[oxfordgamers] Starship Troopers-The Motion Picture: Birth of a Classic

    If you never read the book, and you had no reason to associate the title
  with something that resembled a story, Straship Troopers was probably
  fine. Unfortunately, I had read the book and enjoyed it, so the movie was
  awful.
      
    Thanks for taking that one, John. My heart just wasn't it in.
    I know this isn't the Hollywood way, but I really wish that if they want
  to make a movie that has nothing to do with a book, they wouldn't use the
  book's title and author's name on it.

    Have you ever heard how Starship Troopers got made?

    Producer Jon Davison and special effects wiz Phil Tippett wanted to make a 
giant bug movie. They *really* wanted to make one. Giant ants, spiders, 
grasshoppers, roaches--they didn't care, they just wanted to make a high-tech 
"homage" to the creepy-crawlers-on-the-attack films of the 50s. They tried to 
secure re-make rights to "Them!" for a while, but they were locked up tight as 
a drum.

    Although Davison and Tippett had nothing more at this point than a 
hankering to unleash giant bugs somewhere on someone, attaching directors to 
illusory projects can often help them look marginally more real, so they 
concentrated on that next. Davison had a good relationship with director Paul 
Verhoeven (having made Robocop together) and he interested Verhoeven in the 
still mightily vague giant bug movie by citing the raw amount of viscera that 
large mandibles could rip from human bodies.

    With the mad Swede on board, our gang brought in one of the Robocop 
scripters, Ed Neumeier to write up thier fever dream. Bugs! Big bugs! All 
kinds! Mutants of some kind! Destroying cities!

    With a script, a director, and one of the best effects artists in the 
business in tow, Davison went to Tri-Star, where Verhoeven was contracted to 
make his next movie. Davison made his pitch.

    Thumbs down. Quick. Real quick.

    Maybe Davison could get Verhoeven out of his contract (or just persuade 
Tri-Star to let Verhoeven make it somewhere else with the understanding that he 
still owned them another movie)? "Sure," Tri-Star said, "shop *that* baby 
around. Be our guest."

    Davison did.

    Red lights. Everywhere.

    Despondent, the braintrust reconvened to plot thier next move. Obviously 
giant digital bugs ripping people apart was too important an experience not to 
share with the world's movie audiences! But how could they get thier movie made?

    Desperate, Davison started trolling through the gazillions of projects 
marooned in Tri-Star's personal rung of Development Hell. There he found that 
Tri-Star held the movie rights for a famous SF novel about soldiers in powered 
armor fighting a war in outer space against....

    ...against....

    GIANT BUGS!!!!

    Now armed with the offer of actually making Tri-Star some money off this 
old property that had been floating around Hollywood forever (and which 
Tri-Star obtained at another movie company's bankruptcy fire-sale years 
earlier), a property that was also better "attuned" to futuristic SF action vet 
(Robocop and Total Recall) Verhoeven's sensibilities, Davison went back to 
Tri-Star and suddenly the red light became a green one.

    The rest is history.

    And no, I didn't make any of that up. That's really how it happened.

    They are making a direct-to-video sequel, you know. Casper Van Diem was a 
little out of their price range (yes, you read that right), but they did grab 
one of the finalists from American Idol (and no, I'm not making that up, 
either). Phil Tippett is directing it, finally living his dream. As Tippet runs 
his own effects company, they are cutting the flick a deal on the CGI.

    See? Everybody's happy.

    -Ted

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