COMMENTARY | The story in Latino Review that a remake of “Starship Troopers” is in the works should be greeted with cautious optimism. The previous, 1990s version with European goremeister Paul Verhoeven had a lot wrong with it.
Besides not having the Mobile Infantry jump from space to the surfaces of planets wearing power armor, Verhoeven decided to pervert Heinlein’s original vision into a trite little satire on fascism in the future. There was even a slam against the Mormons a full decade before Mitt Romney ran for president.
Besides, the movie made Denise Richards a bankable actress, at least for a while. And that was just wrong.
For those who have read the novel by Robert Heinlein, the idea that he was depicting a “fascist future” was very wide of the mark. Using the device of a war epic, Heinlein was exploring an idea of ordering a society in which the franchise is reserved only for those willing to do a term of public service. This can be in the military, but also as a teacher or some other useful position. The idea was that people willing to put their civilization above themselves deserve to have the right to vote and hold office.
Also, the Mobile Infantry as depicted in the novel was not some kind of future Wehrmacht strutting around in feld grau bragging about how they were going to go on a bug hunt. They were future United States Marines actually going on bug hunts and killing them in great numbers. The tactics shown in the movie, with soldiers lined up like Civil War soldiers blasting away at armored bugs with ineffective weapons was just laugh out loud funny.
The only good part of the movie was the casting of Clancy Brown as the DI from Hell, Sergeant Zim.
One can only hope that something of Heinlein’s social commentary makes into the remake, along with the explosions, weapons fire, and mass casualties. Still, shots of Mobile Infantry, encased in their combat armor, making jumps from low Earth orbit should be nothing short than spectacular. At the very least it will be a guy’s movie, hopefully better-cast than the first version.