His name is Zim

A few days ago, I re-read Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers, and then for good measure, watched my copy of Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film Starship Troopers. It was interesting to see how the film failed, in many respects, as a film and as an adaptation of the book.

There were many downsides:

• The biggest flaw, in my opinion, was the casting of the leads. Casper Van Dien, as the hero, was a perfect plastic Ken, to go with Denise Richards's Barbie. Despite the football-hero good looks, he was characterless and lacking in the charisma that makes watchers empathise with him. The movie needed someone grittier, not "Ken".


• Almost anything to do with weapons and combat was ludicrous. One of the major points of the book was that the Mobile Infantry troopers were armoured trooped, encased in a ton of powered armour, laden with a variety of powerful weapons (rockets, guns with target-seeking bullets, flame-throwers, small nukes, etc.) and sophisticated detection and communication systems, enabling rapid, coordinated tactics with heaps of firepower in any conditions. They were fired in capsules from spaceships, and retrieved by landing craft afterward. By contrast, in the movie, we have infantry using 20th century equipment: a fancy gun that can fire hundreds of rounds of large, but ineffectual bullets, simple and not-very-good body armour on the chest, primitive 1970s-era radio equipment, and just about nothing else. For a movie set two centuries in the future, it's quite ridiculous. Then, to top that, we have our vulnerable, poorly-armed soldiers ambling about as if they're using World War 1 tactics; naturally, they have no backup from air, from armour, or from artillery - none of which the book's troopers needed, because they had the powered armour.


• The "love story" was a little silly, but would have been far better if Casper and Denise hadn't been so preppy and vacant-looking.


• The CGI was a little flaky even in 1997, but I did like the look of the warrior bugs. The huge bugs, though, were daft; in fact, the movie seemed to ignore the fact that the bugs were advanced, and space-faring.


• Verhoeven seemed to have gone for the grossness factor, sadly. Almost anything to do with the bugs was squishy, slimy and gross; the brain bug in particular was truly gross, and nightmarishly Freudian. I thought that distracted from the movie; the brain-bug's proboscis/mouth, in particular, jolted the viewer straight out of suspension of disbelief.

The film did get some things right. Much of the early parts of the film ran well; I think this may have been because Paul Verhoeven only read part of the book (I must admit, I find it very strange that a movie directory would only read half of his movie's source material - a Hugo Award-winning novel). A good bit of the dialogue was lifted straight from the book, and I liked that. Also, the movie managed to bring across the whole concept of a society where the right to vote is gained by service to the Federation.

Cast-wise, Dina Meyer was excellent: she made a good soldier and a sympathetic character. Michael Ironside was superb too; in fact, when I read the book, it's his face I see on the characters he portrayed. Best of all, though, was Clancy Brown as Sergeant Zim; with his height and attitude, he made the perfect drill sergeant.

The FedNet "inserts" were really good; I thought they were a good way of feeding information about events.

One change from the book that I liked was that in the movie, men and women served equally, even to sharing barracks and showers (the shower scene was hot!).