Roughnecks - Starship Troopers Chronicles - Vol. 3

Amazon.co.uk Review

Inspired by Robert Heinlein's pulp classic and executive-produced by Paul Verhoeven, who made the big-screen version, Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles is cutting-edge TV animation that's more for grown-ups than kids. The neat equipment, combat suits and weapons are as deadly as they are cool, and even though the extreme gore and violence of the movie has been toned down, the endless threat from all manner of nasty bugs is still pretty terrifying. Five roughly 20-minute episodes are spliced together into a movie-length feature, which makes for a satisfyingly lengthy story arc instead of the more usual self-contained individual episodes. Like all good war stories, at its heart Roughnecks celebrates that Band of Brothers-style bonding in extreme circumstances that we viewers can only experience vicariously.

On the DVD: Roughnecks, Volume 3: The Hydora Campaign finds Lt. Razak's troopers on the aquatic planet Hydora, where they meet massive mosquitoes among other oversized pests. The disc has a good 4:3 picture, although it's better to watch with the lights off to see all the detail in the moody (i.e. "dark") CG animation. The 5.1 sound shows off explosions and gunfire, but also the almost incessant techno soundtrack. There's a commentary from cast and crew members, a photo gallery of the human actors, filmographies and a trailer. --Mark Walker

Customer Reviews:

More Roughnecks.......2007-11-18

If you arre a fan of SCI-Fi and enjoyed the film Starship Troopers thhen this CGI computer graphic version will really please you. The graphics are very good and the stories are all on the same Human v Bug theme. My son lover starship Troopers and certainly enjoyed this follow up series. The stories continue on with some of the original movie chatracters such as Rico but some of thhe stories themselves are new. Goof fun and worth a watch.

Out of sequence , Good action cartoon/film.......2003-04-07

The title as Volume 3 is misleading: the publishers have got them out of sequence, and it's actually the second.

Technically the series is somewhere between Quake and Final Fantasy in visual quality. Lots of choices in languages, other discs in the series have commentaries and technical notes.
There is some small reuse of action sequences, such as missile launches, but amounts to only a few seconds.

Storyline is good, based around 20minute episodes spliced together. Action is a good pace, mixing Quake style shoot outs, with tactics. There is development of the characters and their team without the long introspective pauses that occur in some Manga cartoons. This episode crosses Quake action with jet skis, in the team's first interstellar mission.

The only mildly disturbing point is the visual of the master bug, if the viewer has a phobia about insects or slugs. Violence to the bugs is kept to a cinematic effects.

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