Starship Troopers Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Starship Troopers: Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

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The Starship Troopers franchise consists of three live-action films and two animated efforts; here’s every movie ranked from worst to best.

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Starship Troopers Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

To date, the Starship Troopers franchise consists of three live-action films and two animated efforts; here’s every movie ranked from worst to best. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, the original Starship Troopers bombed financially, received negative reviews in 1997; however, it has since become a cult classic appreciated for its satirical approach to its source material: Robert A. Heinlein’s controversial 1959 novel of the same name, said to champion a neo-fascist ideology. Since then, various sequels to Verhoeven’s film have been released — all direct to video, and all possessing the usual flaws that such low-rate productions tend to entail.

Taking place in the future, the Starship Troopers franchise follows the exploits of the United Citizen Federation — a fascistic state that grants individuals full citizenship (the ability to vote, attend college without tuition fees, and have more than two children) in exchange for federal service. This usually means joining the military, and soldiers are in high-demand given the ongoing scuffle between the Federation and the Arachnids — a race of giant, insect-like aliens, hatefully referred to as ‘Bugs’ throughout the series. In Verhoeven’s film, the Arachnids launch a meteor attack, destroying the protagonist’s home city and starting a war with the Federation, but various clues are planted to suggest that this ‘attack’ was manufactured by the latter group to inspire hatred for the former. By distracting its populace with an alien war, the Federation is able to continue its fascistic rule.

Sadly, the sequels seem to ignore these narrative clues (for the most part), reducing the Arachnids to their surface-level threat and largely dispensing with satire altogether. Aside from the occasional, overblown public service announcement, for which the original film was rightly praised, the sequels tend to offer a more traditional blend of science fiction and action. By neglecting the satire present in the original Starship Troopers, many of the sequels low-key support fascism. This essentially renders the franchise impotent — lacking its unique selling point, and accidentally supporting an ideology it once purported to mock. Regardless, here’s every movie ranked from worst to best (though, really, only one of the Starship Troopers movies belongs anywhere near the latter category).

Starship Troopers: Invasion

Starship Troopers Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

After two live-action sequels, Starship Troopers: Invasion was released in 2012: an animated feature about a rescue mission gone awry. While various characters return from the original film, none of them are voiced by (or particularly resemble) their original actors, and it’s not difficult to understand why. At best, the CGI animation resembles a video game from the mid-2000s — a bad video game, at that, considering it can’t be played — and the whole thing is a ton of effort to endure. Additionally, motion capture technology was reportedly utilized, though you’d be hard-pressed to figure out when or why — with the facial animations looking particularly limp. Aside from the ‘bugs vs humans’ premise and a nude shower scene (plastic and lifeless, given the dodgy CGI), Starship Troopers: Invasion bears little resemblance to the Paul Verhoeven original, doesn’t do the animation medium any favors, and ought to be avoided at all cost. That said, Johnny Rico’s Snake Plissken-esque eyepatch is pretty cool.

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Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars

Starship Troopers Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars was released in 2017: a second animated feature, from the same team as Invasion, with Casper Van Dien and Dina Meyer reprising their roles from the original film this time around. Johnny Rico (Van Dien) is relocated to Mars, following his demotion, and leads a ragtag squad against a slew of Arachnid attacks. While the animation is an improvement over Invasion’s stilted visuals, faces continue to be a problem — made worse by consistent close-ups which never fail to provoke that ‘uncanny valley’ feeling. Again, it resembles a video game, but at least it makes an effort to be slightly satirical — another step-up from its predecessor, though still not enough to make Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars a worthwhile viewing experience (at least Rico’s eyepatch makes a welcome return).

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation

Starship Troopers Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation was released in 2004: the first live-action sequel, it debuted to generally terrible reviews and rightly so, but, in fairness, the plot is pretty cool in concept — it’s just executed poorly. Something of a riff on John Carpenter’s The Thing, Hero of the Federation sees a group of troopers arrive at an abandoned outpost before running into Dax: a disgraced soldier, imprisoned in the outpost after killing his commanding officer. Meanwhile, the Arachnids have evolved, with a new breed capable of infecting the human brain and taking control of the body.

Unfortunately, the infected troopers are super-obvious, removing the paranoia so keenly felt in The Thing and making the other characters seem stupid for not recognizing the change in their comrades’ behavior. On the other hand, the effects are pretty impressive given the film’s low budget, and it’s more firmly in the horror genre than the original. Sure, the handheld camera-work is vomit-inducing, the lighting is poor, and the movie forgets to introduce any of its characters until around thirty minutes in, but Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation is kind of fun in a grindhouse sort of way.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

Starship Troopers Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder was released in 2008: the second live-action sequel and first to feature Casper Van Dien returning as Johnny Rico. Plot-wise, its another rescue mission — with Rico leading a team to retrieve their beloved Sky Marshal from an Arachnid-infested planet. Boasting a bigger budget and better camera-work than Hero of the Federation, its alien effects are somehow worse; however, the film remembers to include both characters and relationships (thinly drawn as they are), putting it above the other sequels, narratively-speaking.

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The live-action sequel also features some really cool mech-suits towards the end, as well as a few decent moments of Starship Troopers’ signature satire. The focus of that satire? Religion. While this might seem controversial at first, the film handles the topic in an even-handed way, looking at how a state can utilize religion in both positive and negative ways. The Federation — long opposed to religious practice — ends up embracing religion in the end, with the added satiric caveat that “A: God exists, B: He’s on our side, and C: He wants us to win.” While more ambitious and infinitely smarter than the other sequel installments, for Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, this high-mindedness results in some pretty dodgy pacing. You really pick your poison with this franchise, don’t you?

Starship Troopers

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 classic Starship Troopers is the best film in the franchise by a country mile. It tells the story of high-schooler turned soldier, Johnny Rico, who joins the fascistic Federation to become a citizen and fight Arachnids. A bizarre blend of pulp sci-fi and outsized satire, with the tone of a teen soap opera and copious references to Nazi imagery — Starship Troopers received generally negative reviews upon release but has since been re-evaluated as something of a masterpiece.

While the groundbreaking effects and hilarious satire are correctly praised, it’s the relationships between Rico and his classmates-turned-colleagues that keeps the dramatic motor running. The main players look like they’ve jumped out of an issue of Vogue; all cheek-bones and wistful glances — a reference to the Nazi’s Aryan ideal. Their interactions play out like a demented episode of 90210, complete with love-triangles, wooden acting, and a sexually-charged energy. While these aspects might (on the surface) seem negative, they’re all very deliberately placed — adding to the satire while also giving the audience characters and relationships to invest in emotionally. It’s the kind of movie where the emotion sneaks up on you; making you laugh at its characters while slowly giving you a reason to care about them in spite of their B-movie trappings. Like all the best genre films, Starship Troopers has a ‘Trojan horse’ quality: deftly smuggling a relationship drama (usually aimed at women) inside its outsized, satiric space-opera (usually aimed at men) and, eventually, getting away with it.

On a final note, if you’re desperate for more after seeing the original Starship Troopers, do yourself a favor: watch Verhoeven’s other satirical sci-fi classics (RoboCop and Total Recall) rather than diving into the Starship Troopers sequels. All told, it might be one of the worst franchises in film history (which, in this day and age, is saying a lot), but the Verhoeven original absolutely deserves its newfound respect.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/starship-troopers-movies-ranked-worst-best/

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