I only read it for the first time over the last few months.
Debating on the prequels or sequels but will perhaps wait for those.
Mediocre show. Even when I don’t compare it with the books (the serie is inspired by them at best), I am left with a bad script and mediocre acting. Visuals are good 
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Unfortunately, I am in this camp also. Watched Ep.2 last night and started checking how long to go on the ATV remote. Watching it (and will probably finish it) out of a sense of duty to Asimov (weird huh?)
I noticed within myself last night there is no connection to any of the characters and, what is the actual plot? (Because I have read the novels multiple times, I know the overall plot, I don’t think the series has created a sound, dare I say, foundation…)
So far: B-
To each his own. I found both episodes absolutely spellbinding, can’t wait for the ep3. Read all seven books years ago, and re-read the 1st of the main trilogy before watching. I thought the changes from the book additive to the story, considering how sparse the “details” of the book text was. Essential given the wider audience necessary to make the series successful, otherwise it would never have been made.
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Absolutely agree! 
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Actually I dare to disagree. During the weekend after episode 2 I reflected on what happened and how it related to a major theme of the trilogy despite being a shocking departure. Saying more would involve spoilers.
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We rewatched the 1984 Dune movie recently to get ready for the new one. Having read the Dune novels, Dune is like a place I visited years ago, and any movie takes me back to my memories of being there.
But the creation of the Dune universe took a vast amount of world building, and condensing all that into the 1984 movie seemed to result in “son avenges father’s assassination.” So much of the dialog was whispered rather than spoken, and the costumes and makeup verged on the grotesque.
I can’t wait to see how the new movie compares and contrasts.
What!? That movie is on my Top 5 of all time list. It is so much better than the novel. Paul Verhoeven is just awesome, great satire.
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I really enjoyed the Dune books which I only started reading due to to a rule at high school that said you must have a book to read after lunch break. I grabbed Dune on the way out of the library just so I had a book! Ended up reading them all. So much so that once, when playing scrabble, I used the word “seitch”. Asked what it was by my co-players I answered according to Dune, which they had also read. Lost my turn! 
Dare away! 
I hope I come to enjoy it, maybe I’m just becoming a grumpy old man! 
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The movie didn’t make it to my favorites but Verhoeven is fantastic - everything he does has these signature twists of liquid black humor - like the ice pick at the end of Basic Instinct.
It totally missed the whole point of Starship Troopers, that the right to vote and decide on life or death issues ought to depend on your willingness to subsume self for the good of the society as a whole. It also missed that age doesn’t matter in whether you should be allowed to make those decisions or not.
About the only thing the movie got right was the nod to equality between sexes in the military. At the time of the book, and for the audience, it was a big stretch to have fighter pilots being primarily women in the books and the movie quite rightly extended that to include the cap troopers too. The whole part of the book about OCS and the chain of command details were never even mentioned and they are some of the most important parts of the book.
Starship Troopers the book was NEVER meant to be satire and as such seeing it turned into a glorified and inadequate action movie was horrible to watch. I love action movies but the Starship Troopers book was so much more that never got discussed.
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I used to love playing Scrabble and in the group I played with if you could prove proper use of a word from any book, fiction or not, and explain it’s meaning without resorting to looking it up and then provide the reference (which would be so much easier now as you could google the reference after the meaning discussion) it was a legal word. Made Scrabble far more fun for me.
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Theory (not original to me but I have found it to be true): David Lynch fans, who expect Lynchg’s “Dune” to be a Lynch movie, love it. Dune fans, who expect a “Dune” movie, do not love it.
Corollary (original to me): Verhoeven fans love the “Starship Troopers” movie. Heinlein fans, who expect a movie based on the book, do not.
As with Verhoeven and “Starship Troopers,” David Lynch was not familiar with the novel “Dune,” he didn’t get it, and he hated the most important parts of it. In the novel, the Fremen win because they are intimate with the desert. Lynch discarded that because he didn’t want to make his movie into (he has said) a Kung Fu movie in the desert. Also, another major theme about the novel is that when religion and politics ride together, the results are horrible. Paul tries to resist that destiny but then surrenders to it. His rise to galactic emperor is presented as a tragedy in the novel, but in the movie, it is a happy ending.
