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Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 sci-fi military novel Starship Troopers is getting another big screen adaptation. Only this time around it's going to be less violent, but on the bright side of things, it will be more faithful to the book!
The first Starship Troopers is one of those movies I feel could have been done a lot better, so I'm not really all that upset about the book getting a new film adaptation. In a recent interview with Empire, producer Toby Jaffe (Total Recall) discusses the plans for the film and explains,
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.
I like what I'm seeing with Total Recall, so if they are able to keep Starship Troopers exciting and action-packed, then there shouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't mind seeing a crazy violent version of the film, but it's not going to happen. Hollywood has found that PG-13 films make more money, so if they can make it work as a PG-13 movie, then that's what we're going to get. This is just something we can expect from Hollywood from here on out. Jaffe went on to talk about director Paul Verhoeven's film version saying,
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.
So we trade in violence for a more faithful and solid story? I'm OK with that. He continues,
Verhoeven made his movie a critique of fascism, 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...
The producer then goes on to talk about how today's special effects are obviously going to allow them to do more in bringing elements of the story to life.
Working in a visual-effects 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.
