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Starship Troopers 2 - Hero of the Federation

Starship Troopers 2 - Hero of the Federation

List Price: $19.94
Your Price: $17.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Starship Troopers 2...BLAH
Review: I think if they had advertised this movie as "a movie that occurs in the StarShip Troopers world" I would not have been so extremely disappointed. The first minute had me excited, thought it was going to be just like the original. Then it turned into a horror movie, think Heinlein's Puppet Master's.

That's right, Puppet Master's. Where extraterrestrial life forms, that look like bugs (just like Puppet Master's and Starship Troopers), controls the actions of what people do. Add in there a naked woman who doesn't need to act because she's just there for the sex appeal, a somewhat decent actor who turns out to be the hero of the movie, and a whole lot of really bad acting.

Like I said, this movie is a horror story that happens in the Starship Troopers world. It takes place over maybe a week, most likely less. There's no real suspense, no real story, and definitely doesn't solve or add to any of the original Starship Troopers story. For all of you horror fans out there, think Urban Legend 2.

I was disappointed and glad I didn't go buy it, instead just rented. If your interested in a B-horror movie, I know there's better ones out there. If you want to return to StarShip Troopers, might as well either rent/buy the original, or read the book. If your going to be doing some heavy drinking and want to laugh and see naked women, then I would recommend this movie. Otherwise, better pass.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Appalling!
Review: I'm a big fan of the first movie... The writers, production crew and even some of the actors should be sent to Abu Ghraib prison! The plot had potential but never realized it fully. I could spend hours listing the many faults of this movie but here are just a few: (1). The psychics are always having flashbacks that make them appear so melodramatic that you wonder why the Federation even let them live; (2). The respect for the chain of command was lacking in this futuristic society run by the military; (3). Brenda Strong, the female captain of the Rodger Young in ST #1, plays an insubordinate seargent in ST #2; and, (4). It mimicked the first film's propaganda alerts so poorly that you're disappointed within the first 5 minutes.

Save your money... that's a couple of hours of my life that I won't be getting back.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Worth renting, not worth owning.
Review: Honestly, I'm pretty easy going on movies. As long as it's entertaining, I'm game. So even tho this was a direct to video movie, I figured what the hell, give it a shot. Well, if you take out the few shots of the big bugs, someone would have to tell you your watching a Starship Troopers movie. Really, there is no resemblance to the first one so don't get your hopes up. It's not to bad for a low budget film, but unfortunately there's no mystery or suspense to it. All through it you know who's infected and you know what's going to happen. On the bright side tho, some of the acting was pretty decent, and the special effects were better then other low budget films, so if your looking for a simple no thought action flick, this is a renter at best. Just don't expect it to be anything like the original

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Oh boy.
Review: I went into this movie hoping and praying that I wouldn't hate it. The first one, while not meeting my expectations based on having read the excellent Heinlein novel about a future united Earth menaced by alien bugs, still managed to be a fun movie that I can watch repeatedly.

Oh God, what happened with this movie?

I'll be honest, I don't expect Shakespeare out of Ed Neumeyer. Both Starship Troopers and Robocop had bad writing and dumb plots, but both managed to be fun movies that I still like to watch years later.

What the hell happened with Starship Troopers 2?

I'm warning you readers now, this review's gonna have some vague spoilers in it, so if you don't want to have this travesty of a flick spoiled for you any more than watching it will, you better stop reading. This paragraph is your neutral zone.

The movie involves a Mobile Infantry unit on planet Zulu Angel, a planet which is shrouded in perpetual night so as to hide the fact that the external shots are built on a small sound stage with the walls a mere ten to twenty feet away from the edges in any given shot. This is also masked through the extensive use of blowing dust later in the movie, but I've moved away from the central plot.

The unit, lead by General Ed Lauter (the actor's name, I can't be bothered to remember the character's name) is in trouble, besieged by bugs on all sides. This is made clear by, after panning the camera around to show the bugs on all sides, having the unit's psychic (who seems to be reading off a cue card at all times) whine something about sensing that they're surrounded by hostile forces. Thank you, Deanna Troi.

Then they fall back to an outpost, leaving the General and four cap troopers behind, because at some point it has become a really good idea to leave Generals with classified knowledge behind on planets held by aliens with a caste that can suck your brains out and find out everything you know. This outpost has been ripped apart by Bugs and is abandoned, but they move right on in anyway and sling their rifles over their backs after losing several people in a massive sandstorm that blows up so they can obscure the fact that the soundstage walls are ten feet away on all sides with darkness and blowing sand.

