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Starship Troopers/Starship Troopers 2 - Hero Of The Federation/Starship Troopers 3 - Marauder DVD

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Starship Troopers (Dir. Paul Verhoeven) (1998): The Federation needs you for a desperate do-or-die mission in 'Starship Troopers' the ultimate sci-fi action thriller from the director of 'Total Recall'... hailed for its mind-blowing special effects and amazing futuristic settings! The new millenium brings man face-to-face with the deadliest enemy of all... an intelligent race of alien bugs some thirty feet tall some that fly and all capable of destroying every living thing on Earth! That's where brave young freedom fighter Johnny Rico comes in. While Johnny trains... in an elite infantry unit his stunning girlfriend Carmen becomes a top starship pilot - but is seduced by a suave flight instructor! Join their mission to the aliens' home planet where an all out inter-planetary war is about to begin... with mankind on the line. Epic filmmaking and jarring action sequences that put you in the middle of it all make 'Starship Troopers' the definitive space-age story in this or any other universe. Starship Troopers 2: Hero Of The Federation (Dir. Phil Tippett) (2003): In this rapid-fire sequel to the cult favorite the Federation's best Mobile Infantry unit goes back into action against the Bug horde. But this time the Bugs are waiting for them. Trapped on a remote outpost light years from the nearest reinforcements a small group of soldiers fights an enemy smarter and more cunning than any they've ever faced. Now they must join forces with an infamous traitor if they are to have any hope. Starship Troppers 3: Marauder (Dir. Edward Neumeier) (2008): A Federation Starship crash-lands on the distant Alien planet OM-1 stranding beloved leader Sky Marshal Anoke (Stephen Hogan) and several others including pilot Lola Beck (Jolene Blalock). It's up to Colonel/General Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) reluctant hero of the original Bug Invasion on Planet P to lead a team of Troopers on a daring rescue mission. [show more]

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  • DVD Details
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Released
29 September 2008
Directors
Actors
Format
DVD 
Publisher
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 
Classification
Runtime
313 minutes 
Features
Box set, PAL 
Barcode
5035822813816 
  • Average Rating for Starship Troopers/Starship Troopers 2 - Hero Of The Federation/Starship Troopers 3 - Marauder [1997] - 3 out of 5


    (based on 1 user reviews)
  • Starship Troopers/Starship Troopers 2 - Hero Of The Federation/Starship Troopers 3 - Marauder [1997]
    Kashif Ahmed

