Battlefield Earth Movie Review by Erich S. Arendall
I wouldn't say that I like bad movies, but occasionally a movie comes along that is so bad that it goes full circle and is good again. It's good in a "this movie is fun to mock" sort of way, alá , but that's the kind of fun that I like to have. Not since Species II have I watched a movie that was the stinkfest that Battlefield Earth was.
Battlefield Earth stars (and I use the term loosely) John Travolta, whom you may recognize from other bombs like Stayin' Alive and Look Who's Talking, Look Who's Talking, Too and Look Who's Talking Now!. My spell checker suggests using the word revolt instead of Travolta, and I agree wholeheartedly. In Battlefield Earth revolting Travolta plays Terl, Chief of Security on the backwater blue-green planet known as Earth. Terl is a member of an alien race known as Psychlos, who took over the earth 1000 years prior. Forest Whitaker takes the part of Terl's second-in-command, Ker. Meanwhile, the humans get themselves Barry Pepper as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler for the lead hero. Jonnie has a spunk that most humans have lost in their years of hiding (and reverting to a technological state of barbarians).
To say that the movie has only a few problems would be a huge understatement. The movie is flawed from beginning to end. However, this is not all the fault of the actors, director, script writers, etc. The movie takes its first flawed steps in the book by L. Ron Hubbard, writer of Dianetics - the worst sci-fi ever written. (...What do you mean that's what Scientology is based off of? Bwah ha ha! [no offence to those that follow Scientology, but come on - have you really read Dianetics?]) B.E. is Hubbard getting on his poorly crafted soapbox to declare all that is wrong with capitalism and how it could ruin the human race. Of course, he never mentions this outright, instead he creates a alien race with a poorly imagined name: the Psyclos.
Where the book's tragic story-telling ends, the movie picks up. Barbarians learning to fly military VTOL jets in less than a week! Vehicles sitting for 1000 years running perfectly! It's almost too good to be true. What took a two year time span in the book was compressed into about a month. An epic proportion of ludicrousness. All that, plus bad acting and vaguely thrown references to other outstanding sci-fi movies of our time. Mind you, this is only the surface of it. On the whole, the movie was even worse.
Am I saying that no one should ever see this movie? Hell no! Go, grab your friends - all of them. This movie is one of the most unintentionally funny movies I've seen. I'm going to get this one on video (previously viewed, it's not worth full price) to mock again and again.