sci-fi film Starship Troopers place in history as a great cult classic space movie. The song solidified itself in most people’s collections with its strange dark humor, interlaced with political satire, gore, and nudity. The film, taken from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel of the same name, Starship Troopers is a great ride, and worth a view if you have never seen it.
Fast-Forward twenty years, and news hits that we will get another Starship Troopers, but this one aims to be closer to Heinlein’s original vision. Produced by Neal Moritz and Toby Jaffe (xXx, Stealth), the new Starship Troopers will be “more grounded” and “one man’s fascism is another man’s patriotism” according to Jaffe.
The first film’s director, Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) was asked what he thought about a reboot of the franchise. He told Indiewire that the novel’s political insight works better in the present day climate:
“We succeeded to do this movie, that is so subversive, and politically incorrect [because] Sony changed [leadership] every three, four months. Nobody looked at the rushes because they had no time because they were fired every three, four months. So we got away with it because nobody saw it.
We really, really tried to get away from the novel, because we felt that the novel was fascistic and militaristic. You feel that going back to the novel would fit very much in a Trump Presidency. Our philosophy was really different (from Heinlein’s book). We wanted to do a double story, a really wonderful adventure story about these young boys and girls fighting, but we also wanted to show that these people are really, in their heart, without knowing it, are on their way to fascism.”
When the first film hit, it was met with mixed reviews. Fans of the source novel condemned Verhoeven’s film for straying to far away from the original story. It was the film’s subtle satire that eventually won audiences over.
The Starship Troopers reboot is shooting for a 2018 release date.
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