I'm older and so read the book shortly after it came out. I loved it. I was in the Marines and agree with Heinlein that an all-volunteer force is superior on several levels to a drafted one. After getting out of the Marine Corps and graduating from college, I went to work at Douglas Aircraft Company in the Missiles and Space division. Starship Troopers was frequently discussed and much loved in that military-oriented company. The movie shocked me inasmuch as it made fun of Heinlein's ideas about the military. Rico was promoted, not demoted at the end. I read the book several times over the years, but only managed to watch the movie just the once.
Wow what a story! Thank you for sharing. It’s so interesting hearing how divicive this books and its movie has been. I had no idea! Thank you for your perspective
Agreed, and thanks for your service. One of my best friends is a retired marine hooah! I wanted to serve too, but I'm legally blind. And I cannot wait to see veterans to put an end to corporate greed. That Orange guy scares me. And the GOP has been exploiting the military for decades and those who serve don't even see it. It makes me ashamed to be a registered Republican. So much so, that ever since Orange guy first ran, I vote blue.
The book has one of the best depictions of what it is like to go through boot camp and the struggle we all had. Though some of the runs are outlandish.
because the mobile infantry was not a modern boot camp and they believed that human lives had subjective value modern bootcamp does not every life has value.
Rico was not demoted at the end of the book. He was a "Temporary 3rd Lt." who was injured on Planet P helping Sgt. Zim. He then completed his training at OCS and was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. He is assigned to "The Roughnecks" as it's CO after Lt. Jelal is wounded, renaming it "Rico's Roughnecks". His father is under him as the platoon Sgt & XO. Several missions later he is assigned Temp. 3rd Lt. Bearpaw to train. They then do the drop on Klendathu as the book ends.
Yeah i think ur the second person to point this out. Im clearly not military but i guess the impression i had was him being in charge and going to save carmen in bug tunnels was something for which he received punitive demotion which turned out to be right where he wanted to be. I will have to reread that section so i understand it better…. As this was my first read, i wouldnt doubt I made a mistake…. Thank you for noticing!! I wish i could fix it now the video is posted without having to delete it entirely
@@secretsauceofstorycraft he didn’t receive demotion, Rico was expecting to but actually got a good word and continued his schooling. Reread the book a couple more times.
Correct, Johnny went to OCS and came back an officer now leading his old platoon (yeah like the military is going to be that sentimental to send a brand new Lt. back to his old unit). I don't remember any demotion except in training when he used his eyes instead of his suit's sensors to determine if it was "safe" to fire a tactical nuke. I do agree that the lack of the powered assault armor was a HUGE mistake in the movie but she's wrong about the psychic powers, the book did have "special units" that used psychic powers but Carl wasn't a part of them and he didn't survive in the book.
Psychic powers were in the book at the end with ‘the talent.’ He was the guy that could sense the bugs underground tunnel network. He was a pretentious little diva, I thought it was pretty funny. Great video!!!!
This is one of those different generations things. In the 1960s, one of America's most important questions was whether there should be a military draft. The single most effective argument against abolishing the draft was that it was necessary to recruit sufficient personel to defend America against overwhelming outside forces. (This was in a period where the percieved likely enemies were communal societies with seemingly unlimited populations and no respect for individual lives.) In this book, Heinlein creates a society that can defend itself without a draft. All that's necessary (according to the book) is to invest heavily in "force multiplers" (like power-armor and specialized support units) and to balance priviledge (i.e. the right to vote) with service (i.e. military service). At that level, the novel is one huge argument against the draft. That's why the book reads like a philosophical analysis of the justifications for the use of force against outsiders and against the society's own citizens. Almost every scene in the book discusses the use of force on some level, from the conditions of forcing H.S. students to take particular classes, to the pros and cons of destroying of planets.
Wow this is great context! And I can see many of his arguements looking back. I love how multilayered it is. Wish u had been my consultant for this video! Haha
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Thank you for your kind comment. I have to admit that I'm a huge fan of Heinlein, precisely because the settings of his novels are so heavily (yet discretely) permeated by philosophical considerations. He normally gets criticized for his gender and sociological attitudes (from the 1930s) instead of being admired for the settings in which he immerses the reader. There are often layers beneath the layers. (BTW - For a quick, fun, Heinlein read, try "All You Zombies". It's a short story that was made into a film and, last I saw, is available online for free. In case you're worried, there are no zombies involved.)
@@mike-zl3kv Well, that seems to be the way of RAH film adaptations. Except for the first one in 1951? Destination Moon. I have not read: All You Zombies for a while. I will have to go to that bookcase! Time travel and identity, as I recall..
@@secretsauceofstorycraft This is the vid that introduced me to the quote, which is from a NYT article. Highly recommended video: ruclips.net/video/2qihB3MaDTo/видео.html
@@bastaitsocial darwimism is just evolution by another name. And it has nothing to do with socialism. I would say it's the opposite of socialism.. in socialism u don't sauly ppl r richer bcoz they are better than me... they say it's bcoz they r evil.. that's not social darwinism.
Starship Troopers was one of my fav books in high school. I was so excited when the movie was announced for release the summer I graduated. I was devastated coming out of the premier, the movie having butchered the book so badly. That was a me problem though, I went into the movie wanting a movie based on my favourite book, and what I got was a satire of sci-fi action movies, military propaganda, and fascist rhetoric. Those are all things Verhoeven excels at. I eventually came around on Starship Troopers, and now consider it my favourite comedy of 1997. I still long for a proper adaptation of the book though.
😯 very cool! Hey at least you recognized your expectations. Im going to say tho- no film adaptation ever seems to be as accurate as fans want it. So b careful what you wish for!
Taking a reference from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I consider Verhoeven's movie to be the "Nutri-Matic Tea" movie adaptation. Something almost, but not completely, entirely unlike the book. Considering that the movie was titled "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine" before Verhoeven managed to acquire the movie rights to get a more visible hook to hang the movie from (and in a panel many years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con, he stated flat out that he'd always wanted to make a movie from the book because of the inherently fascist nature of the society in the book).
@@seanmalloy7249yea I guess having to put your life at risk to get the vote really got to the anti military peacenik verhoeven. I'm a person who would never want to fight in the front lines, but I also realize that the ones that DO risk their lives to defend my country should get to decide for that country as long as u have a constitution that grants certain rights that cannot b violated. I would b fine letting ppl these ppl b the only ones that vote. Only thing I would add is that those who die in combat should b able to grant their families their vote for the sacrifice. Bcoz if u do not have a draft, u must offer something substantial to nudge ppl into the military. The other option is just a draft.. and peaceniks really hate that! And from what I've seem in my life, ex military seem to be more thoughtful about going to war or not than ur avg non military politician.
Heinlein must have done something right because I judge every Generation Ship story by Orphans of the Sky and every Power Armor story by Starship Troopers. I didn't read either as satire, I read them as space adventure. These two helped define the sub-genre where I feel most at home. Other than the lack of Power Armor my biggest gripe with the movie is the guns that never run out of ammunition. When the 24hr cable news stations started I thought "Hey, the Starship Troopers movie got it right." What passages did you tab in the book? I'm always curious when I see BookTubers tab books.
As far as tabbing, i tabbed ch 8 and the oath they pledge when they join the military. These were two places i kept going back to and figured if heinlein spent the time to create it, he had a purpose. As for doing something right, I would agree with you! He really did a great thing for the genre.
Maybe I'm dumb, but the possibility of a satire never passed through my mind while reading the book. I thought it was a very interesting view on sociology and phylosophy and I loved it. I liked the movie before reading the book, but after reading the original it totally lost any value (except for the awesome soundtrack). I seriously hope the book wasn't meant to be a satire, cause I loved how it can make doubt many concepts we took for granted. Bu the way, I read somewhere that Verhoven never actually read the whole book, instead it stopped reading after few pages, hence the huge difference between the two. I see more Robocop in his movie than I see Starship Troopers the book.
Nobody’s experience is dumb- at least not in my opinion. And im glad u enjoyed the book, because i really loved it too. I think if it was a satire or not doesnt take away that it made people think and it was a great exploration into sociology and psychology. One thing It does best is start discussion. So I had to make the video even if lots of folks would disagree. Thanks for hearing me out and adding to that discussion!!
The notion that "Starship Troopers" is a fascist or satire is a misrepresentation perpetuated by those who vehemently oppose the philosophy it espouses. While some readers may discern certain elements of social criticism, the book is not intended to be classified as a work of satire. Satire, by its nature, employs irony, humor, and exaggeration to deride and scrutinize societal matters, establishments, or individuals. However, "Starship Troopers" incorporates social commentary in a manner distinct from satirical literature. The novel serves as a vessel for exploring Heinlein's profound musings on governance and citizenship. It delves into themes of duty, honor, and the profound responsibilities associated with being a citizen in a future society. While it does offer insights into these subjects, the book's primary purpose lies in the realm of science fiction, rather than satire. It is regrettable that certain ideological opponents unfairly cast aspersions upon "Starship Troopers," misconstruing its intent and nature. By clarifying the distinction between satire and the book's genuine form of social commentary, a more accurate appreciation of Heinlein's work can be attained. It is a masterpiece.
The book isn't satire. It was anti-communist and based on Heinlein's military experience. And the failure of democracy goes all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville. Like many authors, Heinlein started with a concept and explored it in that world. And per the book, 95% of people do not serve in the military. It was elite- you had to pass aptitude testing and you had to qualify. And in the book, you didn't get to vote until you *finished* federal service of 2 years. In war time, that would be longer for the military. After natural disasters, it might be longer for aid workers. There's frequently a confusion between fascism and militarism. Any society faced with being invasion and death will turn military or be eliminated. Democracies were militaristic during world war 2. Verhoeven was lazy and didn't read the book. But it's clear some of his writers were fans of the book and adapted it fairly and verbatim in the high school scenes.
What is truly amazing is that Heinein won the Hugo for best novel twice in 3 years, the first for Starship Troopers 1962, then for Stranger in a Strange Land 1964. The first is a very militaristic society with fascist undertones while the second was considered a "guidebook" for the counterculture of the late 1960's. Two very very different looks at society with two very very different protagonists.
He was not demoted at the end. He reverted back to cadet, as the deployment rank was temporary, then it jumps to when he is a lieutenant. There was a few pages talking about issuing the pips worn by previous cadets on their temporary assignment.
One of the best novels that I read for a very long time. And the Power Armor concept is truly remarkable and inspired many media and video games for many generations to come. I love the world building and how it explains to the reader about the world of Starship Troopers really is. And it still holds up as one of the best novels. Without Starship troopers theirs no Halo, Starcraft, Warhammer 40k and many more.
As I recall, E. E. "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol/Lensman books described power assisted, heavily armored spacesuits used in boarding other ships. That series was first published in the 1930s & 40s. Don't remember if those suits used integrated weaponry like Heinlein's. I'm almost sure they did use battle axes, but it's been a long while since I read those stories. 🚀 I'd recommend reading a couple of those classic Space Operas, maybe "Galactic Patrol" and "Gray Lensman" if only so you can appreciate Harry Harrison's fond 1973 parody "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers".
@@paintedjaguar It was the Valerians -- descendants of Dutchmen who'd moved to a high-gravity world, and it was mentioned several times that there was little that could withstand a boarding axe wielded with the high-gravity muscles of a Valerian driving them -- VanBuskirk being the canonical example.
@@paintedjaguar I'm pretty sure that at least some of the suits that Kinnison had built would require power assist to be able to move in them, but I don't think that Doc Smith ever particularly focused on the technical features of the suits.
I remember decades ago that the discussions in my group of friends were quite a bit different. We didn't think it was satire at all. A view on society certainly. The coming of age and dealing with internal conflicts of personal vs group think. Was it a practical way to organize a military? Did the Roman concept of military service for citizenship really work for a technologically advanced civilization. How would it change views on military service within society itself? Why would a society continue to accept it? The clear delination between the branch of service for men versus woman. The movie had both men and women serving in ground forces, while in the book women were pilots and did not serve in ground forces, and men did not serve as pilots. How did that show or reflect society at large with such a strong division shown in the military between the sexes? I always viewed the movie as more inspired by than a true adaptation of the book personally. Thanks for your review. It was interesting and put Starship Troopers on my TBRr (To Be Reread).
You are so right. There are so many differences in movie vs book, I decided not to cover all- but I should have mentioned the gender differences. I really noticed that one as a kid watching the movies. Shame on me! But thanks for adding to the discussion and for watching!
As I remember, citizenship was given based on a individual's willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. It was not military service for Citizenship. Military service happened to be one example of sacrifice your life for the good of society.
Great video, Whitney! I think it can become a great recurring format of putting sci-fi films and their corresponding books against each other. Greetings from Greece!
End of Chapter 13. Rico mentions he speaks Tagalog at home. This is the language of the Philippines. Maybe they had connections with South America but after Buenos Aires is destroying, Rico offers condolences to the ships only “porteño”. Port city resident. Rico is surprised to learn his mother was in Buenos Aires. Perhaps his Filipino family emigrated to South America but he is FILIPINO Thx
Juan “Johnny” Rico is of Filipino descent from a rich family in the book. His mom was on vacation in Buenos Aires when it was attacked. His father join him in the military after. Not Sargent Zim
@@pjsnickers76 Starship Troopers audiobook with sound effects! War. Leadership. Crime & punishment. “Marriage is a young man’s DISASTER & an old man’s comfort.” - Starship Troopers the book 1959 ruclips.net/video/zwFMszIVGko/видео.htmlsi=t7NBjvjMXqeX1sbC
I'm a huge Heinlein fan. I've read all of his works and even heard him speak at a convention in Seattle circa 1977. He said that to truly understand him you must read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," "Starship Troopers," and the unedited version of "Stranger in a Strange Land." Robert A. Heinlein wrote the first Sci-Fi story which featured a transgendered hero, 1959's short story "All You Zombies." it was adapted into a movie, the 2014 Australian feature "Predestination." His novel "The Door Into Summer" was adapted into the 2021/22 Japanese film of the same name. Other Heinlein novels that have been adapted into films include "Destination Moon" and "The Puppet Masters." It would be interesting to see you to do comparison videos on them.
I will have to look into those films, i was not aware of them. Will add to watch list. I am also a heinlein fan- loved this novel!! Im currently getting ready to read double star i hear so much about :)
@@DailyLifeSolution The novel's militarism, and the fact that government service was a prerequisite to the right to vote in the novel's fictional society, has led to it being frequently described as fascist. What many people get wrong is that that service must be to serve in the military, which is not the case. True, you must serve the Federation for 2 years, but that service can be achieved in several ways - such as being a teacher for example. Read the book and decide for yourself. The film is more a satire of the book than a faithful adaptation. Besides, you can't judge Heinlien based on this one novel. He was labeled a 'flaming liberal' (by Isaac Asimov no less), a Libertarian, a Conservative, and a Humanist - all in his lifetime.
@@cessnaace I will read the book. Robert was not a fascist sympathizer and not a socialist too; so the claim of book being fascist might be the result of culture war in U. S. A.. Socialist often call everything on other side as fascist.
Well said, friend. My late older brother was an RAH fan from the early 60's, and I caught the bug from him. I suspect he read more of Heinlein's work than I did, and his favorite, too, was "Moon", with the computer named Mike. I miss him. My favorites remain the ones you mentioned........Puppet Masters, Starship Trooper, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and "Stranger" (only read once, and it was disturbing to my tender years). Door Into Summer, Farnham's Freehold, and Orphans in the Sky were also favorites. RAH could always spin a story and knew how to craft compelling characters. A two-headed mutant named Joe-Jim, who compelled the main character to face reality, and has a loyal pinhead sidekick named Bobo?? How do you come up with an idea like that?
Hahha! Thats a tall order to not get lost in the Endless TBR-- good news is its a short one, so one day when u need that it’ll be there. Thanks for watching.
Uchuu no Senshi did a much better job of portraying the CAP troopers and their powered armor, but the aliens they were fighting against didn't mesh well against anything in the book, being more in the vein of the classic anime monster than the Arachnids.
Well, I feel obliged to speak up, about this film. Your analysis, regarding whether the film's version of Rico's evolved from 1950s USA civilization, is a dystopia or a utopia, is correct. I have read the book at least 20 times over the last 58 years, learning a lot of new concepts every time from 10 to 25 years of age, and a little more since.. When this film appeared (1997), most SF Fandom felt it had nearly no connection to RAH's novel, except for a percieved illegitimate use of character's names and background story. How the producer's acquired the rights, was discussed. It was assumed the estate had no idea what was intended. The film is a parody and criticism of the book, overtly undermining virtually everything RAH tries to convey, very logically, in the novel. If you read Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Citizen Of The Galaxy, Red Planet, The Past Through Tomorrow, The Star Beast, The Long Watch, Coventry, Glory Road, etc. he is very consistent. I have never felt Starship Troopers was satirical in any way, just the opposite. That RAH era came after his 1960 or so health issues. The film is fine if you just watch it as a joke, which it clearly is intended to be.
BTW, RAH's Starship Troopers was required reading in several branches of the US Military for many years. The tactics of the training, the ships, powersuits and enemies. Still recommended, last time I checked. I am certain the film is not...
Its so much fun to hear everyone’s perspectives on this film and on the book itself. Thank you 🙏 for sharing! I am hopeful to be able to reread this book in thr future myself- the best books are always those we get something new out of everytime. This book is definitely one of them!
Actually this is a good book for the youth of today. The veterans did away with the corporate greed we see and lasted at least seven centuries. After, of course, seven decades of world war. If kids these days can learn how to do it without that much war, we'll be fine
There is a huge error in your interpretation of the last chapter of the book. Johnny has not been demoted by his return to The Roughnecks. He is now the CO (Commanding Officer) of the unit. This is made quite plain in the first few paragraphs of the chapter. He clearly states that he now has a JO (Junior Officer) under instruction (i.e., a 3rd LT, Johnny's rank earlier in the book when he was under the instruction of a senior officer). He refers to himself as "The Old Man" (i.e., The Unit CO). The CO of the Rodger Young refers to him as "Lieutenant" when he reports that "Rico's Roughnecks" are ready for drop. Why is the unit called "Rico's Roughnecks"? Because he is the unit CO. Lastly, there is a second Rico in the Roughnecks. This is Johnny's father who is now the units Platoon Sergeant (A senior NCO, but not an officer and therefore junior to Johnny). As discussed in the book, the father joined the service when his wife (i.e., Johnny's mother) was killed in the Bug's raid on Buenos Aires. The father and Johnny have a discussion on this point earlier in the book when they accidentally meet when Johnny is transferring to OCS (Officer Candidate School) and his father is transferring to the Roughnecks. One question you might want to add to the discussion is "What is Johnny's ethnicity"? This was not well represented in the movie. In any case thanks for making a great episode. Keep up the good work!
