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Movie Notes: Battlefield Earth

July 6th, 2008

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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  • I remember seeing this with you in the theater (as in we paid full fare for this dreck). Fortunately, the movie had a lot of laughs (despite not being billed as a comedy).

    A few things I enjoyed:
    * That ridiculous opening scene where Johnny is running from some Psychlo security detail. The slow motion chase and odd close ups of various body parts were bizarre.
    * The Psychlo super technology: small, hidden cameras (to spy on the humans)
    * The pathetic, Mystery Science Theater-worthy, matte painting of the Psychlo home planet. Every time I saw it, I laughed. So much for inspiring awe at the home of the universe's overlords.
    * The fact that a 1000 year old Harrier jet still works, can be piloted by humans who have no business flying them and that simply hiding under a bridge (or was it a rock formation) was sufficient to outsmart their Psychlo counterparts. So much for Psychlo radar technology.

    On the plus side, I recently watched Roland Emmerich's "10,000 BC". The word that kept running through my head as I watched it was "incompetent". It was as bad as Battlefield Earth minus the laughs...which sadly makes me appreciated Battlefield all the more :-P
  • Heh... yeah now that I think about it, was that theater as empty as you
    remember? So many plot holes - of which you list several. I think Hubbard
    wrote himself into a corner with the premise - the humans are enslaved by an
    all powerful alien race, so how exactly do you get the humans to a level
    where they can overthrow their masters? It seems half the solution was
    making the Psychlos complete morons... anyhow, it's definitely good for
    laughs.
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