Review of Battlefield Earth (2000) by Maridia B — 25 Sep 2012

When I was twelve, I remember walking into my local video store where I went to rent movies all of the time. I saw a poster for Battlefield Earth displayed and I thought that it looked good. I don't remember if this was before, or after I went to the theaters to see Star Wars Episode II, but I digress. Nonetheless, this film caught my interest. I remember my dad came home one day with the movie and I watched it and it was a slap in the face.

The plot takes place in the year 3000. The primitive mankind has been enslaved by an alien race from the planet Psychlo. The Earth has been drained of almost all of its natural resources and mankind is forced into hiding. Amongst the humans is a man named Johnny Goodboy Tyler (played by Berry Pepper) who gets captured while touring the ruins with two men from a different colony who show him various statues that they confuse for gods. While he is captured, he discovers who these ''demons'' (the humans in the colonies call them such due to their ignorance) are. One of which, named Terl (played by John Travolta) is the chief head of security who is accompanied by Ker (played by Forest Whitaker). In response to his authorities putting him back on Earth, the planet he despises, he and Kerr begin to privately train the humans to harvest gold so they can keep it for themselves. As they learn more about one another, Johnny starts to organize the surviving colonies into a resistance faction to overthrow the Psychlos and liberate Earth.

This movie is based on a book written by L. Ron Hubbard in 1982. L. Ron Hubbard is infamous for founding the Church of Scientology, but this movie has absolutely nothing to do with Scientology. There is so much wrong with this disaster of a sci-fi movie, I don't know where to begin. We'll begin with the structuring.

This movie's plot covers the first 436 pages of the book's 1050 page length, but the adaptation is very dreadful. The first couple of seconds into the film begins with a overhead view of the humans going inside their place of sanctuary. We finally see Johnny return from lord knows where with a cure for his father only to find out he's dead. Johnny then begins to mourn. Why am I bringing this up? Because unlike the book, we don't get any exposure, nor backstory to that character whatsoever. Granted, there have been films that have started out that way. Two of which being Fantastic Planet (Terr's mother getting killed by the playing Tragg) and Dragonball Z: The History of Trunks (Gohan returning with a cure, only to find out that his dad, Goku has passed away), but in this film it's executed miserably. It's paced at the last minute, it's rushed, and comes totally unexpected.

Oh, wait. There's more. Another thing one will notice with only a few minutes exposure is that almost every shot is slanted. I don't know whose bright idea that was, but I can safely say that it's stupid. There's no plot device to hold this dynamic in place and it never contributes to anything in the long run. When I first saw this movie, I remember that it was very hard to tell what was going on in the images because of this fact. There were also times where I had to tilt my head at the corresponding angle just to watch the film. I can safely say that there's no excuse whatsoever for this. This is only one of the things this film is notorious for.

Another thing that brings this film down are the special effects. The special effects look very drab, dark, and generic. Most of them look like images one would expect off of an Atari game. The sound effects to these same images sound like someone took each and every sound effect from tons of video games and compressed them wrong. The music doesn't fare much better. Roger Ebert perfectly summed up in his review that the music sounds like someone threw an activated microphone into a trash can and rambunctiously tossed it to and fro.

The designs of the aliens are another noteworthy thing. In the book, the Psychlos were described as humaniod felines that stood at ten feet. In this movie they all wear KISS boots and Bob Marley wigs. Their air masks are reduced to oxygen tubes that hang from their noses like snot from someone who has a really bad cold. Their fangs are replaced with rotten, yellow teeth that could use some serious dental care. Their talons are also nothing but three-fingered hands that have infected nails that could use some serous trimming. I know that aliens (mostly evil ones) are supposed to be ugly, but with this movie's theme being about understanding one another and being liberated it all feels so needless. The story just isn't dramatic and the tension is totally absent. This fact alone makes it jarring.

Another thing noteworthy is the idiocy of this film's plot. Examples being: Terl is a leader of a conquering race. This race has enslaved humanity for many years and they don't know anything about humans. What we eat, how we live, nor our language. When Johnny holds Terl at gunpoint and stops the accompanying humans from killing him, he gives Terl back his gun after giving a motivational speech to the humans and doesn't kill him. As Terl teaches the humans how to use their war technology and leaves for the day, I'm not lying this is true, he watches the humans by having a small camera fly over every couple of hours and take a still picture. The humans destroy the planet Psychlo with a single nuclear bomb and this happens because the atmosphere is radioactive.

Terl is just a complete buffoon in this movie who does nothing but call Johnny rat-brain (like he does in the book, but in the book he's smarter), gets drunk off of kerbango, gawks with Chirk-his secretary played by Kelly Preston, and scowls at everybody he talks to. As with all of the other Psychlos. Some of y'all might be wondering whether I've read the book. And the answer is: yes I have. Terl did all of these things that I've just mentioned, but the way the movie ''simplifies" them is remarkably dumb. Johnny was the only human present with the Psychlos. Terl captures him by himself and begins to study him first thing. Terl didn't get knocked down by a human while showing off his marksmanship skills, he got attacked by a bear and Johnny saved him with Terl's own gun. The cameras that monitored the miners were always on, but moved in specific patterns that became known and evaded by the human miners. During his imprisonment, Johnny develops a friendship with Ker- the midget Psychlo who accompanied Terl, but never was involved in Terl's plot to plunder the gold for himself. Terl never lost his arm. Lastly, the planet was not destroyed in the middle of the book, it was near the end. The planet was not destroyed by one nuclear bomb, it was destroyed by a multitude of them that reached its core and turned it into a radioactive sun.

Overall, Battlefield Earth is a disaster of a film from start to finish. While it does retain some of the character traits that were presented in the book, the way it executes them is just miserable. I give this movie 1 star because the dialogue is halfway decent and does contain some memorable lines here and there. The cast of actors in this film are great, but not here in this movie. If you want great alien films, check out Predator, Alien, Aliens, Predators, Starship Troopers, and Avatar. Otherwise, either read the book this film is based on, which is a good read. But stay away from this film.