I intentionally didnt mention anything on race because there is so much more to talk about, but It is a piece. Someone else mentioned i should have gone into gender roles also- too many things to cover 🙂 I will go back and reread the books end. For some reason I thought rico got a promotion as head of multiple units during the brain bug search not just rough necks but many other units as well then got demoted since he went off plan back to just the roughnecks. But will recheck, thanks for keeping me on my toes!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft It is easy enough to confuse some of these military SF books with others. I had the advantage of just having read the book about 6 months ago so it was fresh in my mind. Make sure you also reread the last few paragraphs of the penultimate chapter of the book. That is where Johnny indirectly reveals that he is a Filipino during a discussion with Bernardo. How did they miss that in the movie? Especially in modern day Hollywood!
Spot on, Mike. Juan (Johnny) isn’t demoted at the end. I really liked how we never really got his ethnicity until near the end, when he says something in Tagalog. It’s hinted at throughout, just in stating his name (and his father’s), but never really explicitly covered. I thought that part was handled particularly well. I can’t think of another SciFi story with a protagonist from the PI. Overall, I really enjoyed this analysis/comparison. Would definitely like to see more!
@@mikeschroeder6867 Paul did not miss Rico's race, he intentionally changed his race. You may find the answer of it by by listening to Paul's answers on reasons for not being faithful to the novel.
RICO IS FILIPINO. At the end of Chapter 13 he mentions he spoke Tagalog at home. He also mentions Ramon Magsaysay as someone who would have been a good Chief of Psychological Warfare…
In Heinlein's day most writers were not promoting their personal beliefs through their stories. Impossible though it apparently is for many people today to grasp, only in recent decades has art become almost exclusively a vehicle for pushing an author's personal agenda.
I've spent time thinking about how this society would work. Because of the oxymoron of juvenile delinquency, I believe that all children until they reach 18 would be supervised in person or on video. And when misbehaving would not just be subjected to spanking and such. One can talk to children like adults at a very young age and are smart enough to understand. An example from my own life: when I was about 7. I got mad at a girl hitting herwith a rope that was in my hand. We played innocent escape artist games with it. It was soft and thick and we took turns tying each other in chairs and stuff and it wasn't just us two. A group of us played. Anyways her father saw from the porch that I hit her with the rope. He was a retired AF NCO and ran over to pull me aside and explained in very adult terms that we don't do that. The opposite sex are our mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmas, and they deserve our kindness, respect, protection and any harm to them damages us greatly. He spelled it out in very Christian terms, but I'm about to turn 48 tomorrow and I've never hit another lady since, I stand with my childless cat lady sisters being a childless dog dude and find the Roe V Wade killing a disgrace. So. Any capital punishment on children wouldn't happen because the watchers would have watchers. I think company run by CEOs would still occur, but there might be a salary cap. Regardless an employer would be responsible for not just paying wages and some health care, but would aid in housing, utilities, education, child care, food, retirement income, vacations ( not just paid leave, but the entire vacation), and pretty much all aspects the corporations screw us on. In the movie despite not having the franchise, Rico's dad was probably a great CEO of a huge company but they lived in a very modest home. I'm sure every one of his employees lived similarly. And not in the movie at all was the fact that military service wasn't the only way to get franchised too. A humanitarian role, or say a firefighter. Or civilians who lost a limb saving a life, or developer of a life saving vaccine, or whatever. Lots of ways to get to vote. And the way they keep on trying to get the soldiers to Walk down washout lane was brilliant. Gonna get tough soldiers who can't be stopped rather than drafted kids who don't wanna be there. Does anyone else have ideas on how society might be different? BETTER.
Wow you spent alot of time thinking about this. I will have to consider your question- tbh thats why i love sci fi to see what worlds the author can paint for me.
Watching this because Starship troopers discord with the release of Helldivers 2. Never knew that originally Heinlein wanted this to be sold as a YA novel but in hindsight that does make sense.
Thanks for a thought provoking video Whitney. I was a little nervous of watching your review of Starship Troopers as I first read this when I was at university (many many years ago), and it has been a favourite ever since, so I was worried what you might think. But I thought your review of the book was really good and very fair. You covered the criticisms .and you were spot on - it does make you think about society and how it evolves. But then you challenged me - is Starship Troopers (the book) a satire? Because I read it when I was much younger I never thought of it as satire and have never considered it such even when I've re-read the novel in later years. But is it? Do I need to think again? The film is, of course, a full-on satire with caricatures of the characters from the book and some of the key parts (power armour) completely missing. Sadly, even knowing all that, I have never liked the movie because it pretends to be the movie of a much loved novel. If the book didn't exist and the movie was just released as an 'over the top' SF satire I may have enjoyed it a bit more... but maybe not. But even when I try and consider it as a stand alone movie I'm afraid I don't rate it so, in this instance, we hold differing views. But that's right and proper. I am pleased you liked the book though. Great review - hope you will do more book v film reviews. It's an interesting format.
Well it is just my opinion, and it very well might be wrong. But I had to present the arguement to start the discussion!! Thank you for watching… as always I look forward to your thoughtful commentary. I would like to do more book vs movie but only if it does well- (and only if I have something to say) haha.
Agreed, Alan. Time has passed, the magazine editors that kept all this fresh are long gone. I started reading SF at 8, 1963. First book was "Miss Pickrell Goes To Mars" on the shelf in my 3rd grade class and age appropriate. Next was Latham's "Five Against Venus" for teens and very scary, but I was hooked. Then "Not In Solitude" by Gantz and not a juvenile, at all. I was reading a book a week after that and lost track!
@Joe Brooks. We are of an age (9 in 63). My first remembered book was ‘Raiders from the Rings’ by Alan E Nourse which opened up a whole new world for me, and I followed that with Heinlein’s ‘Tunnel in the Sky’ and ‘Space Cadet’ and there was no turning back. I got to ‘Starship Troopers’ a decade later and it has stuck with me ever since. To this day I can’t read the opening chapter without wanting to read the whole book again and there are not many books I can say that about.
@@alans3023 That is great, Alan! I still have Raiders From the Rings! I went to every Library sale for 30 years. SF was a History, Philosophy, Economics and Integrity teacher to me. Heinlein's quotes at the beginning of each chapter, History and Moral Philosophy class, Chapter 6.. I return to Heinlein frequently, too. There were just a few SF readers at my school, fortunately they all wrestled in JR High and HS, within 2 years of me. We talked SF at practice and I still have the books one gave me. Mrs Davis, HS SF teacher, was very knowledgeable and we all discussed SF in there, too. I had the good fortune to see Yes in concert, Sept 1972. If you are familiar - I have thought the Wurm part of Yes' Starship Trooper is Rico waiting in the capsule as his men are bumping thru to ejection. You can hear the drums as they eject and bump, and as he gets more nervous, the music builds. Then ejection and the dueling guitars [forces]?
The biggest take away for me is that everything from universal medicine and volunteer military to finally realizing that we are after all, children of Earth! God bless this planet!
My two brothers and I were Marines, and we discussed the Starship Trooper movie when it came out. I was overseas and movie theaters were banned as unholy abominations, so I didn't see Starship Troopers. My younger brother loved the movie but was bothered by the armed mob tactics displayed, so I sent him a copy of the novel. "Dizzy was a guy!" Infantry combat is a team sport. Modern infantry units practice a ten-meter dispersion between individuals and there is a twenty-five-meter dispersion between squads. This dispersion was learned the hard way on the battlefields of World War One--the troops would actually be closer in restricted terrain, but the idea was that no one bullet would go through two men and that throwing a hand grenade at the squad would only inflict one or two casualties. Dispersion has to be closer in movies because a silent squad sneaking through hostile terrain does not engage in chit-chat communicating today by hand signals until action is joined, and by brief radio commands. Today's battlefields are lonely, empty places swept clear of visible life by very lethal weapons fire. In Starship Troopers the dispersion between individual troops was measured in miles. in Chapter One: "You'll be dropped in two skirmish lines, calculated two-thousand-yard intervals." Steve and I played this out in the Starship Troopers board game by Avalon Hill. The lack of powered armor broke the movie, and the dispersion between individual soldiers in the novel was far greater than the dispersion between AT-AT Walkers in "Star Wars--the Empire Strikes Back." For cinematic reasons, Hollywood has to employ American Civil War tactics or there wouldn't be anything interesting happening on the screen. Check the movie "1917" and notice how much more evolved the tactical dispersion is for the British First World War battalion. As Heinlein described the three suits, Mobile Infantry had better battlefield mobility than modern tanks, better armor protection and greater firepower. Starship Trooper combat armor could be flown, nice to get over ditches and walls and rivers, but it wasn't smart to stay airborne long due to enemy fire. Like modern helicopters, the powered armor-wearing infantry stayed close to the deck and relied on speed. Situational awareness was made possible by networked C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence) that came online before the real-world Desert Storm. There was a tactical nuclear weapon in the real world when the M28/M29 Davy Crockett atomic bazooka was fielded in 1961--and Heinlein's Starship Troopers had similar weapons mounted on their armor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) When I read about the Davy Crockett in a 1961 book by C. B. Colby called "Our Space Age Army: weapons and aircraft of the modern U.S. Army" (I was in the eighth grade and the year was 1971) I thought that the Davy Crockett was a fake, something to scare the big bad Red Russian Bear. The M388 warhead had a yield of 20 tons of TNT (the Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 12,000 tons of TNT) but the casualty radius of the M388 was greater than the range of the 1.25-mile "lightweight" M28 launcher--telling me that the Davy Crockett was an enhanced radiation warhead, a true death ray machine. You can visit a Davy Crockett mockup in several US atomic museums. www.nuclearmuseum.org/ I didn't believe that the Davy Crockett was real until I stumbled across range clean-up protocols for the M390 practice round while being certified to run Nevada Army National Guard small arms ranges in 2005. The practice round had a radioactive trace element so that the radiation cloud created could be scored--by Geiger counter. Part of my disbelief was putting six warheads and a launcher in the hands of a junior sergeant. One Davy Crockett squad was attached to forward battalion battle groups to destroy Soviet tank battalions--units containing 30 T-55 main battle tanks when the Davy Crockett was first fielded. Well--the movie did have small and destructive rockets--but the effects of detonation would have been nastier than the movie showed. The US Army of 1959, the year Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" was published, was already a complex beast.
Holy crap!!! U and your brothers should do a video!!! I’d watch it!!! Very detailed analysis of tactic here… i had no idea but can see why they would make the battlefield more busy for the on screen excitement.
Please listen to my audiobook version of starship troopers. I think you will like it. I was in the US Army reserves for 30 years. I joined in 1992. The book is very special to me and shaped some of my life decisions.
I cringed through most of the combat scenes. You're fighting an opponent that, with its equivalent of infantry, has to close to melee range to attack you, and your tactics are to run right up to them in a disorganized mass and flail away with full auto until someone gets impaled, then frantically run away? Shoot whoever the unit commander is, and replace them with somone who has a brain. Or when the platoon is advancing... along the bottom of an arroyo that cuts off half their ability to see around them, and then gets attacked by flying bugs, and once more we see the same flailing full-auto spray-and-pray tactics. It's as if everyone lost all trace of military knowledge since 1914.
@@seanmalloy7249 Worse than 1914. I studied 19th Centry tactics in order to understand how Second World War tactics have evolved. Trench warfare has been a thing for centuries--that's why we still have Sapper and Grenadier units (even when the title is honorific) --Grenadiers used a siege engine called the hand grenade, and the sap was an offensive trench. The tank was a siege engine--at first--and during my year on Operation Iraqi Freedom II I filled my daily quota of sandbags to fortify our FOBs, when I wasn't on armed convoy escort or my primary duty of operating a multichannel radio station. Surprise--I didn't have to keep carrier pigeons -- though if the roads were better, a bicycle instead of being a runner would have made being a messenger easier. Football (either American or "soccer") had more tactics than did Starship Troopers. In the 19th Centry, before the year 1914, "whatever happens we have got, the Maxim gun and we have not." In Marine Corps History and Traditions, Medal of Honor Winner Dan Daley fought in the Boxer Rebellion. He held a section of breeched wall with his rifle and colt machine gun against sword-armed Chinese (it's what they had). Throughout the 19th Century's colonial wars, relatively small bands of imperial troops armed with breechloading rifles and courage faced native armies who had courage and spears (and but a few guns with limited ammo). The Europeans would form up where they had a large killing field and fire their single-shot breechloaders by volleys in closed pack ranks so that only part of the formation was shooting and the rest was either ready to shoot or reloading, a tactic developed for muzzle-loading flintlocks. The Battle of Little Big Horn had Custer's headlong rush (Starship Troopers movie style) into an area ambush where the Sioux could exploit their numbers and close-combat expertise--there's more to that, but essentially Custer, motivated to "don't let them get away" fought his final battle on Sioux terms -- on terms that the Sioux were going to win. Meanwhile, the rest of 7th Cav established fighting positions and dug in as best they could, setting up so that their ranged combat advantage with their single-shot .45-70 carbines and far more lavish ammunition supply could keep the Sioux outside of close combat range. The Sioux even used Man's oldest weapon of mass destruction--the Sioux set fire to the prairie--7th Cav used the Little Big Horn River as a fire break and as a wet moat and this posture was too difficult to assail with light cavalry, the undergrowth had been burned away and the river way too open for infiltration tactics, and when General Cook's forces arrived, the Sioux had completed their evacuation. Starship Troopers didn't fight as smart as the 7th Cav in its worst defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And that was just the land battle. Want to talk about how the Federation fleet was stacked up as if it were the target array for the atomic bomb testing at Bikini Atoll? The Bugs had close air support! The movie Mobile Infantry blundered into ambushes. Tactics means "never fight on the enemy's terms--fight on terms that guarantee your victory."
You say the propaganda pieces give a feeling of "fake news", but they actually don't lie at any point in the film. That's probably the second most unrealistic part of the film (the first being the bugs using asteroids moving at normal speed as weapons, but that was also wonky in the novel)
True they dont lie, but its not quite the truth either…. Maybe fake news was bad analogy. As to the bugs weaponixing asteroids, yeah its a common complaint about that movie- but i guess that part didnt bother me as much as lack of power armor.
Haven't read the book but the movie is kind of a guilty pleasure with me lol. This is an interesting comparison. Not being an avid reader yet, I've often heard the phrase "it's nothing like the book." about many movies. These two seem to be very different as well. Great video
The rant is the best part lol. If I may point out a few observations about your videos, I've noticed several things. Your editing is great and I imagine takes a lot of time. You have a very good way of giving the basic plot without spoiling the book. I have enjoyed every video I've watched. If I had one bit of advice it would be to try to get some videos down to 10-15 minutes. I've heard other tubers say these videos do better. On your next video, if you don't mind, I'm going to suggest some things to your viewers to help your analytics which hopefully will increase your views. Your videos are too good not to be viewed more.
I can't pinpoint any specific source, but I remember hearing years ago that Heinlein was considered by the politically left to be politically far right. I'm pretty sure I'd read that Verhoeven - being an outspoken leftist - specifically chose ST to adapt not as a fan but to repurpose what he saw as far right propaganda into a satire of American imperialism. Again, this could all be completely wrong, but I thought that was the hubbub surrounding ST back around the time of the release of the movie.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Yeah, I'm not sure either. Relying purely on memory. Their political beliefs could actually be just the opposite for all I know (Heinlein left, Verhoeven right?). lol
I liked his idea that politicians had to prove they could put the good of the many in front of themselves. Not that they always would but that they could. Please remember there is no such thing as a juvenile delinquent, only undisciplined juveniles that become adult delinquents. very simplistic but hard to debunk because of the simplicity.
It is my opinion that Verhoven's movie is nowhere near as good as Heinlein's book. The side plots that you talk about exist primarily because Verhoven never bothered to read the book, and so he had to make up his story from whole cloth, with only the names of characters to go on. Also, the idea that any kind of planet-based weaponry could shatter a fleet in orbit around the planet is absolute hokum, though it would take a basic knowledge of physics to understand.
@@saftpackerl, so the script was written by a Hollywood script-monkey to conform to the "artist's vision" of the Director. As it is certain that the script-monkey had never even bothered to read the original material.
Movie deliberately satirised the novel, which the director saw as a fascist leaning novel. Though I love what the movie did, l think Director Verhoewen misread the novel’s intent. Like you perhaps, I think we should see Heinlein writing a novel that is very tongue in cheek, a kind of homage plus gentle satire of the kind of gung-ho ‘boy’s adventure novel’ that was popular at the time. After all the idea of YA fiction was not really part of the literary scene in the 1950s - or even in the 1970s during my childhood: you read children’s fiction till you got bored - in my case around the age of 13, when I would sneak into the adult section of the local library and borrow books there…Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, Alistair Maclean, Hammond Innes, and, yes, Robert Heinlein.
Guys, Heinlein wrote a wide range of "juveniles" in the 1950s. Ranging from 13 to 18 years of age. Starship Troopers was among the last, as I recall. I read them all and still have most. Here they are: Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) Space Cadet (1948) Red Planet (1949) Farmer in the Sky (1950) Between Planets (1951) The Rolling Stones (also known as Space Family Stone, 1952) Starman Jones (1953) The Star Beast (1954) Tunnel in the Sky (1955) Time for the Stars (1956) Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) Have Space Suit-Will Travel (1958) Starship Troopers (1959) (rejected by Scribner's, published by Putnam's)
@@secretsauceofstorycraft I'd have to reread the book again to be sure, but I don't think that women were restricted to being pilots, just restricted to the Navy, out of any direct field-combat role. Which didn't protect them from combat, just from getting down and dirty like the grunts.
