10 Terribly Unfaithful Adaptations That Made Seriously Great Movies

10. Starship Troopers (1997)

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The funny thing about 1997's Starship Troopers is that director Paul Verhoeven didn't even read the book past the first couple of chapters, which explains why this satire-clad and largely ironic take on Robert A. Heinlein's seminal sci-fi novel barely resembles its source material. The first draft of the script was even written before the rights to the book were even optioned, which says a lot about how much "respect" the people involved in this adaptation had for Heinlein's words (who was dead by then). Thankfully Verhoeven's movie managed to transcend the original novel. And I don't meant that it was better, but it was different and so damn entertaining that it kind of didn't matter: Verhoeven saw this as an opportunity to unleash his filmmaking fetishes and just ran with it. Heinlein's book appears to promote ideas like fascism and military rule, whereas Verhoeven's movie sends up those concepts in scathing, incredibly unsubtle satire. In a lot of ways, Starship Troopers exists as a ridicule or send-up of the novel on which it's based. It's not tough to see why audience were confused about the intended tone of the movie back in '97, then.
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