I'm blaming Roger Christian for many of the failings of Battlefield Earth. But truly he's hardly the most responsible party. I could blame L.Ron Hubbard for writing an insipid book. Or John Travolta's ego for making the insipid book into the insipid movie now available. I could blame Giles Nuttgens for some truly ugly cinematography. Or the entirely special effects crew could be blamed for seemingly spending 75 million dollars to create cheesy "afterburner" effects on cardboard looking space crafts. But ultimately there's just too much blame to go around. All that can be said is that Battlefield Earth is possibly even worse than you may have heard. And that's impressive.
The plot is a mishmash of science fiction clichés, the kind of things a Phillip K. Dick or Robert Heinlein would be embarrassed to even think, much less write. Battlefield Earth takes place a thousand years in the future. Now, we're told on at least two occasions, Man is an Endangered Creature. The planet Earth is ruled by tall, ugly aliens called Psychlos. The Psychlos don't really like the Man-Animals and, for no good reason, keep them locked in cages. But it isn't as if Man is doing so well even without the Psychlos. We're living in caves again and nobody has developed proper grooming standards. That's the premise. There isn't really a plot beyond the fact that Johnny Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) wants to lead a rebellion and Terl (Travolta), the Psychlo Security guru, wants to stop him. Things blow up, people say stupid things, and there's a stupid subplot involving Ker, another Psychlo played by Forrest Whitaker, who must have desperately needed this paycheck.
There isn't a single piece of the alien technology that looks cool, or even interesting. That's a flaw for a science fiction film. Similarly, none of the images of destroyed humanity (like the shell of the Denver Public Library, or an old mini-golf course) are the least bit evocative. That's a flaw for a post-apocalyptic drama. And none of the action scenes achieve any kind of pacing or momentum. And that's a problem for any film.
For some strange reason virtually every shot in the film is at a jarring angle. If Christian's point is that this is a world askew, he probably could have made it was one slightly tilted camera angle. Instead, the artistic pretension just seems silly. Ditto the lengths Christian has to go to to make us believe that the Psychlos are really tall. He'd have been better off using actors in stilts rather than the low angle shots and other tricks he uses. Also, is there any reason why the film keeps going back to slow motion over and over? Slow motion, even used in moderation, is kinda tacky, but it just pulls me out of an action sequence when you add that level of contrievance.
While Barry Pepper's performance is just awful, I have no way of telling what the blazes John Travolta is doing. He speaks with a strange stilted accent (British, not Psychlo), his hand gestures are wooden, befitting the silly suit he's wearing, and it all just smells like a bad Saturday Night Live skit performance. Remember the skit where he played a potentially gay vampire? Imagine that gay vampire in an alien suit in a really horrible movie and that's what you have here. My point is that Travolta is funny. Sometimes the humor is intentional (the scene where the Psychlo discover the Man-Animals' food of choice is a hoot), but why does he keep using the word leverage? I kept waiting for Inigo Montoya to arrive from the Princess Bride saying, "I do not think that world means what you think it means." It's all just a mess.
I watched the movie with a friend who has extensive experience with film editing and he insists that Battlefield Earth was fairly well edited because it looked like the cutting covered up a lot of even worse work. So with that in mind, congrats to Robin Russell for her excellent work on a 1/10 mess.
The plot is a mishmash of science fiction clichés, the kind of things a Phillip K. Dick or Robert Heinlein would be embarrassed to even think, much less write. Battlefield Earth takes place a thousand years in the future. Now, we're told on at least two occasions, Man is an Endangered Creature. The planet Earth is ruled by tall, ugly aliens called Psychlos. The Psychlos don't really like the Man-Animals and, for no good reason, keep them locked in cages. But it isn't as if Man is doing so well even without the Psychlos. We're living in caves again and nobody has developed proper grooming standards. That's the premise. There isn't really a plot beyond the fact that Johnny Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) wants to lead a rebellion and Terl (Travolta), the Psychlo Security guru, wants to stop him. Things blow up, people say stupid things, and there's a stupid subplot involving Ker, another Psychlo played by Forrest Whitaker, who must have desperately needed this paycheck.
There isn't a single piece of the alien technology that looks cool, or even interesting. That's a flaw for a science fiction film. Similarly, none of the images of destroyed humanity (like the shell of the Denver Public Library, or an old mini-golf course) are the least bit evocative. That's a flaw for a post-apocalyptic drama. And none of the action scenes achieve any kind of pacing or momentum. And that's a problem for any film.
For some strange reason virtually every shot in the film is at a jarring angle. If Christian's point is that this is a world askew, he probably could have made it was one slightly tilted camera angle. Instead, the artistic pretension just seems silly. Ditto the lengths Christian has to go to to make us believe that the Psychlos are really tall. He'd have been better off using actors in stilts rather than the low angle shots and other tricks he uses. Also, is there any reason why the film keeps going back to slow motion over and over? Slow motion, even used in moderation, is kinda tacky, but it just pulls me out of an action sequence when you add that level of contrievance.
While Barry Pepper's performance is just awful, I have no way of telling what the blazes John Travolta is doing. He speaks with a strange stilted accent (British, not Psychlo), his hand gestures are wooden, befitting the silly suit he's wearing, and it all just smells like a bad Saturday Night Live skit performance. Remember the skit where he played a potentially gay vampire? Imagine that gay vampire in an alien suit in a really horrible movie and that's what you have here. My point is that Travolta is funny. Sometimes the humor is intentional (the scene where the Psychlo discover the Man-Animals' food of choice is a hoot), but why does he keep using the word leverage? I kept waiting for Inigo Montoya to arrive from the Princess Bride saying, "I do not think that world means what you think it means." It's all just a mess.
I watched the movie with a friend who has extensive experience with film editing and he insists that Battlefield Earth was fairly well edited because it looked like the cutting covered up a lot of even worse work. So with that in mind, congrats to Robin Russell for her excellent work on a 1/10 mess.