jgnfld wrote:McGuiness wrote:...
"Ender's Game" was much more about finding and nurturing those talents in children who had the intelligence and flexibility to learn those skills and then achieve the symbiosis of becoming a true team to fight those battles. Ender would have failed without Bean there to point out enemy weaknesses and to act as his second in command when he collapsed, so although Ender got all the screen time, victory would have been impossible without Bean.
The movie "Starship Troopers" was despised by critics, who thought it showed a completely fascist state, when the government was based on people being required to serve a tour in the military in order to have the right to vote. That resulted in a government that could certainly organize and fight an interstellar war, but Hollywood botched it badly. (Where were the mech suits? They didn't show up until the THIRD movie, which nobody saw because it was a straight to DVD release.)
2 quibbles:
1. re. Ender: I'm not sure "nurturing" is quite the correct thought. "Developing through any means necessary and cynically using" is closer.
2. re. Starship Troopers movie: The state depicted in the movie was pretty fascistic. Ctitics were quite correct to see that.
Considering the director/producer admitted that they TRIED to mock Heinlein's vision by making the Federation "over-the-top" fascist... shocking that they succeeded.