Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

September 19, 2008

Rated: R Runtime: 105 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The 1997 Starship Troopers has spawned a 1999 animated series, a 2004 straight-to-DVD Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, and now this 2008 straight-to-DVD Starship Troopers 3: Marauder.

Starship Troopers 2 was a pretty low-budget outing; surrounded by bug aliens, the soldiers retreated into a fortress and the rest of the movie became somewhat ALIENesque.

This time around, either they had a bigger budget, or they really stretched it filming in South Africa. The sets for the human base are pretty impressive, and the CGI is comparable to the theatrical movie.

Casper Van Dien is back as Johnny Rico. Jolene Blalock (The Vulcan on STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE) also stars.

More importantly, some of the dark humor about the fascist overtones of the Earth government are back from the first movie. Along with the retro-future newsreel footage. Do you want to know more?

Starship Troopers3: Marauder

A military base on a farm planet is attacked. Johnny Rico repels the attack, but, when he punches a superior officer, is sentenced to hang.

Meanwhile, Jolene Blaloch’s ship is forced to set down on a major Bug world.

Rico is sprung to go on a rescue mission.

There’s lots of weird new Bugs.

This movie manages to be a fun science fiction monster movie, with some of the throwback feel of the original movie. And there’s a big dose of political and religious satire.

Also, there’s a nice homage to the original Robert Heinlein novel, with the introduction of the power armor suits (Marauders).

Keeping in mind that a straight-to-DVD movie isn’t going to be equal to a theatrical movie, this is a pretty good third movie, much better than the second one.

Of course, one thing that’s never been explained in any of these three movies is how the alien Bugs travel between different planets. Seems difficult to hold an interstellar war with creatures who have no means of space travel. Yet they seem to have infested the whole galaxy!

DVD Extras: A pretty good assortment: 2 commentary tracks, 2 featurettes, and a music video.

Popularity: 64% [?]

Posted by Mack Guffin | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Amanda Donahue, Casper Van Dien, DVD, Horror, Jolene Blalock, SciFi, Stephen Hogan