Starship Troopers vs Starship Troopers

Or a comparison between source and adaptation

One of the interesting consequences of having so many different flavours of media these days is that things have a tendency to be adapted between formats. Comics become movies which are adapted to novels which inspire TV shows which spin into new comics. Each media transition often involves different people with different objectives, goals, and creative tastes. Each flavour of media has its own individual strengths and weaknesses. While the core story can never really be completely divorced from its creators or media, I think it's a fun game to compare different versions of the same story and see which I like best.

Today I will discuss and compare the classic Robert A Heinlein novel Starship Troopers with the Paul Verhoeven action film adaptation Starship Troopers.

There will be many *SPOILERS* in this article.

My analysis after the cut:

Fighter Jets and Bombshells

Or Top Gun's top tips for scoring with the ladies

Top Gun is a film about fighter jets and the brave,  rule-breaking men who fly them. Especially those named Maverick.

(I think you can also make a compelling case for Top Gun being a commentary on the AIDS Crisis and safe/unsafe sex practices.)

But Top Gun is also a romantic movie! When not flying their fighter jets, playing shirtless beach volleyball, or staring meaningfully into each others eyes Top Gun fighter pilots are all about romancing the ladies. An analysis of the film provides a foolproof 7 step guide to successful wooing any lady in the world.

Step 1: Pick out a woman at a bar. Make a bet with your best friend about whether you can have coitus with her on the premises.

Step 2: Embarrass the woman by singing "You've lost that lovin' feeling" poorly at her. If all goes well the rest of the bar will spontaneously join you. Women like nothing than having an entire room of people sing poorly at them. Also, all bars are moments away from singing "You've lost that lovin' feeling" spontaneously.

"... you guys are gonna join in any second right?"

Step 3: Sexually harass that woman in the ladies washroom. Chicks dig that.

"What, you mean suggesting we have sex on the counter isn't okay?"

Step 4: Belittle her at her place of work in front of her colleagues. She might be an astrophysicist who is an expert on communist airplanes for some reason, instead of, say, an aeronautical engineer, but you know better than she does and everyone needs to know this.

"I want everyone here to know that your ideas are stupid. Women, amIright?"

Step 5: On your first date, go to the woman's house immediately after playing shirtless beach volleyball with the guys. Demand a shower.

"Guys I gotta go see a lady about a shower."

Step 6: Have a secretive workplace affair. Set it to 80's music. Add back-lighting.

*80's music* (Please note the tongue tip springing forth)

Step 7: Kiss with a frightening amount of tongue. Kiss with the amount of tongue someone who has heard of french kissing but has never seen or attempted it before thinks is okay. Use more tongue than an affection and overheated dog. Tongues!

*80s music* (She just licked his face)

There you are future pilots and lady-killers. Follow these steps and soon you'll be knee deep in women with a face coated in saliva.

"Go get 'em, Tiger."

Green Lantern Barbie

Or how the sexist treatment of the character Carol Ferris was my least favourite part of the Green Lantern movie.

I don't think it's surprising that I didn't particularly enjoy the green lantern movie. I agree with most of the criticisms out there: the movie was quite silly, focused too much on Earth stuff and ignored all the great space adventures, and just didn't work well as a film.

I also find Ryan Reynolds about as charismatic as a block of wood and felt that the romantic subplot of the Green Lantern movie was, perhaps as a result of this, extremely wooden.

That said, there was one scene in Green Lantern that was particularly horrendous. Enough so that I still feel like writing about it all this time after. Specifically, I am still bothered by the scene where the movie threw Carol Ferris under the sexist bus.

When we first meet Carol Ferris she is introduced to us as this intelligent business woman who runs her fathers aviation company, who is also a super courageous fighter jet test pilot , and who just so happens to be a beautiful young woman. Which is fine. There is no reason why a woman can't be smart, brave, and pretty (which is obligated in both movie and comics lands). This was an interesting character.

We then get the opening fighter jet test piloting scene where Carol and Hal Jordon (Green Lantern) go head to head with a robotic fighter prototype. Hal does a dick move that gets Carol "killed" (electronically) but allows him to pull another dick move and defeat the robot planes at the expense of crashing his own plane. He barely bails out of his crashing aircraft (which as Top Gun has taught us is dangerous) and has to be rescued. All of this is okay too.

But this is where shit suddenly goes sideways for me.

The next scene, which has a freshly rescued Hal also has a primped and sexy business attired Carol WHICH MAKES NO SENSE. Her childhood friend/secret love crashes his plane and almost DIES while her company's new product has just failed an important test. Apparently in the face of these two pretty monumental catastrophes she decides to shower, do her makeup and hair, and put on the sexy skirt and blouse.

