OFF: Starship Troopers and a connection to the Tick

[M Holmes]

Dave Berry writes:

> Thrillers are another genre where several successful films have come
> from books.  I haven't seen many of these, but examples like The Fugitive
> come to mind.
>
> SF though, doesn't do so well.  Why is this?

Some reasons that I can think of:

1) SF sometimes requires viewers to think about a plot and often even to
interpolate plot events from what's made explicit. The average adult has
a mental age of 12 and most visual media deliberately pitch below this.

2) SF is still regarded by many in media circles as "kid's stuff". This
means that SF is pitched below (1).

3) SF doesn't have enough standard props an plotlines which are well
known in the way that those of westerns, detective stories, thrillers
and war stories do and so a lot of time is wasted in goofy explication
of the plot and props. In recent memory this has destroyed every Star
Trek film except 4 (in which the plot is basically a play on the ST view
of the punk era) and 7 which is IMHO the only reasonable ST film yet
made.

It also demolished Doctor Who and The Saint since in both, more than
half the film was spent setting up the characters. The Saint wasn't
improved by Val Kilmer's reprise of his Jim Morrison role and it
degenerating into a poor man's James Bond.

4) The sorts of people who go into the production end of media (as
opposed to special effects) are often completely ignorant of science and
unable to understand or appreciate good SF.

> Dave.

FoFP