    It's been over a decade since Paul Veerhoven's expectedly visceral, ultraviolet and unashamedly sadistic sci-fi satire; 'Starship Troopers' (1997), turned Robert A. Heinlein's cult novel into a blood & sun soaked bullet festival of co-ed showers, improbably huge guns and exploding heads. Released to some acclaim and respectable box office, the movie made good use of up-and-coming, though now pretty much down-and-out, stars like Denise Richards, Dina Meyer and iron jawed, All American hero; Casper Van Dien. Focused on an interstellar war between Earth and the Bug planet of Klendathu, our vacuous threesome join the armed forces on behalf of Earth. Earth, incidentally, is ruled by 'The Federation', with its Nazi symbolism and Spartan values; unseen rulers withhold citizenship to all but those who put in military service. And it was only months later that I picked up on the gag that our protagonists are part of some Aryan master race: whitebread North American bozos who seem to have taken over the world, how else can you possibly explain "Buenos Arians": Rico (Van Dien), Ibanez (Richards) and Flores (Meyer)? And what of the claims that 'Starship Troopers' is an ode to Hitler or Zionism? Well it is to an extent, but then again, how seriously are we expected to take a story that has soldier's making love to their clones (in the novel) or lines like "We're going to get the Big Brain on Planet P?" Its far-out fiction with a love of militaria, ideas of collective servitude and warlike camaraderie but one that's put up on screen as a camp, gaudy, tongue-in-cheek indictment of all that deadly propaganda frequently imposed upon the masses with furrowed brows and earnest sentiments, beneath the yellow tasselled flags of fascism. Caspier Van Dien is a good 'bad actor' in that he gets the premise immediately and we're laughing with him, not at him as Rico spouts some inane rhetoric about patriotism and honour or is confronted by a multiple amputee who beams: "Congratulations son, Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today!". 'Starship Troopers' is the best of an unplanned trilogy and quite frankly, there was absolutely no need to go back: "Do You Want to Know More?". No, but I've a feeling you're going to tell me. 'Starship Troopers 2: Hero Of The Federation' (2004) is such utter bollards that not even an out-of-work Caspier Van Dien or Denise Richards could be tempted back, and who can blame them? After all, 'ST2' looks like someone saw 'Pitch Black' and decided to remake it, only removing all those unnecessary elements like story, character, suspense, SFX and cinematography. Scribe Ed Neumeier ('Robocop', 'Starship Troopers') seems to be winging it with some on-the-sly hokum about Troopers patrolling Quarantine Zones, whilst our humorously named heroes are a largely indistinguishable bunch of grunts, though I liked Pvt. Sahara (no dry spells for her, I hope) played by brassy broad Colleen Porch; an actress with the good looks of a beauty pageant winner, albeit a pageant held in a maximum security women's prison. Kelly Carlson's Pvt. Soda is essentially Eva Braun with an RPG though her comrades just blur into a rumble of gunfire, overacting and incomprehensible noise; one reasonably exciting battle sequence is the best you can hope for here. 'Starship Troopers 3: Marauder' proves that trying to remodel a concept that's been subverted to the point of satire is difficult, nay impossible, though 'ST3' can hold its head a little higher than its predecessor, in that Casper Van Dien returns to reprise his role as Johnny Rico. And I think its fair to say that Van Dien's a better actor than the material he's given to work with; for our all action uberman puts in a reasonably good performance (Van Dien proves to be somewhat of an offbeat comic genius, in that he does the entire movie as John Wayne) which begs the question: why wasn't this guy recruited for 'GI Joe'? After all, Casper didn't exactly embarrass himself acting opposite one Johnny Depp in 'Sleepy Hollow' and even turned in a none too shabby performance as Tarzan in 'Tarzan And The Lost City' . Ed Neumeier has another go, this time managing to work in some well written witticisms smashed home with the steel rod of irony, and yet, you can't help but notice that the material simply doesn't work in the 'Starship Troopers' universe anymore, mainly because the 'Starship Troopers' universe came to its natural end ten years ago at the 125 minute mark of Paul Veerhoven's 'Starship Troopers'. That said, 'ST3' still has some killer lines like Federation officials declaring " A) God exists, B) He's on our side and C) He wants us to win", lines not a million miles away from apostate Rabbi Khane's hate speech declaring Zionist Jews the superior race, SS Gestapo's with their 'God Is With Us' belt buckles or evangelical U.S. troops acting as modern day tools of the 'Knights Templar'. Alas, reality seems to have overtaken satire: for the banal, 'Robocop'-esque newscasts are no more absurd than the real ones you can see on 'Fox News' whilst 'Shock n' Awe' fascist degeneracy can no longer be viewed with the comfort that such things could never come to pass in our time; and that's more a sad reflection on the society that let it happen, than the political villains who made it so. Performances range from bad to awful, though Jolene Blalock lifts proceedings somewhat as hot ensign Lola Beck, and not quite knowing how to end it, they opt to rip off that power suit scene from 'The Matrix Revolutions' (itself a riff off Kazutaka Miyatake's OVA 'Uchû No Senshi' which was inspired by Henlin who got it from E.E. Smith who got it from Tokusatsu). 'ST3' keeps the Bug war rolling, though politicising it in an overt but inchoate manner, only serves to remind us that Neumeier probably should've saved his script for a different movie. And as for the Arachnids? I don't see much point in drawing direct parallels or analogies with any particular conflict, for the bug simply represents our implanted concept of 'The Other' as defined by Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward L. Bernays in his seminal work 'Propaganda'. Whether that other is an Arab, Jew, Hispanic or Vietnamese person is irrelevant in terms of how impressionable, intellectually stagnant and vulnerable minds can be twisted to see the world as those in power want them to see it. But if I were compelled to offer some kind of real world equivalent, I'd have cite Fritz Hippler's loathsome Nazi propaganda film 'The Eternal Jew' (1940) in which anti-Zionist, orthodox Jewry were consistently equated with vermin in an absurd, demented, but tragically successful, ploy to manufacture consent for their extermination, in the European Holocaust to come. 'Starship Troopers' is the best of the lot here; an all or nothing, balls-to-the-wall sci-fi that doesn't brake for anyone whose not in on the joke, for is it any wonder that those who got 'Starship Troopers' giggled & cringed through 'Black Hawk Down'? 'ST2' & 'ST3' have their moments, but aren't quite deserving of the 'so bad its good' label, you'll probably watch them once for a laugh before they gather more dust than an abandoned outpost on Klendathu, but you may, like me, find yourself revisiting the original every now and then. For as a Mobile Infantryman once said: "Kill, kill, kill!"...I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I didn't quite get the second word.

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Triple bill featuring the first three films from the popular sci-fi franchise. In 'Starship Troopers' (1997), mankind has been invaded by a lethal alien bug race, 30 feet tall and possessing the ability to fly. Freedom fighter Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) sets about training up an elite military unit in order to combat the alien invaders, while his girlfriend, Carmen (Denise Richards), becomes a fighter pilot. However, in the heat of battle, Johnny is unaware that Carmen is being seduced by her dashing flight instructor. In 'Starship Troopers 2 - Hero of the Federation' (2003), the Federation's best mobile infantry unit goes back into action against the Bug horde. But this time, the Bugs are waiting for them and they are smarter and more cunning then ever. To stop the Bugs from destroying the rest of mankind, a group of soldiers trapped by the creepy-crawlies realise that they must team up with an infamous traitor in order to save the world. In 'Starship Troopers 3 - Marauder', Rico (Van Dien) faces off against the killer bugs once more as he leads his team on a secret mission to rescue a crew of troopers trapped on the remote planet of OM-1. Battling bugs both new and old, the team's new 'Marauder' weapons technology may be its only hope against a treasonous element operating within the Federation itself. As Captain Lola Beck (Jolene Blalock) and the rest of her stranded crew fight to survive in harsh conditions, it becomes clear to them that something on OM-1 is very, very wrong and this time the bugs have a new trick up their arthropodic sleeves.

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