Movie Review – Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

The third and final installment in my Starship Troopers marathon.  The first remains one of my favorite b-movie/cult classics because of its arrogance and subtle meaning.  The second was much worse than I had expected, with almost no relation to the first and an abandonment of the original sci-fi plot.  The third gave me some hope of a return to glory.  Casper Van Dien came back to play Johnny Rico and director Edward Neumeier was the writer of the original script based on the Robert A. Heinlein book.  It looked like Marauder was going to be a homage to the first movie and an attempt to get back on track.  Well, it was, but unfortunately it was also some of the worst acting I have ever seen in my life.

The war continues, and the Bugs keep on fighting.  Rico has risen in the ranks and is now in charge of a major fort in the human campaign to wipe out the insects.  When the new and very popular Sky Marshal arrives, he brings with him two old companions from Rico’s younger days: Intelligence General Dix and the beautiful Captain Lola.  But when the fort is overrun, the reunion is busted up.  Rico is court marshaled, Dix is MIA, and Lola & the Sky Marshal crash land on a Bug planet while trying to escape.  Rico is saved from death for one last mission; to rescue the Sky Captain and to destroy the Big Bug Brain once and for all.

That was really hard to type.  The plot makes much less sense than that, if you can believe it.  It’s like there were a dozen people shouting out ideas and every one of them was used somewhere in the movie.  There was this weird religious uprising storyline that muddled everything up, and people started singing hymns.  Very strange.  And the acting, my god.  Casper Van Dien got decidedly worse over the years apparently and his cast mates were just as dreadful.  There is literally nothing good to point to except near the end when they finally starting talking about the Marauder program.  It was pretty bad ass, but it’s in the title of the movie, shouldn’t you mention in before the last ten minutes?  And since it was the coolest part of the film you’d think they’d want to feature it.  But no, what we get is an hour and a half of absolute nonsense concluded by a nice final scene.  Bad job.