My Review of "Starship Troopers 4K Blu-ray (20th Anniversary Edition)"

Starship Troopers 4K Blu-ray (20th Anniversary Edition) had come out in 2017 and the original movie had come out back in 1997. I haven't had a good home theatre set-up to watch this movie until recently. This had to be something I'd have to try out since I still have the original DVD version of the movie.

In this movie we have a ragtag group of high school kids that decide to enlist for Earth's forces against a tyrannical race of bugs. Each of the characters, Johnny, Dizzy, Carmen and Carl are split up when they finish up high school.

They make a nice little backstory of the world they live in. It's a very militaristic society where you have to enlist in the Earth's forces in order to obtain citizenship. This means if you want to be a politician or even vote you have to enlist. Some of the fringe benefits include the Earth forces paying for your education and it's also a guaranteed career path.

Since this is during a war with the insect aliens the army isn't exactly a welcoming thing to do. People don't come back the same. They're missing limbs and hardened after war. Still these high school kids have a glamourized idea of joining the force. This is a very interesting perspective especially since they're at the brink of war.

The great motivator is when the alien bugs eventually start to hit Earth. That's when people place their differences aside to work together in order to irradicate these aliens.

I like how they split each of these characters up into different fields. It's mainly focused on Johnny but you still see tidbits of the different perspectives of Johnny's friends. There's a feeling that this movie could have been much more. A lot of the movie is sped up at a frantic pace to keep within a specific runtime.

The action is frantic and quite visceral especially when you consider that this movie came out in 1997. I'm glad to report that the conversion to 4K has done this movie some justice. A lot of the special effects still look good today however there are moments where this movie does look its age. Some of the effects and the background props really feel dated. Good thing it doesn't pull you out of the experience.

As a lot of the scenes are in lower light conditions you're going to see a lot of snowy images. This visual noise is quite visible and can be distracting at points. However there are a few scenes with very good lighting and look absolutely beautiful in 4K. They are few and far between though. Still you have to consider that the cameras that they were using back in the day only had a certain amount of dynamic range. They can only pull so much information from these images.

The sound is where its at though. Immediately I noticed the Dolby ATMOS soundtrack. You will hear ships and gunfire at every direction inside your room. This movie has never sounded better. This feature alone made it worth a purchase because I don't remember this movie sounding so good.

Unfortunately the feature department is quite lacking. You'll have to go to the regular Blu-Ray for features and that's a bit of a bummer. The features on the 4K feature disk only has a few special features that kind of remind you of the DVD version of the movie. It's anemic and they don't even bother updating the background photo of the movie. This photo looks like a photo made with a point and shoot camera from the 1990s.

Overall, if you find this 4K Blu-ray for cheap I would highly recommend it. The movie is a classic to me. I don't think there is enough special content to get some people on board though. The soundtrack though is pretty amazing and to me that was a welcome surprise. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10 and the 4K Blu-ray disk a 6 out of 10. If you haven't already upgraded to the Blu-ray version then maybe this is worth buying.