A quote by the producer of the announced remake of Starship Troopers, who promises that his version will be less violent and more patriotic.
“Verhoeven made his movie a critique of fascism,” says Jaffe, “whereas Heinlein was writing from the perspective of someone who had served in World War II”
I like how he seems to be unaware that Verhoeven grew up in Nazi occupied Holland, and that he is probably intimately aware of the end result of humourless patriotism. Starship Troopers is a ridiculous and mostly terrible film, but that’s entirely the point.
If you take out the irony and sarcasm from a story like this, all you end up with is the kind of glorification of violence and militarism that gets dangerously close to the kind of ‘might is right’ philosophy that Heinlein himself served to protect the world from.
Anyway, I’m hoping that Verhoeven is getting paid plenty from all these ridiculous new remakes of his films that he can maybe make a new film himself.