Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation

I watched it several times in the past, probably once over 10 years ago. I hated it back then, coz it looked low-budged and the graphic was too dim. The bugs looked so fake so cheesy. The infected troopers looked like cosplays in Halloween. And the gore effects made me laugh.

Last week I somehow re-watched the whole series again. Yes, the whole series including the CG animation ones. This onetime it's not that bad as before. Trapped within a military outpost might have limited the plot n cinematography, but now I think it quite faithfully reflects the real havoc un that crazy situation. But that sleeping beauty is an exception. Her character is a total nonsense. Why? Just look at her Make-up n her body. It's not a Dior etc fashion show.

Fighting bugs within an outpost is congenitally cool for many military fans. Count this one in n give it a shot. I would recommend it.

Series note: Although this film is something of a train wreck, it would be even worse if one didn't watch the original Starship Troopers (1997) first. The first film is excellent, and will help you figure out what is supposed to be going on in this film.

A group of Starship Troopers becomes stranded while engaged in warfare on a "bug planet". They make it to a mostly abandoned makeshift fort and succeed in holding the enemy at bay outside, only to discover that they may have enemies just as lethal amongst themselves.

Phil Tippet may be a genius with visual effects in other films, but in his first turn as a director, he's made a mess of Starship Troopers 2. Admittedly, it's not a complete loss. I actually ended up giving the film a 5 out of 10, even though that is a rating I usually reserve only for "so bad they're good" films. No, Starship Troopers isn't really good, but at times it threatened to get a 3 out of 10, while the closer it got to the finish line, the more it started seeming like a 7 out of 10 to me. I decided to average it. Keep in mind that in my rating system, a 6 is equivalent to the grade of D.

Oddly, I thought that the script was almost worth a C (or a 7) throughout the film. The biggest problem script-wise, aside from the fact that the tone of this film is completely different than the first (a fact that will turn off many viewers, but for which I wouldn't subtract any points in itself), was that the dialogue is overburdened with pseudo-militaristic gobbledy-gook and there are far too many characters to keep track of and care about. Towards the end, when the film turned more into a horror film than its previous contentment with being a war flick (this one is never really sci-fi), I thought the ideas were actually very good. I'm a huge horror fan, and the horror material worked for me. There was a nice amount of gore and decent suspense.

But those are the positives. Let's get to what the film does wrong. The biggest problems are the cinematography, lighting, and production design. For some reason, the opening scene of the film, which we could say goes on for maybe 40 minutes (far too long), is almost exclusively close-ups. We routinely have a screenful of someone's nose, mouth, or some other body part. Close-ups aren't bad in general, but when that's all a viewer sees for 40 minutes, and in the midst of what's supposed to be a grand-scale war with hundreds or thousands of combatants, it's awful. Everything is also too dark, and when it isn't dark, it's usually too bright, in that Tippet has a light or two pointing directly at the camera. And during fight scenes, we only get to see troopers face-on. We hardly ever see what they're shooting at.

Now, being generous, we might say that the point of all the above is to convey the claustrophobia and chaos of war. But that's being far too generous. The original Starship Troopers conveyed the chaos of war very nicely. In Starship Troopers 2, Tippet is really trying to cover up the fact that they had no budget to build sets, acquire props, hire many cast members, pay for cgi-rendered environments or even matte paintings. There are some cgi-rendered bug aliens (and maybe a couple small things done with mechanicals) and there is one set, but that's about it. Most of the film is poorly lit and backlit so that we can't see that the actors are on a mostly empty soundstage. The close-ups are an attempt to distract our attention from the small, low-budget scale of things. All of these aspects fail miserably. At least until halfway through the film, when we begin to see some cinematography and lighting on the single set that we could call "almost competent".

Even though I wouldn't subtract points for the difference in tone, it is quite a shock if you start watching Starship Troopers 2 expecting anything even remotely resembling the first film. The first film is a clever satire on society and militaristic thinking via its depiction of a future, war-hungry culture. We see clever commentaries on behavioral norms in our culture via different norms depicted in the film. We see funny things that are very similar to our present culture, but that are underscored by their temporal alienation. The first film is an ingenious, fast paced, epic scaled sci-fi/war/horror extravaganza.