This is crazy-nuts! Think about it: the person Carol loves may be dead or at least seriously injured and her business may have just gone bankrupt but she takes the time to primp herself beautiful before she deals with either crisis. This is either unprofessional and a sign she can't prioritize things or it's a sign that she is a SOCIOPATH. Just for a second think about how insane it would be if a male character did that! This is as insane!!

It's also insanely sexist. The fact that the film makers decided to put Carol's appearance ahead of all her more interesting character traits really diminishes her as a person and objectifies the shit out of the chatacter. It's kind of disgusting.

It's also pretty unnescesary.

I get that thefilmmakers were trying to convey that she is a sexy lady and that she is vulnerable and what-not, but putting her in her best business-fancy isn't really needed to do this. (NOT that I feel making her sexy in this scene is at all nescesary or even appropriate, I'm just saying that IF you wanted to there are less sexist and easier ways). Now Blake Lively (the actor playing Carol), for all her acting faults is a pretty conventionally attractive woman. She remains attractive while wearing her flight suit. In fact, the film makers could have had her undo the top half of this thing, hang it off her waist, and be wearing an undershirt underneath. All the sex appeal they might want coupled with her taking charge of the situation in a manner that is consistent with her badass mogul-pilot character as well as basic human decency and common sense. Add some frazzled hair and you have vulnerability too: Carol is so worried about Hal that she doesn't worry about her appearance. So you could have easily emphasized how sexy and vulnerable Carol Ferris was  (had you wanted to) without character assassinating her.

So yeah, this is the scene where instead of having strong, smart and attractive Carol Ferris we got intorduced to green lantern Barbie instead.

The Minority Report vs The Minority Report

Or a comparison between the source and the adaption.

One of the interesting consequences of having so many different flavours of media these days is that things have a tendency to be adapted between formats. Comics become movies which are adapted to novels which inspire TV shows which spin into new comics. Each media transition often involves different people with different objectives, goals, and creative tastes. Each flavour of media has its own individual strengths and weaknesses. While the core story can never really be completely divorced from its creators or media, I think it's a fun game to compare different versions of the same story and see which I like best.

In the following essay I will discuss and compare the classic Phillip K Dick short story The Minority Report with the Steven Spielberg action film adaptation The Minority Report.

There will be many *SPOILERS* in this article.

My analysis after the cut:

Lights, Camera, Action Comics.

Or how questionable comic motifs have made into our comic book movies.

As a guy who loves comics, Hollywood's current obsession with quality superhero flicks is pretty great. That said, I've noticed some odd choices in some of these films, which at first glance would seem like unusual/practical film choices, but upon closer examination I suspect these are just films attempting to better mimic comic books.

It should be noted that this is going to be *SPOILER*-tastic

The Avengers: You know how the climatic conflict between the Avenges and Loki's invading army took place in a tiny chunk of manhattan which features many of the New Yorkiest locations? I think this was a deliberate attempt to be more comic booky. Sure, an argument could be made that the battle was limited to such a small and familiar location to give it a sense of place and to contextualise the giant CG action (to stop the Michael Bay effect), but I think this is misguided. Instead, think about how Marvel comics are based in mirror world New York and how many superhero fights take place within view of the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Central Park, a New York bridge, the Statue of Liberty or on Coney Island. It's a lot right? The Avengers final fight scenes setting is just trying to stay true to the source material.

"We sure look like Grad Students"

The Amazing Spider-man: I think the choice to cast 20-something actors as teenaged Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey was an attempt to be comic booky. There may be a Hollywood tendency to cast distractingly old actors to play teenagers, perhaps out of a shortage of actual teenage actors with the skill, reputation, or schedule necesary to pull off a tent pole film. I'll concede it's also possile that the studio thought the actors' inherent Peter Parkerness and Gwen Stacey-tude made up for any age issues. But the choice of Andrew Garfield (28) and Emma stone (23) has nothin to do with these studio politicky or creative choices. Instead casting older actors is a tribute to comic book artists tendency to draw teens, especially girls, with adult proportions. I mean, If you look at the comics where Spider-Man was actually in highschool, Peter and Gwen already looked like young adults. So yeah, Amazing Spider-Man is an unexpected tribute to comics art.

The Dark Knight Rises: Gotham is a city of deserted streets for the vast majority of the movie. Is this pragmatic film making designed to cut the costs of many extras? Nope. It's clearly an attempt to mimic the visual tone of comics where the art team minimizes background characters for efficiency.

