STARSHIP TROOPERS 3: MARAUDER

Johnny Rico has been promoted to colonel of a platoon of infantry soldiers overseeing a colony on a planet infested with arachnids. The Sky Marshal Anoke visits that planet, accompanied by General Dix Hauser and Captain Lola Beck, two old acquaintances of Rico. Suddenly, a horde of arachnids breaches the protected area and carries out a massacre, so the captain prepares to evacuate the Sky Marshal, while Dix and Rico stay to fight. The spaceship on which Captain Beck and Anoke are traveling suffers a malfunction and the crew is forced to land on an unknown planet. Having lost contact with the Sky Marshal, the Federation sends a rescue platoon, led by Rico and ready to use the Marauder, a secret weapon for the war against the arachnids. By now, it has become more of a certainty than a possibility: when a good film with a lot of potential is serialized and its sequels are direct-to-video exclusives, the quality plummets dramatically and diminishes from episode to episode. "Starship Troopers" was an ironic, brilliant, and excessive manifesto of Verhoeven's anti-militarism, seemingly escaping this rule, since the second installment, obviously destined for home video, presented itself as a radical variation of the original premise while maintaining its distinctive "political" traits. But then the producers, perhaps disappointed at not being able to "cash in" on the franchise, delight us with a third installment that fully falls into the "poor-quality sequel for home video" category. Want to know more? In reality, both fans of the first film and those disappointed by the second had hoped for a quality hold. This third installment directly connects to the original, with the same screenwriter and lead actor, and returns to more purely science fiction atmospheres after the horror incursion of the second one. "Starship Troopers 3" was, on paper, a much bigger film than what could actually be realized, and it shows in every single frame. The screenplay was visibly simplified to allow the presentation of many planned situations, resulting, in the end, only confusing. Already because the viewer does not understand the behavior of some characters or their psychological evolution, probably because the story deserved more in-depth exploration. And so we find Rico and Dix immediately in conflict, even though they seem to be old and peaceful friends; a Rico condemned to death without a real reason and immediately released with an excuse that screams "Jena Plissken" a mile away; apparent government conspiracies immediately abandoned; sudden and inexplicable religious conversions, which should have been profound but appear only ridiculous... and so on with many situations that seem stuck together with tape. But do we want to talk about the "Marauder," the secret weapon that gives the subtitle to the film? The viewer might think it is a significant element of the story, and indeed it could have been, but in reality, it only appears near the end of the film, out of nowhere, without any prior mention. Hmm... too much narrative superficiality that we would not have expected from Edward Neumeier, who in the past was the screenwriter of "Robocop" and the first "Starship Troopers," here also engaged in directing. Want to know more? Let's also throw into the "made just to make" pot a mediocre visual effects department (the arachnids have never been so rigid) and a cast of handsome but inexpressive forty-year-olds, including the monolithic Casper Van Dien, launched by Verhoeven with "Starship Troopers" and then quickly returned to the underbrush of direct-to-video productions. It is a shame to have to speak ill of a film that, if treated with more care and with a larger budget behind it, would certainly have had a positive outcome. The ironic mockery of the army and militarism is still there, with the funny fake inserts from propaganda news broadcasts; this time, an attempt is also made to step on the toes of religious extremism, embodied by an opposition between Christian faith, atheism, and faith in an arachnid god, although the critique degenerates into incomprehensible behaviors that would almost make one think of a real pro-Christian propaganda message in the film. In the end, one is left perplexed: the film flows, if we want to be entertained a little, but the flaws are macroscopic, sometimes unbearable, and one sinks disconsolately into the armchair, imagining what "Starship Troopers 3" could have been. Rounded down vote.