Everybody likes a good fight, particularly if it’s in a galaxy far, far away. And on that score, the original Starship Troopers delivered. In venom of — nay, in large part because of, its camp, tongue-in-cheek approach to the hard-boiled state of war genre, the sheer high-impact, bug-crushing massacre of the 1997 outlet captured the imaginations of America’s violence-drenched youth and raised insect extermination to the stage of high service to humanity.
Well, forget all that. Starship Troopers 2 is 91 minutes of tediously inane straight-to-DVD boredom. Directed by Phil Tippet, the animation brainiac wHO designed the Sean Connery-voiced dragon in Dragonheart, this unreasonably lame sequel offers virtually cipher in the way of either animation or focussing. Or anything else, really.
A few age after the point where the get-go film left off (when, if you’ll call back, Doogie Howser discovered an enormous “brain bug” in a cave and was preparing to question it), a platoon of troopers finds itself apart on a distant planet, surrounded by bugs, with no daylight in visual sense. (Someone must have seen Pitch Black and persuasion a world of aeonian darkness would be a cool thought for this movie, too.) After about 10 minutes of hopelessly uninspired pretend fighting, during which the cast takes turns repetition a few of the first film’s topper catch phrases, the survivors find their way to a modest, abandoned outpost in the middle of a abandon plain.
The solely remaining survivor in the place is a soldier named Dax, who has been locked up for killing his previous dominating officer for reasons unknown. Before long, a trio of unsung troopers shows up to join the fun. Only these are no ordinary troopers: They’ve been septic by a new kind of bug that takes over people’s bodies, and they’re planning to term of enlistment a ride to Earth in hopes of wiping out our species.
The rest of the film consists of a single shot in which a hemipterous insect enters a person’s mouth and turns him or her into a zombie. This scene repeats over and over again, with different actors playing the roles of infector and victim, until only if two troopers remain. With only Dax and a hot chick left animated, the bugs take over the heighten, the chick gets away, and Dax stays in arrears for no reason at all, acquiring needlessly overrun by the invading glitch infestation.
The one standout performance of the film belongs to Richard Burgi, wHO plays Dax. He has a of course rugged personal appeal that comes across easy on camera. You about get the sense that, if this was a different film, Burgi’s public presentation would have been interesting. Unfortunately, near of his lines are so timeworn and unintelligent that it’s difficult to enjoy any of it.
Oh, and there’s also about ten transactions of footage of Kelly Carlson (no, not that chick from American Idol) running around naked, putting bugs in people’s mouths. And that’s okay to watch, too.
If you liked the original, you’ll hate the sequel and everyone involved in the making of it. Sure, the first base Troopers was ridiculous, simply it managed also to be fun, surprising, bestial, and sexy in a way that convinced us to laugh along. More importantly, things actually happened in that film. In this film, nothing happens. Ever.
See Also
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation - 8/5/2008
