Recast It!!: Starship Troopers

[KenK]

Now, as I read the Robert Heinlin novel, I can see that Verhoeven and Neumier changed A LOT from it, as they excluded a lot of Heinlin's major points about the dangers of a fascist military systerm. I loved the absurdity of not letting a recruit quit training, no matter how insubordinate his behavior became. In the movie quitting was as easy as filling out a form(or shooting a follow recruit's head off! :D ).

Anyway, I look at some of the cast, and I've always been baffled by three characters in particular: Johnny Rico, Dizzy Flores, and Carmen Ibanez. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of hispanics you could easily mistake for garden veriety gringos, but c'mon! Denise Richards?!? Dina Meyer?!? Casper Van Dien?!?!? That's the whitest, Aryan, nazi posterboy name for the whitest, aryan, nazi posterboy-looking fool since Dolph Lungdren started makin' movies!And they were all pushin' thirty when they were supposed to be high school graduates! Dina had just played a college professor on 90210! Anyway, here are some substitutions:

Johnny Rico: Jay Hernadez
Carman Ibanez: Jessica Alba (or Rosario Dawson)
Dizzy Flores: Michelle Rodriguez
Carl Jenkins: Greg Stults(7th Heaven)
Ace Leivey: Brendan Fehr
Xander Barkalow: James Marsden
Sergeant Zim: Clancey Brown(I could never replace him!)
Lieutenant Razchack: Dennis Quaid

[Chou Blaster]

Well THe Movie verison made the Humans seem Facist.

As in the book Joining the Service wa sdiscouraged.. And there way more jobs than MI and Navy.

Also the power armor.

And in the book Dizzy was a man. (Women were in Navy, becaus ebette rpilots, while men fought in MI. THey made Dizzy a woman for a made up romance situation.)


Also Carl, Rico's friend was KILLED. And was a lab jockey.. Not some psi field agent.


Seirously they took liberities on SST.

[BoosterBronze]

I'm pretty sure casting perfect aryan poster-boys was part of what Verhoeven (sp?) was going for with his creepy "Cheer for the guys who are a lot like Nazis" social satire.

The reason I love this movie is that it sticks that satire in a pot with a teen drama and arguably the best sci-fi action move ever made and stirs it up.

While there are many talented Hispanic actors working in Hollywood now (even quite a bit more than in 1997), I still think all those casting choices were on the mark for the movie Verhoeven made.

[KenK]

Oh, I love the movie, but I'm just being speculative, you know how we do! I didn't mind them making Dizzy a man and playing up a romance between her and Rico. And Razchak died at the beginning of the book, as did Dizzy Flores. Razchak wasn't even the one with the cybernetic arm. In the book I believe his name was Dubois. In the book, Breckinridge did get his arm broken taking on Zim, but he didn't get his head blown off like in the movie(still died, though). They definitely changed a lot of stuff.

[SnowTrooper]

I thought the original was fine how it was.