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Movie Review #36 - Starship Troopers 2
I loved the first Starship Troopers movie because it knew exactly what it was - a satire on militaristic societies - so I looked forward to Starship Troopers 2, thinking that this might explore the issue further.
First check of the watch - 5 minutes in, then 10, then 15, then 20, then .... well, you get the picture
It is always a worry when the sequel to a satirical movie decides to take itself seriously and this movie demonstrates exactly why. The combat scenes early on are just stupid - we have no idea what is going on and I understand that this may be some kind of attempt to show the chaos of battle but this means that for the first 15 minutes or so we have absolutely no character that we can follow long enough to care about. The establishment of just one sympathetic character at this point might have changed everything if it had been done well but sadly .....
And what's with the darkness - I know it is shot at night but find some way of letting us see something or someone, please? Of course, once the lights do finally come on, I realise why it has all been darkness and chaos up until this point - clearly they spent money on something but it was neither set, script not cinematography because all of that is bad, cliched, awkward and just awful. It is painful - and then something happens: we get a genuinely scary movie for about the final 30 minutes or so.
Now I will admit it's not original by any measure but suddenly the tension is there, the claustrophobic feeling of the fortress works well and some great sequences ensue - too late to save the movie and it is all very reminiscent of The Thing or various "human-body-taken-over-by-aliens" movies but it works surprisingly well, given the crap before it. Sadly the very last moments veer into cliche again so it ends on that kind of note.
First check of the watch - 5 minutes in, then 10, then 15, then 20, then .... well, you get the picture
It is always a worry when the sequel to a satirical movie decides to take itself seriously and this movie demonstrates exactly why. The combat scenes early on are just stupid - we have no idea what is going on and I understand that this may be some kind of attempt to show the chaos of battle but this means that for the first 15 minutes or so we have absolutely no character that we can follow long enough to care about. The establishment of just one sympathetic character at this point might have changed everything if it had been done well but sadly .....
And what's with the darkness - I know it is shot at night but find some way of letting us see something or someone, please? Of course, once the lights do finally come on, I realise why it has all been darkness and chaos up until this point - clearly they spent money on something but it was neither set, script not cinematography because all of that is bad, cliched, awkward and just awful. It is painful - and then something happens: we get a genuinely scary movie for about the final 30 minutes or so.
Now I will admit it's not original by any measure but suddenly the tension is there, the claustrophobic feeling of the fortress works well and some great sequences ensue - too late to save the movie and it is all very reminiscent of The Thing or various "human-body-taken-over-by-aliens" movies but it works surprisingly well, given the crap before it. Sadly the very last moments veer into cliche again so it ends on that kind of note.
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true, dat