Hollywood is making another Starship Troopers movie because you know, the last one came out SO long ago in 1997!

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=84799

Hollywood = Zombies from "The Walking Dead" and then some!

Technically the Last Starship Troopers came out in 2008.... I think Rico was the only returning character.

Wow, that's just ridiculous.

Revisiting Total Recall is bad enough.

Are there NO script-writers left?

Sure there are script writers.

But to get the big money for big budgets, you need to guarantee the money-men that it's going to be a guaranteed hit. The days of throwing $100 million at a flop are gone. Today if you lose money in movies, you get fired from the industry, basically.

The movie nazi says: "NO MOVIES FOR YOU!"

It's a really odd system for sure.

What if the remaining Beatles put out a re-imagined Sgt. Pepper's every ten years? I guess there are re-issues, and greatest hits, in the music industry but they are generally unadulterated.

there's idea for a spoof movie (like epic movie, date movie and scary movie).

Call it... wait for it... "80's Movie"!

Top Gun has already been parody'd though.. so... meh..


how about "Greatest Hits" and merge all the top grossing movies into one story line.

A little odd, I still love the first. Maybe they're going to go by the book this time?
There are so many good scifi books out there waiting to be made into movies, I wish they would just pick some popular favorites and put out some good fresh material.

If they make it closer to the book I would buy it but I bet they go all hollywood and take everything that made it a good book and throw it out for special affects and soap opera'ism.

No doubt it will be in sodding 3D too...

Yup. Can't say I'll cry many tears when that fad is over.

Which is exactly what the Paul Verhoeven movie did so I don't know why they're even bothering with a reboot.

Isn't that why they're doing Total Recall again?

Nope. And to make it worse The Hobbit is going to be 3D. What is Jackson thinking? Oh, no wait I know - money!....

I dont have a problem with 3D if it's implemented well as was the case with Avatar and Beowulf.

The problem started when the movie studios started retro-fitting 3D at the last minute to films so they could charge the higher ticket prices but since 3D wasn't implemented from the beginning it came out looking terrible. Case in point: Clash of the Titans.

Why? The 3 movies were crap. I just watched them so I can say with authority "the 3 movies were crap." I shudder to think of watching them again, even if they had boobie shots.

Ironically, I'm listening to the audiobook of Starship troopers now. Pretty "meh" reading but the material is good so I go ahead listening.

I do hope they put more of the book into the movie this time. I've yet to see a proper implementation of the ape-suit they wear. If we give this story to some Jap animator, they'd probably at least do the suit some justice.... then make Rico an emotionally troubled teen

Ahem, you were saying?

Starship Troopers OVA

Total Recall is going to follow the original story more closely this time (no Mars stuff), so my guess is this film will do the same.

Jackson said in writing the scripts for LOTR they at one point got some parts pretty far from the books, but in each draft revision they wound up getting closer and closer to the book again because it worked better. My guess is a lot of the writers/producers out there don't see that the book was better. Perhaps they feel changing it is more important (so they look like they've contributed something?) than porting over various story elements.

A good adaptation is rarely a straight copy of the book to a script. In addition to editing stuff out things are often rearranged, reprioritized, or replaced with new material that covers the same ground but in another way that wouldn't work well on screen. The problem is when they decide the adaptation owes nothing more to the original story than a basic idea instead of only substituting that which didn't work right.



The Jedi Master

It still amazes me how many people don't get that film and print are two different art forms with their own pacing and narrative.


Question for all: I've not read "The Andromeda Strain" but does anyone know if the original Wise film was very close to it?

Don't know that one.
If a show/movie is done well enough, it should be able to stand on its own. The fans need to cut the movie a break. A director doesn't want everything about the movie to be known, but it's up to them to make it in the spirit of the book and not just cash in on a well known title with a crappy product. Apparently The Walking Dead and True Blood diverge from the books but both manage to be well done. Haven't read either one, but seems to be the consensus.
I love the book Clear and Present Danger, but I also like the movie, which was almost a complete rewrite of the book. Same with Starship Troopers, actually. I couldn't even finish the book (may try again one day) but I like the movie that's nothing like it.

And then there's Dune..... lol


I have been a life long fan of David Lynch's film. I think it is an incredible work of visual art and it simply works for me at a visceral level.

