GrahamKennedy wrote:I've watched the DVD commentary on the original ST movie, and it's pretty clear that Verhoeven actually thinks he's being quite faithful to Heinlein. Because he has the basic idea of "serve to get citizenship" in there, and things like the fact that many veterans are missing limbs, he thinks he's got it.
In fact the missing limbs thing is a perfect example of how he messes the book's ideas up. In the movie the recruiter is made up to have Rico joining up; his amputated limbs are used to show how brutal serving is, give you the idea that nobody really cares if these people are chopped up in wars. The government just wants "fresh meat for the grinder".
In the book it's the complete opposite. In the book the recruiter is deliberately chosen because he is missing limbs, with the express intent of stopping people from enlisting. He's a horror show put there to make civilians go "oh wow, no way!" and walk out.
Because in the book the government isn't the militaristic fascist nonsense of the movie.
Well, in the book, Heinlein actually makes the effort (though it probably pained him to do so) to rationalize the semi-fascist nature of the global government, and to actually extol its merits - perhaps a bit cynically, however. As far as that scene, I get the impression that Verhoeven was ignorant, not necessarily with willful disregard for the book. The recruiter in the book does make the point that the government doesn't consider each of the recruits personal, just as bodies; however, the intent of that is more than it seems in the book. The "uncaring" of the government is not about whether you get injured - it's about whether you sign up at all, because you'll simply be disenfranchised if you don't. The further point is that the MI is what it is because only people who get past that scene - and by implication, truly WANT to be there - will be a member, and therefore a future citizen.
I have a bit of a tangential question. After re-reading the book 20 years later, I notice that toward the beginning Johnny calls Carmen
Ochee Chornija. Am I reading too much into it by considering that to be an allusion to the globalization of government coinciding with a more oligarchic and totalitarian state?