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× Talk abut Movies & TV here. Just tell us what you have been watching. Have hyper-academic discussions on visual semiotics. Whatever, it's all good.

Movies you like but don't like the source material?

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18 Jun 2017 20:54 #250101 by Sevej

Gary Sax wrote: Starship Troopers---all time great film that EVICERATES the fascistic book it's based on


Woah, I was thinking on reading the book. Is it good? Dense? (the book)

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18 Jun 2017 20:57 #250102 by Gary Sax
It's worth reading but it has... a viewpoint on citizenship, militarism etc that is pretty shitty IMHO.

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18 Jun 2017 21:50 #250103 by Jackwraith
It kinda depends on what era of Hellblazer you read. There were some real clunkers along the way. If you read the initial Jamie Delano run (1-40) and the subsequent Garth Ennis run (41-83), you read the best of the series. Paul Jenkins followed Ennis and kind of drove the title into the ground, they tried to rescue it by bringing Ennis back for a few issues and then following him with Warren Ellis, but it was never the same. Strangely enough, the bloody awful film is based on what a lot of people think is the best arc ever written: Ennis' first, "Dangerous Habits." But the film was doomed from the start just by trying to cast Keanu Reeves as John Constantine. Denise Chamian should have been kicked out of the CSA for that. And, just like the subsequent TV series, they butchered the character. Constantine was damned for many of the things he did, but attempting suicide was not one of them, since it belies the character's essential elements (survivor by any means necessary and living with the horrible guilt of what he's done to other people, often in order to survive.) They just utterly missed the point and the film was completely hollow as a result.

Starship Troopers is absolutely worth reading for the same reason that the film is worth seeing: they're both insane and emblematic of the modern trends of ultra-nationalism and militarism. The book is OK; not one of Heinlein's best. The movie is hysterically funny. There's not a single good performance in it, which makes it kinda like Big Trouble in Little China (i.e. a must-see, not because it's a good film, but because it's not.)

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19 Jun 2017 09:16 #250113 by Shellhead
I almost always like the source material better than the movie, but The League of Extraordinary Gentleman is an exception. I'm a big fan of Alan Moore, except for his need to include at least one rape scene in every work. The League movie had no rape scene and better pacing. On the other hand, the movie featured a disappointing final performance by Sean Connery and an annoying new character inserted just to keep American audiences happy.

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19 Jun 2017 12:49 #250136 by Vlad

Gary Sax wrote: It's worth reading but it has... a viewpoint on citizenship, militarism etc that is pretty shitty IMHO.


It is definitely not dense. Easy to go through in a couple of sessions.
I agree with Gary that the point of view of the main character is questionable, but on the other hand it is like saying that the point of view of space marines (death to heretic, etc) is questionable. Actually, Starship Troopers could be easily construed as a prequel to WH 40K universe.
I also don't think that Heinlein actually sympathised with fascism. He just took that premise of an inter-stellar total war between humans and species so different that no communication between us is possible, and asked a question of how our civilization would have to organize itself in order to survive and win. A few years ago, I read an editorial by Paul Krugman (if you're not familiar with him, there's basically no-one more left-oriented this side of New York Times) that talked about a hypothetical war between earth and an alien species. In Krugman's opinion, that would serve as unification of human race, putting aside our differences, and everyone working towards a common goal - all good things (in his opinion), but on the basic level he was advocating for a totalitarian society, not very different form that of starship troopers.

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19 Jun 2017 15:46 - 19 Jun 2017 15:51 #250153 by Gary Sax
A non-totalitarian vision of the sci-fi future is actually something I like about the Expanse, for all its other flaws. But even then there's a little totalitarianism in it since the (democratically elected, though) UN earth government has pretty severe restrictions on things like reproductive freedom and Mars government is pretty restrictive due to the resource demands of terraforming. The Belters are actually an interesting bit because they've gone the other way---while they squabble, etc, their severe limitation on resources and the dangers associated with living in deep space have enforced an almost cultural communalism/socialism on them.

