So, I just finally saw this movie, and I have to say… I liked it, but it could have been a lot better. Spoilers of course.
From the trailers it looked like they were hitting all the high points of the first movie, with the special effects, campiness, and bringing back Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico (Captain Dixon was a badass, but he wasn’t nearly enough to make StarShip Troopers 2: Hero Of The Federation really worth it)
I like how they are continuing the theme of the Federation not really being a very nice place. Just better than the alternative of being killed off by the Arachnids. Kind of interesting is how the media, while pretty much just being a propaganda mouthpiece for the government and the military, does make a point of showing dissenting opinions in their coverage, at least earlier on.
Another example of how the Federation is evil: They managed to almost completely sterilize nudity! It’s noteworthy that the scene where MI troopers are casually talking post-war plans while stripping naked is far from the worst-acted scene in the movie.
For a movie titled Marauder, we barely got to actually see the Marauders in it. I don’t think they’re even mentioned until halfway through the movie, and we don’t see them do anything until the very end. We hardly see enough of them to get a good sense of scale (one of them is two or three times as tall as an Arachnid, which means they pretty much do tower over a person like at the end in the recruiting commercial). I wish we had seen more of them, ie: the training for the team, just actually getting to know more of them than just Manion (the fangirl lieutenant). Hell, I’d like to get to know more of Kirby (the girl with the eyebrows who scopes out Slug in the scanner scene)
Some parts of the movie just seemed stupid in context, such as Sky Marshal Anoke’s flagship, which appears to have a crew of 12, including the Marines who seem to have been forgotten by the writers completely after the first act (leading to their off-screen deaths).
Speaking of the Sky Marshal, given that they made a plot point of his being telepathic, I gotta wonder how Neil Patrick Harris would have played him (I mean, we know NPH can sing…) That said, the guy playing him was still one of the more quality actors in the movie.
I liked Admiral Phid. If anything else comes from this movie, I hope she’s still around to be the opportunistic manipulative bitch she is. I didn’t like how easily everyone just got in step with her at the end, not so much as raising a voice of protest about how she tried to have them all killed very recently, or even a question of whatever became of Lieutenant Lamb, who was up for hanging for telling Dix Hauser what was going on. Then again, they’re all fairly patriotic characters who grew up in that society, who might very well be conscious of the fact that the alternatives to Phid aren’t too great either (sure she tried to cockblock any attempts to rescue the Sky Marshal and then faked his death so she could have his job. He was trying to hand all of humanity over to the Bugs on a silver platter. I guess Phid is a vast improvement there.)
Behemocoital was stupid the way they played it, though I do like the idea of a brain bug who was so big that he made up a significant portion of an entire planet.
The “Go Fleet” commercial amuses the hell out of me. “See you in the cockpit!” Heh.
Did I mention that the Marauder suits, when we finally saw them, were freaking sweet? Casper Van Dien looked weird in that scene though, like he was trying to be Rutger Haur or something. And I keep trying to figure out how they’re supposed to get them back up to the ship. Maybe a recovery boat with a sling-load hook or something. In any case, the “halo” over the flight attendant girl’s head when the Marauders were descending from orbit was kinda funny.
Oh, and as annoyed as I was by the flight attendant girl, she had a really cute smile whenever someone turned on a set of flood lights. I don’t know why, I guess the girl really likes flood lights.
Oh, another random thought for anyone still reading my ramblings, did anyone else interpret some Judgement Day overtones from the scene with the Marauders tearing up the Arachnid swarm? Gnashing of mandibles and what not.
Favorite lines:
“Now we know why his momma called him Slug!”
“They’re not much to look at, are they?” “Well, we didn’t make them to do pretty things.”