And all of this exists even with the film being radically different from the Herbert novel which I also love.

Same here, different but still really good IMO.

Jurassic Park is also quite different on film from the book. Not sure if the book straight would've done as well.



The Jedi Master

I loved Jurassic Park the book alot

I think the reason Lynch's film was so good is because he understood there was absolutely no way he'd be able to convey what the book tells of the Butlerian Jihad, CHOAM, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the feud between Atreides and Harkonnen, etc, in the movie's dialog. So, he made the best choice he could given the limitations he was working under and left out or just barely alluded to things he wouldn't be able to explain satisfactorily.

In a way I was disappointed with the SciFi miniseries, because they had a lot more time to work with but still not enough to do the book justice. So the places where they DID improve basically pointed out the shortcomings, and when compared to the good parts the shortcomings became even worse.

I think the only way Dune could be presented as Frank Herbert wrote it would be if it was serialized like Game of Thrones. 1 season might not be enough.

I actually really liked the original Starship Troopers movie, but as a campy sci-fi version of a WW2 patriot film. I also love the book for a variety of reasons.

-Jenrick

An HBO series would be killer with Dune. It's got the drama and the big book/season enders they like. Sci Fi but wouldn't have to be CGI intensive every episode to pull it off.

Agreed on lynch's take. Just enough mentions or nods to the book subjects for the fans to catch without throwing off those new to it. I catch more each time I watch it. When I finally read the book I was amazed that the weirding way weapons weren't actually in there. LOL Kind of missed them too!

Absolutely. Dune most certainly could use 10 1 hour episodes. Maybe HBO one day will greenlight such a project?

I don't think the first book should take more than 10 eps, that would be drawing it out.

However, I disagree that the SF mini that was done left out too much. Yes, stuff was left out, but was it important? Depends on your POV. If you go from the "what do you need to know to understand the story" POV, then no. Unlike the film which took some large liberties with the source material to work around problems, the mini did it without deviating so much, mostly by omitting. The Irulan part was altered, but I think that was to give the chance to have more scenes with the Emperor to get info from that side. Lynch's solution was "have the Navigator make Jose Ferrer give a plot summary monologue", which in retrospect is a bit too on the nose as "mandatory exposition scene".

Lots of the details in the book are unnecessary when the story is told in a visual medium. CHOAM is almost an afterthought in the books, it really isn't needed at all.



The Jedi Master

Hehe, CHOAM is even mentioned by Thufir in the Lynch film so at least it was there in some small way!

That's one of those nuggets for the fans that movie only viewers don't pick up.

Exactly. I watched the Lynch film before I read the book so I remember being very confused the first time I watched it when Irulan mentioned that against the orders of the Bene Gesserit, Jessica conceived a son instead of a daughter in order to please Duke Leto. I was like "uh, how did she do that? You can't choose the sex of your baby". Of course later on when I read the book I learned all about how the Bene Gesserit can manipulate their body chemistry. Then I was like "AH!".

Yeah the navigator was a giant fish/man mutant Deus Ex Machina for a whole lot of stuff they couldn't fit into the movie. I loved the books of Dune and Starship Troopers. I also loved both the movie and mini of Dune. While I liked the Starship Troopers movie I view it as being within the ST universe but something altogether different.

I agree with Kryptonite on cutting movies based off books some slack because there will be some artistic/directorial license, but that doesn't keep a part of me wishing that it was truer to the book.

I consider something like Dune or Jurassic Park to be about the limit I'm willing to accept alterations in an adaptation.

Of course, you have the purists out there that disown Jackson's LOTR because too much was changed...they apparently have a limit of about ONE acceptable change. Having read LOTR and the Hobbit several times, and the Silmarillion and Children of Hurin just once (so far), I felt the 12 hrs of LOTR we got (in the extended editions) was as close to the book translated verbatim as is possible without it seeming like some dry BBC production no one under the age of 50 could enjoy. The changes that were made FELT right, so that the spirit remained intact even when the letter did not.

I grant that it's hard to do, but frankly writing a good adaptation is the cheapest thing that can be done for a film and if they're not willing to put the money and effort into that small part, how can they expect a good result?



The Jedi Master