Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

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.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder. Hmm, well I'll start with the good. There was quite a bit of good in this movie. A great starship troopers movie. Like Casper Van Dien says in the making of the movie, this is the true sequel to starship troopers. Casper Van Dien reprises his role as John Rico. He plays the role great, maybe even better than the first film. Supporting lead cast was good. Boris and Jolene played excellent roles. Special Effects were superior to syfy movies but not up to par as first or second movie. Could have been excellent with more money in the budget. They had the right person for the job in Dennis Stotak. The directing was pretty good for Ed Neumier's first directing job. The fednet sequences are good and campy as the first movie. This movie features more citizen and human depth than war with bugs which made it its own picture. The Marauder's needed more screen time and more money to make better CG effects, but it wasn't awful.

The bad: Money and time. Which about sums up the times you can tell when things were CGI effects or looked visually unappealing. The supporting cast was pretty bad, as in they would destroy the dialog or you couldn't understand them too well with the heavy accents. The weapons looked too bulky but at least they were not lazers. They did shoot actuall shell cased ammunition which was a cool thing from the first film. This movie isn't a good stand alone movie which is not necessarily bad but its great for starship troopers fans, but it won't jolt much excitement from someone who hasn't seen any of the other movies or read the book.

I hope they get a bigger budget and maybe create another movie with some more original cast members and an all out war picture. Just my wishful thinking. 6 out of 10, I did enjoy this movie because I enjoyed the others but if you are not a fan of the others you probably won't enjoy this one.

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?

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.

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.