Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004)

Someone thought sequel to Starship Troopers would make money. That is only reason this movie was made. After first few minutes almost everything from Starship Troopers is gone. I assume they had unused footage from first movie and they used all of it during first few minutes. Contrast to rest of the movie is huge. This was made with fraction of money and same fraction of talent.

No-one from first movie returns. There are couple brief mentions of themes of the first movie but most of the movie has nothing to do with the first movie. Budget constraints became clear when ever movie tries to emulate first movie. You can make good movies with low budget but this is not one of them. They could have made good movie with same story and same money.

Starship Troopers 2 fails on badly written characters, bad acting and too extensive use of bad cgi. There were few actually good practical effect which stand out from all the bad cgi. Characters were big problem. Bad acting didn't help. It was like movie wanted to underline how some characters weren't trustworthy. This took away all suspension. You just waited when they would betray others. Story provided change to do something like The Thing but it was never unclear who was human and who wasn't.

Starship Troopers 2 is closer to The Thing than Starship Troopers. It tells about group of solders on abandon outpost during heavy bug attack. Bugs have new breed that goes inside human and then controls him or her. Group of solders have few of those bugs among them. But like I said earlier it was never unclear who was a bug. Character learned about the bugs just before they died. There was never confusion among them who was human. It was kind of like you waited things to happen and then things happened.

Movie is pretty much complete waste of time. I had force myself to watch it. I could do it because I had to write this review. There is something wrong when you wonder how anyone could have been happy with some shots that are in movie. They didn't have the money but they tried to do shots that require money. They should have stayed in things they could do like practical effects. Movie is only one and half hour long but there are still scenes that don't go anywhere. Script tries to have twists and character development but awful dialog and bad acting destroys that.