Pretty Good

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Casper Van Dien must have been offered plenty of loot to reprise his role as John Rico from Starship Troopers. He's now in the officer ranks and still a role model for the infantry troopers fighting the arachnid invasion.Starship Trooper 3: Marauder finds things have changed in the Federation and on the arachnid side. The original one ended with the capture of a giant brain bug as it became obvious those bugs definitely were using some kind of military strategy. But it's only the tip of the iceberg so to say.Rico is in a nice jackpot as he's blamed for a huge battle loss and scheduled to be hung. But he has friends in high places and they need him for a rescue mission of a sky admiral.There's also a growing peace movement that gets kind of violent as peace movements sometimes can. As for the rest all I can say is the bugs are learning quite a bit about what makes humankind tick.Van Dien is still as heroic as ever as John Rico, perhaps a bit wiser with age. None of the others who played characters who survived reappear in this. Might have made for greater continuity if they had.Unlike the first sequel the second paid a bit more attention to the society that formed because of the bug invasion and some of the inevitable flaws in a militarist based society. It's also got a lot of good action.Nowhere a patch on the original but far better than number 2.

Johnny Rico is on a agrarian planet Roku San where the Bugs are attacking. For various PR reasons, Anoke, Beck, and Dix come to the planet. The Federation personnel become embroiled in a bar fight while hoping to relax with a drink.The Federation mounts a defence against a Bug attack, but sustain a bad defeat. The few who escape the scene of the defeat, include Rico, Beck, Anoke, and Dix. The ship seems to make a clean get away, but they are forced out of hyperspace. The ship is critically damaged by plasma streams sent from the Bugs. The higher ups escape and some return to Earth.Johnny gets the blame for the failure at Roku San. The calls for help from the Sky Marshall and Captain Beck are classified by Admiral Phid. Dix saves Johnny from being hanged, and uses him to mount a raid to rescue Anoke and Beck. Phid files a false video that Dix and Sky Marshall Anoke were killed by a bombing done by religious a opposition group.Sky Marshall Anoke was being controlled by a Bug brain, so his jump into religious fervour eventually made a bit more sense. He thought of the Bug brain as God, and obeyed it, as we saw in the Roku San incident.Will Johnny's group rescue the Sky Marshall and the Captain? Will the truth come out? Will Phid be stopped? ------Scores------Cinematography: 6/10 There was too much CGI, not all of which was good. The regular photography plus green screen was not so bad.Sound: 5/10 Woof. Voices often sound hollow. Incidental music was not effective, but was irritating. The leveling of the sound was incredibly poor.Acting: 6/10 Stephen Hogan and Boris Kodjoe were totally worthless. Van Dien, Donohoe, and Blalock were considerably better.Screenplay: 4/10 This wretched script makes the original Starship Troopers look articulate and coherent. The political satire is laid on too thick: hangings without trials, arrests without cause, strongly enforced double standards (I can hang you, but you cannot insult me). There is talk of advanced weaponry, followed by footage of trench warfare, so the advanced weaponry consists of shovels. The interruptions for the Federation propaganda are more than a bit too much. Given the willingness to kill anyone for any reason, one wonders why the Federation did not just explode every Bug infested planet. This is explained in the original book; in this movie, not so much.

This movie and Starship Troopers followed the book very closely. However in the book Rico's parents were killed in the first movie. In the book Rico's father lived and joined the mobile infantry to help fight the bugs. The term see you on the bounce in marauder is used throughout the book. I know certain reviewers were very critical about the script and the actors and stated they just scraped off them off the street. Some questioned why others from the original movie were not in marauder. Well dizzy got killed off, Zim was doing highlander and Carmen Ibanez was a bond girl playing Dr. Christmas Jones with Pierce Brosnan. The actors in marauder are professional and the script was more than adequate. Some people were turned off by the religious aspect of the movie. But how else can you explain Anoke's relationship with the bugs and the brain bug from planet p.

I loved the first movie, but the two sequels were a criminal waste of film. The biggest problem as noted by other reviewers is that these two sequels have strayed so far from the vision of Robert Heinlein. There were a few moments (some of the action sequences) in the 3rd movie which were enjoyable. However, the religious overtones that permeated throughout the movie (particularly toward the end) pretty much destroyed this movie. Unfortunately I wasted good money purchasing the movie. However, I no longer own the movie, because I decided that since I have no intention of ever watching it again there was no reason to rob my trash receptacle of its rightful property.