You need to know he was a U.S. Navy Midshipman in the 1930s. His 3rd wife was a veteran.. He, Asimov and De Kamp all worked together in a military think tank in 1945. He was very pro-military.
The book is deep philosophical discussions that often end with the conclusion that there are no easy answers. The movie is a fairly shallow critique of fascism that accidentally makes fascism look pretty cool. There are psychics in the book. They are used on planet p to look for tunnels. Johnny Rico was not demoted, he graduated and was assigned as an officer to his old unit. Carmen is mentioned extensively through the book, and kept as a professional in her own right instead of merely a love interest. Its also kind of sad to see how the frankly groundbreaking diversity in the book is done away with in the movie by verhoven just to make a point. The book came out int 1959, so imagine the shock of many readers to find out that jonny rico was a tagalog speaking filipino the whole time. As far as whether the book is a satire, i actually think it's more of a thought exercise. The author came from a military family and was in the military himself. The book was a way to consider what the ideal military-run society would look like. He actually spends a good deal of the book criticizing the militaries flaws. The main takeaway that his characters tried to impresss on Jonny was that the current system was good because it worked, not because it was inherently good, and that if it ever ceased to work, it would have to be replaced.
I agree with saying it is a thought experiment- thats actually what i like most about it. That and that it challenges you to decide if you agree or disagree. I am also sad the movie didnt display with diversity element, but I am hoping to reread this book again soon.
Yes, a lot of people just do not know the depth of the book. Please check out the audiobook I made. When the psychics come onto the battlefield, I try to play some strange music lol.
I’m so glad you knew that he was Filipino! I am Filipino American, and was in the US Army reserves for 30 years. I read the book when I was 23 years old. No exaggeration. It changed my life. The “marriage is a young man’s disaster and an old man’s comfort“ really stuck with me and helped me avoiddrama😊
I saw a Spanish video that analyzes all of Heilen's bibliography and the point is that a liberal, in the strict sense, is an individual person. It is said that Heilen was not comfortable with people who did not doubt, and the same thing is pointed out as you, that according to each book people can reach different and even opposite conclusions about Heilen. His point against communism is real. He was a communist and became disappointed with them after visiting communist countries. He even participated in a communist party. It is obvious to me that the book does not dehumanize communists but rather shows that the communist ideal is unattainable for man. For this reason, he praises the efficiency of insects with admiration. They are superior for war in the biological sense. Which is also a question about the novel. The competition of the species. Heilen speaks of the iteration of the species and the competition for vital signs. The confrontation is inevitable, exposing case of invasive species and the disadvantage. A iconic example is the meek grass being a destroyer on a planet where the flora grows with less. and the point is that sometimes it doesn't depend on you simply sometimes you simply won't be able to negotiate in the case of insects they simply can't understand it because of the differences and the vision of the low for them is indifferent, so intimidating them doesn't work. there are times when you should fight he doesn't praise war but he considers it naive not to prepare for war because not everything in the universe will be peaceful the military point is personal for him he was a military man and he declared that he is not in favor of the army but he admires people who sacrifice their lives for their families so his point was a tribute to people who fight. The same book shows his position on nuclear weapons, he believes as the author of the art of war that it consists in avoiding avoiding war and making the enemy want to give up, avoiding the duration of wars is the objective, his operations in the book are always with the purpose of discouraging the enemy, and if following what was referred to before the insects do not see the lives of their subordinates as we do, that is why they seek to capture a brain bug because they want to be able to negotiate and recover soldiers who have been captured from fighting, not annihilation as when you act big when there is a Bears, it goes hand in hand with the idea that the relative peace today is the fear of the use of nuclear weapons (which in reality was the cold war) Heilen welcomed the anti-war positions of novels such as the ENder and Forever War games
The lack of power armor served the broader agenda of the film which tried to portray conflict as mostly wasteful. No power armor means more soldiers are going to die. In the book, the MI are a treasured and valuable resource that are meant to use their power in surgical ways.
I loved the use of the power armor in the anime from the late 80’s. It was such a cool yet simple design based on the one from studio nue from the late 70’s
I should mention that the movie Director did NOT enjoy the book, finding it "boring", and instead changed the movie's direction in his own way, which is also where most of the satire actually came from.
The point is that he actually didn't finish reading it, he asked the writer of the production for a summary so obviously he didn't understand Heilen, the script ended up looking more like the anime so it's probably an adaptation of an adaptation
I hope you do, Whitney! If there were two sci-fi novels ever written that cry out for side-by-side comparison, it's Starship Troopers and The Forever War.
The movie and book should be considered two separate media products. Other than the names of the characters and the movie, they share little else. The movie missed all the important issues Heinlein dealt with while trying to be hip and sarcastic. In the book, the Federation, the government is a limited franchise democracy. It is not a dictatorship. It is not a militaristic society like Sparta. All adults have the same civil rights. The only difference is that only vets vote and make political decisions. This is similar to the early Roman Republic and the Greek city-states like Athens (without the slavery or reduction of women to barely human). The vote comes from Federal service. Not all Federal service is military. Had Rico not gone MI, he could have ended up being a test dummy for environmental suits on Pluto. Federal service required serving society in some manner in which you risked life and limb. All service is voluntary and the Federation does things like stationing a double amputee NCO at the reception desk to test the commitment of the wannabe recruits. Rico's parents try to discourage him from enlisting. They are quite comfortable and don't see the point in risking your life for the vote. The military in the Federation is all volunteer. Even in training or service, you can quit, tell your supervisor you want out, and you get discharged with no other impact other than you will never be given a second chance to earn the vote. The Mobile Infantry is not a mob of light infantry with no heavy weapons or armored vehicles in support. All ground units are combat units, such as the combat engineers we see later in the book. All have armored powered suits, equipment that probably costs far more than the US Army spends on recruit training, which can reach over $120K. You don't waste assets like that, though a direct offensive to the enemy's home world doesn't seem like a good idea. It's such a bad idea that Rico spends the rest of the book serving in a platoon conducting "hit and run" missions. Finally, there's the enemy, the Arachnids. In the book they are an advanced species, using starships and ground combat energy weapons. When Rico joins, both sides have been involved in "border incidents". Both sides want the same real estate. Neither can trust the other enough to share worlds or delineate sphere's of influence, though the "border incidents" imply such a thing. The other sentient race, the "Skinnies" also need Earth like worlds, but they are powerful enough to stand against either side, starting as Arachnid allies and then changing over to the side of the Federation. The "hit and run" on the Skinnie planet shows that the war is not simple violence, but organized violence intended to produce a political result, a perfect definition right out of Clausewitz. The humans of the Federation are not xenophobic, they just face the facts that the Arachnids want the galaxy on their terms and they'll kill every human they have to, men, women and children. So humanity faces the stark reality of fighting to a desired political end state (the Arachnids disarmed and restricted to their home system sounds good) or rolling over and being on the wrong end of a peace treaty or an extermination.
Good job with the analysis! I think the movie is a good sci-fi movie, but not so good adaptation. However I like both, but from different reasons. The next should be "Forever War"... to read, analyze and also to adapt to the big screen! ;)
Love the book it’s the reason I joined the army in 1988 love the film but there is no comparison Johnny Rico is pillipino in the book dizzy is a man and dies in the opening of the book Carl dies in a military accident and doesn’t have psychic powers and the biggest difference is johnnys father joins the fight against the Zergs I mean the bugs LOL both are great but really different
I think the biggest and worst change in the movie is making Johnny Rico a strapping white Argentine rather than a Filipino kid so small he had to cut down the smallest uniform (maroon by the way) and re-tailor it to fit him. His mother was in BA when it was struck, they did not live there.
I wouldn't say that there were no psychics in the book. In that last battle scene, that young man comes out and senses the bug tunnels underneath their position. And there's a lot of hypnotherapy in the book.
My first real team leader in the Army gave me my copy of Starship Troopers. I was shocked after reading it to learn that it was written by a navyman and not a fellow infantryman. The character is more relatable to any true grunt/digger/mudfoot/ect than any other fictional (and most nonfiction) infantryman in any media I've seen. Sure, the MI would make green berets look like mall cops, but the attitude and feeling is the same. I mean, I can relate to Rico than I can many non Grunt service members or veterans. It makes me dislike the movie for taking a well written science fiction infantrymans story into satire. Cant tell you how many times I've heard or said "there's only 2 kinds of soldiers, Infantry and Infantry support" or "they should just put us infantrymen in charge, we'd sort this out", "F*CKIN' POGs (person other than grunts)", "why is it always the infantry thats getting shafted" or "I saw a female yesterday, I smelt her shampoo before I saw her" ect. That last one was especially true before the infantry was integrated with females. I swear, without any joke, that I could smell a female upwind a fotball field away, or spot one walking a mile off. It sounds creepy, but when you've been around only the same smelly, unwashed, chain smoking, tobacco chewing, grease covered, MRE farting, no good, dirty, ugly animals you call platoonmates for months the smell of woman's shampoo is more potent than CS gas. Its foreign, and pleasant. I remember a time where the Airforce tested chemical suits on us. They wanted to test their durability and knew no more destructive force on equipment than infantryman, and didn't want their own guys discomforted of course. We had to wear them for a month if I remember right on or off duty, for a certain amount of hours in a day. We logged equipment failure and if they caused discomfort. The thing was, they sent a very attractive female officer to run the tests. I remember fondly a time when my gunner and myself were cleaning the 242 chaingun on our Bradley, when suddenly his head shot up and his nostrils flaired. He sniffed the air like a bluetick hound, turned to me, and said "the male Luna Moth and smell a female from a mile away..." in a mock nasally voice. Then, I smelt it. He licked his fingers and smoothed his eyebrows, we both threw in some gum, cleaned our faces with wet wipes, and about 2 minutes later she pokes her head in the troop compartment where we are and checks in on us. We shyly and professionally answered her questions with "yes ma'am", "no ma'am", and "good, ma'am". After she left we giggled and fawned like school girls. It made our day. Rico is pure Infantry, through and through.
Good review but in one point i have to be inconsistent with you. Maybe you have seen 'Robocop', also made by Paul Verhoeven back in 1987. In this movie he use news reels and commercials the same way like 10 years later in 'Starship Troopers'! These scenes are in the same style of filming, satirical and over the top. I think Heinlein was a good writer, who tested different styles of writing, but 'Starship Troopers' was more personal for him as a former soldier. And i think he was a man with a good foresight about what he writes in Chapter 8 about raising kids and dogs and collapsing societies.
Ehhhhhhhhhh red flag response for me a veteran. Service has its place but at the core I think you need to know who you are as an individual and why you were choosing to do this well before you enter service that being said the fact that this book was designed for young adult audiences and how it deals with themes in straightforward or even absolute terms when it comes to characters thought processes when they come to a decision, I feel it’s deceptive advertising and inherently dangerous for very young people to be reading as a text to derive or inform your moral, social and political attitudes without the benefit of wisdom and discussion. Kind of (tho this is an extreme example) as a highschooler reading mein kamf or Marx or Lenin or Antigone on their own outside a classroom setting. I think the prince and on liberty would be better places to start. In a lot of ways, it’s like people on, ironically, enjoying hell divers not realizing that it’s satire or taking the satire seriously as a viewpoint and a legitimate place upon which to found beliefs and ideology. The thing that I disagree with is that this book frames it as such an ideology as being moral and acceptable or normal rather than a unique thought process founded on values other than what we would consider to be postmodern values that work within our social and economic framework. It’s the difference between admitting that men in today’s society have it a lot harder and a higher suicide rate than women etc (while yes women still can suffer from the inherent bias of a system not built for them) and being full on red/black pilled misogynist thinking women are privileged and men are oppressed.
the idea of Rico's degradation is the idea of meritocracy, Heilen's ideal is that the army is not run by people who do not understand the consequences of their actions and that it is not in the hands of incompetents, which shows a criticism of the real life army where the officer academies bring rookies to lead and nepotism costs a lot. Rico is subject to an evaluation and the idea of worldliness is not following the hero of this story, the hero is the instructor, making the story not be "egocentric". Rico recognizes his role and leaves the decisions in more competent hands, but being a candidate shows him how difficult it is to access command. Rico's father makes a lot of valid criticism of military service, and shows a popular opinion, but his departure from the army is not a result of "you being right, Rico", but rather a depression caused by the death of his wife, an attack on a home makes war personal.
Good review! I'm a fan of book and film, but the book is very thought provoking. If l'm not mistaken, 'Starship Troopers' was penned during a 3 week period in 1958(?). President Eisenhower had just made public his intent to roll back nuclear weapons testing, and Heinlein, a Navy Vet in WWII, used the book as his "response" to said testing rollbacks. "[W]ill they worry about the fate of their decendants and dose themselves regularly with X-rays, or set off lots of dirty-type nuclear explosions every year to bulid up a fallout resevoir in their atmosphere? (Accepting, of course, the immediate dangers of radiation to themselves in order to provide a proper genetic heritage of mutation for the benefit of their descendants.)" Ch.11. Sadly, I don't believe this was satire, especially considering the political climate, with "McCarthy-ism", "The Red Scare", and other Cold War political agendas (Cuban Missile Crisis) looming in the decade. No one ever mentions the book was set in the 70th century, movie was set in the 24th. The 'Terran Federation' political system in the book (Citizen class, Civilian class) was taken almost directly from the example of the Early Roman Republic (especially during the Punic Wars). Both Citizen and Civilian class were taxed, but only Citizen class had the right to vote and hold office. An obvious example of : Taxation without Representation. Rico was Filipino, and for a former WWII US Navy Vet to make a Filipino the main protagonist, would've been a big plot-twist in the 1960's, mainly due to the racially charged times, and maybe was why he saved that reveal for so late in the book, after the reader has already emotionally invested in the character. The 'Terran Federation' "resolved" gender and culture equality issues in their own society, at the price of Forever Wars, by having a constant enemy.
Even though it would be more expensive to add power armor in the movie, I think maybe it was intentional. If I can remember, in the book the Mobile Infantry was an elite or at least professional unit where recruits get extensive combat training in the basic period before ever touching power armor. In the book they were ill equiped cannon-fodder employed in human wave tactics like WW1 infantry or north korean soldiers during Korea War without proper combined arms tactics like modern armies usually do. Also if I remember, unlike in the movie, the Federation in the book actually made everything to discourage militarism and glorification of war, to the point of sending recruiters without legs with the sole purpose of scaring volunteers, meanwhile in the movie Verhoeven used it to create a contradiction between Federation's propaganda glorifying war and what really happens to soldiers in battle in order to create the dystopia feeling you said. The Federation in the book doesn't seem to glorify war, they still want soldiers but they want to make sure you know what you are signing for, which is more in line with what professional units in our time do. And if I'm not mistaken if you enlisted and didn't show up they would not even bother of going after you (I read the book 6 years ago, so some stuff is hard to remember). So the book's Federation treats war more as a neccessary evil meanwhile the movie's one glorifies it through propaganda, and that also reflects on the view of citizenship of book's Federation, something that a lot of people want but only a few truly want to risk their lives to get, even though it is not really necessary to be a citizen to have a good life in the book. This is why I also think it's unfair to say that the book is fascist, it has nothing to do with that. A modern, professional and well equiped infantry unit would not fit well with what Verhoeven wanted to do, so this is why the movie's Mobile Infantry does not have power armor in my opinion.
The movie sucked. The visuals of the bugs were the best of it. The war was the smallest part of the book. The movie was poorly done for the story, character development, and the overall philosophy and message of Heinlein's vision.
Heinlein was definitely *not* writing this book as a satire. He really believed much of the things he wrote, as remember he wrote this book in the 1950s; a much different time from now and in many ways a much more conservative (and jingoistic) time.
True. But I didn't say he didn't have *some* progressive beliefs as well; in fact he had a great many of them. When I said it was a more conservative and jingoistic time, I wasn't critiquing Heinlein himself all that much but the 1950s in general - it was the era of Joe McCarthy after all. Nor would I compare him to many of the more extreme conservatives then (or today), as Heinlein was definitely not a racist nor strictly religious. Definitely he was not a fascist. He *did* buy into the limited democracy concept somewhat; at least at the time. I don't know that he always did though. But he definitely would have disagreed with such things as book bans/burnings and other modern-day conservative tactics. His conservatism was more in the self-reliance camp than anything else I think. He was, iow, a very complex individual for whom simple labels do not apply; as are we all I suppose.
The Forever War (1974) by Joe Haldeman, is/was a much better "military Sci Fi" novel than Starship Troopers". Rumor has it that the screenwriters and director ignored the book and just attempted to make a Sci Fi War movie, and it's the reason so many of us that read and reread the book were pissed at what we saw on the "silver Screen".
The book and movie are two completely different things. Heinlein's book (one of his best in my opinion) is a satirical blowup of fascism in a post WW2 world, during the rise of militarism and the cold war in the US and UK. In the book, the Bug War is the background against which Rico reflects his training and belief system that he's been taught and raised with (jingoism, militarism, etc.). Heinlein came under fire for writing the book as man saw it as supportive of militarism and fascism at the time. The movie uses the roughest framework of the book's Bug War as a main plot and story. If you read the book and get it, then the movie is entertaining and enjoyable, but simply a different story borrowing names and background to tell a pulp action war movie story. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) both for completely different reasons (and as completely different art forms). At least that's how I read and see it; your mileage may vary.
Love hearing your perspective! I agree that Heinlein doesnt seem pro-fascist to me. I can see the book events in the movie but I agree they are two different animals! I have so many more Heinlein novels to get through, and hope I will find more to love.
I like to think if there ever was a reboot more closer to speculative sci fi? Jonny Rico would probably be split into three characters. One from a Veteran Military Caste, one from a Civilian Employee Caste, One from an Inner Circle caste. Everyone is a citizen and not a citizen at the same time. Just go back and do your part for Animal Farm, I mean THE FEDERATION. lol
I count myself fortunate to have read the novel years before the film was made. The film is good, plain, shoot-em-up fun and I think it can stand as it is on its own merit. But Heinlein's work is undoubtedly deeper, definitely multilayered. I liked your review, Whitney!
