This will contain spoilers. If you skip the movie though, that won't matter! It is not a sequel. It looks like it was written as a bad sci-fi filme and to save some dollars they decided to re-use the already-built CG bugs from the first film as the evil aliens. It has a few nods to the original film such as "Do you want to know more?" and some nice gory stabbing scenes. Another nod is the quick pairing-ups that occur and some no-nonsense military views. There is a tough old general with a decent heart under it all, and the good guys sacrifice at times. The original showed a stylized and exaggerated view of the military,i t did explore multiple sides of the issues. That exploration of both sides in a satirical manner was a fresh idea in film-making. This movie (2) was pretty one-sided: 'War consumes youth.' The bugs in this movie seemed less aggressive than in the first. In the first movie, bugs would attack and slaughter before you knew what happened and main characters died. In this sequel, the bugs seemed to be a little slower and the deaths all seem like staged events rather than a "what just happened?" sort of thing. The first showed MI as an elitist and spooky :) organization but that MI actually made a contribution to the war effort, definitely not weenies. The first glorified the infantry without taking away from the other military contributors. This one showed some less-than-top-notch infantrymen, and no glory. I spent needless time wondering if they were going to link Brenda Strong's character with her character in the first, say a twin sister or something, and they never did.
Now, since I determined that this movie does not make a good sequel, I would like to evaluate it on just a "movie" level. There are 3 complex characters. Dax, Sahara, and Rake, and all others are pretty shallow. The movie is titled "Starship Troopers 2". Where is the starship? Okay, it does not have a completely candy ending, Dax is the tragic hero and Sahara just does her job. When the 3 newbies show up, you just know that one of them is going to be dangerous.. I spent some time wondering which one was going to turn up as the bad guy, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be all 3. I also spent some time trying to determine who would be a trekian "red shirt" with a throw-away death; imagine my surprise when everyone was. There were some plot holes such as why didn't they use the flashburn a few more times? Why didn't they just shoot the compromised general immediately instead of listening to him ramble? What was with locking Sahara into a room with only 1 bug guy? Why didn't they transmit the supersecret intel while the power was still up? Enough on plot holes. It was dark (cheap but effective), It was in a single location, it had pretty decent CG bugs, it had some pretty cheap shocks. Thats all the time I want to spend thinking about this movie.
Now, since I determined that this movie does not make a good sequel, I would like to evaluate it on just a "movie" level. There are 3 complex characters. Dax, Sahara, and Rake, and all others are pretty shallow. The movie is titled "Starship Troopers 2". Where is the starship? Okay, it does not have a completely candy ending, Dax is the tragic hero and Sahara just does her job. When the 3 newbies show up, you just know that one of them is going to be dangerous.. I spent some time wondering which one was going to turn up as the bad guy, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be all 3. I also spent some time trying to determine who would be a trekian "red shirt" with a throw-away death; imagine my surprise when everyone was. There were some plot holes such as why didn't they use the flashburn a few more times? Why didn't they just shoot the compromised general immediately instead of listening to him ramble? What was with locking Sahara into a room with only 1 bug guy? Why didn't they transmit the supersecret intel while the power was still up? Enough on plot holes. It was dark (cheap but effective), It was in a single location, it had pretty decent CG bugs, it had some pretty cheap shocks. Thats all the time I want to spend thinking about this movie.