Can Neill Blomkamp’s Starship Troopers Reboot Top The Original?
He’s doing his part.
Although considered a beloved cult classic now, in 1997, nobody knew what to make of Starship Troopers. Was it a satire? Was it serious science fiction? Or was it truly, and completely, purposefully, kitschy? Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece remains all of those things and, perhaps, none of those things to this day. And because of all of its various contradictions — and the mixed legacy of its sequels — a Starship Troopers reboot was inevitable.
Now, that reboot is actually happening, and the director for the new Starship Troopers is somewhat perfect. The question is, at what cost?
According to Deadline, Neill Blomkamp, the director behind District 9, Chappie, and Elysium, is set to write and direct a new version of Starship Troopers. But, Blomkamp’s Starship Troopers won’t have any shared continuity with 1997 other than the fact that it will also be derived from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel. In fact, as Deadline notes, “The new movie will go back to the 1959 source material by Robert A. Heinlein and not be based on the 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie.”
Dina Meyer and Casper Van Dien in the 1997 version of Starship Troopers.
Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers is a strange example of a sci-fi film that underperformed at the box office, but nonetheless, managed to eclipse its source material, at least in terms of the general public’s perception. Unlike Dune or I, Robot, or other classic SF novels, Starship Troopers tends to be thought of, and discussed, in the ways in which it influenced sci-fi cinema, rather than being judged on its own merits. Case-in-point, before the 1997 film, James Cameron instructed cast members of Aliens to read the novel to get a sense of how he wanted his space Marines to behave.
In other words, the shadow that Starship Troopers casts over science fiction in general is somewhat larger than the importance of the book itself. For a political director like Blomkamp, there’s plenty to unpack in Heinlein’s prose, but because this novel presents a future in which the only true voting citizens are also active members of the military, it’s almost impossible for any adaptation of the story to not be critical of its own status quo. For decades, critics have debated about Heinlein’s intentions: Was it a sneaky pro-fascist novel written by a somewhat libertarian novelist? Or was Heinlein’s intention to condemn fascism by depicting it?
Like Frank Herbert, the ideology of Starship Troopers is harder to pin down than just one interpretation, which is why the 1997 movie so smartly rendered the whole thing as a satire.
But, Blomkamp’s tendency toward earnest political allegory could actually make his Starship Troopers click. While some of Heinlein’s intents are still debatable, a filmmaker like Blomkamp will have the bravery to simply choose his own interpretation of the book. And from there, it seems almost assured that we’ll get a version of Starship Troopers that won’t remind us at all of any previous version, ever.
