BATTLEFIELD EARTH
They should've called it "Yor: The Hunter From The Future Part 2"

  I wish this movie had been released a week earlier than it was; it's hard to think of a more perfect event to hail the long-feared alignment of the planets which unfortunately came to pass without disaster or global panic.

Some movies I deliberately avoid hearing anything about before seeing them, because I want very much to enter the theater with fresh eyes; The Blair Witch Project was such a movie.  Other movies, I read about regularly in the months leading up to release; script reviews, teaser pics, spot-the-shill, you name it, I'm scouring Dark Horizons and Corona for it.  Which brings me to Battlefield Earth.

Battlefield Earth has attracted my curiosity like no other film scheduled to come out this summer.  I've never cared much about comic-book adaptations so my interest in X-Men is limited, and even John Woo at the helm has sparked little more than cautious anticipation for Mission: Impossible 2.  But Battlefield Earth, for whatever reason, I just couldn't wait for.  Surely, at the end of the year, it'll be one of the most-discussed films (largely for the wrong reasons), and I was sure even before I saw it that it was destined to be this year's most hated film.  Again, largely for the wrong reasons.  So I wanted to rush out and see it quickly before I heard too much about it from the people who hate it for the RIGHT reasons.  (and if half of what I'd heard about the script was true, usenet would be choked with these people)

I've been keeping an eye on Battlefield Earth for a while, and I don't really know why.  I guess it's mostly the morbidly attractive Scientology connection; if there was anything I was keeping an eye out for while watching this, it was echoes of that Scientology: A New Slant On Life book I read a couple of years ago. (I don't know how L. Ron Hubbard keeps churning out books, seemingly inconvenienced by being fourteen years dead.)  And reading people's opinions on the film as it proceeded from script to screen, there seemed to be two distinct camps: Scientology-hating people who had nothing nice to say about it at all, but were so agenda-driven they were hard to take seriously, and hilariously transparent Scientology shills (my favorite of which actually said things like "Sometimes, clichés are the truest things of all" and compared the film's detractors to the film's villains).  With star/producer John Travolta vehemently saying for a LONG time now that this was NOT an ad for his church, I hoped he was right and I'm trying, though not that hard, to look at this movie apart from the Scientology connection.

(For the record, I really don't care one way or another about Scientology or Scientologists past my instant knee-jerk reaction to religion/corporations, despite how I found that book I mentioned to be total crap from beginning [before the introduction!] til end.  There are weirder religions around, and I have to admit to a certain respect for Travolta for being so forthright in the defense of his church in the face of a lot of public hostility while other Hollywood Scientologists just kinda dodge the question on that one, reaping the rewards of its influence without taking any of the heat.  And then there's Jenna Elfman, don't get me started on Jenna "AIDS isn't a disease, it's a state of mind" Elfman.  Anyways, like I was saying, if the worst crime this movie can be accused of is being a Scientology propaganda vehicle, then it'll be in good company with any number of other religious propaganda vehicles, many of which people keep insisting are classics.)

Based on the unbelievably long Hubbard book of the same name (never read it, never knew anybody who got even halfway through), Battlefield Earth opens up with the ominously cheesy subtitle "A Saga Of The Year 3000".  Barry Pepper as Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler; nice of Ron to label his characters just in case you might be confused as to who to root for. (admittedly, I don't remember him being called "Goodboy" in the movie)  Johnny is easy to call a caveman, since he lives in a cave, but in actuality he and his people seem to be about on a technological par with pre-Colonial American Indians (but they've got horses).  Johnny gets tired of living in the caves and heads off on his own to seek greener pastures.  He hooks up with some other cavemen and eventually happens on the blasted ruins of a strange city called Denver, which has been largely enclosed in a big glass dome.  There, he runs afoul of nine-foot Earth-dominating aliens called Psychlos, specifically, their head of security, Terl (John Travolta).  In the book, I think they were ten feet tall.  Ten feet, year 3000, Ron had a thing for round numbers.

Terl has a use for this resourceful human; he wants to train him to mine gold that's out in them thar hills.  Just why a galaxy-crossing alien species would value gold in particular, I don't know; sure, it has its uses, but like diamonds, the only thing that makes it REALLY valuable is that chicks love it.  In working his insidious gold-mining plan, Terl unfortunately unleashes doom upon his people's stranglehold on the planet, for Johnny is inspired to lead a revolt against the tyrannical aliens!

