“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