This film on the other hand is just about as pedestrian as you can get. Even though the horror material is good once it finally arrives, it isn't exactly groundbreaking. There is no satire here, no cleverness, it's not fast paced, and it's the complete opposite of epic scaled. Even the tongue-in-cheek military/war advertisements shown on a computer-like screen from the first film fall flat here because they're presented more like television commercials with no window dressing or explanation for context.

Starship Troopers 2 isn't a complete failure, but I can't recommend it beyond its curiosity value, or for die-hard horror fans who are slightly masochistic and don't mind sitting through the war material to get to something more interesting. If a Starship Troopers 3 is ever made, more than likely you'll be able to skip this entry. As things stand now, 2 is not at all necessary to the story. This is more like an obscure footnote to the first film, about some long lost troop that no one really cares about. Only the new kind of "monster" may be of any interest.

From the very first frame of this film to the very last, it's completely obvious that it's a B-movie. A modern, low-budget, direct-to-video no less, action-B-movie. As a follow-up to the first, it's very bad. It turns the plot and theme of the first completely around. The plot is lame, and very unoriginal. The acting is horrible; there were times when it felt like a comedy, or a parody of the first. The characters are badly written cliches, derived from war movies and other B-movies. The cinematography is amateurish and lesser than that of the typical level of early film-student test film(believe me, it really is that bad). The director(or possibly the director of photography, or maybe the cameramen) seems to have a fetish for pointless and very quick zooming shots, and there seems to be quite a lot of camera angles that are zoomed much too far in. I also hated a few of the pan shots, but there were not as many as the zoom shots, and they were somewhat far between. The special effects are quite awful, though there were one or two effects that looked decent. The heroism and stereotyping of the main character/hero is ludicrous. I couldn't stop laughing at the scenes where he tries to look heroic. The whole film is quite laughable. The attempts at humor are cringe-worthy, and almost every scene that is supposed to inspire fear, tension or horror, inspired laughter and mockery instead. The dialog is ridiculous, and very badly written. The action is tame and never really intense. The horror elements are derivative of several much better movies, and generally don't work like they're supposed to, for various reasons(bad special effects,bad acting, bad camera angle). I know that this was direct-to-video, low-budget, and was possibly even intended as a B-movie, but come on, you can do better than this. Almost anyone could. I would guess that, given the same budget(about six million dollars, I think), I could have supplied a better, more interesting 90 minute flick. None of the limitations can be used to excuse how bad the film is. Direct-to-video? Please. So was Children of the Corn IV and American Psycho 2, and at least they were somewhat entertaining and much more professionally made. Low budget? Two words: El Mariachi. B-movie? Honestly... there are plenty of much more entertaining B-movies out there. Take Barb Wire, for example. All in all, a pretty bad film, but fans of B-movies might enjoy it. I recommend this only to fans of B-movies, and people who wished the first had been more like a B-movie. Fans of the first should stay away. I don't regret watching this, though. It was good for a laugh, and knowing that it's so bad is better than wondering about it. If you somehow, as a fan of the first, see this movie, try to think of it as comic relief, a spoof of the first. It'll soften the blow. 1/10

I wouldn't say this was a disappointment from the point of view of being a feeble follow up to the original which, satire or not, wasn't *that* great. I would say the disappointment comes more from internal flaws. On the surface this is far better than most DTVs, several aspects of the production cleverly mask the film's low budget, and initially you might be forgiven for thinking it was a theatrical release. Unfortunately four fairly major flaws quickly arise: 1) The film is very boring 2) It doesn't make a lot of sense 3) Even if it was interesting and made sense it would be hard to tell because the camera wont stay still for five seconds 4) If the camera stayed still for five seconds you might not notice because the lighting is so poor.

So, not really worth bothering with then.

This weak excuse for a film insulted the good name of Starship Troopers. Not only does it have very little to do with the book, but it's plot is stupid as well. Good performances by the actor/actresses can't get past the pointlessly excessive violence and several frankly disturbing video sequences. This film has none of the style or comic timing of the first, just an unnecessary amount of murder and worrying sections. I'm a teenager and I thought this was over-violent for crying out loud!! What happened to the direction and writing teams of the original anyway? Why is the audience forced to endure this piece of trash. Many people, like myself, probably only saw this film because of the brilliance and originality of the first, but are instead subjected to this low rubbish. Yet another unneeded sequel,thank you so much Hollwood!!