In reading the book several times I got the impression at the end of the book that Heinlein had reached the word count he was contracted to do and even though there was a lot more story to tell, he suddenly wrapped it up. Maybe for sequels which I do not know i they were ever written. I have ebooks of 47 of Heinlein's titles. At least in the movie franchise we were given 2 more live action movies. I have all 3 on DVD. Plus an animated movie. My feeling is that the movie critics never really understood the depth of the book and especially Heinlein's political commentary with the setting of the book. Even though the movie gave us a reasonable amount of background. I completely agree with you that in some ways the book was better and in others the movie was better. An excent analysis.
The are many alien societies in the book, but most are off stage, because Earth and its colonies are only at odds with two of them. There are 'psychics' in the book, but they are specialists who are officers by courtesy.
First, i know i'm super late here but i honestly don't think youbread the book. It is not a satire and Heinlien said that he wrote it to get his own thoughts on an alternate future out there (he changed from being extremely left to almost a right wing anarchist in his political views over his lifetime) which is why he wrote about an incredibly libertarian government much like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Second, i know that throughout the video you throw in a lot of cuts from the movie (which i love in its own right) but he is not some Nazi from Beunos Ares, he's from the Philippines lol. He was not demoted, he was promoted to Second LT after finishing OCS which was the entire reason why he went to that school. Simply put i think you fall under the misconception that a government with military service is fascism much the same as the director of the movie decided and you have missed the point that what is described is a libertarian meritocracy. Perhaps if you did read it you should read it again...
Dont really know the response you are looking for here. 🤷🏼♀️ guess we had some different experiences and opinions- although as I’m sure u noticed I am not familiar with military ranking and will pay special attention to that next time i pick it up. As for whatever heinlein said or didnt say, havent been able to find these places where he did or didnt say these things- would love some links if u got em.
i too was disappointed that the movie seemed to satirize the book. but then I'd read it pretty uncritically when younger. also the lack of power armor and the apparent disposability of infantry
Nobody is allowed to tell anybody else what they are or are not allowed to like. Personally, I loved the book and hated the movie. But if you are of the opposite opinions, I'm not going to tell you that you're not allowed to feel the way you feel. There's no accounting for taste. But I will say this. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of the two products, you have to acknowledge that the movie did NOT give justice to the book. Whether you like the book's message or not, you have to admit that the movie wiped its ass with that message. That's the main reason for my... distaste... for the movie. And as I said in another comment, "Starship Troopers" needs a "Dredd." That is, a movie remake (or, more precisely, a movie "reimagining") done by a filmmaker who is actually familiar with and respectful of the source material, which Mr. Verhoven certainly was NOT. The honor of Mr. Heinlein's magnum opus needs to be redeemed.
I actually loved the book 📕 but thought the movie did a good job. Like you said no accounting for taste 😆 but jokes aside- everyone is allowed their opinions and its just fun to have these discussions.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft. He does not live in Buenos Aires. He was surprised his mother was visiting Argentina 🇦🇷 & offers condolences to the ship’s only “porteño”. Port city resident. Rico mentions he spoke Tagalog at home at end of Chapter 13.
Thank you for actually reading the book and drawing a sand conclusion rather than just labeling it fascist like so many other people on RUclips. It is in fact really, really, really, extremely, far from Fascism
I don't think the book was a satire; you have to consider the society in context of the unique sort of neo dystopian world/universe they live in. Calling it a satire on militarism/whatever is like calling all zombie survival shows a "satire" on feudalism.
I agree that the movie does a better job than the book when it comes to plot and interpersonal character development-and it hurts to say that because I love the book and was deeply disappointed that the movie was a satire of "the back cover of the book," as one reviewer described it. The scriptwriters clearly completely misunderstood Heinlein's political philosophy in Starship Troopers.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft True, but my destroyed hopes really made it difficult to ignore the mockery of the book. I'll have to watch the movie again, take it on its own merits.
I would have to disagree with your assumption of his motives. Your generational bias makes you view this through a “modern woke” lens. His generation was very pro American and believed in the concept of “Duty Before Self”. Something that has sadly been lost among most people under the age of 35 or 40.
Being a big Heinlein fan, I hated the movie, It was pretty obvious he hadn't read the book. No telling what Virginia Heinlein would have thought. Having power armor would have salvaged it somewhat. Starship Troopers was not a satire, His government was a meritocracy. Anybody could apply for citizenship unless Psych down checked you as not being able to understand the Oath. In the book Rico's father was not in fear of criticizing the government.
I remember that rico’s father wasnt afraid of government and that it was a meritocracy, although he did leave a lot of solid details left open to interpetation. I am hoping to go back and reread it soon.
I really like your review! One thing i actually thought was fun with the movie is that the propaganda pieces actually DO show things the way they were. But things are just so over the top and ridiculous that it doesn't feel that way. I love that there's not really much that actually points to the society being bad or malevolent in any way. But it feels like it should haha.
1:25 Nope, not intergalactic. Nothing intergalactic neither in the book nor in any of the adaptations. In fact, it's explicitly stated it's the first interstellar war in the history of human/bug/skinny history.
1) Ther movie is an anti-military schlock that was named after the book, because Verhoeven was told the plot was too close to the book, so they had to buy the rights to the movie to avoid a lawsuit. 2). Heinlein was a libertarian, and a lot of his views are reflected in this book (I am NOT a libertarian, but I agreed with 99% of the views expressed in the book). 3) The book is pro-soldiers in the sense that it explains that the soldiers' loyalty is mostly to their comrades, not any politician or political system. 4) Verhoeven made a mockery of the book by presenting most of the book's points in a negative light - Heinlein had a lot of deep, thoughtful points in that book that make sense (that voting should be a priviledge, not a right, that only people who proved they are society-minding should be allowed to vote, that pole tax was OK as long as you can circumvent it - by a military stint, etc.) I loved the book, and I left a movie theatre in a daze and disbelief how a great book could be made so cartoonish and main points trivialized. I do hope Starship Troopers get to be remade following the book, NOT mocking it.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft There are stories every few years that a remake closely following the book is in a pre=production stages, but these disappear soon after. Money and the book rights also are an issue, I'm sure.
You did a great job with the analogies. Segue: Roadside Picnic: It's clear that Matt from Book Pilled and I read two different books so to keep your friendship alive may I suggest starting the book at page 105 (the giant marsh mellow cover paperback) and reviewing it from that point. The book that I read everyone spoke to each other with disdain, disrespect and hatred. Everyone clearly had it with everyone else. Artifacts: meh. Love the Melting Watch, 1954 by Salvador Dali. Great content.
Thanks for watching!! I do appreciate you trying to save our relationship. I finished it last night and will cover it in my next few vids… but the way the characters speak had alot to do with translation. It was supposed to come across as “super cool” like the fonz does in that 70s show…
Heinlein was discharged from the navy for health reasons in the thirties which may account for his mixed messaging about the military. The psychic thing is a carry over from another Heinlein book Time for the Stars. I'm a big Heinlein fan and while I really like the book I think your right about the movie. I don't know if you know but they made at least 2 sequels to Starship Troopers one where the characters almost look real but are cartoons. Always look forward to your videos.
Wow thank you! I didnt know that about him, but I had heard he was in the military. I will have to check out the Time for the Stars. I am glad to have finally started to get into his work, so far I’ve loved it. This one was just a fun video to make.
I just wanna say as someone who was a huge Heinlein fan when I was getting into Literary Sci-Fi back in High School, I can answer wether Heinlein was trying to make a Satire; the answer is largely no, he was writing more accurately a somewhat exaggerated and epic and over the top reinterpretation of his experiences in the Navy during WW2. But it should be noted that even though Starship Troopers may have some debatable beliefs presented in the book; it was not a thesis of Heinlein’s own ideals. Heinlein as a writer was not one for writing just his views and putting it to paper like many modern authors do; back then it was not exactly commonplace for a Writer to just plap their beliefs into a narrative; this is proven by the fact that Starship Troopers; a novel meant to a militaristic war story was followed up by: Stranger in a Strange Land; a Novel known to be “the Quintessential Hippie Guide Book”, it was a story where a human male was orphaned and raised by martians who learned how to master Psychic Abilities, teach this orphaned boy to learn how to use these psychic powers and uses the teachings of these Martians to overthrow a legit fascistic government on Earth (if the telepathic plot sounds familiar, its because the Telepathy part in the Starship Troopers movie was meant to be a beginning of a trilogy of Heinlein’s work, Stranger in a Strange Land was meant to be the sequel, but the movies box office made sure that wasn’t gonna happen). Starship Troopers is a novel that takes place in Heinlein’s own Narrative Universe/Multiverse where stories and settings are stand alone and tend to be reflective of the world itself in its contained story rather than what he himself believes. When you look at it from that point of view, it is more akin to Robert E. Howard’s Fictional Worlds than say Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek or Issac Asimov’s Foundation where the work is meant to be reflective of author morality.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Thank you for taking time of the day to read my comment. I was worried about the age of the video and length of the comment falling on deaf ears as far as you seeing it went, thank you for proving those worries wrong.
I think it's incredible decades after the movie so many people still don't understand what the director was going for with the over the top ridiculous nature of the film ... it's a clear satire of Fascism.
Paul Verhofen took a serious discussion of a social and governmental structure, through the eyes of one individual living in that structure and turned it into a "military is evil" screed. The movie was a waste of time.
Personally the movie was horrible in comparison. In the book they never left a man behind, dead or not. They were cavalier in the movie. The power armor is what allowed a person to go toe to toe with the arachnids.
lol all this time I thought the skinnies were elongated people that they were being racist towards or something 😂 he didn’t go into any details about them
I like your analysis. I just listened to the audio of this book after being a fan of the film since I saw it the night it came out. The movie had a fairly high budget. The power armor aspect was ditched bc it was costly. Which is a shame for fans of the book who probably expected the team from robocop to deliver powersuits in a similar way. When reading the book I didn’t get satire as much as I got CRITICISMS from heinlein. For instance, they mention how every soldier in a power suit is valued not because the soldier matters but because the power suit is so expensive. Otherwise, the human is expendable. There is some truth to this in the armed services, especially during ww2. Adapting a book into a movie is always difficult. They’re different mediums. People complain about Verhoevens knowledge of the book but Ed Neumeier is the one who wrote the screenplay, and from a screen-writing POV he did a good job taking from the book what could be put on film while creating original ideas for a generation the book was NOT written for. On top of that, Neumeier and Verhoeven were creating a thematic sequel to Robocop, and it really shows. So the goal was two-pronged: make starship troopers into a movie, and have it fit the style and aesthetic previously achieved by Paul Verhoeven. And I think the film was more than successful in that venture.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft same: director: producer, cinematographer, writer, visual FX. Only thing missing is Rob Botin in ST but the helmets in the movie are def a nod to his Robocop design.
Juan Rico was a lieutenant in Chapter 14 and his father was his platoon sergeant. Not demoted--Lieutenant Rico graduated from OCS and was put in command of a platoon. Candidate Bearpaw was Rico's J.O. and "second in command" because Mobile Infantry officers all have to have combat experience as enlisted soldiers. Check Chapter 14 again. When I saw "Saving Private Ryan" for the first time, Captain Miller's trembling while in the LCVP waiting to land on the beach reminded me of the bookends to "Starship Troopers." Chapter One began with "I always get the shakes before a drop." The last page has Johnny Rico being hit by the shakes again--a neat book end.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft It's always difficult to say "I made an error." I goof up all the time. One problem with "demotions" is that outsiders might not understand the system of promotion and demotion in an organization. When it comes to Federation Mobile Infantry, I'm an outsider.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft In a really picayune technical sense, he _was_ demoted. He was a cadet in OCS, outside of the chain of command. Detailed to an MI unit, he was given the temporary rank of (IIRC) third lieutenant, supernumerary specifically to put him _in_ the chain of command so that he could legally give orders. During that operation, his two immediate superiors bought the farm, leaving him as first a brevet second lieutenant, then a brevet first lieutenant, being moved up the chain of command to prevent a breakdown in the command structure. After the operation, he returned to OCS, becoming a cadet again, then was _commissioned_ a second lieutenant on graduation. Juan Rico's brevet rank was a temporary field promotion; while he functioned _as_ a first lieutenant for purposes of command, he didn't actually hold that rank, still being a third lieutenant.
I loved the book when I read it back in the nineteen sixties and I still love it to this day. I have read it several times. I was thrilled about the movie until I saw it. To be blunt, the movie stunk. It was made by a moron that had no respect for Heinlein or his works, in fact I don't think the director of the movie ever even read the book. I must add that the individuals who call Starship Troopers fascist are the same class of fool that look for fascists under their beds at night. Most people who use that word have no idea what it really means, they just throw it at anything they don't agree with.
Aw, i liked the movie- but there is a fair amount of nostalgia involved as I saw it in my formitive years. It was interesting to read this book years later. The book holds up for sure!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft I can understand that. If they had named the movie "Bug Blasters of the 22nd Century" I may very well have enjoyed it. But taking the name of a Heinlein book in vain just ticked me off. I think the fundamental problem with this movie is the simple fact that the director hand total contempt for Heinlein and his works. Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier should never again be allowed to put their grubby little paws on another Heinlein property. I put Paul and Edward right next to the fools who vandalize art to "save the planet".
I watched the movie when it came out and I was about 16 or 17 years old. I expected a fun, sci-fi action movie. Instead I got a lame-ass teen sex romp/coming-of-age movie. A few years later, at a friend's insistence, I read the book, expecting a lame-ass teen sex romp/coming-of-age story. Instead I got a political treatise. So I don't know what to expect anymore... There's no such thing as a movie that's better than the book it's based on, so it should come as no surprise that that's the case here as well. And indeed, there have been better books written and worse movies made. However, never before in the history of film has their been a bigger gulf in quality between the book and the movie. "Starship Troopers" needs a "Dredd." That is, a movie remake (or, more precisely, a movie "reimagining") done by a filmmaker who is actually familiar with and respectful of the source material, which Verhoven certainly was NOT. The honor of Mr. Heinlein's magnum opus needs to be redeemed.
A strong argument for why the film is good, despite not being a faithful adaptation without the power armour. As for the book, what a fresh take, but I'm not convinced it was satire. However, saying that I would argue that RAH is what I call a philosophizing writer. He does what many philosophers do when constructing an argument (not the same as being argumentative JIC of confusion). Anyway, loved this, now subscribed and joined your Discord channel.
IF by this you mean much of Heinlein's work was social commentary with multiple edges to it, I agree. I, too, question the claim the book is satire. Heinlein was a keen student of history, he served in The Big One, and he had time to reflect upon how representative governments respond to existential threats. The West having to confront Nazis and the IOJ, then the Communists afterward, does things that are not particularly beneficial to the individual. How societies order themselves seems to be a theme that RAH never tired of exploring.
I'm older and so read the book shortly after it came out. I loved it. I was in the Marines and agree with Heinlein that an all-volunteer force is superior on several levels to a drafted one. After getting out of the Marine Corps and graduating from college, I went to work at Douglas Aircraft Company in the Missiles and Space division. Starship Troopers was frequently discussed and much loved in that military-oriented company. The movie shocked me inasmuch as it made fun of Heinlein's ideas about the military. Rico was promoted, not demoted at the end. I read the book several times over the years, but only managed to watch the movie just the once.
because creator of robocop is anti war to point of absudarity
Wow what a story! Thank you for sharing. It’s so interesting hearing how divicive this books and its movie has been. I had no idea! Thank you for your perspective
@@whiteeye9584 Was it absurd for the Sioux to fight invasion by the white devils? Diplomacy didn't work either. It only takes one to wage war.
That's about how I feel about it.
Agreed, and thanks for your service. One of my best friends is a retired marine hooah! I wanted to serve too, but I'm legally blind. And I cannot wait to see veterans to put an end to corporate greed. That Orange guy scares me. And the GOP has been exploiting the military for decades and those who serve don't even see it. It makes me ashamed to be a registered Republican. So much so, that ever since Orange guy first ran, I vote blue.
The book has one of the best depictions of what it is like to go through boot camp and the struggle we all had. Though some of the runs are outlandish.
🤔 thanks for sharing…
because the mobile infantry was not a modern boot camp and they believed that human lives had subjective value
modern bootcamp does not
every life has value.
Also, Rico was absolutely bot demoted in the book. He went from 3rd Lt (temporary) to 1st Lt, and he was the platoon Commander of his old platoon.
Rico was not demoted at the end of the book. He was a "Temporary 3rd Lt." who was injured on Planet P helping Sgt. Zim. He then completed his training at OCS and was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. He is assigned to "The Roughnecks" as it's CO after Lt. Jelal is wounded, renaming it "Rico's Roughnecks". His father is under him as the platoon Sgt & XO. Several missions later he is assigned Temp. 3rd Lt. Bearpaw to train. They then do the drop on Klendathu as the book ends.
Yeah i think ur the second person to point this out. Im clearly not military but i guess the impression i had was him being in charge and going to save carmen in bug tunnels was something for which he received punitive demotion which turned out to be right where he wanted to be. I will have to reread that section so i understand it better…. As this was my first read, i wouldnt doubt I made a mistake…. Thank you for noticing!! I wish i could fix it now the video is posted without having to delete it entirely
@@secretsauceofstorycraft There is no saving Carmen in the Tunnels in te book...seems like youre mixing them up in your memory.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft he didn’t receive demotion, Rico was expecting to but actually got a good word and continued his schooling. Reread the book a couple more times.
@@MacStatic i plan to!
Correct, Johnny went to OCS and came back an officer now leading his old platoon (yeah like the military is going to be that sentimental to send a brand new Lt. back to his old unit). I don't remember any demotion except in training when he used his eyes instead of his suit's sensors to determine if it was "safe" to fire a tactical nuke. I do agree that the lack of the powered assault armor was a HUGE mistake in the movie but she's wrong about the psychic powers, the book did have "special units" that used psychic powers but Carl wasn't a part of them and he didn't survive in the book.
Psychic powers were in the book at the end with ‘the talent.’ He was the guy that could sense the bugs underground tunnel network. He was a pretentious little diva, I thought it was pretty funny. Great video!!!!
Oh ya, and in the book, Carmen hook ups with random guys in Johnny Ricos family pool.
