Movie Notes: Battlefield Earth

0 = -23 stars
Starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker
Directed by Roger Christian
Synopsis
In the year 3000, humans have been enslaved by the Psychlos, an alien race, for a 1,000 years. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) rises as a human leader who will lead a rebellion to overthrow the alien tyranny.
The Good
- Unintentionally funny in every way.
The Bad
- John Travolta plays the Psychlo alien leader Terl. His costume involves elevator boots, dreadlocked hair, and klingon-like facial hair, and the wussy Travolta voice. It’s not terribly alien or menacing; just bizarre.
- Pretty much every action movie film technique is employed (tilted cameras, slow mo, green filters, Star Wars “wipes”) wherever they make no sense.
- Mind-numbingly horrid dialogue. Too many examples to list here, but the catch phrase “piece of cake” is uttered one too many times.
- Amazingly retarded plot developments. The Psychlos have a galactic empire and a machine with incredible knowledge, yet based on their behavior, they are complete retards. They back-stab themselves to the point of shooting themselves in the foot. Then there’s a laughable situation with the gold - Terl looks at the perfectly smelted gold bars that the humans stole from Fort Knox and doesn’t ponder long on how the “man-animals” got the precious metal into that state. The list goes on and on - the Psychlo planet’s atmosphere will explode in contact with radiation, the humans use a flight simulator to learn how to fly jet planes, and most egregiously, Johnnie is hooked to a “learning machine” giving him too much knowledge - and then Terl leaves him and other humans totally unsupervised (not even a “button camera?”) along with Psychlo aircraft to mine the gold. The Psychlos stupidly sow the seeds of their own destruction.
- Imagine the future morons of Idiocracy except taken dead seriously. At least the humans have an excuse for their retardation - they’ve been enslaved for 700 years. The Psychlos, with teleporters and space ships, are inexplicably even dumber than the humans. The movie documents their moronic efforts to outsmart each other.
- Forest Whitaker, as the assistant Psychlo, looks truly embarrassed the entire time. This is a far cry from The Last King Of Scotland.
- You cheer at the end when the Psychlo home world is destroyed - not because the hero wins, but because the movie is finally over.
- Add a layer of hilarity as the movie is a creation of Scientology - the creator of all that Xenu stuff wrote the book that inspired this film. You may gain some unwanted insight into a truly warped view of the human condition and the universe.
Conclusion
Battlefield Earth is a so-bad-it’s-good masterpiece. Check it out if you’re in the mood for a comedy. If you’re looking for sci fi or action, stay far, far away.
IMDB: Battlefield Earth
Wikipedia: Battlefield Earth
Rotten Tomatoes: Battlefield Earth 3%

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