There are very few things that I really, truly, utterly despise. Starship Troopers, the mockery^Wmovie, is one of them. Shall I begin? Sit back, put your feet up, and get ready to read my Rant. That's Rant, with a capital. I usually start off with my main bitching point - in the book, Johnny Rico has no female love interest. There are about Four females named in the book - one is Carmen, one is the caiptan of the first ship, the other is the captain of his ship. The last one is his motehr. 'Dizzy Flores' is not a love interest. In fact, Dizzy Flores is *male*, and dies on page Four! That's not the only amazing violation of Heinlein's epic. The book, I might point out, is a huge Rant all in itself - it just has a plot. They slashed the History and Moral Philosophy class to shreds. They slashed Camp Currie to shreds. In the book, the Camp is multiple months of hell in the middle of the prarie. Then a few months of hell in the mountains. Multiple people die - not just the poor dude Johnny got shot in the movie. I mean *scores* of deaths. Not to mention the idiot who got flogged and tossed out on his ass because he punched his superior officer. And the nut who ran off and killed a little girl. In the movie, Johnny gets someone to pull off their helmet in a live-fire exercise, and the poor dude gets his brains blown out by the quite female Dizzy. In the book, Johnny's mistake is a little harder to understand, and punished quite the same. He tossed a fake nuke without looking through his scope, and Zed caught him at it. Whoops - Johnny got Administrative Punishment of five lashes - and get this - this was the highest punishment anyone recieved without getting thrown out. Nobody was ever tossed out in the movie, though they make a big deal of it in the book. Not to mention the suits. Oh, that's the first thing everyone gripes about. The power suits were, in Heinleins's own words, "Half of what made [the MI] Mobile Infrantry." Of course, in the book, a lot is made of their training and construction. In the movie - gone. Oh, and what happened to OCS? Johnny goes from Grunt to #1 in five seconds. In the book, there is a big deal about him registering, etc, meeting his dad - oh, that, too. In the book, they didn't live in South America - they lived in the middle of the USA. His mom was merely visiting relatives in Buenos Aires when the rock hit. I don't think Doogie Howser came from Argentina, either. And don't even get me started on the sex. The two missions were horribly screwed over, as well. The mission the book starts out on isn't even a Bug planet. It's the Bugs' allies - and that's the mission Dizzy gets toasted on. The mission on Klendathu is just... well, have I used up my quota of 'torn to shreds' 'screwed over' and 'just plain WRONG' yet? The plans, the manouvers, the fact that Johnny's a Third Lieutenant and not in the chain of command, the majesty of the landscape and the glow of a smoking hot size-Four crater... Gone! It makes you want to weep. There's a lot more that I can say. But you can find a lot of it at http://www.sff.net/people/DoyleMacdonald/r_startro.htp - an excellent review. Err, rant. Err, review. You get the point. Anyway, if you had the bad luck to be subjected to the movie, I can only recommend reading the book to counteract the horror.