There was good news a couple of years ago: Sony was working on a third part to the Starship Troopers franchise and they were actually spending serious money on it. Well, they should get a refund.
I enjoyed the first Starship Troopers film even though it was cheesy, an obvious bid to capture the attention of science fiction fans who missed Star Wars (it didn't work, by the way), and the acting was terrible. It was based on a book that really was a notable stepping stone in Science Fiction, but it ignored most of the pesky pages between the covers. So all together, the first Starship Troopers was an excercise in ambition that resulted in an orgy of special effects, gore and a whole bunch of bravado and yelling. It could have been worse.
The third Starship Troopers film, Starship Troopers: Marauder, demonstrates how bad worse really is. The century is only nine years old and here I've found a movie that couldn't have been fun if I spent the whole time sucking down a peyote smoothie. I have never seen a film that more thoroughly wasted my time than this ninety minute failure. Truly worthy of the title: Wost Movie Of The Century, I'm sure a remake of Howard The Duck would have been much better, in fact if I could over write my memory of Marauder with Howard the Duck, I'd do so gladly.
Now that Starship Troopers: Marauder has been out for a while, the story behind its creation is out. It's simple: Sony wanted to package one bad film (Starship Troopers), that did very well in the rental stores with a worse film (Starship Troopers 2), and then create a flashy third film (Starship Troopers 3: Marauder), to create a bargain sequel on Blu-Ray. Now, thanks to the terrible quality of Starship Troopers 2 and 3 you can pretty much get the trilogy for the price of the first film alone. It's all marketing folks, and judging from Starship Troopers 3, with its terrible acting, worse special effects, nasty editing and total lack of entertainment value, they didn't care much about the end product as long as they could use the words; 'trilogy' and 'hi-def' with 'blu-ray.'
In a world where few companies actually believe that you should do something right or not at all, Sony excells at proving that they can produce terrible products better than anyone on earth and that they rarely do anything right. I couldn't have done worse if I tried my best. Now for the good part of this 'review' (which, I realize, isn't actually a review, but an all out attack against Sony, Blu-ray, and Starship Troopers), here are the top 10 reasons why you should avoid Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and why I vote this the worst film of the decade. God help us if anyone manages to make a bigger stinker. . .
SPOILER ALERT: This top 10 list is spoilery.
10 The sound track sounds like it was done with a late 70's synthesizer played by a 12 year old with no talent and only three fingers.
9 This series of films was originally based on a noteworthy science fiction novel. They have fallen so far from it that it's embarrassing.
8 Characters are completely unbelievable. Their backgrounds, performances, dialogue and interactions are poorly delivered and badly written.
7 The technology in this film would either never work (due to the pesky laws of physics) or simply doesn't make sense. Some of it even looks like it's from the 90's.
6 The directing is so bad that I am absolutely certain I could have done better myself with a super 8 in a maximum security prison.
5 The special effects are much worse than the first film. I've seen more convincing effects in Swede movies.
4 Production design lacks any creativity. Everything is borrowed or stolen from other films and television shows. I'm sure they raided the original Lost in Space props room among others.
3 The main villain bug is a great big version of a part of the female anatomy in such great detail that this film should have been rated XXX.
2 Casper Van Dean is the best actor in the film by far.
1 Let me spoil the ending: everyone finds religion and the highest paid actors survive.
Do your part: Boycott Starship Troopers.
RL
No comments:
Post a Comment