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...Man, what an unpleasant experience.
Battlefield Earth was one of the strangest, and most off-the-wall films I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. It's a pretentious and overproduced mess of a film that stands as a testament to what happens when a movie is not told "no."
This movie was based on a book by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology and notoriously poor writer I might add, John Travolta (a dedicated Scientologist) wanted to make this movie since 1982 when the book was first published, but was unable to until the year 2000 (for obvious reasons.)
But he managed to scrape together the resources to make this piece of garbage and have Roger Christian, whoever that is, direct it. Yaaaay...
So, let's discuss this abomination in depth, shall we? Let's dive in.
Be very afraid.
The film takes place in the year 3000. Earth has been invaded by an alien race of 9-foot-tall dreadlocked Klingon wannabes known as the Psychlos. Psychlos. That's what happens when you let your 5-year-old write the screenplay.
The story of the film follows a lone, long-haired human played by Barry Pepper named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Yes, that is the character's real name) as he travels into the ruins of what humanity once was in order to find food and resources for his tribe of cavemen.
While on the hunt he comes across the aforementioned Psychlos and gets captured and taken to their base (where he is able to breathe thanks to some tubes up his nose) where he is put to work doing slave labor in order to mine gold. That's the only reason they're on Earth, by the by, to mine gold. Apparently it's the rarest and most valuable substance in the universe. If only we'd known, eh?
Jonnie is captured with some other humans and tries to attack his Psychlo captors, gaining the attention of the security chief named Turl, played by the illustrious John Travolta who chews more scenery than a pack of rats on set.
Turl puts Jonnie away in the "Man-Animal" cages and is told by his superiors that he's going to be kept on Earth, which he hates, for an extended period of time. So it's up to him to try and do...something to get back at the Psychlo Empire while Jonnie tries to spark an uprising amongst the captured Man-Animals.
Now, if you're wondering what the positives in this movie are, I'll list them below:
-
That's right. NOTHING.
This is one of the most unaware, poorly-made, sickening landfills of a movie you will ever see. There is nothing redeeming about it, absolutely nothing.
The acting ranges from passable to downright hilarious in its execution! The passable actors consist of Barry Pepper and Forest Whitaker as Turl's right-hand man. The rest are awful, including John Travolta.
Now, Travolta's performance is something that's difficult to explain. It's not that he just doesn't care about the role he's in, that much is obvious, but he still plays his role like someone who isn't taking it seriously. His performance is so over-the-top that it's nearly impossible not to laugh when he's hamming it up at Turl the Psychlo.
Every other performance in the movie, the other tribes of humans, the Pychlo administrators, all act like they were given zero direction! They just go as over-the-top as possible with no rhyme or reason! God!
Oh, but don't be fooled! The acting isn't the only thing wrong with the movie! There's also the camerawork! 98% of the shots in this movie are tilted dutch angles, and almost all of them are extremely jarring. It's like half the time the movie is trying to give you vertigo and the other half it feels like the characters should be falling out of the shot! I don't know what the director was thinking when they made this movie, but I feel like they might have been glued to the side of a wall!
The movie's color scheme is awful, even. Most shots are overlaid by color filters, most of which make me sick to my stomach just thinking about them! They consist of a lot of bright secondary colors like purples and greens. I think it's supposed to give the environments an eerie, alien feel, but none of them accomplish this. They just make me hate having eyes!
There is also a lot of slow-mo in this movie, and most of it is shot at a framerate that does not support slow-mo, making it as blurry as a bad Skype call. This movie was released a year after the Matrix came out, so do you think that maybe the director was trying to cash in on the success of that movie?
The writing in this film is just atrocious, particularly the dialogue spoken by the Psychlos. Of course, while you were still learning to SPELL YOUR NAME, Turl was being trained to CONQUER GALAXIES, and to do anything less would be a shame to his entire family line.
Turl's plan to do...whatever it is he's doing makes no sense! He wants to train the "Man-Animals" to mine gold for him and him alone, so he decides to find out what they like to eat so they have motivation to mine. How does he do so? Strand a few people on a mountain and keep them under careful observation until they find something they could eat and then use that food as a treat for the man-animals after they finished mining. Doesn't seem too bad a plan, right? That's only until you learn that they have machines that can somehow teach a man-animal the Psychlo language and culture just like that!...Why didn't they just take a man-animal, stick them in the machine and then ask them "What would you like to eat?!"
The story doesn't feel like it flows naturally. It just sort of meanders along to whatever events the script says have to happen. Facts and plot devices are revealed as they're needed, no thought is put into the order events at all. It follows an "and then" style of writing. This review cannot do this movie justice. It's such an ugly and unpleasant film that makes you absolutely loathe every single person involved. The only way it could be made worse is if it didn't make me burst into unintentional hilarity several times.
A pathetic attempt at a sci-fi epic with ludicrous writing and acting on par with Jim Carrey's worst moments. Battlefield Earth is Cinematic Garbage at its finest.
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