Review by Kelly Parks

STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 (2004) Tri-Star Pictures Rating: USA - R

When a movie goes straight to video it's usually a pretty safe assumption that it sucks. But if said movie is a sequel to a movie that really sucked, is it possible that merely sucking is an improvement? Or is that too confusing? Let me start over.

STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 was written by Edward Neumeier (ROBOCOP, STARSHIP TROOPERS) and directed by Special effects Ace Phil Tippet (his first time directing). Mr. Tippet's career has been mostly on the special effects side, including the creature effects in STARSHIP TROOPERS (the only half-way decent part of an otherwise awful movie). Both movies are based on the excellent novel "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein.

The story opens with an upbeat propaganda video about how well the Bug War is going (just like in the first movie) which fades to the brutal reality of a squad in desperate combat. The bugs (giant insect warriors) are everywhere and the soldiers are cut off, but they manage to make it to a nearby abandoned outpost. In nominal command is Lt. Dill (Lawrence Monoson: FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER), who also happens to be a PsyCore psychic. But the group is really held together by cigar-chomping Sgt. Rake (Brenda Strong: STARSHIP TROOPERS, TERROR TRACT, RED DRAGON). Brenda Strong played a different character in the first movie - a starship captain killed in battle.

Inside the abandoned outpost, locked in an incinerator with the word "murderer" scrawled on it, the troopers find war hero and rebel Captain Dax (Richard Burgi: DECOYS, I MARRIED A MONSTER [TV], THE SENTINEL [TV]). A quick check of the base log shows Dax murdered his commanding officer so Lt. Dill orders that Dax be left in his makeshift prison. But not long after a bug attack leads Private Sahara (Colleen Porch) to release Dax because they need the help. Sahara feels she can trust Dax because she also has psychic abilities, though they weren't considered reliable enough for her to "wear the black" like Lt. Dill.

Not long after another group of survivors makes it to the outpost. This group includes General Shepard (Ed Lauter: KING KONG, CUJO, DEATH WISH 3, THIRTEEN DAYS, PYTHON), the freaky but competent tech Sgt. Peck (J.P. Manoux: PUMPKINHEAD II, GALAXY QUEST, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW), and the very sexy Private Charlie Soda (Kelly Carlson). Some of these new arrivals seem a bit… strange. I won't say anymore about that but I will say it involves standard sci-fi plot #3.

In spite of being a much lower budget movie than its predecessor the effects here are pretty good. That's to be expected, I assume, when the director is also a special effects artist. The acting ranges from the terrible to the not too bad so it's about average for a straight-to-video monster flick. The thing that makes this movie suck (which it does) is the cliché-ridden script. The dialogue is predictable and the plot is formula. And speaking as a Heinlein fan I feel certain he would have hated this movie almost as much as he would have hated the first one because once again the political ideas expressed in his book are portrayed as fascism. In fact there's a very anti-military bias here, as though the humans are fighting an unjust war against the bugs! Neumeier seriously needs to re-read Heinlein's novel.

And speaking of being serious, it's time for a

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
This science moment involves a personal experience connected to this movie. I was at the 2002 San Diego Comic Con and, while wandering around one day, I came across a panel discussion about STARSHIP TROOPERS 2. Actress Brenda Strong, director Phil Tippett and writer Ed Neumeier (and one of the producers, I think) were all there promoting the movie and taking questions from the audience. So I took the opportunity to ask (as diplomatically as I could manage) why the first movie did such a terrible job getting the science right, especially considering that it was based on a Robert Heinlein novel and Heinlein was one of the first "hard core" science fiction writers who always made a serious effort to get the scientific details correct.

The reaction? Confusion. They looked at each other and back at me and clearly didn't understand what I was talking about. They thought the science was fine. Which explains a lot about these movies and about Hollywood in general.

The science in STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 isn't terrible only because it doesn't have the chance, given the limited scope of the story. A few things bothered me, like the primitive (given that this is supposed to be 100 years or more in the future) weapons and the fact that Lt. Dill wore glasses. That far in the future the only place you'd find glasses is in a museum. But those are minor points and don't affect my rating anywhere near as much as the formula screenplay. I give STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 a matching two on the shriek girl scale.

This review copyright 2004 E.C.McMullen Jr.

Return to Horror Movies