This is one of those different generations things. In the 1960s, one of America's most important questions was whether there should be a military draft. The single most effective argument against abolishing the draft was that it was necessary to recruit sufficient personel to defend America against overwhelming outside forces. (This was in a period where the percieved likely enemies were communal societies with seemingly unlimited populations and no respect for individual lives.) In this book, Heinlein creates a society that can defend itself without a draft. All that's necessary (according to the book) is to invest heavily in "force multiplers" (like power-armor and specialized support units) and to balance priviledge (i.e. the right to vote) with service (i.e. military service). At that level, the novel is one huge argument against the draft. That's why the book reads like a philosophical analysis of the justifications for the use of force against outsiders and against the society's own citizens. Almost every scene in the book discusses the use of force on some level, from the conditions of forcing H.S. students to take particular classes, to the pros and cons of destroying of planets.
Wow this is great context! And I can see many of his arguements looking back. I love how multilayered it is. Wish u had been my consultant for this video! Haha
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Thank you for your kind comment. I have to admit that I'm a huge fan of Heinlein, precisely because the settings of his novels are so heavily (yet discretely) permeated by philosophical considerations. He normally gets criticized for his gender and sociological attitudes (from the 1930s) instead of being admired for the settings in which he immerses the reader. There are often layers beneath the layers.
(BTW - For a quick, fun, Heinlein read, try "All You Zombies". It's a short story that was made into a film and, last I saw, is available online for free. In case you're worried, there are no zombies involved.)
@@mike-zl3kv I am unaware of the film and will look for it.
@@joebrooks4448 I’m referring to the book, not the film. The film has all of the philosophy and social commentary replaced by action.
@@mike-zl3kv Well, that seems to be the way of RAH film adaptations. Except for the first one in 1951? Destination Moon. I have not read: All You Zombies for a while. I will have to go to that bookcase! Time travel and identity, as I recall..
Heinlien wrote about the controversy: “It [the book] is an invitation to THINK and NOT to BELIEVE.”
Amazing!?!! Lets tell more people! Do you have link to that?
@@secretsauceofstorycraft This is the vid that introduced me to the quote, which is from a NYT article. Highly recommended video: ruclips.net/video/2qihB3MaDTo/видео.html
@@mbm8404Your link was not deleted? What propaganda is this? I’d like to know more.
@@caelestigladii socialism is inherently based in heinleins idiotic social darwinism.
@@bastaitsocial darwimism is just evolution by another name. And it has nothing to do with socialism. I would say it's the opposite of socialism.. in socialism u don't sauly ppl r richer bcoz they are better than me... they say it's bcoz they r evil.. that's not social darwinism.
Starship Troopers was one of my fav books in high school. I was so excited when the movie was announced for release the summer I graduated. I was devastated coming out of the premier, the movie having butchered the book so badly. That was a me problem though, I went into the movie wanting a movie based on my favourite book, and what I got was a satire of sci-fi action movies, military propaganda, and fascist rhetoric. Those are all things Verhoeven excels at. I eventually came around on Starship Troopers, and now consider it my favourite comedy of 1997. I still long for a proper adaptation of the book though.
😯 very cool! Hey at least you recognized your expectations. Im going to say tho- no film adaptation ever seems to be as accurate as fans want it. So b careful what you wish for!
Absolutely! The movie is hot garbage 💩
@@secretsauceofstorycraftthe lord of the rings proves that good adaptations are possible.
Taking a reference from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I consider Verhoeven's movie to be the "Nutri-Matic Tea" movie adaptation. Something almost, but not completely, entirely unlike the book. Considering that the movie was titled "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine" before Verhoeven managed to acquire the movie rights to get a more visible hook to hang the movie from (and in a panel many years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con, he stated flat out that he'd always wanted to make a movie from the book because of the inherently fascist nature of the society in the book).
@@seanmalloy7249yea I guess having to put your life at risk to get the vote really got to the anti military peacenik verhoeven. I'm a person who would never want to fight in the front lines, but I also realize that the ones that DO risk their lives to defend my country should get to decide for that country as long as u have a constitution that grants certain rights that cannot b violated. I would b fine letting ppl these ppl b the only ones that vote. Only thing I would add is that those who die in combat should b able to grant their families their vote for the sacrifice.
Bcoz if u do not have a draft, u must offer something substantial to nudge ppl into the military. The other option is just a draft.. and peaceniks really hate that!
And from what I've seem in my life, ex military seem to be more thoughtful about going to war or not than ur avg non military politician.
Heinlein must have done something right because I judge every Generation Ship story by Orphans of the Sky and every Power Armor story by Starship Troopers. I didn't read either as satire, I read them as space adventure. These two helped define the sub-genre where I feel most at home.
Other than the lack of Power Armor my biggest gripe with the movie is the guns that never run out of ammunition.
When the 24hr cable news stations started I thought "Hey, the Starship Troopers movie got it right."
What passages did you tab in the book? I'm always curious when I see BookTubers tab books.
As far as tabbing, i tabbed ch 8 and the oath they pledge when they join the military. These were two places i kept going back to and figured if heinlein spent the time to create it, he had a purpose.
As for doing something right, I would agree with you! He really did a great thing for the genre.
That's because the book Starship troopers isn't satire
Maybe I'm dumb, but the possibility of a satire never passed through my mind while reading the book. I thought it was a very interesting view on sociology and phylosophy and I loved it. I liked the movie before reading the book, but after reading the original it totally lost any value (except for the awesome soundtrack).
I seriously hope the book wasn't meant to be a satire, cause I loved how it can make doubt many concepts we took for granted.
Bu the way, I read somewhere that Verhoven never actually read the whole book, instead it stopped reading after few pages, hence the huge difference between the two. I see more Robocop in his movie than I see Starship Troopers the book.
Nobody’s experience is dumb- at least not in my opinion. And im glad u enjoyed the book, because i really loved it too. I think if it was a satire or not doesnt take away that it made people think and it was a great exploration into sociology and psychology.
One thing It does best is start discussion. So I had to make the video even if lots of folks would disagree. Thanks for hearing me out and adding to that discussion!!
The notion that "Starship Troopers" is a fascist or satire is a misrepresentation perpetuated by those who vehemently oppose the philosophy it espouses. While some readers may discern certain elements of social criticism, the book is not intended to be classified as a work of satire. Satire, by its nature, employs irony, humor, and exaggeration to deride and scrutinize societal matters, establishments, or individuals. However, "Starship Troopers" incorporates social commentary in a manner distinct from satirical literature.
The novel serves as a vessel for exploring Heinlein's profound musings on governance and citizenship. It delves into themes of duty, honor, and the profound responsibilities associated with being a citizen in a future society. While it does offer insights into these subjects, the book's primary purpose lies in the realm of science fiction, rather than satire.
It is regrettable that certain ideological opponents unfairly cast aspersions upon "Starship Troopers," misconstruing its intent and nature. By clarifying the distinction between satire and the book's genuine form of social commentary, a more accurate appreciation of Heinlein's work can be attained. It is a masterpiece.
The book isn't satire. It was anti-communist and based on Heinlein's military experience.
And the failure of democracy goes all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville.
Like many authors, Heinlein started with a concept and explored it in that world.
And per the book, 95% of people do not serve in the military. It was elite- you had to pass aptitude testing and you had to qualify.
And in the book, you didn't get to vote until you *finished* federal service of 2 years. In war time, that would be longer for the military. After natural disasters, it might be longer for aid workers.
There's frequently a confusion between fascism and militarism. Any society faced with being invasion and death will turn military or be eliminated. Democracies were militaristic during world war 2.
Verhoeven was lazy and didn't read the book. But it's clear some of his writers were fans of the book and adapted it fairly and verbatim in the high school scenes.
The soundtrack was pretty bad-ass.
What is truly amazing is that Heinein won the Hugo for best novel twice in 3 years, the first for Starship Troopers 1962, then for Stranger in a Strange Land 1964. The first is a very militaristic society with fascist undertones while the second was considered a "guidebook" for the counterculture of the late 1960's. Two very very different looks at society with two very very different protagonists.
He was not demoted at the end. He reverted back to cadet, as the deployment rank was temporary, then it jumps to when he is a lieutenant. There was a few pages talking about issuing the pips worn by previous cadets on their temporary assignment.
I will have to reread!
One of the best novels that I read for a very long time. And the Power Armor concept is truly remarkable and inspired many media and video games for many generations to come.
I love the world building and how it explains to the reader about the world of Starship Troopers really is. And it still holds up as one of the best novels.
Without Starship troopers theirs no Halo, Starcraft, Warhammer 40k and many more.
So true!!! Very influential.
As I recall, E. E. "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol/Lensman books described power assisted, heavily armored spacesuits used in boarding other ships. That series was first published in the 1930s & 40s. Don't remember if those suits used integrated weaponry like Heinlein's. I'm almost sure they did use battle axes, but it's been a long while since I read those stories. 🚀 I'd recommend reading a couple of those classic Space Operas, maybe "Galactic Patrol" and "Gray Lensman" if only so you can appreciate Harry Harrison's fond 1973 parody "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers".
@@paintedjaguar It was the Valerians -- descendants of Dutchmen who'd moved to a high-gravity world, and it was mentioned several times that there was little that could withstand a boarding axe wielded with the high-gravity muscles of a Valerian driving them -- VanBuskirk being the canonical example.
@@seanmalloy7249 Sounds right. Can't remember for sure if their suits were power-assist or if they were just that strong.
@@paintedjaguar I'm pretty sure that at least some of the suits that Kinnison had built would require power assist to be able to move in them, but I don't think that Doc Smith ever particularly focused on the technical features of the suits.
The book was required reading for Marine Corps Infantry Officers when I was in back in the 80s
Wow. 🤩 i didnt know that
It was on our NCOPD recommended reading list in the Army--at least in my division--in the 80s, too.
When Rico is waiting to catch his shuttle to go to Officer Training… and that “Sergeant” stops to ask him for help.
Crushed me .
💕
I remember decades ago that the discussions in my group of friends were quite a bit different. We didn't think it was satire at all. A view on society certainly. The coming of age and dealing with internal conflicts of personal vs group think. Was it a practical way to organize a military? Did the Roman concept of military service for citizenship really work for a technologically advanced civilization. How would it change views on military service within society itself? Why would a society continue to accept it? The clear delination between the branch of service for men versus woman. The movie had both men and women serving in ground forces, while in the book women were pilots and did not serve in ground forces, and men did not serve as pilots. How did that show or reflect society at large with such a strong division shown in the military between the sexes?
I always viewed the movie as more inspired by than a true adaptation of the book personally.
Thanks for your review. It was interesting and put Starship Troopers on my TBRr (To Be Reread).
You are so right. There are so many differences in movie vs book, I decided not to cover all- but I should have mentioned the gender differences. I really noticed that one as a kid watching the movies. Shame on me!
But thanks for adding to the discussion and for watching!
As I remember, citizenship was given based on a individual's willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. It was not military service for Citizenship. Military service happened to be one example of sacrifice your life for the good of society.
@@thomaseric8662and the main focus as that’s the route our main character picks.
Great video, Whitney! I think it can become a great recurring format of putting sci-fi films and their corresponding books against each other. Greetings from Greece!
Thanks! I think that would b fun, but so far not as popular as i’d hoped. But here is hoping!
End of Chapter 13. Rico mentions he speaks Tagalog at home. This is the language of the Philippines. Maybe they had connections with South America but after Buenos Aires is destroying, Rico offers condolences to the ships only “porteño”. Port city resident. Rico is surprised to learn his mother was in Buenos Aires. Perhaps his Filipino family emigrated to South America but he is FILIPINO
Thx
Thats awesome to know!! Thank you 🙏
Juan “Johnny” Rico is of Filipino descent from a rich family in the book. His mom was on vacation in Buenos Aires when it was attacked. His father join him in the military after. Not Sargent Zim
@@pjsnickers76
Starship Troopers audiobook with sound effects! War. Leadership. Crime & punishment.
“Marriage is a young man’s DISASTER & an old man’s comfort.” - Starship Troopers the book 1959
ruclips.net/video/zwFMszIVGko/видео.htmlsi=t7NBjvjMXqeX1sbC
I'm a huge Heinlein fan. I've read all of his works and even heard him speak at a convention in Seattle circa 1977. He said that to truly understand him you must read "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," "Starship Troopers," and the unedited version of "Stranger in a Strange Land." Robert A. Heinlein wrote the first Sci-Fi story which featured a transgendered hero, 1959's short story "All You Zombies." it was adapted into a movie, the 2014 Australian feature "Predestination." His novel "The Door Into Summer" was adapted into the 2021/22 Japanese film of the same name. Other Heinlein novels that have been adapted into films include "Destination Moon" and "The Puppet Masters." It would be interesting to see you to do comparison videos on them.
I will have to look into those films, i was not aware of them. Will add to watch list.
I am also a heinlein fan- loved this novel!! Im currently getting ready to read double star i hear so much about :)
Cessnaace, some claim the government in Starship Troopers novel of fascist kind. Is it true?
@@DailyLifeSolution The novel's militarism, and the fact that government service was a prerequisite to the right to vote in the novel's fictional society, has led to it being frequently described as fascist. What many people get wrong is that that service must be to serve in the military, which is not the case. True, you must serve the Federation for 2 years, but that service can be achieved in several ways - such as being a teacher for example. Read the book and decide for yourself. The film is more a satire of the book than a faithful adaptation. Besides, you can't judge Heinlien based on this one novel. He was labeled a 'flaming liberal' (by Isaac Asimov no less), a Libertarian, a Conservative, and a Humanist - all in his lifetime.
@@cessnaace I will read the book. Robert was not a fascist sympathizer and not a socialist too; so the claim of book being fascist might be the result of culture war in U. S. A.. Socialist often call everything on other side as fascist.
Well said, friend. My late older brother was an RAH fan from the early 60's, and I caught the bug from him. I suspect he read more of Heinlein's work than I did, and his favorite, too, was "Moon", with the computer named Mike. I miss him.
My favorites remain the ones you mentioned........Puppet Masters, Starship Trooper, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and "Stranger" (only read once, and it was disturbing to my tender years). Door Into Summer, Farnham's Freehold, and Orphans in the Sky were also favorites. RAH could always spin a story and knew how to craft compelling characters. A two-headed mutant named Joe-Jim, who compelled the main character to face reality, and has a loyal pinhead sidekick named Bobo?? How do you come up with an idea like that?
Been wanting to read the book for a really long time now. Thanks for a reminder. Hope this thought doest get lost in the Endless TBR. Also great vid!
Hahha! Thats a tall order to not get lost in the Endless TBR-- good news is its a short one, so one day when u need that it’ll be there. Thanks for watching.
The book is 70% just Juan Rico in class. It's dry, but extraordinarily interesting.
Most of his class time is actually flash backs but i agree with you- fascinating
How about a comparison video on the differences between the book and the late 80’s anime. I loved those power armor designs
Uchuu no Senshi did a much better job of portraying the CAP troopers and their powered armor, but the aliens they were fighting against didn't mesh well against anything in the book, being more in the vein of the classic anime monster than the Arachnids.
Well, I feel obliged to speak up, about this film. Your analysis, regarding whether the film's version of Rico's evolved from 1950s USA civilization, is a dystopia or a utopia, is correct. I have read the book at least 20 times over the last 58 years, learning a lot of new concepts every time from 10 to 25 years of age, and a little more since..
When this film appeared (1997), most SF Fandom felt it had nearly no connection to RAH's novel, except for a percieved illegitimate use of character's names and background story. How the producer's acquired the rights, was discussed. It was assumed the estate had no idea what was intended.
The film is a parody and criticism of the book, overtly undermining virtually everything RAH tries to convey, very logically, in the novel. If you read Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Citizen Of The Galaxy, Red Planet, The Past Through Tomorrow, The Star Beast, The Long Watch, Coventry, Glory Road, etc. he is very consistent. I have never felt Starship Troopers was satirical in any way, just the opposite. That RAH era came after his 1960 or so health issues. The film is fine if you just watch it as a joke, which it clearly is intended to be.
BTW, RAH's Starship Troopers was required reading in several branches of the US Military for many years. The tactics of the training, the ships, powersuits and enemies. Still recommended, last time I checked. I am certain the film is not...
Its so much fun to hear everyone’s perspectives on this film and on the book itself. Thank you 🙏 for sharing! I am hopeful to be able to reread this book in thr future myself- the best books are always those we get something new out of everytime. This book is definitely one of them!
Perfect video. Love it. Sending you a private message re chapter 8...
Got it! Its always fun to chat about specifics
Actually this is a good book for the youth of today. The veterans did away with the corporate greed we see and lasted at least seven centuries. After, of course, seven decades of world war. If kids these days can learn how to do it without that much war, we'll be fine
Interesting to ponder….
There is a huge error in your interpretation of the last chapter of the book.
Johnny has not been demoted by his return to The Roughnecks. He is now the CO (Commanding Officer) of the unit. This is made quite plain in the first few paragraphs of the chapter. He clearly states that he now has a JO (Junior Officer) under instruction (i.e., a 3rd LT, Johnny's rank earlier in the book when he was under the instruction of a senior officer). He refers to himself as "The Old Man" (i.e., The Unit CO). The CO of the Rodger Young refers to him as "Lieutenant" when he reports that "Rico's Roughnecks" are ready for drop. Why is the unit called "Rico's Roughnecks"? Because he is the unit CO.
Lastly, there is a second Rico in the Roughnecks. This is Johnny's father who is now the units Platoon Sergeant (A senior NCO, but not an officer and therefore junior to Johnny). As discussed in the book, the father joined the service when his wife (i.e., Johnny's mother) was killed in the Bug's raid on Buenos Aires. The father and Johnny have a discussion on this point earlier in the book when they accidentally meet when Johnny is transferring to OCS (Officer Candidate School) and his father is transferring to the Roughnecks.
One question you might want to add to the discussion is "What is Johnny's ethnicity"? This was not well represented in the movie.
In any case thanks for making a great episode. Keep up the good work!
I intentionally didnt mention anything on race because there is so much more to talk about, but It is a piece. Someone else mentioned i should have gone into gender roles also- too many things to cover 🙂
I will go back and reread the books end. For some reason I thought rico got a promotion as head of multiple units during the brain bug search not just rough necks but many other units as well then got demoted since he went off plan back to just the roughnecks. But will recheck, thanks for keeping me on my toes!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft It is easy enough to confuse some of these military SF books with others. I had the advantage of just having read the book about 6 months ago so it was fresh in my mind.
