Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012)

The "Starship Troopers" series has never been a huge draw for me. The original Paul Verhoeven camp-fest was decent in its own ways, I suppose, but it didn't bowl me over and doesn't hold much nostalgic value for me either. Of course, after seeing the sequels I look at the original in an entirely new light since it can actually be called "a movie." Calling the sequels movies is akin to calling a Hot Pocket food. You know you can eat it, and you're pretty sure it won't kill you, but calling it food seems like an overly generous technicality.

"Starship Troopers 2: Hero of The Federation" was an interesting conundrum, as the first half is some of the most unwatchable garbage I've ever seen, but the second half introduced some interesting elements that, while still not that great, was a gigantic step up from earlier. It still sucked all around, but in its defense it was a split between horrible and half-way passable.

At least the next one, "Starship Troopers 3: Marauder" was so silly and poorly acted that it was unintentionally(?) funny. I will never forget the solider who meekly says to his commander "You're a bitch" after she slaps him. That was hilarious. And of course there was the computer that kindly informs the crew "The bug is big. We have lock." This was great for a couple reasons, first because the "Big Bug" is the size of a polar ice cap, so telling us it is big seems a touch unnecessary. The second reason is that the target of the "lock" they speak of is the planet they're orbiting. I just find it funny that they needed to lock on to a planet that they literally couldn't miss so long as they vaguely pointed the nose of the ship towards it.

With this one, I wasn't holding out too much hope. But so long as "Starship Troopers: Invasion" kept the action going and didn't get too silly or campy I figured it couldn't be too bad. And it being a Japanese made CGI film at least gave it a pass in having bad acting and dialogue. All of those CGI movies from Japan have bad acting and dialogue. I'm not faulting another one for doing what all the rest did too.

"That was too close. You were almost a Carmen sandwich!"

"Starship Troopers: Invasion" did in fact have bad dialogue and bad voice acting. But hey, that's par for the course. On the other hand, it did keep the action going (maybe too much so), and the animation was decent, particularly in how expressive the faces were. For some reason this is especially so in the case of Johnny Rico, the main character from the first film. Maybe it's because he's one of the only characters who isn't essentially "The Doom Guy," and is capable of showing a range of emotions greater than grunting and contracting his trigger finger.

"Starship Troopers: Invasion" seems very much like a video game adaption to be honest. Although considering what I've seen lately, if it were a video game adaptation it'd be one of the better efforts. The story concerns a Federation base that has been overrun by bugs. A team of troopers manages to blow up the installation and rescue survivors of another team, among them Major Henry "Hero" Varro, who functions as what can roughly be called our main protagonist. Kind of. It's hard to tell with a cast of characters this big and interchangeable. It's almost like the team as a collective is the main character, which is cool since it's more realistic and sucks at the same time, since it has a tendency to make each character feel very expendable and anonymous.

Once the rescue is complete, Hero is put in charge of the team. Of course he is. His nickname is "Hero." They are then tasked with retrieving the ship John A. Warden, which has gone off the grid. On board is Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris' character from the first film), and it is suspected that he has done something exceedingly silly and dangerous, since well, he looks freaking evil.

Seriously, look at this guy. He's a Metal Gear Solid villain.

Naturally once aboard the John A. Warden things go belly-up for the team very quickly. There's not a small amount of Dead Space-type atmosphere going on, what with the exploration of a spooky derelict spacecraft and such. There isn't much time for exploration however, since as expected they soon encounter waves upon waves upon WAVES of bugs, and "Starship Troopers: Invasion" turns into something like watching over someone's shoulder as they play an arcade shooter. An entertaining arcade shooter, to be sure, but one can't overlook the fact that it is pretty wash-rinse-repeat.

Where's Calhoun when you need her?

That's the first of two significant problems with "Starship Troopers: Invasion." I won't begrudge the film for being action-packed. That's what we signed on for. The problem comes from the fact that there isn't enough variety to the action. They walk down a corridor. They see bugs coming down the hall. Someone yells "FIRE!" and makes a war face. They shoot 17,500 bullets down the hallway but they never EVER need to reload. Lots of bugs and maybe one anonymous trooper die. They continue down the hallway, or run back the way they came depending on whether or not there's too many bugs. That's most of the movie.

