If a string of inferior Robocop sequels taught us anything, it’s that the satirical eye of Paul Verhoven is tougher to obtain than the Holy Grail – however, this didn’t stop producers from trying to milk Starship Troopers in much the same way. Almost admirably, Phil Tippett’s direct to DVD Starship Troopers sequel didn’t even try and boasted a straighter tone that seemed more like John Carpenter’s The Thing than anything Robert A. Heinlein ever wrote. However, any sense of the sequels staying in their lane went out of the window with Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, which went all out trying to replicate Verhoven’s elusive sense of humour.
However, directing this time was Ed Neumeier who not only wrote the first Starship Troopers, but also penned the original Robocop too. If anyone had a chance at nailing that sardonic tone, it was him – would you like to know more?
We’re now into the eleventh year of the intergalactic war that’s pitted a ludicrously fascist, futuristic earth against an army of chattering, swarming bugs and it seems like the war has no end. However, that seems to be sitting extremely well with the powers that be although a growing wave of dissent seems to be spreading through the population which no amount of public hangings can possibly stem.
On the other hand, the Federation has a genuine star on their hands in the form of Sky Marshall Omar Anoke, a triple threat who not only has the ear of the people and is telepathic, but also has the voice of an angel with an incredibly popular (and very propergander-ish) pop song doing the rounds.
On the former agricultural planet Roku San, we’re reintroduced to Johnny Rico who is now a colonel and is leading an entrenched battle against the bug’s new and laughably dangerous breeds, but after Anoke arrives in order to raise morale and inspect the base, shit suddenly goes sour at an alarming rate. After the perimeter fences mysteriously fail allowing countless Warrior Bugs to swarm in and cause more damage than a Black Friday sale, Rico and former buddy, General Dix Hauser get into a disagreement about the latter wanting to shoot local farmers for bad mouthing the Federation which leads to Johnny facing execution for insubordination. Meanwhile, Dix’s paramour, the tough Captain Lola Beck is trying to pilot Anoke to safety when her ship is marooned on classified Bug planet OM-1 and the ragged group of survivors try to make it to safety before an entire planet full of Bugs realise they’re there. However, even for a man marooned on an alien Bug planet, Anoke is acting decidedly strange and all of his talk of God and faith stirs up an almost fanatical mood among the small group that verges on religious hysteria and involves something with the worrying title of “Behemecoatyl”.
Realising that only Rico can save the day, Dix plucks him from the hangman’s noose and drops him to something dubbed the “Marauder” project, a secret weapon that could finally turn the tide of the war.
The secret behind Verhoven’s distinctive tone for Robocop and Starship Troopers is actually as simple as it is tough to replicate – being Dutch, he put all if the culture shock he felt about being in America into the former and as a child growing up in the Nazi occupied Netherlands, he had first hand experience of life under a fascist rule which proved invaluable when honing the spikey, faux pro-fascism stance of the latter. In comparison, anyone following directly in his footsteps is essentially dead in the water right from the word go, but you truly have to give Neumeier credit for trying so hard.
A glance of the script certainly feels like Starship Troopers, with splatterly, vicious gore mixing it up with almost happy-go-lucky nudity and an unnaturally pretty cast, but ultimately Starship Troopers 3: Marauder feels like someone re-telling a joke they’ve heard somewhere else that they don’t exactly know how to tell and in the process, it becomes oddly laboured as it struggles toward the punchline. The issue seems to be that this time, Neumeier is targeting religion as a tool to subdue the masses, but the twist that the televangelist-esque Anoke is actually in the thrall of a gigantic, Lovecraftian, God-bug ends up as being as awkward and heavy handed as Fisto from Masters Of The Universe attempting a back massage.
However, while the movie attempts to wrestle with these themes, it’s also mounting other, sizable subplots that also to struggle resonate like the middle child in an argument. Not only to we have the whole marooned/religious plot, bit there’s a whole other storyline going on that sees Casper Van Dien return as Johnny Rico only to butt heads with Boris Kodjoe’s former best friend, Dix and end up facing the death penalty for his troubles. However, after an interesting start in the trenches of Roku San, this plot thread loses steam as it weirdly means that Rico (still being played like a human two-by-four by Van Dien) is sidelined by the overly complicated plot. In fact, the only one who really seems to get the material is Amanda Donohoe, whose power hungry admiral has a ruthless, chin-up, tits-out attitude perfectly matches Neumeier’s attempted tone.
All this might have been salvaged if the visuals had been up to snuff, but Marauder’s CGI is laughably lightyears short of the original movie’s effects which still hold up impressively to this day. Hell, even the sequel (directed by effects guru Phil Tippett) had better than average digital bugs for a direct to DVD production, but the VFX here is shockingly inadequate and even suffers in comparison to the Starship Troopers animated series that followed a few years later. The Warrior bugs look as bad as the pixelated pieces shit your average Lake Placid or Anaconda sequel and the new breeds of bug are kind of crappy compared to the classics. Instead of the awesome (and expensive) Tanker Bugs, we now get the rubbery, plasma spewing Scorpion Bugs and the kamikaze Bombardier Bugs – woodlice looking critters that act as living grenades. The show stoppers of the whole show are Behemecoatyl (try saying that ten times after a couple of long island ice teas) and the overdue arrival of the battle-suits from the original book, but again, the effects are so basic that any impact the sequence might have had is destroyed as adroitly as a Warrior Bug attempting to put up a roll of wallpaper.
Again, all credit is due to Neumeier for at least trying to sidle up to Verhoven’s evasive wit, but in a weird turn of events, it’s Tippett’s simpler, second film that’s oddly the more rewarding follow-up. Still, neither ultimately prove to be a truly worthy successor to a movie that seemingly will remain a maverick original that will live forever – you apes…
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