There you have it, three comic book movies with three questionable comic motifs included. Here's to faithfulness to the original material.

Missed Marvel

Or how The Avengers movie missed a great opportunity to introduce Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel

I really enjoyed The Avengers movie: it was a big fun comic book rendered into film that managed to be smart (enough), funny, and very very charming. Joss Whedon and all involved have my undying thanks.

It should be noted we are going to SPOILER town.¹

Despite how much I enjoyed The Avengers, one nit-picky thing about the movie still kind of bothers me. It isn't Ironman throwing a nuclear weapon at alien invaders or the alien invaders all collapsing enmasse upon the closing of the wormhole thing. It's that they failed to capitalize on the stupid number of chances they had to introduce Carol Danvers, the woman who gets alien Kree warrior powers (through whatever means) and becomes, in her current iteration, Captain Marvel.

A key part of the Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel mythos is that she was a fighter pilot before the accident/magguffin that granted her super powers. The Avengers movie took place on a Helicarrier, basically a flying aircraft carrier, and featured at least THREE speaking parts for pilots.² One of these pilots really ought to have been Carol. A simple female voice (distorted to allow for future casting choices) for one of the pilots could have been a nice Easter Egg for Danvers, instead of the generic southern-esqu pilot voices they used. Even a simple background shot of a woman fighter pilot, or a plane with Carol Danvers stenciled on it would have been awesome.

Of course, in a perfect world, the pilot who dropped in and fired on the Hulk in close quarters, which was a particularly brave, skillful, and  crazy thing to do, was Carol. In my imagination it was her.

Now, the other two pilots I’m thinking of were involved in nuking New York city, so they are questionable choices to be Carol (although, a story beat about her following orders/redeeming herself might be cool?). Also, Marvel may want to make her an astronaut or something for future movies. So you know, I’m willing to give some time on this. My point, though, is that Marvel really needs to have more female movie superheroes, Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) ought to be one of them, and they totally missed a chance to start seeding her into the universe.

1: Population: frowns

2: It’s been a while since I saw the movie, so it may have been four. Although, one of the four I am thinking of was a transport pilot instead of a fighter pilot. I’m 90% sure that three fighter pilots had speaking lines.

The Dark Knight Rises Above Expectations

Or I just saw The Dark Knight Rises and I really liked it.


The Dark Knight Rises lives up to the potential of the previous two movies and is a fitting finale to Christopher Nolan's take on Batman, which is cartoonishly high praise. I try to check my expectations for things-I-am-very-much-looking-forward-to, but despite myself I had a very high set of expectations about the Dark Knight Rises... and the movie exceeded them. I think I liked The Dark Knight more (Heath Ledger's take on the Joker was epic)... but the fact I even have to think about it speaks to the quality of The Dark Knight Rises. It's a VERY GOOD movie. It's VERY GOOD Batman.


A few things occurred to me while watching the movie, and while I am sure that the majority of them have already been written about elsewhere, I *just* saw the movie and am excited enough to ramble them off anyway. My thoughts after the cut.


*SPOILERS*

Amazing Spider-Man is neither Amazing nor Spider-Man

Or a brief discussion on the intrinsic flaws of Amazing Spider-Man

Amazing Spider-Man isn’t a bad movie. The broad strokes of the story can be followed, the character’s motivations are clear enough, and the actors do a pretty good job bringing the characters to life. There are a few great moments in the film and some of the departures from Spider-Man dogma they presented were pretty clever.  At no point in this movie was I infuriated.

Amazing Spider-Man also isn’t a particularly good movie. The plot overall felt very unoriginal. If you saw Spider-Man, the Sam Rami film, you pretty much saw a bigger, campier and Spider-Manier film adaptation of Spider-Man with a similar collection of plot beats.  In fact, much of Amazing Spider-Man is an origin retread so a third of the movie is almost literally the same as Rami's Spider-Man. It also felt very… by the numbers? Things happened because the genre demands it without a lot of substance or explanation. I’d go so far as to argue that whole plot threads of the movie rely on our prior knowledge and expectations to make sense.¹ So, while Amazing Spider-Man never made me go all geek-hulk, it didn’t really illicit any positive emotional reactions either. I’ve heard the whole Spider-meh joke, and I buy into that.

But there is more to my apathetic reaction to this film than its kind of lackadaisical take on the character. In my opinion Amazing Spider-Man is further brought down by two key general problems: it gets the soul of Spider-Man wrong and it makes ham-fisted attempts to tell instead of show. My analysis after the cut.

It should be noted that after the cut is going to be *SPOILER* rich… so go on at your peril.