5th Blog for "Starship Troopers" by Robert A. Heinlein

                                                                                 Vs.

For my final blog, I will compare the book and the movie. The book was written in 1959 and the movie was made in 1997. Now that's a pretty big time differences and there must be different historical contexts that might have influenced both works. But it doesn't seem that movie really changed much because of historical context, that doesn't mean it is not different.

To start off, the book deals a lot more about the philosophy of war and combat through a soldier's perspective. Sure, in the movie Johnny is a soldier but the movie likes to satirize America's military aggressiveness and recruitment tactics. In the movie, the Federation runs many promotional videos for joining into the military and serve which in the book the Federal recruiters were hesitant in recruiting high school kids. The Federation runs many ads in the movie that glorify the role of the soldier because they are "Doing their part". The aggressiveness of the Federation against the Bugs is seen in both the book and the movie. I believe that this is an allusion to our American military. Why? Well, the Federation goes into war with the Bugs when they start to expand into Bug territory, taking away their land. The Bugs only attacked as a defense against the invasive humans much like Americans in the olden days when they took over the lands of the Native Americans and the Mexicans.

Lastly, as expected, the movie is not an exact representation of the book. The movie adds a more in length scene of what it was like for Johnny in high school. The book just glossed over his high school days for a few pages. One thing that is missing from the movies is the there are no soldiers in power armor or soldiers making combat drops in drop pods. They wear army fatigues with ballistic armor and a helmet. Also, men and women are intermixed in the army ranks in the where in the book it wasn't allowed in the Mobile Infantry. I'm taking a guess that it was like that in the book because females were much more suited as pilots but not only that because in the 60s, there were not many women in combat roles in the American military. Things were different in 1997 so they must have felt like they should mix men and women together.

Both are pretty enjoyable works. I would recommend reading the book first before watching the movie so you can see the differences much more apparently.