Starship Troopers: Marauder (2007)

I'm one of very few people who not only love the book of Starship Troopers, it's my favourite SF novel, but also loved the movie too, hell I even liked Starship Troopers 2 which was direct to DVD. Anyway now Casper Van Dien is back as Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers: Marauder, and starring with him is everyone's fave busty Vulcan Jolene Blalock, Sub-Commander T'Pol from Star Trek : Enterprise. The new movie is directed by Robocop and Starship Troopers screenwriter Edward Neumeier in his directorial debut. Visual FX are being supervised by Robert and Dennis Skotak who are providing the miniature work, not sure if Phil Tippet's people are involved with doing the CG creatures this time though. Phil Tippet who supervised CGI on the first film directed the $7 million sequel Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation in 1994, the new film has an estimated budget of $20 Million and has been shooting on location in South Africa for a 2008 release, though I assume it's direct to DVD again.

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

The annoying thing about B.D Clark's 1981 Alien wannabe is that it's a waste of $4.5 million budget with his direction, and using the script that was written.
Produced by Roger Corman's New World Production's it's easy to imagine just how this 81 minute film might have turned out in the right hands. In the same year that he directed his first feature Piranha II: Flying Killers, James Cameron was Unit Director and Concept Artist/FX Crew on Galaxy of Terror, although given directorial credit on Piranha II most of the work was said to have been done by Ovidio G. Assonitis who edited the movie whilst Cameron was locked out of the studio. Cameron went on to prove himself as a director with 1984's The Terminator and Aliens in 1986.

Looking at Galaxy of Terror from purely a visual standpoint it's easy to see Cameron's influence on the design aesthetic, the production has very strong set design and FX design for such a low budget film. The bridge of the rescue ship is a pretty big set and the corridor sections of the ship have a hint of Alien and of the later Aliens about them.

Cameron also does a good job at capturing a Giger-esque style for the main pyramid and it's interior, but this stuff is almost too good for such a crap plot.
Helping with the visual FX work on Galaxy of Terror were Robert and Dennis Skotak who went on to work with Cameron on Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2 and Titanic.

For an actual review of the movie on DVD Maniacs click Here

Speaking of Galaxy of Terror

Before directing Terminator or Aliens, James Cameron did concept design and FX work on Galaxy of Terror, along with Robert and Dennis Skotak who did FX work on Aliens,The Abyss,Terminator 2 for Cameron. The film may be pretty naff but these guys did work wonders for the most part with the budget they got, probably around $50 :) You can see from the top picture that James Cameron is a very accomplished artist, the pic of the guy in the Giger-esque corridor being a great example of his skill. Cameron went onto design the look of both the Terminator endo-skeleton and the Queen Alien and Power Loader amongst other things, Stan Winston said they tried other ideas but pretty much went back to what Jim had first designed, I suppose as a director he knew exactly what he wanted so the best way was to draw it himself. I really hope James Cameron's new movie Avatar is worth the wait and doesn't end up being his Star Wars prequels after all these years.