Wisecrack – Tyson Adams

Book vs Movie: Starship Troopers – What’s the Difference?

It’s time to discuss Starship Troopers. Again.

Video: Starship Troopers – Lost in Adaptation – Dominic Noble.

The first time I watched Starship Troopers all I saw was a cheesy B-grade action movie. This was also what many movie reviewers thought at the time. Many years later I finally read the book and it clicked.

Verhoeven’s film only made sense to me after I’d read the book as it is as much a critique of the material as it is an adaptation.

“I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring,” says Verhoeven of his attempts to read Heinlein’s opus. “It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn’t read the thing. It’s a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, ‘Are these people crazy?’ Source

The cheesy propaganda segments riff on the heavy-handed philosophical lecturing Heinlein does. The proud militarism is given consequence by utilising Heinlein’s own references to disabled veterans and by showing horrible training injuries and battlefield scenes. The fascist elements are played up for farce in the uniforms and sequences mirroring actual Nazi propaganda films.

Michael Ironside asked, “Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?”
Verhoeven replied, “If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work, no one will listen to me. So I’m going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it’s only good for killing fucking Bugs!” Source

Now, I did actually enjoy the book. It is very interesting and many of the ideas were challengingly different. The portrayal of future warfare was, at the time, as imaginative as I’d come across. So Verhoeven’s reaction to satirise the book – one that Heinlein dashed out as an angry response to the US stopping nuclear tests – was probably overwrought by his childhood in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. But if the movie adaptation had been faithful we’d probably have seen the worst elements of Heinlein’s ideas paraded around like something produced by the Ministry of Enlightenment.

Well, either that or a schlocky B-grade action movie about the military killing alien bugs.

I’ve covered this book previously when other Youtube channels have discussed Starship Troopers. The first was What’s the Difference by Cinefix, which breaks down the differences. The second was from Wisecrack on how the movie makes fascism look good, despite Verhoeven’s intentions.

Video: Starship Troopers – What’s the Difference?

Video: Starship Troopers – how to make fascism sexy – Wisecrack.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading, Video

How Tech Bros Get Sci-Fi Wrong

Recently on the den of inequity and monetised dumpster fires, I posted a tweet.

Text: Those who read spec-fic are doomed to see dystopias turned into tech company ideas.

This idea of how the “big brains” in Silicon Valley seem to miss the point of most speculative fiction has been in my thoughts lately. I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read that have sung the praises of a new tech idea that was clearly ripped straight out of a dystopic novel.

Surely it isn’t just me and every other book nerd who understands that your favourite sci-fi novel was meant to be a warning, not a goal, right?

Well, this video from Wisecrack certainly appears to be on my side.

Wisecrack video: How Tech Bros Get Sci-Fi Wrong.

I think it is clear why tech-bros get sci-fi (and other spec-fic) wrong. The shallow, selfish and egotistical nature of being a Silicon Valley wonk precludes you from fully understanding subtle messages in fiction. You know, subtle messages like AIs will destroy the planet, anarcho-capitalism will destroy the planet, rich/greedy people will destroy the planet, pollution will destroy the planet, etc.

Take Musk’s Neuralink. When it’s not being inhumanely tested on monkeys, there is a lot of buzz around what it could do. Like brain uploading to make you immortal. Like in that sci-fi novel where people became immortal thanks to brain uploading. Which was a novel about how brain uploading was really really bad.

But is that the message that someone like Musk would take away from Altered Carbon? Would he look at that sci-fi dystopia and think “wow, bad, let’s not make brain uploading a thing” or does he look at it and think “wow, that rich guy had a sky palace and got to be super-duper immortal rich, let’s make that brain uploading a thing”? Hint, it’s the last one. Because that novel isn’t a dystopia for someone like Musk, it’s a utopia.

This is ultimately the point of speculative fiction. It makes comments upon our current society through fictional worlds, to show us the follies of our ways. The trick is to make sure WE heed the message and stop the rich and powerful from steering us (further) into dystopia.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading, Reblogged, Video

Book vs Movie: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – What’s the Difference?

Did you know that Quentin Tarantino had novelised his ninth film? Neither did I. Let’s take a look and What’s the Difference?

As a Tarantino fan since the early 90s – geez, that makes me sound even older than I am – I have to come clean on Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I didn’t like it.

I’ll even go a step further and say that his previous film, Hateful Eight, wasn’t good either.

