Hey, Casper Van Dien and the rest of the cast certainly provide plenty of eye candy for this film, however, I don't see much more in it. First, we are given no indication of why these "bugs" are attacking humans...it would have been nice to supply more of a premise than the three or four lines spoken by a reporter about how the "bugs" resented human encroachment...just before the bugs kill him. WWII movies could get away without supplying the premise for why we were fighting WWII, because it is to this day universally known why, but I'm afraid that the WWII formula won't work in the Starship Trooper context, we need a plot including the premises for why this war started in the first place.
Next, let's look at the credibility of some of the things seen in this movie--Reporters standing in the middle of a combat mission? When was the last time you saw a Geraldo Rivera-type standing in combat uniform in the middle of an actual battle ground in a hot war? The Earth appears to have been politically united and science moved forward enough to get humans across our galaxy...yet the best weaponry we have are hoards of combat infantry armed with machine guns? And in terms of realistic warfare, we saw infantry without armored support, without air support and apparently only armed with a total of two grenades (which were used by Rico and Diz respectively to kill two big bugs). Eventhough conventional weaponry seems to have been the choice of this film maker (and I guess Heinlein) we see no weapons like the bazooka or surface to surface missles, mines or tanks. There is one shot of what looked like a light anti-aircraft gun in action...why is the weaponry so primitive given the backdrop of intersteller space travel? Even now we are experimenting with particle beams, lasers, biological warfare and things more sophisticated than a machine gun, for sure. Apparently, between now and the time this movie is set, we forgot a lot of science, except how to travel across our galaxy. Maybe they needed a formula for bug spray?
There are loose ends in this movie too--we needed some exploration of the difference between citizen and civilian...seems like some new definitions were being applied here, which again, were minimally or not at all explained.
One cannot help but notice the symbols used that so strongly resemble those adopted by the likes of the Nazis, Falangists and other fascists. Given that it seems the earth is being run by fascist types, one might like to see in this movie an answer to the question "Just what exactly is back on earth that the troopers are defending?" It doesn't seem like democracy and freedom play much of a role in this new world--one that is hardly explored by the movie-makers, but I could be wrong since the moviemakers never told us what was happening on Earth, other than Buenos Aires was destroyed and that there was some kind of federal council sitting in Geneva (perhaps an apt venue for a fascist dictatorship given evidence of Swiss complicity with Hitler, but I digress).
I could write reams on what I observed that is wrong with this movie. I'll refrain from saying anything more other than to comment that if you want a movie with no plot, with really no beginning and no end, with minmal character development and growth, no premise supporting its existence, showing you illogically waged warfare with lots of action, then this is the movie for you.
I for one would have skipped it had I known what was in store...but at least Casper and the other members of the cast were pretty to look at. I gave it a 4 just for Rico and Zander's looks....
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