Starship troopers rumours
- Thread starter barnest2
- Start date
Greg Smith
Mongoose
They were but then there were licence issues.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
It's a pity. A Traveller adaptation of the Starship Troopers universe would be great.
Greg Smith
Mongoose
barnest2 said:
There are several B5 ACTA ones. There is a RQ/Eberron one. No reason why not.
Lincolnlog
Mongoose
A Star Ship Troopers Traveller version would be great if:
It ignored all the Paul Verhoven movie crapola and actually went back in line with the book. Robert H may then finally be able to rest in peace, I've heard his family was disappointed in Verhoven's vision. I can tell you all the Hienlien fans I know, think SciFi should do a remake like they did with Dune.
It ignored all the Paul Verhoven movie crapola and actually went back in line with the book. Robert H may then finally be able to rest in peace, I've heard his family was disappointed in Verhoven's vision. I can tell you all the Hienlien fans I know, think SciFi should do a remake like they did with Dune.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
Lincolnlog said:
Yeah, the first movie was great fun (the less said about the other two the better), but not Heinlein's vision. Personally I think Verhoven realised that he would have to spend a lot more on props and cgi to do the book justice, and he couldn't really be bothered, so it all became a bit of a good humoured caper and parody. Oddly enough, the bugs themselves rather lost out as well, Heinlein was envisaging a technologically advanced race, but with a very different mentality.
Still, it would be very straight forward to do a Trav supplement for either version.
Egil
Well the 1st film started as an Aliens rip-off before it was decided that putting the Starship Troopers name on it and renaming the characters to fit would make a couple more bucks. Verhoven read the start of the book, didnt like it and decided to just let the writers deal with adapting the thing (the Heinlein book) to the original script.
The whole thing of course was some strange summer blockbuster that was an anti-fascism statement and showed humanity in a less than great light when you watch the film objectively. Verhoven even has said he believes the humans attacked the bugs first in an unprovoked attack, starting the war. Also the human government is supposed to be fascist and the uniforms, especially Carl Jenkins' uniform which also showed that characters devolving humanity as evidenced through their methods later on.
This decision is a little strange as I wonder if such a "moral tale" was needed and if so, shouldnt it have been a little more obvious rather than have it as background material hiding behind the explosions?
On-topic, if I wanted a Starship Troopers pastiche, theres enough in the Traveller Core to make some Bugs using the Animal rules, then its just a point of the planets being deserty, a specific level of tech and making it an Army/Navy game.
The whole thing of course was some strange summer blockbuster that was an anti-fascism statement and showed humanity in a less than great light when you watch the film objectively. Verhoven even has said he believes the humans attacked the bugs first in an unprovoked attack, starting the war. Also the human government is supposed to be fascist and the uniforms, especially Carl Jenkins' uniform which also showed that characters devolving humanity as evidenced through their methods later on.
This decision is a little strange as I wonder if such a "moral tale" was needed and if so, shouldnt it have been a little more obvious rather than have it as background material hiding behind the explosions?
On-topic, if I wanted a Starship Troopers pastiche, theres enough in the Traveller Core to make some Bugs using the Animal rules, then its just a point of the planets being deserty, a specific level of tech and making it an Army/Navy game.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
zero said:
A friend is convinced that Starship troopers was a response to US foreign policy in Iraq, so perhaps that's the moral aim.
Personally I'm not convinced, the book has been frequently critised as a facist manifesto (Moorcock's essay "Starship Stormtroopers" is an interesting read, but he was not the first to suggest these links), and Verhoven was picking up on that, as a film maker he cannot include all the "future history" and philosophy that Heinlein can get into a book, so instead opts for "nazi" type uniforms and mad scientists. and like many atempts to combine parody with other genres, it all ends up sitting rather uneasily, is Verhoven suggesting that a happy, smily kind of fascism is the way forward? Probably not, but the ending is pretty positive and so reflects well on the sociey that could produce Johnny and Carmen.
When I first got MgT (core book) I set up a "Starship Troopers, the film" game to test the rules, the adaption is less than two sides of A4, and half of that is bug stats.