The second problem is that the troopers are the absolute height of anonymity. The main reason for this are the outfits they wear. In combat they all have their helmets on, which completely cover their faces. The only way to tell who you are looking at is to try and read the name stenciled on the armor, right below the neck. In addition to being difficult to read when the characters are moving, sometimes this isn't even possible since you don't always see their front, and when they are shooting they have a nasty tendency to aim their guns, which means their arms cover up the name.

"Johnson. Take point."

"I'm Anderson, sir. He's Johnson."

"Wait, you're Anderson? I thought that guy was Anderson."

"No, that guy's Hanks, sir."

"Look, somebody just take point."

"Why are you giving orders, Rodriguez? You're the APC driver."

"I'm not Rodriguez! I'm Sgt. Adams!"

"Really? I thought Adams got killed in that last hallway back there."

"No, that was Bill."

"What? Oh man, not Bill! I thought it was Adams. That guy sucks."

"HEY!"

You know, I don't even get the point of all that armor anyway. It seems to me that there was not one single instance in not only this, but every single "Starship Troopers" movie in which the soldiers' armor did anything useful. It provides about as much resistance to the bugs' claws as Reddi-Whip topping. Even the head-to-toe power armor here did absolutely nothing to help them. I'm just wondering why they would even bother. At least in "Aliens" the armor saved someone's life once. Yeah, it was the only time that proved to be the case, and the armor was toast afterwards, but the acid that hit Hicks would have straight up killed him had he not had that on. In this movie though, if a bug gets near you, you're dead. What's the point?

Now is all of this done poorly? No, it's not. It's actually done pretty well, and for a movie that could have been ripped straight from the script of any random brain-dead FPS video game, it plays it fairly realistically. This is especially true in how it handles certain plot elements and expectations you may have with a story like this, and it really likes to play with cliches. This makes it a pretty unpredictable movie in terms of who is going to make it, and has a lot of hidden realism which may seem unsatisfying until you think about it.

For instance, in the beginning of the film one of the troopers gets his arm crushed. They have to amputate it and replace it with a biotic arm. Then, on the John A. Warden, the same solider gets that same arm bitten by a bug, which then rips it off. You're thinking to yourself "Ah ha! That was lucky. I see what they did there." But here's the thing - it doesn't help him. He bleeds out and dies. At first you think to yourself "Well then what the hell was the point of the biotic arm then, if you're just going to kill him by ripping it off? It wouldn't have mattered if he had a fake arm either way!" And it irritates you until you realize that it's...just like real life. Like if you had a biotic arm which was grafted into your body and muscles and bone and nerve endings just straight up ripped out of you, you'd be in really bad shape. Guess they got me there.

Chekhov's...arm?

Another side story with Trig, the squad's sniper, seems horrendously cliche and predictable when it's first laid out. She gives some awkwardly placed backstory (but everything with the acting is pretty awkward honestly) which guarantees that you know she ain't making it to the end credits alive. And guess what? She doesn't. I don't even feel bad about spoiling that for you because there's no way you'd think she's living after the story she tells. And that's too bad because she was also one of my favorite characters. But what was interesting was what happens after she dies. Because while the resolution of that story, like the fake arm thing, seems like a total pointless let-down, it's realistic. In fact it would have been far more cliched to bring it about to the conclusion you were expecting. Once again, they got me there.

Then again, the trooper attempting to kung-fu one of the bugs plays out just about as expected. That was really funny, actually.

"No dude. I'm for real. Just Bruce Lee-backhand a bug. It'll work. Trust me."

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Starship Troopers: Invasion" isn't as bad as I feared it was going to be. Despite not starting off well, it gets better as it goes. I just wish the characters were a bit more recognizable in their armor. That's really the biggest problem I had with it. It may not be a great movie, but it's at least a hell of a lot better than the sequels. That's not saying much, true, but it's a step in the right direction.