Make sure you also reread the last few paragraphs of the penultimate chapter of the book. That is where Johnny indirectly reveals that he is a Filipino during a discussion with Bernardo. How did they miss that in the movie? Especially in modern day Hollywood!
Spot on, Mike. Juan (Johnny) isn’t demoted at the end. I really liked how we never really got his ethnicity until near the end, when he says something in Tagalog. It’s hinted at throughout, just in stating his name (and his father’s), but never really explicitly covered. I thought that part was handled particularly well. I can’t think of another SciFi story with a protagonist from the PI. Overall, I really enjoyed this analysis/comparison. Would definitely like to see more!
@@mikeschroeder6867 Paul did not miss Rico's race, he intentionally changed his race. You may find the answer of it by by listening to Paul's answers on reasons for not being faithful to the novel.
RICO IS FILIPINO. At the end of Chapter 13 he mentions he spoke Tagalog at home. He also mentions Ramon Magsaysay as someone who would have been a good Chief of Psychological Warfare…
In Heinlein's day most writers were not promoting their personal beliefs through their stories. Impossible though it apparently is for many people today to grasp, only in recent decades has art become almost exclusively a vehicle for pushing an author's personal agenda.
Good to know 👍🏻
I've spent time thinking about how this society would work. Because of the oxymoron of juvenile delinquency, I believe that all children until they reach 18 would be supervised in person or on video. And when misbehaving would not just be subjected to spanking and such. One can talk to children like adults at a very young age and are smart enough to understand.
An example from my own life: when I was about 7. I got mad at a girl hitting herwith a rope that was in my hand. We played innocent escape artist games with it. It was soft and thick and we took turns tying each other in chairs and stuff and it wasn't just us two. A group of us played. Anyways her father saw from the porch that I hit her with the rope. He was a retired AF NCO and ran over to pull me aside and explained in very adult terms that we don't do that. The opposite sex are our mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmas, and they deserve our kindness, respect, protection and any harm to them damages us greatly. He spelled it out in very Christian terms, but I'm about to turn 48 tomorrow and I've never hit another lady since, I stand with my childless cat lady sisters being a childless dog dude and find the Roe V Wade killing a disgrace.
So. Any capital punishment on children wouldn't happen because the watchers would have watchers.
I think company run by CEOs would still occur, but there might be a salary cap. Regardless an employer would be responsible for not just paying wages and some health care, but would aid in housing, utilities, education, child care, food, retirement income, vacations ( not just paid leave, but the entire vacation), and pretty much all aspects the corporations screw us on. In the movie despite not having the franchise, Rico's dad was probably a great CEO of a huge company but they lived in a very modest home. I'm sure every one of his employees lived similarly.
And not in the movie at all was the fact that military service wasn't the only way to get franchised too. A humanitarian role, or say a firefighter. Or civilians who lost a limb saving a life, or developer of a life saving vaccine, or whatever. Lots of ways to get to vote.
And the way they keep on trying to get the soldiers to Walk down washout lane was brilliant. Gonna get tough soldiers who can't be stopped rather than drafted kids who don't wanna be there.
Does anyone else have ideas on how society might be different?
BETTER.
Wow you spent alot of time thinking about this. I will have to consider your question- tbh thats why i love sci fi to see what worlds the author can paint for me.
Watching this because Starship troopers discord with the release of Helldivers 2. Never knew that originally Heinlein wanted this to be sold as a YA novel but in hindsight that does make sense.
Yeah its really interesting. Thanks for watching!!
Thanks for a thought provoking video Whitney. I was a little nervous of watching your review of Starship Troopers as I first read this when I was at university (many many years ago), and it has been a favourite ever since, so I was worried what you might think. But I thought your review of the book was really good and very fair. You covered the criticisms .and you were spot on - it does make you think about society and how it evolves. But then you challenged me - is Starship Troopers (the book) a satire? Because I read it when I was much younger I never thought of it as satire and have never considered it such even when I've re-read the novel in later years. But is it? Do I need to think again? The film is, of course, a full-on satire with caricatures of the characters from the book and some of the key parts (power armour) completely missing. Sadly, even knowing all that, I have never liked the movie because it pretends to be the movie of a much loved novel. If the book didn't exist and the movie was just released as an 'over the top' SF satire I may have enjoyed it a bit more... but maybe not. But even when I try and consider it as a stand alone movie I'm afraid I don't rate it so, in this instance, we hold differing views. But that's right and proper. I am pleased you liked the book though. Great review - hope you will do more book v film reviews. It's an interesting format.
Well it is just my opinion, and it very well might be wrong. But I had to present the arguement to start the discussion!! Thank you for watching… as always I look forward to your thoughtful commentary. I would like to do more book vs movie but only if it does well- (and only if I have something to say) haha.
Agreed, Alan. Time has passed, the magazine editors that kept all this fresh are long gone. I started reading SF at 8, 1963. First book was "Miss Pickrell Goes To Mars" on the shelf in my 3rd grade class and age appropriate. Next was Latham's "Five Against Venus" for teens and very scary, but I was hooked. Then "Not In Solitude" by Gantz and not a juvenile, at all. I was reading a book a week after that and lost track!
@Joe Brooks. We are of an age (9 in 63). My first remembered book was ‘Raiders from the Rings’ by Alan E Nourse which opened up a whole new world for me, and I followed that with Heinlein’s ‘Tunnel in the Sky’ and ‘Space Cadet’ and there was no turning back. I got to ‘Starship Troopers’ a decade later and it has stuck with me ever since. To this day I can’t read the opening chapter without wanting to read the whole book again and there are not many books I can say that about.
@@alans3023 That is great, Alan! I still have Raiders From the Rings! I went to every Library sale for 30 years. SF was a History, Philosophy, Economics and Integrity teacher to me. Heinlein's quotes at the beginning of each chapter, History and Moral Philosophy class, Chapter 6.. I return to Heinlein frequently, too. There were just a few SF readers at my school, fortunately they all wrestled in JR High and HS, within 2 years of me. We talked SF at practice and I still have the books one gave me. Mrs Davis, HS SF teacher, was very knowledgeable and we all discussed SF in there, too.
I had the good fortune to see Yes in concert, Sept 1972. If you are familiar - I have thought the Wurm part of Yes' Starship Trooper is Rico waiting in the capsule as his men are bumping thru to ejection. You can hear the drums as they eject and bump, and as he gets more nervous, the music builds. Then ejection and the dueling guitars [forces]?
@Joe. I was never a Yes fan so haven’t listened to that but I’ll seek it out on Deezer. Thanks.
The biggest take away for me is that everything from universal medicine and volunteer military to finally realizing that we are after all, children of Earth! God bless this planet!
🔥
My two brothers and I were Marines, and we discussed the Starship Trooper movie when it came out. I was overseas and movie theaters were banned as unholy abominations, so I didn't see Starship Troopers.
My younger brother loved the movie but was bothered by the armed mob tactics displayed, so I sent him a copy of the novel. "Dizzy was a guy!"
Infantry combat is a team sport. Modern infantry units practice a ten-meter dispersion between individuals and there is a twenty-five-meter dispersion between squads. This dispersion was learned the hard way on the battlefields of World War One--the troops would actually be closer in restricted terrain, but the idea was that no one bullet would go through two men and that throwing a hand grenade at the squad would only inflict one or two casualties. Dispersion has to be closer in movies because a silent squad sneaking through hostile terrain does not engage in chit-chat communicating today by hand signals until action is joined, and by brief radio commands. Today's battlefields are lonely, empty places swept clear of visible life by very lethal weapons fire. In Starship Troopers the dispersion between individual troops was measured in miles. in Chapter One: "You'll be dropped in two skirmish lines, calculated two-thousand-yard intervals." Steve and I played this out in the Starship Troopers board game by Avalon Hill.
The lack of powered armor broke the movie, and the dispersion between individual soldiers in the novel was far greater than the dispersion between AT-AT Walkers in "Star Wars--the Empire Strikes Back." For cinematic reasons, Hollywood has to employ American Civil War tactics or there wouldn't be anything interesting happening on the screen. Check the movie "1917" and notice how much more evolved the tactical dispersion is for the British First World War battalion.
As Heinlein described the three suits, Mobile Infantry had better battlefield mobility than modern tanks, better armor protection and greater firepower. Starship Trooper combat armor could be flown, nice to get over ditches and walls and rivers, but it wasn't smart to stay airborne long due to enemy fire. Like modern helicopters, the powered armor-wearing infantry stayed close to the deck and relied on speed. Situational awareness was made possible by networked C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence) that came online before the real-world Desert Storm. There was a tactical nuclear weapon in the real world when the M28/M29 Davy Crockett atomic bazooka was fielded in 1961--and Heinlein's Starship Troopers had similar weapons mounted on their armor.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
When I read about the Davy Crockett in a 1961 book by C. B. Colby called "Our Space Age Army: weapons and aircraft of the modern U.S. Army" (I was in the eighth grade and the year was 1971) I thought that the Davy Crockett was a fake, something to scare the big bad Red Russian Bear. The M388 warhead had a yield of 20 tons of TNT (the Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 12,000 tons of TNT) but the casualty radius of the M388 was greater than the range of the 1.25-mile "lightweight" M28 launcher--telling me that the Davy Crockett was an enhanced radiation warhead, a true death ray machine. You can visit a Davy Crockett mockup in several US atomic museums.
www.nuclearmuseum.org/
I didn't believe that the Davy Crockett was real until I stumbled across range clean-up protocols for the M390 practice round while being certified to run Nevada Army National Guard small arms ranges in 2005. The practice round had a radioactive trace element so that the radiation cloud created could be scored--by Geiger counter. Part of my disbelief was putting six warheads and a launcher in the hands of a junior sergeant. One Davy Crockett squad was attached to forward battalion battle groups to destroy Soviet tank battalions--units containing 30 T-55 main battle tanks when the Davy Crockett was first fielded.
Well--the movie did have small and destructive rockets--but the effects of detonation would have been nastier than the movie showed.
The US Army of 1959, the year Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" was published, was already a complex beast.
Holy crap!!! U and your brothers should do a video!!! I’d watch it!!!
Very detailed analysis of tactic here… i had no idea but can see why they would make the battlefield more busy for the on screen excitement.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Both of my brothers were buried with full military honors in 2007 and 2008.
Please listen to my audiobook version of starship troopers. I think you will like it. I was in the US Army reserves for 30 years. I joined in 1992. The book is very special to me and shaped some of my life decisions.
I cringed through most of the combat scenes. You're fighting an opponent that, with its equivalent of infantry, has to close to melee range to attack you, and your tactics are to run right up to them in a disorganized mass and flail away with full auto until someone gets impaled, then frantically run away? Shoot whoever the unit commander is, and replace them with somone who has a brain. Or when the platoon is advancing... along the bottom of an arroyo that cuts off half their ability to see around them, and then gets attacked by flying bugs, and once more we see the same flailing full-auto spray-and-pray tactics. It's as if everyone lost all trace of military knowledge since 1914.
@@seanmalloy7249 Worse than 1914. I studied 19th Centry tactics in order to understand how Second World War tactics have evolved. Trench warfare has been a thing for centuries--that's why we still have Sapper and Grenadier units (even when the title is honorific) --Grenadiers used a siege engine called the hand grenade, and the sap was an offensive trench. The tank was a siege engine--at first--and during my year on Operation Iraqi Freedom II I filled my daily quota of sandbags to fortify our FOBs, when I wasn't on armed convoy escort or my primary duty of operating a multichannel radio station. Surprise--I didn't have to keep carrier pigeons -- though if the roads were better, a bicycle instead of being a runner would have made being a messenger easier.
Football (either American or "soccer") had more tactics than did Starship Troopers. In the 19th Centry, before the year 1914, "whatever happens we have got, the Maxim gun and we have not." In Marine Corps History and Traditions, Medal of Honor Winner Dan Daley fought in the Boxer Rebellion. He held a section of breeched wall with his rifle and colt machine gun against sword-armed Chinese (it's what they had). Throughout the 19th Century's colonial wars, relatively small bands of imperial troops armed with breechloading rifles and courage faced native armies who had courage and spears (and but a few guns with limited ammo). The Europeans would form up where they had a large killing field and fire their single-shot breechloaders by volleys in closed pack ranks so that only part of the formation was shooting and the rest was either ready to shoot or reloading, a tactic developed for muzzle-loading flintlocks.
The Battle of Little Big Horn had Custer's headlong rush (Starship Troopers movie style) into an area ambush where the Sioux could exploit their numbers and close-combat expertise--there's more to that, but essentially Custer, motivated to "don't let them get away" fought his final battle on Sioux terms -- on terms that the Sioux were going to win. Meanwhile, the rest of 7th Cav established fighting positions and dug in as best they could, setting up so that their ranged combat advantage with their single-shot .45-70 carbines and far more lavish ammunition supply could keep the Sioux outside of close combat range. The Sioux even used Man's oldest weapon of mass destruction--the Sioux set fire to the prairie--7th Cav used the Little Big Horn River as a fire break and as a wet moat and this posture was too difficult to assail with light cavalry, the undergrowth had been burned away and the river way too open for infiltration tactics, and when General Cook's forces arrived, the Sioux had completed their evacuation.
Starship Troopers didn't fight as smart as the 7th Cav in its worst defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And that was just the land battle. Want to talk about how the Federation fleet was stacked up as if it were the target array for the atomic bomb testing at Bikini Atoll? The Bugs had close air support! The movie Mobile Infantry blundered into ambushes. Tactics means "never fight on the enemy's terms--fight on terms that guarantee your victory."
The Bugs attacked humanity in the book there was no choice
You say the propaganda pieces give a feeling of "fake news", but they actually don't lie at any point in the film. That's probably the second most unrealistic part of the film (the first being the bugs using asteroids moving at normal speed as weapons, but that was also wonky in the novel)
True they dont lie, but its not quite the truth either…. Maybe fake news was bad analogy. As to the bugs weaponixing asteroids, yeah its a common complaint about that movie- but i guess that part didnt bother me as much as lack of power armor.
Haven't read the book but the movie is kind of a guilty pleasure with me lol. This is an interesting comparison. Not being an avid reader yet, I've often heard the phrase "it's nothing like the book." about many movies. These two seem to be very different as well. Great video
Thanks for listening to my rant. I hope it doesnt ruin too much :)
The rant is the best part lol. If I may point out a few observations about your videos, I've noticed several things. Your editing is great and I imagine takes a lot of time. You have a very good way of giving the basic plot without spoiling the book. I have enjoyed every video I've watched. If I had one bit of advice it would be to try to get some videos down to 10-15 minutes. I've heard other tubers say these videos do better. On your next video, if you don't mind, I'm going to suggest some things to your viewers to help your analytics which hopefully will increase your views. Your videos are too good not to be viewed more.
I can't pinpoint any specific source, but I remember hearing years ago that Heinlein was considered by the politically left to be politically far right. I'm pretty sure I'd read that Verhoeven - being an outspoken leftist - specifically chose ST to adapt not as a fan but to repurpose what he saw as far right propaganda into a satire of American imperialism. Again, this could all be completely wrong, but I thought that was the hubbub surrounding ST back around the time of the release of the movie.
There seems to be lots of myth around these folks beliefs-- im not sure how to confirm any of it, but it is fun to speculate!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Yeah, I'm not sure either. Relying purely on memory. Their political beliefs could actually be just the opposite for all I know (Heinlein left, Verhoeven right?). lol
I liked his idea that politicians had to prove they could put the good of the many in front of themselves. Not that they always would but that they could. Please remember there is no such thing as a juvenile delinquent, only undisciplined juveniles that become adult delinquents. very simplistic but hard to debunk because of the simplicity.
It is an amazing place to start a discussion for sure!
Johnny is not demoted at the end of the book
Ive heard this i need to reread this book
It is my opinion that Verhoven's movie is nowhere near as good as Heinlein's book. The side plots that you talk about exist primarily because Verhoven never bothered to read the book, and so he had to make up his story from whole cloth, with only the names of characters to go on. Also, the idea that any kind of planet-based weaponry could shatter a fleet in orbit around the planet is absolute hokum, though it would take a basic knowledge of physics to understand.
Verhoeven didnt write the script though...
@@saftpackerl, so the script was written by a Hollywood script-monkey to conform to the "artist's vision" of the Director. As it is certain that the script-monkey had never even bothered to read the original material.
Movie deliberately satirised the novel, which the director saw as a fascist leaning novel. Though I love what the movie did, l think Director Verhoewen misread the novel’s intent. Like you perhaps, I think we should see Heinlein writing a novel that is very tongue in cheek, a kind of homage plus gentle satire of the kind of gung-ho ‘boy’s adventure novel’ that was popular at the time. After all the idea of YA fiction was not really part of the literary scene in the 1950s - or even in the 1970s during my childhood: you read children’s fiction till you got bored - in my case around the age of 13, when I would sneak into the adult section of the local library and borrow books there…Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, Alistair Maclean, Hammond Innes, and, yes, Robert Heinlein.
A beautiful time to be alive- im always impressed by people who started asimov and others at age 13… i dont even remember what I was reading then….
Guys, Heinlein wrote a wide range of "juveniles" in the 1950s. Ranging from 13 to 18 years of age. Starship Troopers was among the last, as I recall. I read them all and still have most.
Here they are:
Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)
Space Cadet (1948)
Red Planet (1949)
Farmer in the Sky (1950)
Between Planets (1951)
The Rolling Stones (also known as Space Family Stone, 1952)
Starman Jones (1953)
The Star Beast (1954)
Tunnel in the Sky (1955)
Time for the Stars (1956)
Citizen of the Galaxy (1957)
Have Space Suit-Will Travel (1958)
Starship Troopers (1959) (rejected by Scribner's, published by Putnam's)
Starship Troopers was not sarcasm. It was a criticism of society as it existed in the world of the 1950s on both sides of the political divide.
So was there a shower scene in the book? I’ll put it on my to-read list.
Liked the movie shower scene.