If you're thinking that this plot sounds a lot like that of Yor: The Hunter From The Future, you're not alone.

Travolta's been trying to get a Hubbard book made into a film for some time.  I cannot really say what would be a better choice; when I was a teen I read the whole Mission Earth series (ten, yes ten, very long books - I was young and thought that if it was THAT long, it HAD to be good), but I'm not familiar with the rest of his work.  I hear his work most often dismissed as pulp, but pulp isn't a bad thing if it's done well; even Harlan Ellison admitted that Hubbard wrote some great pulp in his day, though I never did read any of it.  (Ellison singled out Fear, which had an admittedly intriguing premise and was actually Travolta's first choice to be filmed)  But if this movie is any indication of the quality of its source material, this is one book that viewers of the film are going to be quite unconcerned about reading.

Screenwriter Corey Mandell was handed a difficult task, since while I have no idea if he's a member of the Church of Scientology (let's see...80-megabuck movie, but it's his first job writing on spec...you do the math), surely Travolta was hovering over his shoulder throughout his writing of this script, and his responsibilities in adapting the novel must have been twofold.  First, as little overt Scientological philosophizing as possible was, again I'm just assuming, to have made it into the script, because the world is gonna go over this movie with an electron microscope looking for it and even the Scientologists know they're just gonna catch hell if it's there.  And second, it's my understanding that actually altering the words of Hubbard is tantamount to blasphemy in the CoS, so he had to remain word-for-word faithful to the source material.  (this unfortunately means that the Psychlos keep calling people "rat-brain", and taking human clichés and applying them to themselves by substituting "man" with "Psychlo", and all these permutations on the word "crap")

I don't know how much like the book this movie is, but if they're even remotely similar, I'm glad I've held off my morbid curiosity for a read.  (were it a shorter book I would already have read it)  As for the Scientology traces, there's not much but it's there, mostly in the form of the Psychlos.  For Scientologists, psychiatrists are like the ultimate enemy, and the Psychlos represent them in more ways than just their name.  For example, they refer to humans as "man-animals" and treat them accordingly, like the stereotypical Scientological view of psychiatrists, motivating people with Pavlovian reward systems.

Oh, the Psychlos are lame badguys, but they somehow manage to look even worse.  Imagine Klingons without the bumpy heads, but with really tall ski boots.  And noseplugs.  Expect it to be a long time before you hear the end of Battlefield Earth noseplug jokes.  Psychlos are a galaxy-hopping species that can conquer worlds, but still have far worse oral hygiene than humans which have been living in caves for a thousand years.  The Psychlos are, astonishingly, more interesting when they're speaking their native language and we can't understand what they're saying.  It is my sincere hope that the script refers to this language as "Psychlobabble".

All this, and somehow, SOMEHOW, the character of Terl STILL manages to come across as what must be a below-average example of his species.  The sheer, towering idiocy of this character gives him an instant place of honor in the grand hall of stupid cinema badguys.  Where do I begin?  His plan to loot this gold for himself is dependent upon many things, not the least of which is blackmail he has on his assistant (Forrest Whittaker); Terl actually shows this guy where he keeps the videotape.  Then he trains Johnny with a "teaching machine" which is like the instant-upload thingy in The Matrix (I'm still, to my surprise, waiting for the claim that this rips off that film, though such a claim would of course be way off-base).  What does he aim to teach Johnny?  The Psychlo language - and yet, somehow, this comes (at no extra cost) with information on Psychlo weaknesses, details of how to destroy the Psychlo homeworld, you name it.  Then he teaches Johnny, in person, how to fly a Psychlo transport because he's going to leave Johnny and his pals alone in the woods for two weeks while they gather gold.

Things spiral even further into inanity from there, Terl only briefly questioning why the gold they get (looted from Fort Knox) is smelted, pressed into bars, and presumably has "U.S. MINT" stamped into the underside.  Terl is supposed to be head of security for the whole planet (which does not appear to extend very far outside of Denver), and yet the conclusions he draws about humans are hilariously silly.  Despite using them as slave labor regularly, he's so convinced that they're too stupid to handle Psychlo firearms that he actually gives Johnny one to demonstrate.  He gets into a fight with his assistant as to whether or not humans can fly.  (in this rare instance, Terl is right)  Ancient satellite pictures of dogs riding in the back seat of convertibles suggest to him that dogs were the dominant species on earth, although he admits to having experience with them and notes their uselessness.  I think my favorite has to be the explosive neck collar.  How can you NOT notice that you're wearing an explosive neck collar that's four inches thick?

