Battlefield Earth

Review by Jason Gaston

 It's the year 3000 and Earth has been invaded by militaristic materialistic aliens called Psychlos (think of what would happen if a Klingon mated with a Feringi). Humans are either under Psychlo captivity or hiding in the mountains were the aliens can't get them. One day, an adventurous little scamp named Johnny (played by Saving Private Ryan's Barry Pepper) leaves the safety of the mountains, gets captured, and soon he's the prized pet of Psychlo, Terl (John Travolta) who's up to no good.

Well, needless to say a lot of stuff happens. Johnny realizes that he has a duty to save humanity, Terl realizes that the humans are smarter than he thinks, and I realize I should have went and saw Screwed instead.

Usually when I see a bad movie - and make no mistake, Battlefield Earth is a bad movie - I just like to mercilessly tear into it pointing out the stupidity and lameness of the plot, actors, writers, directors, and so on. First though, I'd like to point out one thing I liked. John Travolta was an awesome villain. He's got a bit of charm about him and manages to be despicable and dangerous without making you totally hate him. Hell, I was actually rooting for Terl to win the war!

And now, to deal with the 99.99 percent of the move that is crap.

Battlefield Earth is one of those kind of movie, a lot like Waterworld that expect you to buy into a lot of fractured logic.

Here's just a sample of the stupidity of this movie:

- The Psychlos appear to be masters of all kind of technology except for the toothbrush.

- The Psychlos have been strip mining Earth of precious minerals for about a thousand years, yet all the gold in Fort Knox is left untouched.

- The said gold from Fort Knox is offered to Terl by Johnny claiming that he and several other humans mined it. "Why is it in bricks?" Terl asks. "We thought that common ore wasn't good enough for you," Johnny replies. And Terl buys it! What an idiot!!!

- The Psychlos will teach slaves anything. Construction, interior design, how to mine, operate airships, and advanced alien weaponry. Idiots.

- Cavemen can be taught how to fly Harrier Jets in only seven days. Hey, I got a couple of free hours this weekend!

- Harrier Jets apparently have a lifespan of a thousand years. Yeah, right. The air force can barley keep a billion dollar stealth fighter in the air for one week and they expect us to believe that a thousand-year-old Harrier Jet is just going to fire up?

- Speaking of thousand-year-old technology, Johnny and a few of his caveman friends also manage to get a flight simulator working. Where's it getting power from? A pair of AA's? Is the thousand-year-old power plant still working? Was anyone putting any thought into that little conundrum?

- Okay... I can buy the thing about radiation causing the Psychlos' air to combust and how maybe one little nuclear bomb could do a little damage to their atmosphere, but one nuclear bomb blowing up the entire frickin' planet like it was the mother humping Death Star? Not bloody very damn well likely!

God, the stupidity of this movie is overwhelming and even more overwhelming than that is it's arrogance. Everything in this movie is presented as profound and as if it is the greatest thing to grace the theater. This pompous strutting attitude turned me off of the movie almost from the laughable opening credits which looked like they were done on a word processor.

The movie crawls at a snail's pace and just dives deeper and deeper into the Olympic-sized swimming pool of absurdity. Barry Pepper can't act and went through his scenes like he was imitating Kevin Costner from Waterworld and Mel Gibson from Braveheart. John Travolta and Forrest Whitaker are great, but the contraptions they wore to make them look like nine-foot-tall aliens made them look like stilt men when they were walking down the hall. I little money invested into some CGI would have helped make them look less stupid.

Well... I suppose it could have been worse. Battlefield Earth could have been a sermon on Scientology since L. Ron Hubbard, the writer of the Battlefield Earth novel founded the religion and it's been the gang of Scientologist's wet dream to make this into a movie. Hell, I was expecting something... anything about Scientology but the subject was never touched on. I suppose they might have resorted to subliminal messages, but that's just ridiculous.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a check to write to the church of Scientology and I'm not sure why.

Battlefield Earth is just an exercise in bad moviemaking. The colors are drab, the characters are dirty, and the story... Jeez, don't even get me started. There are certain things I can suspend disbelief over... Cavemen with seven days of experience flying perfectly operating thousand-year-old Harrier Jets and successfully fighting off an advanced alien air force isn't one of them.