Starship Troopers

Paul Verhoeven’s film did not start as a Heinlein adaptation. Ed Neumeier wrote it as Bug Hunt at Outpost 7, and the novel’s rights were bought only after producer Jon Davison noticed the resemblance. Verhoeven never finished the book, stopping after two chapters out of boredom and having Neumeier tell him the rest. The differences are not cosmetic. Heinlein’s powered armour never appears, and the troops land from craft rather than individual drop capsules. The satire also sits beside the story rather than inside it: the Federal Network bulletins share the drama’s bright, near advertising register, so the film never flags where the joke begins. On release a Washington Post editorial called it pro-fascist. Tanker, plasma and hopper bugs, plus about seventy percent of the warriors, were digital builds from Tippett Studio; the ones that pin soldiers down in close contact were full scale mechanical work by Amalgamated Dynamics. The rest came not from captured actor movement but from a jointed armature moved by hand, its joints wired to a computer. The effects team took a Visual Effects nomination; Titanic won. A good fit if you read the recruitment bulletins as the joke and treat the heroes never noticing it as design. Not for a reader of the novel hoping to see powered armour and drop capsules on screen.