Review of Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) by Allan C — 29 Dec 2018

Low budget direct-to-video sequel is better than you'd expect. Directed by Phil Tippett, the stop motion special effects whiz behind movies like "RoboCop" and the original "Star Wars," and the original film's writer, Ed Neumeier (who also wrote "Robocop"), both knew the budgetary limitations of this production (character actor Ed Lauter is the only name actor in the film) and instead of trying to match the spectacle of the first film, they instead scaled the story down to a smaller siege film (think "Aliens" meets "Assault on Precinct 13").

The story is a simple one. A group of starship troopers take refuge in an abandoned outpost and find themselves under siege from wave after wave of bug attacks. This sequel does lack the satirical edge of the Paul Verhoven original, but in terms of being an engaging and interesting story, it completely succeeds, even if it's tonally quite different from the first film.

I actually appreciate when sequels diverge significantly from the original, which was kind of an 80s thing (i.e. "Rambo: First Blood Part II," "The Road Warrior," "Rocky II and III," "Halloween III: Season of the Witch," etc.

). I'd describe the first film as a sci-fi satire of a pro-military, pro-war films such as "The Sands of Iwo Jima" or "The Green Berets," peppered with plenty of Leni Riefenstahl imagery.

This sequel is much closer to a horror film along the lines of "Night of the Living Dead" or "Dog Soldiers," except that instead of zombies or werewolves, it's giant alien bugs attacking the hunkered down survivors.

Overall, this sequel is nothing to go out of your way to watch, but if you enjoyed the original film, you'd probably enjoy this sequel despite it's significant change of tone. FUN FACT: One of the characters is named Captain Dax, who's quite similar to a character in Stanley Kubrick's WWI anti-war film "Paths of Glory," Col.

Dax, who are both career military men betrayed by their cowardly superiors.