The ‘John A. Warden’ Starship has
gone missing. At last sighting the ship was plotting an unknown
course and had turned off all communications. A team of Mobile
Infantry soldiers are brought in to locate and investigate the ship
but will they be ready for what is waiting for them on-board?
So I’ve now willingly watched three
straight to video sequels to ‘Starship Troopers’. How I managed
to get to this point, I’m not entirely sure. I found ‘Starship
Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation’ ok if not a bit over ambitious
and ‘Starship Troopers 3: Marauder’ ambitious and not at all ok.
So without a huge amount of enthusiasm I found myself watching
‘Starship Troopers 4: Invasion’. Now ‘Invasion’ differs from
the other films in the series by being animated. Does the computer
generated approach help revive the movie series, or is it an attempt
to reanimate a corpse?
So these realistic CG movies haven’t
had the best track record with me. I’m yet to see one that truly
captures the humanity in its polygons that makes a story really
engaging. Now I’m about to say something that is damning this film
with about as much faint praise as I can, this is the best CG
animated ‘realistic’ film I have seen. Now before you uncork the
champagne and release the banners I should explain a few things. I am
not saying that ‘Starship Troopers 4: Invasion’ is a good movie,
I am however saying that it is A movie. We have a plot, we have
characters and we have more than the usual 2 hour render benchmark
tests these sorts of films rapidly become.
So this film continues the trend set by
the previous two sequels of solidly crafted films being let down by
weak scripts. As with the previous sequels we start the film being
introduced to a huge variety of different characters, all of whom we
are meant to become engaged with emotionally. As with the previous
films we are simply introduced to too many characters to truly care
about them as much as we should. To its credit, smart direction does
manage to make a few of these characters stand out but these few
should have led the film from the beginning. This approach would have
given these characters an opportunity to breath and would have made
the film considerably more engaging.
The general plot of the film could have
used another draft also. The script is filled with moments where I
found myself trying to work out the logic of the characters. For
example we see several commanding officers choosing to go on suicidal
rescue missions with their teams. This in itself wouldn’t be weird
if they weren’t always risking more soldiers than they could ever
save in doing so.
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Big Boss Rico |
This problem reaches fever pitch when
Johnny Rico takes six members of his team to save five, even though
the rescue mission will endanger Paris and the millions that live
there. Seriously they have the option to destroy the ship before it
gets anywhere near the City and Rico decides to take the chance. At
least in ‘Saving Private Ryan’ we get the excuse that the mission
will be used as propaganda to inspire others. I hardly doubt that “We
saved five guys!” is going to console the people of France much. As it is Paris survives entirely by chance, so Rico can
look like a hero and avoid another military hanging…. “Hoo-ah!”
From a technical perspective this film
is surprisingly impressive. Although made at a very low budget
various efforts have been made to hide this fact. For Example the
Mobile Infantry have to enter spaceships without oxygen, so they are wearing power
armour with life support. This power armour makes the huge amounts of
soldiers incredibly similar in appearance, saving hours in 3D
modelling time.
Clever direction is used to hide the
lack of budget also, with the cast often reacting to impressive
things we will not see until we absolutely have to. Impressive
lighting and camera angles also do a lot to create an impression of a
location, without having to show it in depth. The entire film feels
as if it is being overseen by somebody with a stopwatch, doing
everything they can to save on expense when possible. For this reason
‘Starship Troopers 4: Invasion’ feels very large in scope and
looks very impressive. However it doesn’t need somebody
with experience in CG to notice the budgetary decisions that are
holding the film together either, with a slight feeling of repetition plaguing the copy/paste attitude of the film.
So ‘Starship Troopers 4: Invasion’
has many of the same issues that plagued the previous sequels. That
being said it also manages some things that the other films didn’t.
Despite having quite a large cast several characters stand out from
rest and make a genuine impression. Smart direction also gives the
film some genuine moments of emotional resonance, abandoned areas
feel peaceful, frantic battles feel frantic. This movie will not win
any awards but it is easy to see the huge amount of work and heart
that went into it. The people who made this film obviously cared
about it and wanted to make something special. They didn’t entirely
succeed, not by a long shot, but this film is one lost ship worth
investigating.
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