In 1997, the director Paul Verhoeven and the screenwriter Edward Neumeier, the manufacturers of “Robocop” of 1987, resumed to make “Starship Troopers”, a satirical vision of the novel by Robert A. Heinlein in 1959. “Starship Troopers” takes place in the future where the earth has been, for many decades, in war with giant insects and intelligent insects and of a distant planet. Human society, however, has become a fascist state, and people have all become propaganda vehicles to the head and the handle. The media have become the size of a bite and your face. It is no coincidence that humans all wear very Nazi uniforms at the end of the film.
“Starship Troopers” was not fully appreciated in 1997. He especially obtained negative criticism, and many criticisms did not seem to resume his more satirical elements. It was also a modest blow, making $ 121 million with a budget of $ 100 million (considerable at the time). Since then, however, he has found his audience, proliferating on domestic video and on the midnight cinema. His critical reassessment found that many called him one of the best science fiction films of his decade. Many believe that they can now place “Starship Troopers” alongside “Robocop”.
The film generated an adaptation of animated television series in 2000, two suites directly to the video in 2004 and 2005 (both written by Neumeier), and two spin-offs of anime, from 2012 and 2017. It is not a successful lucrative franchise – DTV films were only made for a few million dollars each – but people remember the 1997 film with penchant.
This is why it can happen: The Hollywood Reporter Said Neill Blomkamp, ​​the director of “District 9”, “Chappie” and “Gran Turismo”, will make a new cinematographic version of “Starship Troopers”. Its objective is to more closely adapt the original novel of Heinlein, and not necessarily redo the film by Verhoeven.
Neill Blomkamp does not want to redo starship soldiers and rather readjust the novel
Heinlein’s original novel is extremely different from the adaptation of Verhoeven. Heinlein gave a large part of his book to the dialogue, mainly devoted to the philosophy of war. Although it is open to interpretation, Heinlein’s book seems to be a pro-combat text. Verhoeven’s film, on the other hand, is massively violent, oriented towards the plot and has several prolonged combat sequences in which hundreds of bullets are drawn. Indeed, he broke a record for the number of balls drawn on the screen in an American film. It is very clearly about militarist thought and describing what is happening when militant thought takes charge of a national philosophy.
If Blomkamp must be taken in the word, his new “Starship Troopers” will be spoken and thought out. Whether or not it is war or anti-war will depend on the way he interprets Heinlein’s novel and the way he makes his film.
This is not the first time that Blomkamp said that he wanted to redo a beloved science fiction class. In 2015, Blomkamp published Concept Art for a film “Alien” He wanted to do. His concept, however, was to ignore the events of “Alien3“” Alien: Resurrection “and” Prometheus “and make a direct sequel to the” Aliens “of 1986 by James Cameron. It was essentially”, “Aliens 2.” This project collapsed. In 2018, It has been announced that he is redoing “Robocop” In his own idiom (which he has already done with “Chappie”, another robot film). This film would also ignore the existing suites and follow directly from the original 1987. This film has also collapsed.
Time will tell us if “Starship Troopers” by Blomkamp is really achieved, because its history on the restarts are very poor. If this happens, fans may be impatient to see if it will surpass the ultra-violent bug massacre of Verhoeven, or if it will be more thoughtful than that.