I can think of people farther left than liberal Krugman and publications left of the New York Times since I read them, but I take your point. ;)

Also, Starship Troopers isn't a bad read or anything. I just think it's icky and the movie is an amazing gutting of the book's viewpoint.
Last edit: 19 Jun 2017 15:51 by Gary Sax.
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19 Jun 2017 15:50 #250154 by Jauron

jay718 wrote: Wow. Never thought I'd hear someone say they enjoyed Constantine more than the Hellblazer comic.


It's about the concepts, the movie excited me, the comics, not so much. Supernatural always works this way for me, the actually story telling gets in the way of what I really want, cool shit happening and hints about why. A main character who's got a plan (I'm a total sucker for a man with a plan and it can make garbage watchable for me).

The very beginning of Hellblazer was decent but it went downhill for me and I quit reading it.

My version of good supernatural is the first book in the Sandman Slim series. Does that make an asshole with shit taste? Probably.

Josh Look wrote:
WOW. This enire post. Too each their own, but goddamn. Good topic though!

I'll throw in on Starship Troopers as well, but I'll add second Hunger Games movie. Those books aren't terrific and I don't even like the other movies, but i do really like that one.

I'm hoping the Ready Player One movie falls into this category. I still like Speilberg quite a bit, plus Simon Pegg is in it...but that book really *IS* utter shit. I haven't seen such heavy Kool Aid drinking over something in the nerd spectrum since the release of Eclipse.


I take it you disagree with all three? League was painful to read, and I didn't make it very far. Whatever I was looking for, I wasn't finding it. Hellblazer fell victim to most supernatural things for me, interesting subject matter but the folks who like it I guess like story telling I don't. Hellboy - I don't know what the problem was to be honest, I kept plugging away but I didn't enjoy my time with the books.

I agree on Ready Player One, the book was not good.

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19 Jun 2017 15:55 #250155 by Jauron

Jackwraith wrote: It kinda depends on what era of Hellblazer you read. There were some real clunkers along the way. If you read the initial Jamie Delano run (1-40) and the subsequent Garth Ennis run (41-83), you read the best of the series. Paul Jenkins followed Ennis and kind of drove the title into the ground, they tried to rescue it by bringing Ennis back for a few issues and then following him with Warren Ellis, but it was never the same. Strangely enough, the bloody awful film is based on what a lot of people think is the best arc ever written: Ennis' first, "Dangerous Habits." But the film was doomed from the start just by trying to cast Keanu Reeves as John Constantine. Denise Chamian should have been kicked out of the CSA for that. And, just like the subsequent TV series, they butchered the character. Constantine was damned for many of the things he did, but attempting suicide was not one of them, since it belies the character's essential elements (survivor by any means necessary and living with the horrible guilt of what he's done to other people, often in order to survive.) They just utterly missed the point and the film was completely hollow as a result.


Big fan of Garth Ennis, well most of this stuff. His run on Punisher totally changed my mind on that character. It was brutal and gritty and I loved it.
I went hunting for more Garth stuff recently and some of it's great and others like The Boys really missed for me. I'm mostly trying to avoid his Preacher stuff since I really like the show and want to enjoy that first.

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19 Jun 2017 16:28 #250159 by Shellhead
Heinlein was a complex guy, judging by the various books of his that I've read.. Early in his career, he wrote shallow gee-whiz space adventures. In the '40s, he attempted to live in an ongoing menage-a-trois with his liberal wife and a conservative bisexual woman, but it failed and led to his divorce and then marriage to the conservative woman of the trio.The Heinlein who wrote Stranger in a Strange Land had to be a very progressive liberal, but later Heinlein seemed to move farther to the right, probably under the influence of his second wife. Starship Troopers could be interpreted as a critique of militant fascism, but some of the details seem more sympathetic, like restricting voting power to military personnel and veterans. Heinlein once famously said, "An armed society is a polite society." By the end of his career, Heinlein seems to have become a right-wing Libertarian, possibly in reaction to Watergate. Despite being an agnostic, Heinlein gave L. Ron Hubbard the idea basic idea for the Scientology scam/cult.

According to Wikipedia, the movie that became known as Starship Troopers started out as a script titled "Bughunt at Outpost Nine," and was not originally intended to be a Starship Troopers movie
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19 Jun 2017 16:41 #250160 by Gary Sax
The section in the book "Going Clear" where L Ron Hubbard and IIRC Heinlein et al are into Crowley is amaaaaazing.

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