Suffice it to say that the movie goes downhill from here. The sets are well-designed for the budget they had (six million dollars for the sequel to a movie that cost over 120 million dollars to produce), but the acting is horrible except for the main character Captain Dax (played by Richard Burgi of The Sentinel fame), Ed Lauter (who gamely does what he can with the terrible script, which unfortunately isn't much because the script stinks), Brenda Strong (Captain Deladier from the first movie, reincarnated as Sergeant Dede Rake), and Ed Quinn as the creepiest son of a gun in the history of moviekind, who only has to smile to creep you out and doesn't do much acting otherwise. Colleen Porch does a passable job as Private Sahara, but the rest of the cast is absolutely terrible. It includes Huge Black Guy With A Huge Rifle, Freaked Out Green Recruit, Whiny Female, Chick who Walks Around Naked For Ten Minutes At A Stretch, Fat Guy, Nerd, and Minority Who Dies In The First Ten Minutes. What a star-studded cast!

The one redeeming element to this movie is the soundtrack, which is almost uniformly excellent, especially the Fed Net cues at the beginning and end of the movie, and this is why I am forced to give the movie higher than the one star that it so richly deserves.

I also cut the movie some slack in rating because I honestly feel sorry for the poor director, who was trying to make his directorial debut (Phil Tippett, a well-known Hollywood special effects guru). I really do feel terrible for him, because he was handed a miniscule budget that wouldn't pay for a decent multi-part episode of a TV series and told to make a sequel that lived up to a movie budgeted with 120 million dollars and, while the main characters were somewhat wooden, had a strong cast of secondary characters such as Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown that carried it.

All in all, the movie is bad, the acting is almost uniformly terrible, but the soundtrack and the fact that you can have some fun if you watch it drunk with friends and make fun of it MST3K style redeems it somewhat. 3/5.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation
Review: The original "Starship Troopers" movie is my favorite film; I had waited for the second one with great anticipation. Unfortunately, I don't know what to think of the second one. It is definitely not as good as the first one. At times, I could describe it as horrible. Why, oh why did they try to make a horror movie out of Starship Troopers, they missed the point completely!

There were a couple of good actors in the movie. Brenda Strong was one of them. What I couldn't figure out, is how come after being killed in the first movie... Ok, maybe the medicine is pretty darn good in those advanced space age days, so she didn't really die, and they patched her up. I can believe that. But, why did they give her a different name, and stuffed into the different branch of the military?

Unfortunately, the select few of the good actors could not overshadow the play of the rest of the cast. Did they make a special effort to find actors that suck? I mean, come on! Even I can play better than that, and I couldn't play my way out of a potato sack.

Ok, the story is good. It definitely needed some polishing out. Like for example, we meet the main character while he is locked up for killing his CO. Wouldn't you think the audience deservers to know why the guy killed his commanding officer? Apparently the makers of the movie didn't think that was important, like, yea, he killed his CO, it happens all the time. But anyway, I buy the story, it had a potential - which unfortunately never materialized.

The movie is full of holes, you could see at times, that they probably meant to include some things here and there, but then run out of time or money or creativity, or all there, and whatever there was supposed to be at places never happened. What a shame.

On the other hand, if you want to see somebody's head cut off and put in a microwave, you will not be disappointed. There is some nudity too, by Kelly Carlson. But Dina Meyer and Denise Richards are not in this one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: ALIENS MEETS THE HIDDEN... LET THE FUN BEGIN :)
Review: First off, let's get real here, Starship Troopers, the original opus from Paul Verhoven, wasn't the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. That said though, it was a fun jaunt, and worth the time to watch it.

Now, with Starship Troopers 2, if you're looking for the overly cliché, overly special effecy (to compensate for the silly story, would be my guess; "man this story is kinda lame... Oh, look at the perdy special effect bug guts'n explotions'n stuff... Now, what was it that I was sayin' about the story...?") movie, that was the first movie, then yep, you'll be sorely disappointed. Instead, what this movie gives you is more of a gritty, in the trenches story, about a handful of survivors on a bug planet, where the bug war (contrary to the propaganda being shoved down the humans on Earth's, throat) is going quite badly, who suddenly find that all is not what it seems in their little group, and that the bugs aren't as "Dumb" as they would like to believe (won't say any more, so as not to spoil the fun).

