| Starship Troopers: Invasion | |
| Director: | Shinji Aramaki |
| Producer: | Joseph Chou |
| Screenplay: | Flint Dille |
| Story: |
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| Music: | Tetsuya Takahashi |
| Studio: |
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| Distributor: | Sony Pictures Home Entertainment |
| Runtime: | 89 minutes |
| Country: | Japan United States |
| Language: | English |
is a 2012 American-Japanese adult animated military science fiction horror film directed by Shinji Aramaki. It is the fourth installment of the Starship Troopers film series. The film was released in Japan on July 21, 2012, and in North America on August 28, 2012, as a direct-to-video title.
The film was followed by (2017).
On an asteroid, the Terran Federation's Fort Casey is crawling with bugs. The starship Alesia begins to deploy its Mobile Infantry troopers, by dropship, to seize and control the hangar and rescue any survivors. Lt. Daugherty's Alpha Team lands and immediately engages bugs, fighting through to rendezvous with the surviving Fort Casey troopers. After setting explosives charges, the troopers head to the starship John A. Warden for evacuation, only to see it leave dock without them—Minister Carl Jenkins has commandeered the Warden from Captain Carmen Ibanez, sending her to Alesia. Before leaving, Jenkins orders that Major Henry "Hero" Varro, the commander of Fort Casey's K-12 troopers, be escorted to Alesia as a prisoner. Alesia docks with Fort Casey for emergency evacuation of the surviving troopers, and the Fort Casey asteroid is successfully destroyed.
While en route to Earth, Alesia is contacted by General Johnny Rico from High Command at L-6 Base. When he orders Alesia to search for the Warden, which has broken all contact, the Fort Casey troopers agree to do so on condition that Varro lead them during the mission. When they find the Warden, Daugherty's team escorts Ibanez to the bridge while Varro's team secures the engine room, both teams finding nothing but dead crewmen and a few dead bugs. Varro finds a deranged Jenkins who warns him—too late—not to power up the Warden because "she" has hacked all the systems. As engines recharge the Warden, an Arachnid Queen inside takes control of all systems and opens bulkhead doors to release her bugs. As Ibanez and the troopers attempt to return to Alesia, the Queen uses Wardens main weapons to destroy the other ship, then flies Warden into a wormhole whose outlet is in near-Earth space. The troopers return to the bridge, where Varro reveals he was arrested when Jenkins had ordered his unit to capture the Queen alive on Fort Casey, but Varro had refused to sacrifice his squad.
General Rico deploys three starships from L-6 Base in Earth orbit, but the Queen hijacks the Warden's weaponry and destroys them. The Queen sets the bug-infested Warden on a trajectory to crash land in Paris, but Alpha Team sniper Tia "Trig" Durer manages to shoot out the wires linking the Queen to the ship, allowing Ibanez to re-direct the Warden to crash land in the Alps. Meanwhile, General Rico leads a squad of troopers in Marauder suits to stop the bugs from escaping the crash site, while high command gives him thirty minutes before dropping nukes from the L-6 Station to sanitize the site.
Back on the Warden, the five surviving troopers make their way toward the Queen. Ice Blonde protects Ibanez at a nearby airlock while Mech and Ratzass go to the engine room to blow it up. When Varro and Bugspray find Trig's corpse, Bugspray uses Trig's family-made sniper rifle to buy Varro some time to reach the queen. Jenkins, having recovered from his mental breakdown, provides Varro backup with bugs under his mind control—revealing an important Terran breakthrough in the war effort, and the reason for capturing a live Queen.
Rico is the lone survivor from his squad to reach the Warden. The extraction shuttle from L-6, and the nuclear strike, are all destroyed by the Queen's control of the Warden's weapons. As Jenkins leads the team to his shuttle from Fort Casey, Rico rushes to distract the Queen and rescue Varro. Varro, critically injured, blows a grenade when surrounded by bugs. Rico abandons his broken Marauder suit and uses a combat knife on one of the Queen's eyes, buying Ibanez time to make takeoff preparations. Rico sprints back into the dropship as it barely escapes the Warden before the explosives detonate and destroy the Warden.
Mech, Ice, and Ratzass pay their respect to their fallen comrades while Ibanez confronts Jenkins over the recent crises. Jenkins sidesteps the issue, telling Rico and Ibanez that his research will someday save the entire galaxy. After the closing credits, one warrior bug is seen navigating a sewer system, having inexplicably survived the Wardens destruction.
The voice cast as presented in order of closing credits:
Edward Neumeier, writer of the three previous films in the series, and Casper Van Dien, actor playing the protagonist Johnny Rico in the first and the third film, are attached as executive producers. According to Neumeier, he was allowed to have as much impact as he wished in his consulting role but his involvement ended up rather limited. Once the script was finished, it took about a year-and-a-half to complete the film. If the film was successful, there was a possibility of further sequels by the same creative team.[1]
The characters of Johnny Rico, Carl Jenkins, and Carmen Ibanez return from the original Starship Troopers; despite some pre-release rumors to the contrary, all three roles were recast with new actors rather than the original cast.[2] [3]
The recording was done at Seraphim Digital in Houston, Texas. Several of the actors that were in the film also did the motion capture for several of the characters.
A mobile game that acts as a prequel to the series, called Starship Troopers: Invasion – Mobile Infantry, was released worldwide via the App Store on November 13, 2012.