So, how do you follow up the fantastic Starship Troopers 2 and 3? Well, you scrap all of the "actors," most of the storyline, and you make the whole thing CG. That was what they did for Starship Troopers 4, and I can't blame them. The franchise probably wasn't worth the money it would have taken to make another live action movie.
Because the actors are essentially computer game characters, the expectation level of the effects is lowered considerably. So, the effects manage to live up to those expectations. There are some problems with the cookie-cutter way some of the characters are presented, but that is similarly accepted by the same mentality that makes you believe that the writing for a video game does not have to be all that great.
The issue with that line of thinking, however, is that stories and effects for video games are getting better and better all the time. When you put together a movie like this, you have to bare in mind that the technology you are using to make the movie will likely be surpassed by the best video games by the time the movie comes out. That's just the way things work.
So, you have to fall back on the story. You have to bring a story that is compelling enough to make people want to watch graphics that are not going to be state-of-the-art for very long (if at all). In the previous two movies, story was not the strongest factor. In this movie, however, character development and story are what keeps it going.
I was surprised and gratified to find that the story was decent, but I was more surprised at the nudity. There was full frontal, and I was taken aback by it. I don't know why - two of the three previous films had some nudity in them - but it really just seems wrong when it's a CG character. I can't help but think of the repressed programmers whose job it was to take care of the nipple coloring.
In any army movie (even a space army movie) you will have certain character types that you can't get away from - the sniper who likes to be alone, the grunt who tries to be the most aggressive, the hero that everyone looks to for everything, the woman trying to overcome a gender stereotype, etc. Yes, you have them here, too.
Story was decent
Acting was decent
Effects were okay
Directing was moderate
Editing could have used a bit of talent
2.0/5