re: #87 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

Paul Verhoeven never even read the book, just like David Lynch never read Dune, that is why these adaptations are interesting on their own, but have little to do with the novels.

From what I read, Verhoeven started out doing an entirely different sci-fi project about fighting giant space bugs, which prompted the producers to seek out the rights to Starship Troopers.

Verhoeven started reading the book but gave up as he found it “too depressing”.

And as I recall, you have to get about 2/3 of the way through it before they start to explain how the system of Service for Citizenship came about.

My understanding is that the movie was really more a passion project of the script writer who was a fan of the novel, and that Verhoeven gave up after a couple chapters and just had the writer (who’d worked with him on Robocop) explain the broad strokes of the book to him.