Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
Okay, imagine a story similar to “Planet of the Apes,” in which the remnants of man are controlled and live in fear of an alien species from a far away planet. Now imagine that man’s fate lies in the hands of a strong hunter who is capable of more danger than most men are to the aliens known as Psychlos, who have ruled over a desolate Earth for 1,000 years.
Okay, now imagine that it sucked. I’m not talking about Tim Burton’s flawed but still interesting “reimagining” of “Planet of the Apes” but “Battlefield Earth,” the 2000 adaptation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s massive sci-fi tome that John Travolta worked to bring to the screen for nearly 20 years. Watching the film again after roughly 10 years (mainly because I wanted to watch it with the RiffTrax), part of me pities the soul of Hubbard, who had to be rolling in his grave after this turd burger hit with a gigantic thud. This is a vanity project from Travolta in every way, shape, and form, and it’s an unmitigated disaster on all levels. We know you’re a devout Scientologist, John, but did you REALLY have to make this film?
Barry Pepper stars as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (yes, that’s actually his name), a human who is part of a village on the outskirts that has scavenged to find food, and is having a hard time of it. One day, he goes further out than before to find food, and he gets captured by the Psychlos. When they take him back to their headquarters (in Denver), the Psychlos begin to use him for manual labor, but Jonnie shows himself stronger (and smarter) than other humans, which endears him to the security leader Terl (Travolta). But when Terl and his second in command Ker (Forrest Whitaker) get overly ambitious after they are passed over, their interest in Jonnie will turn out to be their downfall…or something like that.
I believe I called this film an “unmitigated disaster” a paragraph ago– I can’t quite tell whether that was being too kind. As directed by Roger Christian (who was best known as a below-the-line artisan on the “Star Wars” films before directing this film), “Battlefield Earth” is a visually grim and narratively silly adventure film that fails across the board; honestly, few “serious” films have been less intentionally hilarious, and why the name of Xenu is every other shot in this film tilted? And in terms of performance, no one comes out of this film unscathed: not Pepper, so good in “Saving Private Ryan” and other films, but so poorly served by the material; not Whitaker, who did end up winning a much deserved Oscar for “The Last King of Scotland,” but here just embarrasses himself by agreeing to appear in this movie; and certainly not Travolta, who goes to his worst acting tendencies by over-acting and looking truly absurd in one of the silliest alien makeup jobs in film history (Whitaker shares that latter fate with him). It’s not a pretty site; it’s no wonder this remains one of the most celebrated worst films in cinema history (it has “won” nine Razzies over the year).
Could this film have been saved? I don’t know; certainly not with these production values or this ridiculous script (by Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro). This is only the first half of Hubbard’s book; Travolta had hoped to finish the adaptation, but needless to say, this film’s failure commercially and artistically put the kibosh of that. Maybe great filmmakers with a bigger budget could have made a masterpiece, but I’m guessing we’ll never know; Scientology is a hot-button topic, meaning most “great” directors and writers probably wouldn’t touch it. That said, if you want to get friends together with a few 12-packs and zero responsibility in the real world the next day, I can see watching this (with or without the riffers of RiffTrax) being well worth viewing, so long as you don’t mind feeling a little dirty afterwards.
