Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for its upcoming CGI action flick, Starship Troopers: Invasion.
The film takes place after the events of the third film – though producers are calling it a direct sequel to the first film – on a distant outpost, where a ‘Fast Attack Ship’ has been dispatched to deal with a bug attack. Their mission is to escort survivors away from the infiltrated base. Before they can, however, Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris’ character from the first film) takes the ship off course on another mission.
The text in the trailer is all Japanese, but we have got the English dubbed voices in there, so it still gives us a clear idea of what the film is all about.
Space Marines v. giant bugs: in some ways it’s one of the oldest stories in science fiction, but we seem to always be willing to see more giant bug fights.
Insects are about as removed from ourselves as possible while still being familiar (we don’t really have a good concept of paramecia), and so sentient versions make particularly good symbols for ‘the other’ in literature.
Starship Troopers, the novel, is a classic of science fiction, and can be credited as a huge influence on space war stories ever since, including other now-classics, like Ender’s Game and Halo.
The story is thus: a young man goes off to war against his father’s wishes. That war is fought against giant bugs in space, a common enemy threatening humans everywhere. The young man spends the war training up and becoming a hero, all the while worrying about the approval of his father. At the end, the young man find his father has joined the war effort also, having been inspired by his son.
In the film adaptation, which came out in the nineties, the father/son theme was dropped in favor of a focus on friends and teamwork. The young man gets split up from his friends upon entering the military and taking a series of aptitude tests. In the end, the friends come together on the battlefield in victory.
Starship Troopers: Invasion will be arriving directly on home video July 21st, 2012.