I was quite amazed at the amount of special effects that where created for this movie, considering that it is a straight to video release (with no word ever expressed, during the behind the scenes stuff, that this was ever intended to be, anything but). Granted, compared to the first film, this one looks quite stinchy in it's effects count, but where as the first film relied quit heavily on the effects to make up for story holes, and just about every other problem with the film, ST2, plays out a bit more like a classic sci-fi/horror, with the effects used to advance the story at the proper moments, and not in your face, the whole time, allowing for the story to shape, and the characters to fill in the gapes.

Oh, and contrary to what other viewers might have said, there actually are a few familiar faces in this movie, familiar to those of us who watch a lot of sci-fi stuff, and though, not big name players, still quite solid actors, giving nice little performances, all the same.

This film will never win any big awards, but, it's just the kind of movie to pop in on a Saturday night, and have some fun with.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A familiar name....a dissapointing sequal
Review: The first Starship Troopers had it's flaws for sure, but was still solid, well made, and quality enough to build a cult following. But this "Screen Test" of a movie does the storyline nor concept any sense of justice. From a cast no larger than 20 total (including all extra's), to the OVER use of fog and close ups to hide the lack of sets, this movie was a dissapointment for me all across the board. The only thing that saved this movie from complete dissaster was a few of the rock solid actors that were good enough to still carry the story. The fact that they re-used an actor who's character died in the first SST blew my mind at first, but then she turned out being one of the better of the film. Not to mention, the battle scenes in the first were epic, and SST1 still holds the record for most ammunition used in a feature film...as this one, uses flashes of blue light at the end of the plastic rifles. The lack of human bodies was also depressing, 20 people does not an army make...I need extra's, nameless army peons, but for this you gotta believe these 10-15 people are it, the whole bug quarantine invasion force. Honestly, I could nitpick forever on this films flaws, but all I need to convay is that you should not purchase this movie on the quality of the first film, because even the Sci-Fi channel has higher standards than were set in this deppressing sequal.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Maybe 3 stars would be enough...
Review: ... but I'm giving it one more to try and rise the average. Well, I belive there are truly some bad movies out there, but I think most times people don't like a movie it's becouse they have the wrong expectations. Were the people that rated this picture so low expeting to see a David Lynch film? (maybe I went too far there....)
IMHO this is a perfectly good sci-fi/war movie, never boring and with much much better visual effects than I expected after reading the avobe mentioned reviews. There's nothing new or revolutionary about it, it's just a decent genre B-movie, quite well done. You know, mostly good looking actors, some truly creepy moments, some black humor moments, and fun in general.
If you're a fan of the original 'Starship Troopers', you just have to remind yourself of some things: this is a DTV movie, so don't expect gigantic action set pieces. Also, this is a more straight movie, the constant irony the first one had going on underneath it's not present this time, except at the ending, where the 'message' is put across leaving no doubt about where the heart of the movie (and its filmmakers, I guess) is.
About the dvd: If you're worried about the movie being shot in digital video, don't be, you won't notice the difference, it plays like celluloid.
Well, as you probably guessed I don't write English very well, I'm spanish and learning (and wrote without consulting a dictionary too!), so I'm sorry if I bugged someone in that regard.
Thanks

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't Watch This
Review: This movie did not meet the expectations that I had hoped for. While the first movie was terrific, this one was not. There is no Johnny Rico leading the Federation Infantry, which in my opinion doomed the movie from the start. I was disappointed in one aspect. In the first movie, when the guns were fired we saw bullet casings flying out. In this movie, they replace that with lights that flashed in the front, simulating it being fired. Were the bugs being taken down with invisible bullets?? The only good portion of the movie was the idea of the bigger, badder bug. Whereas the bug in the first movie was a brain sucker, these bugs invade the body and take over. This movie is not worth watching nor renting.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I enjoyed "Starship Troopers 2", but it IS low-budget.
Review: If you are the type of person who demands theatre-level special effects and a budget above $100 million, give this one a pass - you'll only aggravate yourself.

But if you are a ST or science-fiction fan who doesn't mind watching a low-budget sequel, sit down and slip this DVD into the player.

It's got all the gore of the first movie, some new equipment, and some new bugs!

It makes some philosophical points, and gets you deeper into the heads of the people who run the Federation.

Does the film have shortcomings? Sure. But it's enjoyable and worthy of the name "Starship Troopers".

And no matter what it's shortcomings compared to the first film, it's STILL much truer in tone and execution to the original than, say, "Alien 3" was to its original.


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