Despite all that, I have one friend who loved the novel and also loved the movie. “Somebody took the trouble to visualize the novel I’d seen in my mind,” she said. “But the movie is stupid,” I said. “Don’t care,” she said. “But,” I said, “I visualized the Lansraad houses as being medieval European, whereas the movie made them Chinese.” “Don’t care,” she said. “And I pictured the Baron as a lazy gourmand not a pimple-pinata.” “Don’t care,” my friend said.
My friend is wise. She enjoyed the movie, whereas I did not … the first time I saw it. The second time I saw it, more recently, I just went into it expecting to enjoy it and I liked it well enough. I mean, it wasn’t great, but it had its merits.
In other news: I have been thinking about the question of whether to see the movie/TV show or read the book first—for any TV show or movie based on a book or book series—and decided it is a question that does not come up in real life. In real life, we decide on books and movies/TV separately.
Case in point from my current reading: I was looking for a novel to read, and picked up “Lonesome Dove,” by Larry McMurtry. About 100 pages in, I remembered there was a classic TV miniseries based on the book, and decided to watch it after I’m done with the book. At no time did I ever say, “I think I will read or watch ‘Lonesome Dove.’ Which will I consume first.” I was looking for a book, and found this one. Maybe if things had gone differently I would have stumbled over the series when I was looking for something to watch, and watched that first.
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Verhoeven lived trough Nazi occupation of Holland and he didn’t like the fascist ideals of the Terran Federation. But Hollywood bosses wanted a bad ass action movie without politics. So Verhoeven delivered a simple blockbuster you could enjoy and forget. But at the same time, between the wooden actors and simple one liners, the movie was masterfully directed (great music as well).
The whole movie looked like a propaganda made by the Terran Federation and was heavily inspired by Nazi Germany (uniforms for example). Individuality was suppressed, people had no real choice and the propaganda was ubiquitous. Young people were easily manipulated against the will of their parents and used as cannon fodder.
So Verhoeven managed to do a decent action blockbuster that was an actual social satire (especially the manipulation of youth through propaganda is very on point today) and showed Hollywood a middle finger.
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How about the more general theory (NOT original to me) that if you read the book first, you’re likely to have difficulty enjoying the movie. If you see the movie first, you likely won’t get around to the book.
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Never ever treat a book and a movie as a pair, they’re two different form of art. One can be good and the other not, or vice versa. And there is no rule that the movie must be adherent to the book (Blade Runner and Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep comes to mind, but there are a lot of examples). And since usually the book comes before the movie, one one side you have an “original product” (as it’s author intended it) and on the other side you have a “second hand product” (which has been interpreted by the director).
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I am for sure in that category.
And on the book/movie issue. I generally hate most movies made from books because I have usually read the books first. I expect the movie to at least cover the salient points of the books or it’s a failure.
Sometimes true but not always. If I know that there is a book and a movie or TV series that I haven’t read/watched I do generally decide whether this is going to be a visual entertainment package or a written one and watch/read accordingly. And I rarely will go read/watch the other format/incarnation once I’ve picked what I want except when it’s a favorite author and one I really do want to see on the screen. Like Heinlein or Herbert or Asimov and if it ever gets done, McCaffrey. (We’re not Desert Weyr for nothing!)
For a good adaptation of a Heinlein book watch Destination Moon from 1950. And for a good Dune version I like the John Harrison miniseries with William Hurt in it. 2000 I think is when it came out. I have it on DVD so not sure of the date.
I’d really like to see a properly made version of Herbert’s White Plague if I had to pick one of his books that could be made into a good movie very easily wihtour losing any of it’s special features.
Hellstrom’s Hive would be interesting only because it was originally a movie that Herbert turned into a book and it might be fun to see it returned as a movie with the better special effects technology we have now.
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Exactly! And that is most certainly NOT what the book was about AT ALL!
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Verhoeven didn’t really want to do an adaptation. That is usually not a good idea but I think the movie is great in its own right and it is not really something you should directly compare to the book. Movie is another art form and in this particular case you have 2 quite independent works.
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