I guess I'm supposed to care, huh? Today's film is Starship Troopers: Invasion, a CG Sequel to...um, the show, I guess. Right off the bat, continuity is a bit confusing. The original Trilogy- so to speak- appeared to go in some sort of order. It was odd how Rico wasn't in the second film (since they couldn't shell out the money for Casper Van Dien, I guess), which makes his return as a main character in the third film a bit odd. I guess this film follows up from that one, but I've also read that some people consider this to be a follow-up to Roughnecks, the CG Animated show based on the same series. The biggest problem however is the characterization. Even as weird as the third film was, they gave us a pretty decent set of characters to root for/against. In this film, it's a bunch of stock weirdos who spend most of the film in giant, armored suits. What this means is that the action boils down to 'large chunk of metal shoots at large bug' most of the time. I'll get into more of the story and plot details further down, but sufficed to say the plot involves the titular Troopers killing/being killed by the bugs. To find out more, read on...
The CG is good here, but the people have this weird sheen to their skin textures. Add in some guys that just look super-creepy (see the guy on the right) and you have some iffy visuals at times.
In an effort to make us really not care about these stock characters, they can't even get along with each other. That's just brilliant.
On the plus side, boobs. To be fair though, they are CG boobs.
No matter how interesting the plot might be the odd character design and execution is just distracting. Seriously, is that guy a Borg or something?!?
To really ramp up the confusion, Johnny Rico shows up and...what the hell happened to your face?!?
In summary, I don't care, but there are more boobs. The End.
Sorry if you actually liked this. While I'm not the biggest fan of the series, I still went into Starship Troopers: Invasion with an open mind. I've liked CG movies of this kind, be it the Resident Evil ones, the Dragon Age one or others. The problem lies not in the way the story was made, it lies in the story. The film is about a bunch of weird-looking people that I don't like. Beyond that, they fight all of their battles in giant suits that make them mostly anonymous. While any CG movie is ultimately about pixels shooting/fighting/stabbing other pixels, most of them at least made me care. Live-action, CG, stick puppets, hand puppets, whatever- the story has to be good. This story is just about the Troopers killing the bugs. In the sequels, they all introduced new bugs, be it the ass-blasting worms or the like. This one- the bugs from the first movie. That's it. If that's what you want, that's great. I want an actual story to care about- which this film didn't give me. Take us away, CG Typo...
Next up, I rip off Maynard by reviewing a horror film short. It stars Bill Oberst Jr. battling Zombies, so hopefully it will be as good as last time. Stay tuned...
Remember those awesome Marauder Suits with the machine guns and flamethrowers? Well, our guys don't use that. Instead, they turn into the hybrid of Dead Space/Halo characters.
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