Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

In the front-line of the Second Bug War in planet Roku San, the charismatic Sky Marshal Omar Anoke (Stephen Hogan) arrives with his assistant General Dix Hauser (Boris Kodjoe) in an starship piloted by his fiancée Captain Lola Beck (Jolene Blalock) and they are welcomed by their friend and hero of Planet P Colonel Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien). While Anoke inspects the facility protected by fences, Dix, Lola and Rico go to a bar to celebrate their reunion. However, Dix has an incident with the local farmers and arrests Rico for insubordination; meanwhile, there is a shut down in the defense fences and the bugs break into the facility. Lola and Anoke escape in the starship, but it crashes in Planet OM-1 and Lola, Anoke, Chief Bull Brittles (Stelio Savante), Jingo Ryan (Cokey Falkow), Dr. Wiggs (Danny Keogh) and the religious flight attendant Holly Little (Marnette Patterson) save themselves in a rescue pod. When Dix discovers that Admiral Enolo Phid (Amanda Donohoe) has no intention to rescue the survivors in the Arachnid Quarantine Zone, he assigns Rico in the Marauder Program to lead a squad with six other troopers to rescue Lola and Anoke.

"Starship Troopers 3: Marauder" is a reasonable entertaining, with good and also awful points. The good ones are the ironic Federal Network, with manipulative messages and brainwash of the citizens; Jolene "T'Pol" Blalock; and the story as a whole that is not bad. However, there are many stupid lines and dialogs; annoying characters and situations (the attitudes and behavior of the flawed Dix is totally incoherent, Holly Little and Jingo are irritating and Anoke is silly); and this exaggerated subplot of religion is never funny and does not work. The special effects are only reasonable and the set decoration is good. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Tropas Estelares 3" ("Starship Troopers 3")

This movie could have been so good, to bad they screwed it up.

I like the idea of the Marauder Project but the CGI animating it is very weak. So is the bug animation. Even the first movie looked better than this one and that was made in '97. I would say the CGI in this movie is on the same level as Robocop 2 which was made 18 years ago.

The story is consistent and entertaining except for the last few minutes. I liked the heavy combats, the mysteries and the political twists. It was interesting to see how a few men in power can manipulate the "truth" if you give up democracy. For the most part the movie kept the tone and the intensity of the first one but then they had to ruin it with the religious crap and cheesy love scenes at the end.

My opinion is that they took it too far with the bugs. For example with the exploding grenade bugs that you see in the first few minutes. Also the bugs' strength is their short lifespan hence their ability to evolve quickly. So, in my opinion this is in direct contradiction with the big bugs that lives for a really long time. But I'm no biologist and this is not a documentary movie.

You can notice that I did not mention Starship Troopers 2. I don't know why people embarrass themselves with movies like ST2 (or even ST3) if they don't have the budget to make a decent movie. ST2 showed just a bunch of amateur actors reading script from the autocue.

So to sum it up I don't regret the 100 minutes spent watching the movie but it will definitely not go into my personal collection.

It's obvious to me that the makers of Starship Troopers 2 simply did not understand the original Starship Troopers movie. Starship Troopers was a great social satire, and is more relevant today than it ever was before. The makers of Starship Troopers 2 thought it was just a dumb war action flick and created their sequel based on that assumption.

But Starship Troopers was not a movie about a war; it was a movie about the society which waged this war.

The people who made Starship Trooper 3 did not make the same mistake. They understood the appeal and the message of Starship Troopers, ignored the abysmal second part, and made a true sequel, even expanding on a lot of the themes started in the original.

If you liked Starship Troopers but did not like the second part, give this one a try (and if you haven't seen part 2, simply assume that Starship Troopers 2 never happened and go straight to 3). You will not be disappointed.

I am probably re-iterating the same as everyone else but yes the 1st Starship Troopers was fantastic, the 2nd awful and this is average, the only saving grace being the return of Johnny Rico (van Dein). I suppose it was too much to ask for the return of Denise Richards.

The plot, effects and acting are all pretty average. The movie also ripped off most of the first film with the TV adverts with the line (Do you want to know more) every 5 minutes, Troopers shouting It's a good day to die sir and some of the fight scenes although the cgi was not as good could have been cut directly from the original film.

However its far far far better than the second film which should have never been made. My only disappointment is that if the sequels were not going to be of the same standard as the first film, why bother making them !!!

4/10

The first Starship Troopers was one of the best sci-fi movies around since Robocop and remains one of the top of its genre. The disappointing sequel 'Hero of the Federation' did not do it justice and was a low- point in the series. Starship Troopers 3: Marauder has brought the series back to the quality of the first.

The acting is spot on with Casper Van Dien fitting back into the role of Johnny Rico perfectly and showing a change in the character. Jolene Blalock & Stephen Hogan are perfectly cast in their respective roles.

The plot follows Johnny Rico who ones again tries to stop the Bug invasion. At points the CGI is quite poor but this does not really affect the quality or viewers enjoyment of the film.

Ed Neumeier's direction is perfect for the film and he takes the series in the direction that it should be going. Also featured is the series satirical humour of the first and is surprisingly good for a direct-to- video venture.

I'd be all for a Starship Troopers 4 providing we get the return of Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico.