Personally, I don't think it's about adapting games (Off-Topic)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, May 12, 2016, 15:25 (2914 days ago) @ Blackt1g3r
edited by Cody Miller, Thursday, May 12, 2016, 15:34

Harry Potter became decent movies because the story was simple enough that adapting it was very straightforward. Other movies (like Starship Troopers) typically fail to understand the original well enough to do anything decent with it (the book was more about military service, politics, and futuristic weapons technology - the movie? pretty much just violence?).

Wrong. The film version of Starship Troopers was actually brilliant, precisely because it took the opposite stance on the book's themes and ridiculed it.

After the scene with the knife I knew it was great. In the scene a recruit asks why they learn to use knives when we have guns and nukes. In the book, there's a long speech about the use of controlled violence and who is responsible for that control. In the movie, it's like NOPE! We learn how to use knives because you can't hit the nuke button if your hand is pinned to the wall!

It's not that there was a lack of understanding of the source material. Verhoeven just thought the source was stupid. Because he'd experienced fascism first hand in his own lifetime, you can see why he'd ridicule the idea.