Yeah
Uh, no there wasnt a shower scene. But women did join military- they were only allowed to be pilots.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft I'd have to reread the book again to be sure, but I don't think that women were restricted to being pilots, just restricted to the Navy, out of any direct field-combat role. Which didn't protect them from combat, just from getting down and dirty like the grunts.
You need to know he was a U.S. Navy Midshipman in the 1930s. His 3rd wife was a veteran.. He, Asimov and De Kamp all worked together in a military think tank in 1945. He was very pro-military.
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the original script wasnt based on the book
Never said it was or wasnt
The book is deep philosophical discussions that often end with the conclusion that there are no easy answers. The movie is a fairly shallow critique of fascism that accidentally makes fascism look pretty cool.
There are psychics in the book. They are used on planet p to look for tunnels. Johnny Rico was not demoted, he graduated and was assigned as an officer to his old unit. Carmen is mentioned extensively through the book, and kept as a professional in her own right instead of merely a love interest. Its also kind of sad to see how the frankly groundbreaking diversity in the book is done away with in the movie by verhoven just to make a point. The book came out int 1959, so imagine the shock of many readers to find out that jonny rico was a tagalog speaking filipino the whole time.
As far as whether the book is a satire, i actually think it's more of a thought exercise. The author came from a military family and was in the military himself. The book was a way to consider what the ideal military-run society would look like. He actually spends a good deal of the book criticizing the militaries flaws.
The main takeaway that his characters tried to impresss on Jonny was that the current system was good because it worked, not because it was inherently good, and that if it ever ceased to work, it would have to be replaced.
I agree with saying it is a thought experiment- thats actually what i like most about it. That and that it challenges you to decide if you agree or disagree. I am also sad the movie didnt display with diversity element, but I am hoping to reread this book again soon.
Yes, a lot of people just do not know the depth of the book. Please check out the audiobook I made. When the psychics come onto the battlefield, I try to play some strange music lol.
I’m so glad you knew that he was Filipino! I am Filipino American, and was in the US Army reserves for 30 years. I read the book when I was 23 years old. No exaggeration. It changed my life. The “marriage is a young man’s disaster and an old man’s comfort“ really stuck with me and helped me avoiddrama😊
I saw a Spanish video that analyzes all of Heilen's bibliography and the point is that a liberal, in the strict sense, is an individual person. It is said that Heilen was not comfortable with people who did not doubt, and the same thing is pointed out as you, that according to each book people can reach different and even opposite conclusions about Heilen.
His point against communism is real. He was a communist and became disappointed with them after visiting communist countries. He even participated in a communist party. It is obvious to me that the book does not dehumanize communists but rather shows that the communist ideal is unattainable for man. For this reason, he praises the efficiency of insects with admiration. They are superior for war in the biological sense.
Which is also a question about the novel. The competition of the species. Heilen speaks of the iteration of the species and the competition for vital signs. The confrontation is inevitable, exposing case of invasive species and the disadvantage. A iconic example is the meek grass being a destroyer on a planet where the flora grows with less. and the point is that sometimes it doesn't depend on you simply sometimes you simply won't be able to negotiate in the case of insects they simply can't understand it because of the differences and the vision of the low for them is indifferent, so intimidating them doesn't work. there are times when you should fight he doesn't praise war but he considers it naive not to prepare for war because not everything in the universe will be peaceful
the military point is personal for him he was a military man and he declared that he is not in favor of the army but he admires people who sacrifice their lives for their families so his point was a tribute to people who fight. The same book shows his position on nuclear weapons, he believes as the author of the art of war that it consists in avoiding avoiding war and making the enemy want to give up, avoiding the duration of wars is the objective, his operations in the book are always with the purpose of discouraging the enemy, and if following what was referred to before the insects do not see the lives of their subordinates as we do, that is why they seek to capture a brain bug because they want to be able to negotiate and recover soldiers who have been captured from fighting, not annihilation as when you act big when there is a Bears, it goes hand in hand with the idea that the relative peace today is the fear of the use of nuclear weapons (which in reality was the cold war)
Heilen welcomed the anti-war positions of novels such as the ENder and Forever War games
That's no diamond of love, that's thunder rune of love.
It is said that you summon great evil if you cast this spell two times.
Hahaha
The lack of power armor served the broader agenda of the film which tried to portray conflict as mostly wasteful. No power armor means more soldiers are going to die. In the book, the MI are a treasured and valuable resource that are meant to use their power in surgical ways.
🤔 hmmm this could b good point
I loved the use of the power armor in the anime from the late 80’s. It was such a cool yet simple design based on the one from studio nue from the late 70’s
I should mention that the movie Director did NOT enjoy the book, finding it "boring", and instead changed the movie's direction in his own way, which is also where most of the satire actually came from.
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The point is that he actually didn't finish reading it, he asked the writer of the production for a summary so obviously he didn't understand Heilen, the script ended up looking more like the anime so it's probably an adaptation of an adaptation
Can you compare the anti-starship troopers the forever war with starship troopers?
That is a good challenge. I have yet to read forever war, but i will give it some thought!
I hope you do, Whitney! If there were two sci-fi novels ever written that cry out for side-by-side comparison, it's Starship Troopers and The Forever War.
The movie and book should be considered two separate media products. Other than the names of the characters and the movie, they share little else. The movie missed all the important issues Heinlein dealt with while trying to be hip and sarcastic.
In the book, the Federation, the government is a limited franchise democracy. It is not a dictatorship. It is not a militaristic society like Sparta. All adults have the same civil rights. The only difference is that only vets vote and make political decisions. This is similar to the early Roman Republic and the Greek city-states like Athens (without the slavery or reduction of women to barely human). The vote comes from Federal service. Not all Federal service is military. Had Rico not gone MI, he could have ended up being a test dummy for environmental suits on Pluto. Federal service required serving society in some manner in which you risked life and limb. All service is voluntary and the Federation does things like stationing a double amputee NCO at the reception desk to test the commitment of the wannabe recruits. Rico's parents try to discourage him from enlisting. They are quite comfortable and don't see the point in risking your life for the vote.
The military in the Federation is all volunteer. Even in training or service, you can quit, tell your supervisor you want out, and you get discharged with no other impact other than you will never be given a second chance to earn the vote. The Mobile Infantry is not a mob of light infantry with no heavy weapons or armored vehicles in support. All ground units are combat units, such as the combat engineers we see later in the book. All have armored powered suits, equipment that probably costs far more than the US Army spends on recruit training, which can reach over $120K. You don't waste assets like that, though a direct offensive to the enemy's home world doesn't seem like a good idea. It's such a bad idea that Rico spends the rest of the book serving in a platoon conducting "hit and run" missions.
Finally, there's the enemy, the Arachnids. In the book they are an advanced species, using starships and ground combat energy weapons. When Rico joins, both sides have been involved in "border incidents". Both sides want the same real estate. Neither can trust the other enough to share worlds or delineate sphere's of influence, though the "border incidents" imply such a thing. The other sentient race, the "Skinnies" also need Earth like worlds, but they are powerful enough to stand against either side, starting as Arachnid allies and then changing over to the side of the Federation. The "hit and run" on the Skinnie planet shows that the war is not simple violence, but organized violence intended to produce a political result, a perfect definition right out of Clausewitz. The humans of the Federation are not xenophobic, they just face the facts that the Arachnids want the galaxy on their terms and they'll kill every human they have to, men, women and children. So humanity faces the stark reality of fighting to a desired political end state (the Arachnids disarmed and restricted to their home system sounds good) or rolling over and being on the wrong end of a peace treaty or an extermination.
Good job with the analysis! I think the movie is a good sci-fi movie, but not so good adaptation. However I like both, but from different reasons. The next should be "Forever War"... to read, analyze and also to adapt to the big screen! ;)
I own it!! Havent read it yet. But soon
Love the book it’s the reason I joined the army in 1988 love the film but there is no comparison Johnny Rico is pillipino in the book dizzy is a man and dies in the opening of the book Carl dies in a military accident and doesn’t have psychic powers and the biggest difference is johnnys father joins the fight against the Zergs I mean the bugs LOL both are great but really different
Agreed!! 👍🏻
ruclips.net/video/zwFMszIVGko/видео.html
I think the biggest and worst change in the movie is making Johnny Rico a strapping white Argentine rather than a Filipino kid so small he had to cut down the smallest uniform (maroon by the way) and re-tailor it to fit him. His mother was in BA when it was struck, they did not live there.
I wouldn't say that there were no psychics in the book. In that last battle scene, that young man comes out and senses the bug tunnels underneath their position. And there's a lot of hypnotherapy in the book.
My first real team leader in the Army gave me my copy of Starship Troopers. I was shocked after reading it to learn that it was written by a navyman and not a fellow infantryman. The character is more relatable to any true grunt/digger/mudfoot/ect than any other fictional (and most nonfiction) infantryman in any media I've seen. Sure, the MI would make green berets look like mall cops, but the attitude and feeling is the same. I mean, I can relate to Rico than I can many non Grunt service members or veterans. It makes me dislike the movie for taking a well written science fiction infantrymans story into satire. Cant tell you how many times I've heard or said "there's only 2 kinds of soldiers, Infantry and Infantry support" or "they should just put us infantrymen in charge, we'd sort this out", "F*CKIN' POGs (person other than grunts)", "why is it always the infantry thats getting shafted" or "I saw a female yesterday, I smelt her shampoo before I saw her" ect.
That last one was especially true before the infantry was integrated with females. I swear, without any joke, that I could smell a female upwind a fotball field away, or spot one walking a mile off. It sounds creepy, but when you've been around only the same smelly, unwashed, chain smoking, tobacco chewing, grease covered, MRE farting, no good, dirty, ugly animals you call platoonmates for months the smell of woman's shampoo is more potent than CS gas. Its foreign, and pleasant. I remember a time where the Airforce tested chemical suits on us. They wanted to test their durability and knew no more destructive force on equipment than infantryman, and didn't want their own guys discomforted of course. We had to wear them for a month if I remember right on or off duty, for a certain amount of hours in a day. We logged equipment failure and if they caused discomfort. The thing was, they sent a very attractive female officer to run the tests. I remember fondly a time when my gunner and myself were cleaning the 242 chaingun on our Bradley, when suddenly his head shot up and his nostrils flaired. He sniffed the air like a bluetick hound, turned to me, and said "the male Luna Moth and smell a female from a mile away..." in a mock nasally voice. Then, I smelt it. He licked his fingers and smoothed his eyebrows, we both threw in some gum, cleaned our faces with wet wipes, and about 2 minutes later she pokes her head in the troop compartment where we are and checks in on us. We shyly and professionally answered her questions with "yes ma'am", "no ma'am", and "good, ma'am". After she left we giggled and fawned like school girls. It made our day. Rico is pure Infantry, through and through.
Wow! Sounds like some memories!!! Thanks for sharing. Glad to know he got something right
Good review but in one point i have to be inconsistent with you.
Maybe you have seen 'Robocop', also made by Paul Verhoeven back in 1987.
In this movie he use news reels and commercials the same way like 10 years later in 'Starship Troopers'!
These scenes are in the same style of filming, satirical and over the top.
I think Heinlein was a good writer, who tested different styles of writing, but 'Starship Troopers' was more personal for him as a former soldier.
And i think he was a man with a good foresight about what he writes in Chapter 8 about raising kids and dogs and collapsing societies.
the book isnt pro military it is pro service
This is a good distinction
Ehhhhhhhhhh red flag response for me a veteran. Service has its place but at the core I think you need to know who you are as an individual and why you were choosing to do this well before you enter service that being said the fact that this book was designed for young adult audiences and how it deals with themes in straightforward or even absolute terms when it comes to characters thought processes when they come to a decision, I feel it’s deceptive advertising and inherently dangerous for very young people to be reading as a text to derive or inform your moral, social and political attitudes without the benefit of wisdom and discussion. Kind of (tho this is an extreme example) as a highschooler reading mein kamf or Marx or Lenin or Antigone on their own outside a classroom setting. I think the prince and on liberty would be better places to start. In a lot of ways, it’s like people on, ironically, enjoying hell divers not realizing that it’s satire or taking the satire seriously as a viewpoint and a legitimate place upon which to found beliefs and ideology. The thing that I disagree with is that this book frames it as such an ideology as being moral and acceptable or normal rather than a unique thought process founded on values other than what we would consider to be postmodern values that work within our social and economic framework. It’s the difference between admitting that men in today’s society have it a lot harder and a higher suicide rate than women etc (while yes women still can suffer from the inherent bias of a system not built for them) and being full on red/black pilled misogynist thinking women are privileged and men are oppressed.
the idea of Rico's degradation is the idea of meritocracy, Heilen's ideal is that the army is not run by people who do not understand the consequences of their actions and that it is not in the hands of incompetents, which shows a criticism of the real life army where the officer academies bring rookies to lead and nepotism costs a lot. Rico is subject to an evaluation and the idea of worldliness is not following the hero of this story, the hero is the instructor, making the story not be "egocentric". Rico recognizes his role and leaves the decisions in more competent hands, but being a candidate shows him how difficult it is to access command.
Rico's father makes a lot of valid criticism of military service, and shows a popular opinion, but his departure from the army is not a result of "you being right, Rico", but rather a depression caused by the death of his wife, an attack on a home makes war personal.
🔥 this is an enlightening perspective
Good review! I'm a fan of book and film, but the book is very thought provoking.
If l'm not mistaken, 'Starship Troopers' was penned during a 3 week period in 1958(?).
President Eisenhower had just made public his intent to roll back nuclear weapons testing, and Heinlein, a Navy Vet in WWII, used the book as his "response" to said testing rollbacks.
"[W]ill they worry about the fate of their decendants and dose themselves regularly with X-rays, or set off lots of dirty-type nuclear explosions every year to bulid up a fallout resevoir in their atmosphere? (Accepting, of course, the immediate dangers of radiation to themselves in order to provide a proper genetic heritage of mutation for the benefit of their descendants.)" Ch.11.
Sadly, I don't believe this was satire, especially considering the political climate, with "McCarthy-ism", "The Red Scare", and other Cold War political agendas (Cuban Missile Crisis) looming in the decade.
No one ever mentions the book was set in the 70th century, movie was set in the 24th.
The 'Terran Federation' political system in the book (Citizen class, Civilian class) was taken almost directly from the example of the
Early Roman Republic (especially during the Punic Wars).
Both Citizen and Civilian class were taxed, but only Citizen class had the right to vote and hold office.
An obvious example of : Taxation without Representation.
Rico was Filipino, and for a former WWII US Navy Vet to make a Filipino the main protagonist, would've been a big plot-twist in the 1960's, mainly due to the racially charged times, and maybe was why he saved that reveal for so late in the book, after the reader has already emotionally invested in the character.
The 'Terran Federation' "resolved" gender and culture equality issues in their own society, at the price of Forever Wars, by having a constant enemy.
Even though it would be more expensive to add power armor in the movie, I think maybe it was intentional.
If I can remember, in the book the Mobile Infantry was an elite or at least professional unit where recruits get extensive combat training in the basic period before ever touching power armor. In the book they were ill equiped cannon-fodder employed in human wave tactics like WW1 infantry or north korean soldiers during Korea War without proper combined arms tactics like modern armies usually do.
Also if I remember, unlike in the movie, the Federation in the book actually made everything to discourage militarism and glorification of war, to the point of sending recruiters without legs with the sole purpose of scaring volunteers, meanwhile in the movie Verhoeven used it to create a contradiction between Federation's propaganda glorifying war and what really happens to soldiers in battle in order to create the dystopia feeling you said. The Federation in the book doesn't seem to glorify war, they still want soldiers but they want to make sure you know what you are signing for, which is more in line with what professional units in our time do. And if I'm not mistaken if you enlisted and didn't show up they would not even bother of going after you (I read the book 6 years ago, so some stuff is hard to remember). So the book's Federation treats war more as a neccessary evil meanwhile the movie's one glorifies it through propaganda, and that also reflects on the view of citizenship of book's Federation, something that a lot of people want but only a few truly want to risk their lives to get, even though it is not really necessary to be a citizen to have a good life in the book. This is why I also think it's unfair to say that the book is fascist, it has nothing to do with that.
A modern, professional and well equiped infantry unit would not fit well with what Verhoeven wanted to do, so this is why the movie's Mobile Infantry does not have power armor in my opinion.
🤔 😁 👍🏻 🔥 thank you for this insight!
I heard an idea that the movie can be viewed as an in universe propaganda film, much like John Wayne's The Green Berets was during the Vietnam war.
I agree on this whole heartedly!
The movie sucked. The visuals of the bugs were the best of it. The war was the smallest part of the book. The movie was poorly done for the story, character development, and the overall philosophy and message of Heinlein's vision.
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Heinlein was definitely *not* writing this book as a satire. He really believed much of the things he wrote, as remember he wrote this book in the 1950s; a much different time from now and in many ways a much more conservative (and jingoistic) time.
Yet just 2 years later he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land.
True. But I didn't say he didn't have *some* progressive beliefs as well; in fact he had a great many of them. When I said it was a more conservative and jingoistic time, I wasn't critiquing Heinlein himself all that much but the 1950s in general - it was the era of Joe McCarthy after all.
Nor would I compare him to many of the more extreme conservatives then (or today), as Heinlein was definitely not a racist nor strictly religious. Definitely he was not a fascist. He *did* buy into the limited democracy concept somewhat; at least at the time. I don't know that he always did though. But he definitely would have disagreed with such things as book bans/burnings and other modern-day conservative tactics. His conservatism was more in the self-reliance camp than anything else I think.
He was, iow, a very complex individual for whom simple labels do not apply; as are we all I suppose.
The Forever War (1974) by Joe Haldeman, is/was a much better "military Sci Fi" novel than Starship Troopers".
Rumor has it that the screenwriters and director ignored the book and just attempted to make a Sci Fi War movie, and it's the reason so many of us that read and reread the book were pissed at what we saw on the "silver Screen".
Agreed on forever war!!
7:32 LOL
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The book and movie are two completely different things. Heinlein's book (one of his best in my opinion) is a satirical blowup of fascism in a post WW2 world, during the rise of militarism and the cold war in the US and UK. In the book, the Bug War is the background against which Rico reflects his training and belief system that he's been taught and raised with (jingoism, militarism, etc.). Heinlein came under fire for writing the book as man saw it as supportive of militarism and fascism at the time.