Egil
Edit P.S. The adaption was easy to do, game (very combat heavy) went well (even though everybody died in the end), and we adopted Trav.
Greg Smith
Mongoose
Egil Skallagrimsson said:
Verhoeven has said that the message of the film is "War makes fascists of us all."
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
Greg Smith said:
Yeah, makes sense, not sure if the movie really achieves his aim, (and, at a philosophical level, not happy with the "military=fascist" theme that runs throughout the movie, but that is a different issue).
Anyway, I think I am over analysing an entertaining movie.
Egil
I think the way that Starship Troopers has a broken aesop is that despite it being rated "18", I know many who were 13-14 when they first watched it (myself included - showing my age again :lol: ) and watching "Casper Van Dien and Gary Busey's kid shoot up a bunch of bugs and have Kurgan as a drill sergeant and the dude from Highlander 2 as a teacher" was pretty bloody cool and by extension to a teenager, made war look cool.
Watching the film as a 19 year old when I bought the dvd remembering those teen memories, I saw the film wasnt very... well morally ok. Denise Richards' character was not nice, I hated the jock mentality and then there is the whole fascism thing, where its not made anvilicious enough that it is a bad thing. It also didnt show itself to be a full parody, it was like a straight action film with some comic relief and cheesy propoganda, which wasnt extremely biased enough to show it for what it was (although it did try, to be fair - the kids stomping on the cockroaches to the joy of a very flipped out looking mother cheerfully clapping is particularly horrifying in a nightmare fuelish way).
*sigh* lets have a Poul Anderson film made, eh? :mrgreen:
Watching the film as a 19 year old when I bought the dvd remembering those teen memories, I saw the film wasnt very... well morally ok. Denise Richards' character was not nice, I hated the jock mentality and then there is the whole fascism thing, where its not made anvilicious enough that it is a bad thing. It also didnt show itself to be a full parody, it was like a straight action film with some comic relief and cheesy propoganda, which wasnt extremely biased enough to show it for what it was (although it did try, to be fair - the kids stomping on the cockroaches to the joy of a very flipped out looking mother cheerfully clapping is particularly horrifying in a nightmare fuelish way).
*sigh* lets have a Poul Anderson film made, eh? :mrgreen:
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
zero said:
I think Operation Chaos would make an excellent TV series, actually.
Flandry would be "James Bond in Space".
Falkayn would be like Firefly except you get a violent cat lady and a mostly pacifist centauroid rhino-gator instead of Jayne and Book. With occasional side order of fat Dutchman.
Lincolnlog
Mongoose
The interesting side line here, is that the book was a morality play and answered the question "Why we fight". This book is still on the US Army leaders recommended reading list.
In the book the Bugs are a stand in for the Red Hoards. Basically, it was backing up US foriegn (Western since the US wasn't alone in the Cold War) policy in the 50's leading into the 60's. But also addressed American's taking their citizenship for granted.
The old Avalon Hill board game reflected the Tech and Tactics of the genre better, but I know of no RPG that was ever done of the actual book universe.
Heinlein's vision was not facist, but about a free civilization, where you choose to be a resident or a citizen.
In the movie the math just doesn't work. The Bug's obviously reproduce extremely quickly, with the number of casualties the Cap troopers take on each operation, combined with the failure rate in Basic Training, we would have lost this war by the second film.
Bob
In the book the Bugs are a stand in for the Red Hoards. Basically, it was backing up US foriegn (Western since the US wasn't alone in the Cold War) policy in the 50's leading into the 60's. But also addressed American's taking their citizenship for granted.
The old Avalon Hill board game reflected the Tech and Tactics of the genre better, but I know of no RPG that was ever done of the actual book universe.
Heinlein's vision was not facist, but about a free civilization, where you choose to be a resident or a citizen. In the movie the math just doesn't work. The Bug's obviously reproduce extremely quickly, with the number of casualties the Cap troopers take on each operation, combined with the failure rate in Basic Training, we would have lost this war by the second film.
Bob
