Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008)

Number Rolled: 29

Movie Name/Year: Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008)

Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Length: 104 minutes

Rating: R

Director: Edward Neumeier

Writer: Edward Neumeier

Actors: Casper Van Dien, Jolene Blalock, Stephen Hogan, Boris Kodjoe, Amanda Donohoe, Marnette Patterson, Danny Keogh, Stelio Savante, Cecile Breccia, Garth Breytenbach

Starship Troopers, the first one (made in 1997), is one of my favorite campy movies. The graphics aren’t great and the acting is a little B-movie, but the storyline is pretty damn good and so is the script. In fact, I like the first movie so much that I’ve been terrified to watch the two that followed (if there are more, I just plain don’t want to know about it). I’ve heard the second one is pretty much soft-core porn, but I haven’t seen it – so take that with a grain of salt. Doesn’t matter, Netflix currently only streams the third one.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Starship Troopers storyline, it is based around an intergalactic war of humans vs. super alien bugs. That makes it sound like a creature feature, but it really isn’t. The first and third movies in the series follow the life and career of the main character, Johnny Rico, played by Casper Van Dien. The first movie manages to catch a balance between the action, drama and even romance that occurs. In this movie, however, that is not the case.

I think I just sat through 104 minutes of the actors trying to play out a script that had mostly writer-vomit on it. It was forced. The first forty-five minutes or so, there was a lot of action, with no base or reason or storyline to it. This was followed by some very, VERY, forced romance and the entire movie ended with a trip to the church to hear some preaching. I don’t mind religion in a movie, but in this one it was seemingly from out of nowhere and completely forced; even though the religion didn’t come in until the last half hour, I also find myself thinking it was supposed to be the main object of the film. Also, though they attempted to make the graphics of the bugs better in this movie, I found the effort actually made it seem less realistic.

The one interesting part was the utter morbidity of the deaths. I found myself not caring about any of the characters. Instead I was just hoping for, and even looking forward to, their very gruesome deaths…. and the end of the movie. No joke, I checked how long I had left about nine times. It was brutal. Save yourself.

Overall Opinion – 1.5/5