The movie uses the roughest framework of the book's Bug War as a main plot and story. If you read the book and get it, then the movie is entertaining and enjoyable, but simply a different story borrowing names and background to tell a pulp action war movie story. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) both for completely different reasons (and as completely different art forms).
At least that's how I read and see it; your mileage may vary.
Love hearing your perspective! I agree that Heinlein doesnt seem pro-fascist to me. I can see the book events in the movie but I agree they are two different animals! I have so many more Heinlein novels to get through, and hope I will find more to love.
I like to think if there ever was a reboot more closer to speculative sci fi? Jonny Rico would probably be split into three characters. One from a Veteran Military Caste, one from a Civilian Employee Caste, One from an Inner Circle caste. Everyone is a citizen and not a citizen at the same time. Just go back and do your part for Animal Farm, I mean THE FEDERATION. lol
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I count myself fortunate to have read the novel years before the film was made. The film is good, plain, shoot-em-up fun and I think it can stand as it is on its own merit. But Heinlein's work is undoubtedly deeper, definitely multilayered. I liked your review, Whitney!
Thanks! 😊
In reading the book several times I got the impression at the end of the book that Heinlein had reached the word count he was contracted to do and even though there was a lot more story to tell, he suddenly wrapped it up. Maybe for sequels which I do not know i they were ever written. I have ebooks of 47 of Heinlein's titles. At least in the movie franchise we were given 2 more live action movies. I have all 3 on DVD. Plus an animated movie.
My feeling is that the movie critics never really understood the depth of the book and especially Heinlein's political commentary with the setting of the book. Even though the movie gave us a reasonable amount of background.
I completely agree with you that in some ways the book was better and in others the movie was better. An excent analysis.
Thank you 😊 nice to hear from someone who also appreciates the movie
The are many alien societies in the book, but most are off stage, because Earth and its colonies are only at odds with two of them.
There are 'psychics' in the book, but they are specialists who are officers by courtesy.
I will have to read it closer next time!!
First, i know i'm super late here but i honestly don't think youbread the book. It is not a satire and Heinlien said that he wrote it to get his own thoughts on an alternate future out there (he changed from being extremely left to almost a right wing anarchist in his political views over his lifetime) which is why he wrote about an incredibly libertarian government much like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Second, i know that throughout the video you throw in a lot of cuts from the movie (which i love in its own right) but he is not some Nazi from Beunos Ares, he's from the Philippines lol. He was not demoted, he was promoted to Second LT after finishing OCS which was the entire reason why he went to that school. Simply put i think you fall under the misconception that a government with military service is fascism much the same as the director of the movie decided and you have missed the point that what is described is a libertarian meritocracy. Perhaps if you did read it you should read it again...
Dont really know the response you are looking for here. 🤷🏼♀️ guess we had some different experiences and opinions- although as I’m sure u noticed I am not familiar with military ranking and will pay special attention to that next time i pick it up. As for whatever heinlein said or didnt say, havent been able to find these places where he did or didnt say these things- would love some links if u got em.
i too was disappointed that the movie seemed to satirize the book. but then I'd read it pretty uncritically when younger.
also the lack of power armor and the apparent disposability of infantry
Yeah the power armor thing was a really sad thing
Nobody is allowed to tell anybody else what they are or are not allowed to like. Personally, I loved the book and hated the movie. But if you are of the opposite opinions, I'm not going to tell you that you're not allowed to feel the way you feel. There's no accounting for taste. But I will say this. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of the two products, you have to acknowledge that the movie did NOT give justice to the book. Whether you like the book's message or not, you have to admit that the movie wiped its ass with that message. That's the main reason for my... distaste... for the movie. And as I said in another comment, "Starship Troopers" needs a "Dredd." That is, a movie remake (or, more precisely, a movie "reimagining") done by a filmmaker who is actually familiar with and respectful of the source material, which Mr. Verhoven certainly was NOT. The honor of Mr. Heinlein's magnum opus needs to be redeemed.
I actually loved the book 📕 but thought the movie did a good job. Like you said no accounting for taste 😆 but jokes aside- everyone is allowed their opinions and its just fun to have these discussions.
Juan Rico is FILIPINO
Who lives in Buenos Aires?? Interesting…
@@secretsauceofstorycraft. He does not live in Buenos Aires. He was surprised his mother was visiting Argentina 🇦🇷 & offers condolences to the ship’s only “porteño”. Port city resident. Rico mentions he spoke Tagalog at home at end of Chapter 13.
Thank you for actually reading the book and drawing a sand conclusion rather than just labeling it fascist like so many other people on RUclips. It is in fact really, really, really, extremely, far from Fascism
I agree! And of course i read it! Its a great one!
I don't think the book was a satire; you have to consider the society in context of the unique sort of neo dystopian world/universe they live in.
Calling it a satire on militarism/whatever is like calling all zombie survival shows a "satire" on feudalism.
🤔 will ponder
I agree that the movie does a better job than the book when it comes to plot and interpersonal character development-and it hurts to say that because I love the book and was deeply disappointed that the movie was a satire of "the back cover of the book," as one reviewer described it. The scriptwriters clearly completely misunderstood Heinlein's political philosophy in Starship Troopers.
Grantes but we do have them both and they each have good things!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft True, but my destroyed hopes really made it difficult to ignore the mockery of the book. I'll have to watch the movie again, take it on its own merits.
I would have to disagree with your assumption of his motives. Your generational bias makes you view this through a “modern woke” lens. His generation was very pro American and believed in the concept of “Duty Before Self”. Something that has sadly been lost among most people under the age of 35 or 40.
Sad to hear that…
Being a big Heinlein fan, I hated the movie, It was pretty obvious he hadn't read the book. No telling what Virginia Heinlein would have thought. Having power armor would have salvaged it somewhat. Starship Troopers was not a satire, His government was a meritocracy. Anybody could apply for citizenship unless Psych down checked you as not being able to understand the Oath. In the book Rico's father was not in fear of criticizing the government.
I remember that rico’s father wasnt afraid of government and that it was a meritocracy, although he did leave a lot of solid details left open to interpetation. I am hoping to go back and reread it soon.
I really like your review! One thing i actually thought was fun with the movie is that the propaganda pieces actually DO show things the way they were. But things are just so over the top and ridiculous that it doesn't feel that way. I love that there's not really much that actually points to the society being bad or malevolent in any way. But it feels like it should haha.
Hmmm 🤔 i like that some details are left out but i agree overall. Thanks for watching
The OVA is my favorite, and I did not hate the book, the movie was just to mean spirited for me
I see… they did a good job with the OVA
1:25 Nope, not intergalactic. Nothing intergalactic neither in the book nor in any of the adaptations. In fact, it's explicitly stated it's the first interstellar war in the history of human/bug/skinny history.
Hm good to know 🧐
1) Ther movie is an anti-military schlock that was named after the book, because Verhoeven was told the plot was too close to the book, so they had to buy the rights to the movie to avoid a lawsuit. 2). Heinlein was a libertarian, and a lot of his views are reflected in this book (I am NOT a libertarian, but I agreed with 99% of the views expressed in the book). 3) The book is pro-soldiers in the sense that it explains that the soldiers' loyalty is mostly to their comrades, not any politician or political system. 4) Verhoeven made a mockery of the book by presenting most of the book's points in a negative light - Heinlein had a lot of deep, thoughtful points in that book that make sense (that voting should be a priviledge, not a right, that only people who proved they are society-minding should be allowed to vote, that pole tax was OK as long as you can circumvent it - by a military stint, etc.) I loved the book, and I left a movie theatre in a daze and disbelief how a great book could be made so cartoonish and main points trivialized. I do hope Starship Troopers get to be remade following the book, NOT mocking it.
I would love to see them redo it…. I wonder why they dont
@@secretsauceofstorycraft There are stories every few years that a remake closely following the book is in a pre=production stages, but these disappear soon after. Money and the book rights also are an issue, I'm sure.
You did a great job with the analogies.
Segue: Roadside Picnic: It's clear that Matt from Book Pilled and I read two different books so to keep your friendship alive may I suggest starting the book at page 105 (the giant marsh mellow cover paperback) and reviewing it from that point. The book that I read everyone spoke to each other with disdain, disrespect and hatred. Everyone clearly had it with everyone else. Artifacts: meh.
Love the Melting Watch, 1954 by Salvador Dali.
Great content.
Thanks for watching!! I do appreciate you trying to save our relationship. I finished it last night and will cover it in my next few vids… but the way the characters speak had alot to do with translation. It was supposed to come across as “super cool” like the fonz does in that 70s show…
Heinlein was discharged from the navy for health reasons in the thirties which may account for his mixed messaging about the military. The psychic thing is a carry over from another Heinlein book Time for the Stars. I'm a big Heinlein fan and while I really like the book I think your right about the movie. I don't know if you know but they made at least 2 sequels to Starship Troopers one where the characters almost look real but are cartoons. Always look forward to your videos.
Wow thank you! I didnt know that about him, but I had heard he was in the military. I will have to check out the Time for the Stars. I am glad to have finally started to get into his work, so far I’ve loved it. This one was just a fun video to make.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft Just a note the sequels really aren't very good, they don't have the same joy or maybe hopefulness of the original.
@@bobkeane7966 they werent true heinlein i guess.. im still curious but maybe thats why they didnt do as well. They have abysmal reviews
@@secretsauceofstorycraft The ones I watched seemed to be further adventures in fighting Bugs
Heinlein was medically discharged after contracting T.B.
I just wanna say as someone who was a huge Heinlein fan when I was getting into Literary Sci-Fi back in High School, I can answer wether Heinlein was trying to make a Satire; the answer is largely no, he was writing more accurately a somewhat exaggerated and epic and over the top reinterpretation of his experiences in the Navy during WW2. But it should be noted that even though Starship Troopers may have some debatable beliefs presented in the book; it was not a thesis of Heinlein’s own ideals.
Heinlein as a writer was not one for writing just his views and putting it to paper like many modern authors do; back then it was not exactly commonplace for a Writer to just plap their beliefs into a narrative; this is proven by the fact that Starship Troopers; a novel meant to a militaristic war story was followed up by: Stranger in a Strange Land; a Novel known to be “the Quintessential Hippie Guide Book”, it was a story where a human male was orphaned and raised by martians who learned how to master Psychic Abilities, teach this orphaned boy to learn how to use these psychic powers and uses the teachings of these Martians to overthrow a legit fascistic government on Earth (if the telepathic plot sounds familiar, its because the Telepathy part in the Starship Troopers movie was meant to be a beginning of a trilogy of Heinlein’s work, Stranger in a Strange Land was meant to be the sequel, but the movies box office made sure that wasn’t gonna happen).
Starship Troopers is a novel that takes place in Heinlein’s own Narrative Universe/Multiverse where stories and settings are stand alone and tend to be reflective of the world itself in its contained story rather than what he himself believes. When you look at it from that point of view, it is more akin to Robert E. Howard’s Fictional Worlds than say Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek or Issac Asimov’s Foundation where the work is meant to be reflective of author morality.
Wow these are some great points! I think we are in the minority bases on other comments but I agree with you! Thank you for your thoughtful response.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft
Thank you for taking time of the day to read my comment. I was worried about the age of the video and length of the comment falling on deaf ears as far as you seeing it went, thank you for proving those worries wrong.
I think it's incredible decades after the movie so many people still don't understand what the director was going for with the over the top ridiculous nature of the film ... it's a clear satire of Fascism.
Haha so many people debate this one, but is fun to start a discussion 👍🏻
Paul Verhofen took a serious discussion of a social and governmental structure, through the eyes of one individual living in that structure and turned it into a "military is evil" screed. The movie was a waste of time.
Aww sad u think so.
Personally the movie was horrible in comparison. In the book they never left a man behind, dead or not. They were cavalier in the movie. The power armor is what allowed a person to go toe to toe with the arachnids.
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Kudos on highlighting Chapter 8. There is a later chapter that touches upon moral theory as well.
True but ch 8 was best IMO…. Loved it
what a great channel.
Aew thanks!!
lol all this time I thought the skinnies were elongated people that they were being racist towards or something 😂 he didn’t go into any details about them
😆 oh man!
I like your analysis. I just listened to the audio of this book after being a fan of the film since I saw it the night it came out. The movie had a fairly high budget. The power armor aspect was ditched bc it was costly. Which is a shame for fans of the book who probably expected the team from robocop to deliver powersuits in a similar way. When reading the book I didn’t get satire as much as I got CRITICISMS from heinlein. For instance, they mention how every soldier in a power suit is valued not because the soldier matters but because the power suit is so expensive. Otherwise, the human is expendable. There is some truth to this in the armed services, especially during ww2. Adapting a book into a movie is always difficult. They’re different mediums. People complain about Verhoevens knowledge of the book but Ed Neumeier is the one who wrote the screenplay, and from a screen-writing POV he did a good job taking from the book what could be put on film while creating original ideas for a generation the book was NOT written for. On top of that, Neumeier and Verhoeven were creating a thematic sequel to Robocop, and it really shows. So the goal was two-pronged: make starship troopers into a movie, and have it fit the style and aesthetic previously achieved by Paul Verhoeven. And I think the film was more than successful in that venture.
Hmm this is new info to me that it was sequel to robocop… interesting
@@secretsauceofstorycraft same: director: producer, cinematographer, writer, visual FX. Only thing missing is Rob Botin in ST but the helmets in the movie are def a nod to his Robocop design.
This book is so based... way better than the movie in terms of the message and the political discussions it brings up
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Juan Rico was a lieutenant in Chapter 14 and his father was his platoon sergeant. Not demoted--Lieutenant Rico graduated from OCS and was put in command of a platoon. Candidate Bearpaw was Rico's J.O. and "second in command" because Mobile Infantry officers all have to have combat experience as enlisted soldiers.
Check Chapter 14 again.
When I saw "Saving Private Ryan" for the first time, Captain Miller's trembling while in the LCVP waiting to land on the beach reminded me of the bookends to "Starship Troopers." Chapter One began with "I always get the shakes before a drop." The last page has Johnny Rico being hit by the shakes again--a neat book end.
Agreed… i really need to reread this book!!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft It's always difficult to say "I made an error." I goof up all the time. One problem with "demotions" is that outsiders might not understand the system of promotion and demotion in an organization. When it comes to Federation Mobile Infantry, I'm an outsider.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft In a really picayune technical sense, he _was_ demoted. He was a cadet in OCS, outside of the chain of command. Detailed to an MI unit, he was given the temporary rank of (IIRC) third lieutenant, supernumerary specifically to put him _in_ the chain of command so that he could legally give orders. During that operation, his two immediate superiors bought the farm, leaving him as first a brevet second lieutenant, then a brevet first lieutenant, being moved up the chain of command to prevent a breakdown in the command structure. After the operation, he returned to OCS, becoming a cadet again, then was _commissioned_ a second lieutenant on graduation. Juan Rico's brevet rank was a temporary field promotion; while he functioned _as_ a first lieutenant for purposes of command, he didn't actually hold that rank, still being a third lieutenant.
Verhoeven's movie and Heinlein's book have very little in common.
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I loved the book when I read it back in the nineteen sixties and I still love it to this day. I have read it several times. I was thrilled about the movie until I saw it. To be blunt, the movie stunk. It was made by a moron that had no respect for Heinlein or his works, in fact I don't think the director of the movie ever even read the book. I must add that the individuals who call Starship Troopers fascist are the same class of fool that look for fascists under their beds at night. Most people who use that word have no idea what it really means, they just throw it at anything they don't agree with.
Aw, i liked the movie- but there is a fair amount of nostalgia involved as I saw it in my formitive years. It was interesting to read this book years later. The book holds up for sure!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft I can understand that. If they had named the movie "Bug Blasters of the 22nd Century" I may very well have enjoyed it. But taking the name of a Heinlein book in vain just ticked me off. I think the fundamental problem with this movie is the simple fact that the director hand total contempt for Heinlein and his works. Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier should never again be allowed to put their grubby little paws on another Heinlein property. I put Paul and Edward right next to the fools who vandalize art to "save the planet".
I watched the movie when it came out and I was about 16 or 17 years old. I expected a fun, sci-fi action movie. Instead I got a lame-ass teen sex romp/coming-of-age movie. A few years later, at a friend's insistence, I read the book, expecting a lame-ass teen sex romp/coming-of-age story. Instead I got a political treatise. So I don't know what to expect anymore...
There's no such thing as a movie that's better than the book it's based on, so it should come as no surprise that that's the case here as well. And indeed, there have been better books written and worse movies made. However, never before in the history of film has their been a bigger gulf in quality between the book and the movie. "Starship Troopers" needs a "Dredd." That is, a movie remake (or, more precisely, a movie "reimagining") done by a filmmaker who is actually familiar with and respectful of the source material, which Verhoven certainly was NOT. The honor of Mr. Heinlein's magnum opus needs to be redeemed.
I would love to see a new movie, I wonder if they would ever consider it…
Try actually reading Plato's "Republic".
@@michaelsnyder3871 Try posting a comment that's actually relevant to the above conversation.
Try Grumbles from the Grave for a better understanding of his humors.
Ok 👍🏻
A strong argument for why the film is good, despite not being a faithful adaptation without the power armour. As for the book, what a fresh take, but I'm not convinced it was satire. However, saying that I would argue that RAH is what I call a philosophizing writer. He does what many philosophers do when constructing an argument (not the same as being argumentative JIC of confusion). Anyway, loved this, now subscribed and joined your Discord channel.
Welcome! And thank you! I hope we can have more discussions like these!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft That would be fun.
IF by this you mean much of Heinlein's work was social commentary with multiple edges to it, I agree. I, too, question the claim the book is satire. Heinlein was a keen student of history, he served in The Big One, and he had time to reflect upon how representative governments respond to existential threats. The West having to confront Nazis and the IOJ, then the Communists afterward, does things that are not particularly beneficial to the individual. How societies order themselves seems to be a theme that RAH never tired of exploring.
Movie had a 100 million dollar budget it was not a small budget movie
Wow 😯 didnt know that
If you bever read the book, you will love the movie. If you read the book, you were disappointed by the movie.
Haha 😂 what if i liked both?
@@secretsauceofstorycraftThat is possible. Enjoy them both.