Review of Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) by Pete L — 06 Jan 2013

"Here's to the dead and to the next man to die!".

Doesn't have much in terms of a story or a solid script, yet it still manages to be a decent Action/Sci-fi.

Premise: The Federation/Arachnid Empire war rages on. After a battle at the asteroid base Fort Casey, a star ship called the Alesia carrying a platoon of Mobile Infantry soldiers is sent to investigate a ship named the John A. Warden after communications with the ship have failed. It was last seen leaving Fort Casey with Minister Carl Jenkins shortly before the fort's destruction. Johnny Rico enlists the help of his old girlfriend Carmen Ebanez who is also the former captain of the Warden and Major Henry 'Hero' Varro, the disgraced former commander of Fort Casey. But upon arriving at the ship, the team discovers something so sinister it could turn the tides of war or put Earth itself in jeopardy.

Directed by animator and production designer Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) and written by videogame and cartoon screenwriter Flint Dille (Diablo III), Invasion offers up some great action scenes and sub-par storytelling. This is in fact a sequel to Paul Verhoeven's 1997 Starship Troopers and it's two straight to DVD sequels even though the characters look nothing like they do in the live action versions nor are they voiced by any of the original actors, although Casper Van Dien who portrayed Johnny Rico in two of the movies and Edward Neumeier who wrote the trilogy did serve as executive producers. It's very similar to Robert A. Heinlein's novel, well from what I've read of it, unlike the previous three which only had elements of the original source material. The action sequences are the best part of the movie. There are scenes that couldn't be done with conventional live action. Many the characters are surprisingly well developed I didn't expect much in terms of development, but there are some characters that do change over the course of the movie. Yes there are some stereotypical characters, heck even the hero of the movie is named "Hero", but stuff like that can be expected of a straight-to-DVD movie. Fans of the first will enjoy the dialogue exchanges between Rico and Ebanez. It is clear that the makers of this wanted to expand on how the war affected the relationship between the two. The problem is that there isn't enough of them. The computer animation is great, especially when it comes to the face models and body movements. But there are certain points in the movie where it isn't rendered completely and seems stiff and these typical errors can be found in videogames, which the entire movie should have been. It sort of seems unrendered in a few of the battle sequences (but is completely rendered when CGI nudity is present.)As for the animated gore, it isn't that bad. Another thing about the animation that really bothered me was the lack of individuality in the soldiers' armor. The only difference between the armor is the name of the wearer stenciled on the front in small letters. This makes it hard to figure out who lived and who died in the many different bug encounters. The main problems lay in the script. The story is a mess, from the clichéd plot outline in which a team is sent in to find out what went wrong with a ship and getting much more than they bargained for to a cheesy and laughably bad plot twist towards the end. Now I love sci-fi movies and am willing to suspend my belief for a lot of elements in the genre, but the twist was just too ridiculous. Still despite these errors, it still manages to be a pretty good action movie. To me it's the second best movie in the four-movie series. I think passing up live action for computer animation is the right way to go. For example 3: Marauder had a budget of nine million and the final product looked sub-par with terrible effects. With that I really wouldn't mind seeing another animated ST movie. All in all Fans of the franchise will love it, but for people who have no knowledge whatsoever will probably see it as a waste of time. Total Score: 6.3/10.