Starship Troopers

Tag Archive: Starship Troopers

Boba Fett returns–A New Year, bacta tank jacuzzis, the 25th anniversary of the Special Edition, and more

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January 1, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

Happy New Year! My wish for everyone is they get their own bacta tank jacuzzi to help recover from last year… and the year before that, and…

It’s been 38.5 years since I first saw Boba Fett die, at the sneak preview of Return of the Jedi. It was the low point of the movie–I’d rather they’d kill off Han Solo. Let the mysterious bounty hunter drift off into the sunsets. Practically speaking it meant decades of no Boba Fett, and nothing but minor appearances of Boba Fett in the Marvel comic books. So we’ve all had a long time to picture how Boba Fett survives bumbling into the Great Pit of Carkoon, nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlacc, to be slowly digested over 1,000 years, which was as baffling as making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. Now thanks to Jon Favreau, we get to see the vision in his head, in the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett, now streaming on Disney Plus. (Moderate episode highlights and a revisit to 1983 and 1997 follow).

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Now streaming–Latest Chris Pratt movie The Tomorrow War arrives on Amazon

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July 8, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Chris Pratt movies are a thing now just like Tom Cruise movies and Mark Wahlberg movies. The latest Chris Pratt movie is The Tomorrow War, which just arrived this past weekend on Amazon Prime. It’s every bit a vehicle for Pratt and could star nobody else. Like the Jurassic World movies, Passengers, and even The Magnificent Seven remake, Pratt is a unique casting decision but evidently studio execs keep going for his “aw, shucks” brand of characters. In The Tomorrow War, Pratt plays a biology teacher dad turned rescuer of mankind named Dan Forester. Forester is nearly impossible to distinguish from Pratt’s dinosaur confronting character in Jurassic World. Pratt plays that bit of a dope you can’t imagine actually doing any of the things his character encounters, so you may need to be a Pratt fan or simply be grateful it’s a free action movie and not mind you’re getting what you paid for. Either way, there are worse direct-to-TV movies out there, but as the alien invasion genre goes, don’t expect to count The Tomorrow War high on your list.

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Now streaming–Milla Jovovich faces off against big beasties in Monster Hunter

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June 27, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Possibly the biggest surprise of Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson’s latest action spectacle Monster Hunter is that Milla Jovovich isn’t the title character. That role goes to Furious 7’s Tony Jaa, a Mandalorian-meets-Bone Tomahawk or Predators brand of survivor and monster hunter, who Jovovich and a band of soldiers in our time meet after they get sucked into a portal to a very different place. The plot of this latest adaptation of a video game series is like Planet of the Apes, with a team falling into a world of beasts that are a cross of Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers. It has a Ray Harryhausen look, which is good for those who like vintage monster nostalgia, but perhaps not so good for those after impeccable, cutting-edge visual effects. In the opening scenes we meet Jovovich as Captain Artemis, a believable unit commander leading soldiers in Humvees looking for a missing squad. For the most part this is a showcase of the Resident Evil heroine in action mode with bits of goofy humor, with Jaa’s Hunter showing off his stealth survival. But really it’s about framing the star actress in increasingly cooler action shots. Monster Hunter is now streaming on Starz, Hulu, and other platforms, and you might want to check it out.

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Book review–Ender’s Game-inspired series wraps in Engines of Oblivion

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April 24, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

In Architects of Memory, first-time sci-fi writer Karen Osborne created a corporate sci-fi story, similar to Alien’s Weyland-Yutani, where corporations compete for weapons and power. In this futuristic realm, humans have been de-humanized to almost unrecognizable, something like in Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. In a world so vile, why fight to survive? Is living enough when there’s nothing to live for, and if there is something worth living for, then what is it? Osborne doesn’t answer that question in either the original book or its sequel, Engines of Oblivion, the second and last book in her “Memory War” duology. Fans of the first book will be interested in this next novel, as it revisits the world of human bombs and a bleak dystopia, only this time moving from lead protagonist Ash to Natalie, as Natalie is manipulated into returning to find those she left behind after stumbling into a major military success for her board of directors. Strong women on the brink of hopelessness struggle to understand their roles, their relationships, and a world bogged down in Avatar-esque designs in this wind-up to the Memory War story.

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Tags: Alien franchise, Altered Carbon novel, Annihilation, Architects of Memory, Architects of Memory book review, Avatar world, Ender's Game, Engines of Oblivion, Engines of Oblivion book review, Karen Osborne, military sci-fi, Starship Troopers, Tor Books, women sci-fi characters

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Colonyside–Michael Mammay sci-fi sequel takes retired military hero once more unto the breach

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March 1, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

In Colonyside, the third novel of Michael Mammay’s Planetside series, battle-hardened mastermind hero and retired marine colonel Carl Butler is “getting too old for this kind of thing.” With his notorious reputation and knack for getting people close to him killed–and getting alien inhabitants killed, too–his era’s equivalent of the prime directive is even named after him. Lucky for fans of Planetside (reviewed here) and Spaceside (reviewed here), Colonel Butler, now really just Carl, has a methodical approach to military, politics, and life that shows no signs of waning. But where Planetside was a military conspiracy-thriller in sci-fi dress, and Spaceside was a future noir mystery, Colonyside is more office politics and low-level squabbling power plays. The Aliens franchise Colonial Marines vibe of the first two books takes a shift here in a surprising direction. What begins as something like Predator, an intriguing story of a team going in to re-evaluate a prior action–here a mission gone bad resulting in the death of the daughter of an influential executive–ultimately doesn’t catch the intrigue of the earlier books.

