Bug (Starship Troopers) - Differences Between The Novel and The Film

Differences Between The Novel and The Film

In the novel, it is established that the Bugs have spacecraft, particle beam weapons, and other advanced technology. The book describes them as looking like "a madman's conception of a giant, intelligent spider." The book also reveals that the Bugs see by infrared: though pitch dark to human eyes, the underground corridors of a Bug colony are well lit when viewed by the infrared "snoopers" used by the Mobile Infantry.

The Bugs in the film are portrayed as generally mindless insectoid beings, ruled and organized by an extremely intelligent overmind. However, at the beginning of the film, when Rico and Carmen dissect Arkellian sand beetles, the biology teacher states that the Bugs have millions of years of evolution behind them and are, in the case of survival capability, the perfect species. They have the ability to colonize planets "by hurling their spore into space" and possess a social structure which fits their mental capabilities.

Bug society is based on a caste system in both the films and the book. In the book, the "Worker Caste" and the "Warrior Caste" are both mentally controlled by the "Brain Caste", which works on behalf of the "Queen" of each Bug colony.

Read more about this topic:  Bug (Starship Troopers)

Famous quotes containing the words differences, the and/or film:

    “What we have to do ... is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fracturing our communities.”
    —Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)

    “The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.”
    —Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)