Pepper is fine in his role, I guess, although this movie is going to be hell for his fledgling career to recover from.  Minor players say their lines and look grateful to have their exits.  Whittaker looks deeply ashamed of himself.  And Travolta turns in possibly his worst performance ever, never believable for half a second, VERY often giving us his "evil laugh" which is the fakest, worst evil laugh I've ever heard.  Poor Travolta has believed in this project from day one, and even though his performance sucks, you can see on screen that he's totally unaware of the fact that this movie is terrible.

Hilariously stupid actions on the part of characters aside (since we can always just argue that the characters ARE stupid), the plot of this movie is so inane it's like it reaches a new level of summer sci-fi absurdity.  Harrier jets, left sitting around for a thousand years without oiling, work perfectly, ditto a flight simulator with a mysterious power source.  (think you could train a group of fifteenth-century American Indians to fly a Harrier within a week?)  The Psychlos language-teaching device teaches Johnny Euclidian geometry, which Johnny refers to by just that label; from this, we can only conclude that the Psychlos learned this from Euclid just like we did.  Then it teaches him to read English. (although it's not entirely necessary, since if you squint at the written Psychlo language, it becomes clear that it's just stylized English and standard Arabic numerals)  By the end of this movie, even the bitterest ID4-hating curmudgeon is likely to cry out to it "Come back!  All is forgiven!"

Battlefield Earth is directed by Roger Christiansen, and boy does he do a sloppy job.  He keeps tilting his camera at 45 degrees, and every scene change comes with the same center-to-sides wipe, which gets old really fast.  Action scenes are clumsy at best, like our first scene with a Psychlo which barely shows us what's going on; at worst, they're like that one where Pepper just runs in one direction while Psychlos demonstrate all the firearm accuracy of bad guys on The A-Team.  There's one scene where Terl demonstrates his cruelty on a herd of cows; if you blink, you'll miss just what it is he's doing, and if you don't, you'll probably bust a gut laughing at these placid "Moo!"'s in the background.

This movie isn't a total crapwagon (one permutation on the word "crap" which is unfortunately left unused by the script), and a few moments slow (but do not prevent) its slide into atrociousness.  I liked the jet- and transport-flown trips over domed Denver, and there are a number of lines which appear to be intentionally amusing. ("I'm not going to put 'killed by man-animal' in my report!")  But stuff like this can't buoy the film for very long, and at most points, it sinks under its own preposterousness.

This is gonna tank and tank BAD; a sequel (covering the second half of the book; this film only covers the first) is (according to Travolta) in development as we speak, though I suspect that's one project that'll mysteriously dry up, leaving Travolta to hem and haw a lot like Garth "Yes, we're still planning to make the movie!" Brooks in the wake of the colossal failure of his Chris Gaines project.  Now that I've actually stared this hopelessly, bizarrely awful movie in the eye and come out intact, what I'm curious about now is how Travolta is going to a) live it down, and b) keep claiming that it's a good film, because I don't see Scientology's most vocal living proponent ever admitting the obvious on this one.  If changing Hubbard's words is blasphemy, what would calling bullshit on them be?  I almost feel bad for Travolta.  Almost.  It took him sixteen years to get out from under Saturday Night Fever, and that's considered a GOOD film.  God help the man getting out from under this.

As for the Church of Scientology, their interest in this film is mostly in that they hope for it to arouse interest in Hubbard's writings, and thus bring people in that way.  Again, I almost feel bad for them, because by making them even more the laughing stock, this movie is going to do more damage to them than any accusations of the sinister could ever do.  I've even heard there are subliminal messages in this movie, which I doubt but I do hope is true; that would only add to this movie's sure-to-be-enduring bizarro mystique.

Since this movie is going to crash and burn, living on only in infamy for a VERY long time (much like Dune and Highlander II), I wouldn't feel too guilty about tossing a few bucks at it and seeing it for yourself.  Oh, it's horrible, and it doesn't even earn points for being so astonishingly awful that it's unlike anything you've ever seen, like Armageddon did.  But eventually, you're going to want to know what it is people are making fun of.  If you're not curious, then save yourself and stay away; if you are, won't you want to be able to join in on the conversation when people are asking whatever happened to John Travolta?  

BACK TO MAIN PAGE BACK TO THE B's