A Less Violent Starship Troopers?

[adrotate banner=”1″]That’s like a less nude stripper! Seriously, are they dumb, or just stupid? For those of you out of the loop, the producer of the upcoming reboot of Starship Troopers (which is different from the upcoming CGI animated sequel that follows the continuity of the original film and possibly the DTV sequels) has stated that they’re gonna make it less violent. Toby Jaffe told Empire: “The more expensive a film is, the harder it is now to make it that violent. With Recall in particular, we made a conscious choice to keep it tonally closer to something like Minority Report. It gives the studio, and us as producers, the opportunity to reintroduce it in a new way.”

“Verhoeven took [Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel] from one extreme and made it almost comical, whereas our job is to be a little more faithful to the book, and ground it a little more.”

Translation: It will be a boring generic action film. But it gets worse…

“Verhoeven made his movie a critique of fascism,” says Jaffe, “whereas Heinlein was writing from the perspective of someone who had served in World War II. Y’know, one man’s fascism is another man’s patriotism…”
Translation: Nazis? Totally awesome! BTW: Heinlein served in non-combat roles in WW2. So he’s not a citizen. Would you like to know more?

“Working in a visual-efects renaissance as we are, we have the ability to do so much more now. We can do the Jump Suits [armoured exoskeletons from Heinlein’s novel], for example, which I don’t think they could have done before.”
Let’s ignore that they did do them in Starship Troopers 3 and focus on the fact that having giant armored exoskeletons is cool, except for the fact they won’t be doing anything violent in them. And if they did, it would be safe PG-13 violence. The only possibly interesting thing about this is we might get to see the Skinnies. For the giant armored exoskeletons, Pacific Rim will be doing them one better. The entire concept of the novel is ludicrous, and Verhoeven’s satirical take on the subject matter is the perfect way to deal with the problem of the source material being awful to translate to film. There are barely any action scenes and most of the book is either training or classroom lectures.

Speaking of less nude strippers, just watch this Jaffe joker redo Showgirls next, except also PG-13 and ignoring everything Verhoeven did as well. The only good Jaffe is Al Jaffe, the Mad Magazine Fold-ins guy.

via EmpireOnline

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (Review)

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation


2004
Starring
Richard Burgi as Capt. V.J. Dax
Kelly Carlson as Pvt. Charlie Soda
Brenda Strong as Sgt. Dede Rak
Colleen Porch as Pvt. Lei Sahara
Ed Lauter as Gen. J. G. Shepherd
J.P. Manoux as TSgt. Ari Peck

The Bugs are Back, and this time they’ve got a plan! That plan? Crawl around and act stupid! Paul Verhoeven’s ridiculous adaptation of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers gets a low budget sequel put together by the special effects wizards who did the first film. Now, if you remove from your mind that the original is based on a pretty good book, the film suddenly becomes hundreds of times better, but is still an over satirized mess. Paul Verhoeven doesn’t bother with the sequel, I think he was working on another film with CGI Kevin Bacon penis or something. To save money, as this film had none, they spend most of it holed up in a bunker, and then do a lame representation of a different Heinlein book, The Puppet Masters. Unlike the last film, this one will neither be known for cheeseball graphic action nor coed showers.

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Total Recall (Review)


Total Recall


1990
Starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid/Hauser
Rachel Ticotin as Melina
Sharon Stone as Lori
Michael Ironside as Richter
Mel Johnson Jr. as Benny
Ronny Cox as Vilos Cohaagen

Get your ass to Mars!

Paul Verhoeven directs this Philip K. Dick story turned action film, starring my governor. Full of Verhoeven staple actors and Verhoeven staple mindless action (or satire action, as he likes to make most of it.) Now, that style may work well with obvious pieces such as Robocop and Starship Troopers, but it feels out of place at times in movies like this and Hollow Man. Not that this is a terrible movie, it’s just a few of the actions scenes seem like they are slightly out of it compared to the general tone of the film. This movie is also drowning in Star Trek actors, you can’t kick over a mutant in Venusville without seeing half a dozen scatter.



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