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Tags: 2021 borg Hall of Fame, Aliens, colonial marines, Colonyside, Colonyside book review, Ender's Game, Harper Voyager Books, homniverts, Michael Crichton, Michael Mammay, military novels, military sci-fi, Orson Scott Card, Planetside, Robert Heinlein, Spaceside, Starship Troopers, The Phantom Menace, Total Recall

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Retro fix–Tor Essentials re-issues Robert Charles Wilson’s science fiction thriller Spin

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January 29, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Tor Essentials is a new library of backlist science fiction and fantasy novels from Macmillan Publishing’s Tor imprint, so far featuring 15 novels plucked from the past few decades. One of those 21st century titles is a well-constructed gem, Canadian author Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. A broad, epic story that traverses literally billions of years from the vantage of a doctor living on Earth, the novel packs a lot of ideas into 300 pages. The sub-genres covered are a mix of apocalypse, speculative fiction, and Martians, but not quite the aliens of H.G. Wells or Robert Heinlein. Like the inexplicable monolith of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a giant black barrier has blocked the atmosphere so we no longer see the Sun, the Moon, or the Stars, but some secret force is protecting the Earth from the effects of such an occurrence. Somehow Wilson connects the dots between the absurd and the improbable with the realities of the human condition to arrive at a story similar to Daniel H. Wilson’s The Andromeda Evolution, another intriguing, creative tale that made readers believe the unlikely was possible.

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The Mandalorian–Three Season 2 episodes are the third greatest Star Wars movie

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December 5, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

With the second season opener “The Marshall,” I thought the new season would be more of the same (see my review here). A bit light on plot, and so similar to a few episodes from the first season, I figured Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, & Co. were going to deliver some more good entertainment, but not take too many risks. Not one week later I had to take that back, as the episode “The Passenger” delivered a spectacular single-story episode reminiscent of Alien and The Thing. The fourth episode of the season, “The Siege,” was a return of characters from season one and more of the single most important, far-reaching draw for any age group or other demographic, Baby Yoda, given the name Grogu in last week’s episode. But if you take a look at this season, especially episodes 11, 13, and 14, what you may find is the third greatest Star Wars movie. Or at least your third favorite. I’ll avoid spoilers for yesterday’s new episode “The Tragedy” below except to mention the director and that the episode blew me away, but let’s dig into this season so far.

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The Mandalorian–Season 2 begins heavy on throwbacks, light on plot

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October 31, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

One of the oldest sayings of actors is never take a role with an animal or a child, because you’ll always get upstaged. That’s where the Disney+ series is currently stuck–they created a character in The Child (aka Baby Yoda) that we’d all probably rather see more than Pedro Pascal’s title character. Yes, The Mandalorian is back this weekend with the first episode of Season Two, more than welcome fun in the year of COVID-19 and real-life, high-stakes politics. The series is full of Easter eggs and good throwbacks to the original trilogy, the prequels, bits and pieces of the entire franchise. But the plot for the season opener is a retread of themes and scenes from last year, light on our favorite young green-eared friend.

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Monster Hunter–Trailer for film adaptation of fantasy-action game delivers spectacular visuals

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October 15, 2020

If you’re discussing the most compelling and amazing action movie franchise actresses, you’re going to begin with Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton. But quickly you must count Milla Jovovich, whose track record at the box office is hard to match, thanks to her role as Alice in the Resident Evil series. But she’s also revealed her badass prowess in classics like The Fifth Element and Ultraviolet, and she keeps adding to her amped up, tough-as-nails characters. This year that means taking on the role of Lieutenant Artemis in Monster Hunter, an adaptation of the online fantasy-action game. In one word, that overly-used phrase is apt here: Epic. The first trailer for the film (below) is very Starship Troopers meets Jurassic Park.

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Book review–Architects of Memory, a new spin on Ender’s Game and Weyland-Yutani politics

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August 22, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

In Architects of Memory, first-time sci-fi writer Karen Osborne creates an Alien-esque, Weyland-Yutani-inspired construct in outer space in Earth’s future, where corporations are competing for market share as salvagers acquire a laundry list of weapons of terrorism to pursue a pathway toward citizenship. A race of unknown and unseen aliens (like those seen in Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers) are the threat, yet it may very well be the corporations themselves are humanity’s worst enemy. Mad science has concocted the ultimate weapon. Gruesome and invasive, humans become the experiment and the conduit to deliver destruction to the alien race, as a group of strong women struggle to understand their role in the corporations’ schemes.

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