Review of Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) by David F — 26 Jan 2009

What a disappointment. I LOVE the original Starship Troopers. I love the whole WWII attitude set in a sci-fi movie. I love its gung-ho attitude, the amazing visual effects, and the whole over-the-top nature of the whole thing.

The direct-to-video sequel "Hero Of The Federation" was a darker, creepy haunted house movie that still delivered on the action, gore, and gratuitous female nudity. The new dtv sequel "Marauder" delivers only on the gore and nudity.

Gone is the fun of the first, or the atmosphere of the second. Every line of dialouge is stilted and woodenly delivered. The visual effects, except for a couple of shots, are not even comparable to a Playstation game, and worst of all.

..the best performance in the movie is from Casper Van Dien, who is in the movie far less than you'd expect. The story is, believe it or not, very heavy on religion. Human religion, and bug religion.

Yep. It tries to be deep, but comes of laughingly bad. Cute non-actress Marnette Patterson is at the center of the whole religious quagmire, and while she's good to look at, she's hard to listen to.

Jolene Blalock doesn't fare much better. Her character starts out as a tough starship captain, and is reduced to a crying mess who must become a "believer". Worst of all is Stephen Hogan as a singing Federation Sky Marshall who becomes the movies biggest religious nut.

The guy should be arrested for overacting. The movie builds up to the introduction of the "Marauder" weapon, but it's used for about 2 minutes in the movie, and never really does much. The poor script really surprises me because it was written by Edward Neumeier who wrote the first two, and did a good job.

This time he directs his own script, and perhaps that's the problem. If there had been a trained director helming this movie, he could possibly have made the script work, and coached his actors better.

Direct to video movies, especially ones controlled by the people who created the franchise, can be extremely good (see the Tremors series), but here they fail miserably. It feels rushed, and looks like it was made for about $5.

I'm sure there will be a fourth entry, and I'm sure I'll see it. But hopefully next time it's the bugs that get burned instead of the viewer.