Starship Troopers: Invasion

"A fast-paced thrill ride that tops the original!" says Casper van Diem (no relation to ST star and ST:I producer, Casper van Diem). Yet another attempt to keep the poor series alive, when they should have let old grandpa die in the home 15 years ago. A Japanophile's wasabi-infused wet dream, complete with Playstation2 CGI, mobile mech suits salvaged from a Gundam garage sale, community college drama club dropout-level voice acting, and a techno theme song sporting some tasty Engrish lyrics.

Holy cliche. Looks damn good, especially on blu ray, but damn if every. Single. Thing. That. Happens. is not a total cliche. An overtly sexualized animated movie where the director was trying to show off what he could do. I'll give it to him, because it did look damn good, but otherwise it was pretty mediocre.

Is it better than Starship Troopers 2 & 3? Yes, yes it is. However that bar is set so low it's not something to brag about at all. The animation quality is decent enough, on par with some higher end video game cutscenes, but this is still jam-packed with anime cliches. Pro-tip anime: when you have the hero of your film given the nick-name of "Hero" you've made Michael Bay look as subtle as a moth's fart in the wind.

Better than 2&3, worse than 1. Bland characters. Iffy writing. Action consists of gunlines and grenades. It's watchable.

Seems like a bunch of bad videogame cutscenes stitched together. Worse, seems like some nerd without any military knowledge didn't understand the point of the original movie and decided to make his version of an action movie, but with cartoon tits, cliched dialogue, and overly sexualized women. Doors seem to always work to keep bugs out; why not shut the door at every opportunity so you don't get swarmed on a ship with tons of doors? Why does mobile infantry wear camo in space against bugs?

A superficial, superfluous sequel scraping the bottom of the barrel with nothing new to add. The choice to go for animation instead of live action this time round wasn't inherently bad, yet "Invasion" ended up looking more like a video game than a movie - and a janky one for that matter, as evidenced by the characters' clunky motion. Ultimately, although a few decent ideas and rudimentary suspense are present now and then, this is murky, haphazard and, despite the small runtime, largely boring.

The whole thing looks like a PS2 FMV and a very bland one at that. It's a very nothing movie that has stiff animation and a lot of shitty dialog performed by hilariously amateurish voice actors. It's also not even trying to build on or utilize anything this franchise is known for beyond the very surface level. The movie has John Rico, but for some reason they give him an eyepatch and a completely different voice building off of nothing from previous films. Pretty boring overall.

Definitely better than Starship Troopers 2 & 3 even if it's a CGI animation

I can't quite call it good (partially on account of some spotty animation), but as a lover of pulp sci-fi, this was something of a cinematic fast food burger - not fine dining, but it went down easy and kinda hit the spot. I liked that it continued the relationships of Rico, Carmen, and Carl from the original film. If they'd made a live-action sequel a few years after the original with Casper van Dien, Denise Richards, and NPH, this story/script wouldn't have been the worst way to do so.