Unlike Hateful Eight, which had a decisive moment when the film fell apart (Tarantino’s voice over setting up the third act just ruined everything for me), Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was entirely pedestrian. It always felt like a film avoiding being anything other than a love letter to Hollywood films of the 60s.

In fairness to the movie, Tarantino was clearly trying to subvert many of the usual movie moments and be more about actors making great films. For example, the scene at the ranch was setup for a fight for Pitt’s character (Cliff Booth) and the Manson acolytes. Instead, Tarantino subverts that moment and there is no fight, allowing us plenty more time for DiCaprio’s character to learn about method acting from his child co-star.

That the novelisation is quite different from the film isn’t particularly surprising. It’s pretty difficult to make Brad Pitt into a thoroughly unlikable character in a movie. Something to do with charisma and production credits. But the book is unconstrained by actor charisma, which makes it a good opportunity to throw the character under the bus.

Regardless of Tarantino’s future literary aspirations, I hope his tenth/final film is able to cement his career as one of the greats.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Who is Cliff Booth anyway?
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a celebrated installment in writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre. So when he came out with a book adaptation of the story, we were first in line to read it. But was the book markedly different from the film, and do those differences mean something big? We think so and we’ll explain in this Book vs. Film on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – The New Ending.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading, Video

Book vs Movie: How Themes Changed in Lord of the Rings

It’s been 4 years since the last post about Lord of the Rings. Let’s do this!

This is a slightly different take on the differences between the book and the film. Wisecrack have looked at the major themes rather than diving into all of the changes made in the adaptation.

When I last discussed the Lord of the Rings series (see here, here, and here), I heaped praise upon the adaptations. They were able to trim down the waffle and create possibly one of the best trilogies in film history.

I hadn’t previously given a lot of thought to the changes in the themes between the book and the films. Now that it has been mentioned, the character arcs in the film should have been more obvious to me. I also find the idea that the movies were (accidentally??) made to be more secular is interesting. Perhaps that change is as much to do with when the book was written versus when the films were made.

Given the desire to reboot and remake every intellectual property in the cupboard these days, maybe the next LOTR movies will be given an Avengers style makeover. Lots of quippy dialogue, everyone has lots of money, several of the lead characters spend time with their shirts off and arms bulging, and somehow there will be product placement everywhere.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading, Video

Book vs Movie: Death Note – What’s the Difference?

A bit of a change of pace for this What’s the Difference? with Wisecrack diving into the key difference between the Netflix version of Death Note and the Manga and Anime.

I was first exposed to Death Note via the Japanese live-action film adaptation. It was an intriguing and decent film (with some pretty dodgy CGI for Ryuk). That lead me to watch the Anime TV adaptation, which is excellent, if just a bit heavy handed. I have to admit to reading very little of the Manga because I kinda felt like the Anime had covered it really well.

When I saw they were releasing an American version of Death Note on Netflix, I was all over it. I didn’t expect the dense and loquacious Anime, but was thinking they’d remake the film adaptation with better CGI, no subtitles (because Americans don’t read), and star some former Disney child actors looking to do something gritty but lucrative to make sure the mouse didn’t throw their souls into the volcano under Disney Land. What we got was 90 minutes of garbage.

On the Wikipedia page for the American Death Note film, it is described as “loosely adapted from the Japanese Manga”. The word loosely is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that description.

The above video does a pretty good job of covering what the film does wrong. Not different, wrong. The film really does feel like someone saw that Death Note was successful, so they bought the rights, got a director to read the elevator pitch for the series (kid gets the power to kill people by writing in a demon’s book), and thought that was all they needed to do. Everything about it is a failure to understand what Death Note was about. The characters are shallow and lack any value to the story. The story lacks any substance. And they managed to turn one of the most compelling sequences from the Anime into a chase scene involving the wrong characters.* Because every American film needs a chase scene… In short, they made a bad film and an even worse adaptation.

The main thing to remember about Death Note is that they’ve already made a very good adaptation with the Anime.

* See this video that discusses the scene from the Anime I’m referring to.

How does Netflix’s Death Note adaptation hold up to the original?
The anime version of Death Note, which is a faithful adaptation of the original manga, is one of our all-time favorites. So how does it compare to the not-so-beloved 2017 Netflix version? Let’s find out in this “Book” (aka Anime) vs. Film: Death Note