Watch Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation For Free

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Starship Troopers is by no means a perfect movie. I personally enjoyed it, but it really wouldn't even come close to being Paul Verhoven's best film. Probably what it does best is the social satire. Those commercials throughout the film are absolutely hilarious to someone with a darker sense of humor (such as myself). It is a decent send-up to sci-fi action movies, embracing tropes of the genre more than inventing them, and succeeds pretty well at doing so. Cue this piece of trash. It is inherently obvious from the beginning that this film has a significantly lower budget. There are no big stars, the special effects border on laughable, and the writing is intellectually obscene. The first movie wasn't exactly a smart film, but this movie makes the writing in that one seem profound. Poorly written stereotypes flood the screen and stupidity ensues. Basically this movie is the plot to John Carpenter's The Thing (an absolutely fantastic and intelligently done sci-fi film, highly recommended) stuffed into a Starship Troopers movie. That could work if Paul Verhoven returned, or maybe if you got a director like David Cronenberg to somehow agree to it, but in this instance it is simply awful. Nothing about this movie seems sincere. I have very rarely come across a movie that was completely devoid of passion, or any other emotion for that matter. It just looked like no one was having fun (because they probably weren't) in a cheap made for TV movie that was shot quickly and economically to reduce costs. It's really quite a shame, as the first movie set up for sequels pretty well, but trust me and just stop after watching the first one.

Fact: Everyone loved the first 'Starship Troopers' movie. Face no 2: I made that first fact up. However, it's fair to say that a film about extremely good looking teenagers getting their brains sucked out was never destined for true critical acclaim or Oscar nominations, but it was pretty damn good fun anyway.I suppose that's what people were hoping with part II. The problem was that, no matter how much fun Starship Troopers was, it never quite set the Box Office alight as the film-makers might have hoped. Therefore, any sequel was destined never to have the budget of the original. And here it really shows.If you check out most of the reviews of 'Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation' you'll see that most people absolutely hated it. And, I can see where they're coming from. Firstly... the budget. It doesn't have one. Any big dramatic set pieces you may recall from the first film have been replaced by a single set and a background of a sandstorm on an alien planet (largely to cover up the lack of 'alien' surroundings). Then there are the actors. You won't have heard of any of them (okay, so you didn't know Denise Richards before Starship Troopers, yet the calibre of actors seems better in the first film). Then there's the general change of tone. Gone are the big, blazing gun battles and in their place a thin, lifeless plot about alien bugs who can get inside humans – again, largely to replace the need to make proper aliens as the bad guys and use regular actors instead.All of the above is bad and yet I can kind of forgive it for. I have actually watched Part II a few times. Yes, it's a B-movie and it's not that good, but I can't bring myself to totally hate it. In my opinion... the worst flaw it contains is its repeated lack of logic. It's just badly written in places that totally spoils what could be (at least) a lesser compendium piece to the original. You have plot devices that are just wedged in to forward the story and keep the main characters alive, even if what you see contradicts what's happened just a few scenes before.It's hard to recommend Part II to anyone really. Fans of sci-fi and B-movies in general will probably just find it lame. Those die-hard fans of the original will find this one blasphemy as it changes things around so much and, if you're generally looking for an action movie, you'll have seen a hundred better ones. So, I guess the only people who will find something vaguely enjoyable out of it (like me!) are those who can forgive it its many flaws and limitations. If you set your sights low enough, you may just find something entertaining here. But don't hold your breath.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/

The suits have basically taken the action adventure franchise and made a small horror movie out of it. The movie is inferior in every way. The CG is actually inferior after 7 years. The real effects are also inferior due to the smaller budget. The cast is also smaller. The first one had a budget around $100M but this one is listed at $7M. That accounts for most of the difference.The odd thing is that they got Brenda Strong to come back. Of course she died in the first one, but in this one, she's the Sergent leading the group. The cast is limited to around 15. Most of them are B-list or lower actors. This feels like a straight-to-video, oh wait it is.It's a big disappointment that they didn't attempt a big production big scale action sequel to the original. It's rare for Hollywood to not do sequels. Who knows what happened.The other big problem is that the lighting is all very dark. It was probably easier to cover up all the deficiencies. As a horror movie, it helped to have the darkness. But when the action gets going, the darkness obscures too much.As for the story, after an action start, it really grinds to a halt. The actors grumble their lines. They transition to a more horror oriented story. It takes a long while to make that transition. Once it transitioned, it became too chaotic to get a handle on who's who in the movie.

After watching the first Starship Troopers film, I didn't have an ambition to view a sequel but for the sake of preventing fans from seeing it and being disappointed, I'm writing this review anyway. Just like the original, the introduction starts with the barrage of infomercials that are just ludicrous to listen to in the first place. Then, after that, the story starts to begin where a group of stranded troopers find themselves fighting off hoards of bug aliens with no back up. Hmmm how cliché.And wait, it's not over, the situation becomes even more dangerous. Turns out the bugs are learning how to be sneaky. Soon a trooper is infected by some parasite (from a bug) and ends up going rogue and infecting all the other troopers. Once this occurs, the plot turns into a normal overdone horror film where one by one, a character is picked off. While I was watching, it reminded me of a mix of Night of the Creeps (1986), and The Thing (1982) way too much. There's absolutely no originality here.Not even the action, music, bug creatures or bloodshed helped this time. Sure it's all there but for what? By the end of the film, the audience is thrown some more infomercials anyway. Almost like the film crew is saying that you, the audience, just wasted your time! The only credit I give is to the film crew for attempting to make a decent sequel even though they abysmally failed. This kind of film is for true hardcore fans.There's nothing great about this sequel at all. Only the real "troopers" will enjoy this and that's a very small amount.