Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

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.

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

It was refreshing to see they reclaimed much of what made the first movie great when making Marauder. The filmmakers tried to copy the 'style' of the first movie, and in some aspects they succeeded. In others however, they failed miserably. Nevertheless, I think they put a lot of effort into the movie this time. For example, the federation broadcasts of the first movie were fantastic because they carried a lot of atmosphere and had so much subtle irony included. In the third movie, I think they overshot the mark a bit. There are a lot of broadcasts and they do a good job helping to create the film's atmosphere, but they are so openly ironic and sometimes it's almost comedy. One would think the officials are crazy to actually air that (Strongly in contrary to the first movie's broadcasts).

The story is not too bad. If you are willing to overlook some flaws you might find to like it. They even implemented a plot twist, which however was not very surprising at all. What I really could not stand was the needlessly exaggerated part about religion.

The cast is OK, but I think the filmmakers should have brought more old characters. It was nice to see Rico again; however it seemed the main characters were actually Lola and Dix instead of him. Dix's character also acts unreasonable on several occasions. And I found that the cast for the sky marshal was good, he has some charisma.

CGI effects are not very impressive. The bugs seem slightly worse animated than in 1997. So do explosions and the settings. The space ships and broadcasts look nice though.

Music is very average. Aside from the great song in the first broadcast there are no themes that would grab your attention. You would expect much much more of Klaus Badelt after his Pirates of the Caribbean score. Maybe he should have oriented his work more on the fantastic score of Basil Poledouris from the first movie. There is perhaps just one tiny little moment towards the end, where you would notice the music as great support for the scene. But once you notice it, its already over.

Writing this review I feel that there is actually not much positive to say in detail. But the composition of all these clearly average components is slightly better, because the atmosphere was right. It can be seen that this is in fact a Starship Troopers movie and not only shares the same name, as the second one did.

I'm already wondering, minutes after the credits rolled why i kept watching. Maybe it's just cos i was expecting it to get better and it never did. Maybe its cos i was waiting for the great action and gore scenes i saw back in Starship Troopers 1.

Where to begin with the bad? What stands out most is the incredibly, laughably and undeniably the worst special effects I've seen in any film made in the past 10 years. Starship Troopers 1 was light years ahead of this. The scene where the Q-Bomb takes out the bug planet actually made me think "WTF" and burst out laughing. I could have done a better effect in MS Paint.

The acting was bearable but still not fantastic. I like Casper Van Dien but the other characters i was happy for them to die and wanted it to come but they NEVER DIED IN A DECENT WAY. Almost every bug kill was off-screen, clearly because they didn't have the budget for the gore and effect. I just wanted to see some limbs flying off soldiers and crap like that from ST1. All i got was off-screen munching and cheap screams. I mean what the hell? The film was just poor .. Nothing at all seemed realistic and i wanted everybody to die. I was rooting more for the bugs than anything else. The story was just dire and if they could kill 10,000 bugs by building a few kitted-out robots it makes you wonder why they didn't do that in the first place. My score is 2/10 .. 1 point cos it had Casper Van Dien in it and another cos its better than Starship Troopers 2.

I don't know why I kept watching to the end, but I did anyway and it really wasn't worth my (or anyone else's for that matter) time.

you don't need a big budget to make a good film, but it's impossible to hide a bad one with a small budget and this one must have had a REALLY small budget.

I was surprised to see Jolene Blalock's name attached to this being a star trek fan I thought she might bring something to the movie, but I'm starting to understand why she was cast as an emotionally void Vulcan in Enterprise. I'd also read comments about the state of her lips and thought it was just internet geeks going overboard, but they are really big now, significantly moreso than in her trek role, I think she needs to ease off on the collagen before they take over her face, they're starting to look like she was beaten up.

the SFX would have embarrassed the Red Dwarf crew at times they were so bad. For an example of how bad it gets check out the scene on the ship at warp where the view out the window isn't even CGI but some space scene on a long roller rolled past the window really quickly with the same repeating pattern over and over. I honestly don't think I've seen that done since the 70's! even the bug CGI is barely up to video game standards and not a patch on the original (which is 11 years old (1997) now and still looking much better than anything in ST3).

seriously guys, if you don't have the budget to make it properly, just don't make it at all, for your own sakes as professionals as well as for the sake of your fans. didn't you learn anything from ST2?