Starship Troopers: Invasion

  An Arachnid Queen has commandeered a Federation starship headed for Earth and it is up to the brave soldiers of the Mobile Infantry to stop her.
  Like most people, my introduction to the Starship Troopers universe began with the 1997 live action movie directed by Paul Verhoeven. While not as good as his film Robocop, Verhoeven’s take on the influential sci-fi novel, complete with humorous jabs at a fascist society, was a lot of fun and successful enough to produce a series of direct to video sequels. Invasion is the third sequel, and is a CG cartoon movie that is basically a video game cutscene but without the game part. If what I just wrote didn’t scare you away, then you might like Invasion.
  As much fun as the original ST movie was, the biggest problem I had with it was how it completely removed the powered armor mech suits that were in Heinlein’s novel. Starship Troopers is an influential book that helped inspire mecha anime like Mobile Suit Gundam, Robotech and countless other mech based properties from Japan and elsewhere, so an adaptation that lacked one of the chief elements was a bit frustrating to fans of the source material. I mention this because Invasion is based more on the Starship Troopers film franchise then it is the original book, which means that the power armor again gets mostly omitted. Towards the climax of this movie power armor does show up, but for the rest of the run time it’s standard gunplay, which was slightly disappointing for me. I still had fun watching the action in Invasion, don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a war between a bunch of Master Chief look a likes and an army of giant insects any day of the week, I just think robot suits would’ve made the proceedings considerably more enjoyable.
  The film mixes in a group of new troopers among the previously established ones such as Johnny Rico (who is now a general) and his starship pilot, love interest Carmen Ibanez. Carl Jenkins, the psychic played by Neil Patrick Harris in the original, also shows up, but is portrayed as more of a villain this time, at least in the sense that it was his psychic experiments that led to the crisis the troopers are facing. The newer characters are pretty forgettable and mostly serve to give the film an enjoyable body count ala a Friday the 13th film or any horror movie you can think of. By the time the movie is over, most of these new recruits are dead, and that was just fine with me and probably anyone who bothers to watch this.
  Actor Caspar Van Dien and screenwriter Edward Neumeier from the first Starship Troopers movie are listed as producers on this, but as Van Dien doesn’t voice Johnny Rico and I doubt Neumeier had much to do with Invasion’s script their involvement seems like a meaningless gesture designed to attract fans of the Verhoeven film. Other then this, there is no creative talent from the original movie involved in the making of this film, so if you were hoping to hear Neil Patrick Harris or Denise Richards in this then you are out of luck.
  In terms of expanding the lore Invasion adds almost nothing, the most interesting thing in the movie for me was seeing Carl Jenkins use his psychic powers to control some of the bugs, using a few of the Queen’s own drones against her, this was neat but it terms of story innovation this was Invasion’s only contribution, making the rest of the film a somewhat pointless excuse to see sci-fi guys shoot big bugs.
  If you like some of the CG animated features coming from Japan, like the Appleseed movies or Halo: Legends, then you might possibly be interested in Invasion, but this movie was really made for fans of the original film/novel. If you’ve never read the novel, or didn’t care for the 1997 movie, then I wouldn’t bother watching this. Even for die hard Starship Troopers fans the most I can give this is a mild recommendation, Invasion is fine but you might be better off checking out the first CG cartoon based on Heinlein’s book, the TV show Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles.