Battlefield Earth (2000) Reviews

• One of the greatest sci fi comedies ever made!

  mstomaso2005-02-07

  My spouse and I went to see this on opening night. We were expecting to see an extremely bad and costly film, and we were not really disappointed. It is a testament to John Travolta's genius that his career survived this disaster at all. As they say, garbage-in, garbage out. Start with an L Ron Hubbard novel (your first mistake) featuring a completely plagiarized dark-skinned, war-like and hairy alien culture with wrinkly foreheads (if this sounds like Klingons to you, I thought so too!), and add unfortunate Barry "can't get a break" (or maybe it should be 'cant pick a script') Pepper and all you need is Travolta himself - playing the arrogant, merciless, slightly effeminate and quite under-sized leader of the alien colonists. Remove any hint of character development from the script and use the worst of the worst black box technobabble explanations for plot devices. Finally, stay true to the idiotic gibberish you based the film on in the first place, and you've got the makings of a rolling-on-the-floor comedy. In fact, opening night, in a packed theater, people started laughing out loud about 20 minutes into the film and never really stopped. We had a great time that night. Halfway through the film more than half the crowd was actually interacting with the film, asking "Mr Worf, where's Commander Riker?" and asking troublesome questions about how many hundreds of years gas would remain viable in the gas-tank of a Harrier. If you need to know about the plot - it's this simple - Earth has been conquered by an amazingly stupid group of Klingon-like aliens, and the remaining humans live in a large domed slave labor camp where they are taught that their sole purpose is servitude because they are stupid, weak, etc. Barry Pepper somehow becomes convinced that he's not born to be a slave, and learns to fly a harrier, etc. It's really not worth the effort of typing. There are a few not-so-subtle and not very original but good messages about ethnocentrism to be found here, but not much else. Some day when you need a good laugh, rent this or borrow it from your local bad film collector.

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• A (nervous) breakdown of Battlefield earth **SPOILER WARNING**

  The_Dead_See2000-06-12

  3 seconds in: The title is cheesy green and beneath the words 'battlefield earth' is a subtitle: 'the saga of the year 3000'... Not an auspicious start! 3 minutes in: The camera is always on a tilt. It's like watching the old Batman TV show with Adam West. My neck is starting to ache already. My friend wonders aloud if they have put the film into the projector at a funny angle. 10 minutes in: That scene was ripped straight from bladerunner 11 minutes in: So was that one... 12 minutes in: Hey look the costumes are out of dune! 14 minutes in: Hey look the aliens look like klingons 15 minutes in: Hey! They speak like klingons too! 16 minutes in: Hey. The computer displays are out of predator! 17 minutes in: John travolta shows up. He's funny, it might start to pick up from here... maybe...? 20 mintues in... or maybe not. 30 minutes in: Why are these aliens so stupid! Let's not only leave our captive human slaves unattended but let's actually *inject* their brains with all the information about our race and then take them to the library and give them the declaration of independence to read. That won't make them dangerous or rebellious at all! 40 minutes in: Barry pepper does his oscar winning speech: "we will fight for our freedom, and we will win. Are you with me? ARE YOU WITH ME?" The Scots all shout "yes William, I guess we didn't get all dressed up for nothin"... 45 minutes in: John Travolta snarls "When we took over your planet all of the forces on earth put up a fight for a measly 9 minutes before they were defeated. There is nothing you can do to stop us!!!"...I'm left wondering if a race so stupid could have defeated mildly intelligent things like humans in 9 decades let alone 9 minutes. 55 minutes in: Why are the aliens after gold???? Why is this making no sense??? 1 hour in: There hasn't been any middle setpiece yet. Actually nothing has happened at all. 1 hour 15 minutes: Did i just lose time? Was I asleep? Had I slept? what's happening? do I care? 1 hour 30 minutes: Maybe the middle set piece is just late... maybe one will come along in a minute? 1 hour 45 minutes: ... hmmm, maybe not. 1 hour 50 minutes: Oooo goody the humans have come up with a plan to get rid of these incredibly stupid alien's. Finally. 1 hour 51 minutes: Could you repeat the plan please? It made no sense and I think I might need to understand it so that the rest of the film is coherent? 1 hour 55 minutes: Cool, our heroes have found a hangar of fighter planes in Texas. The caveman humans learn to fly Harrier jump-jets in 6 days. Very impressive indeed! 1 hour 56 minutes: ...But since the Harriers have been sitting in a hangar for 1000 years how come they are still fully fueled and shiny with working weapons?? Never mind. I guess we're not supposed to notice that. 2 hours: Yayyy the fighting has begun! Ooo look, some pretty explosions. Cool - a building fell down! The humans are stopping to throw chairs through windows. That will defeat the aliens for sure! 2 hours 2 minutes: Hang on just one moment? Isn't this supposed to be BATTLEFIELD earth? There are about 15 humans and 10 aliens. Shouldn't they have called it 'slight scuffle earth' or 'schoolyard fight earth' instead? 2 hours 10 minutes: Please somebody kill me now. 2 hours 15 minutes: YAY! the head alien has managed to blow his entire race up by being really stupid. 2 hours 20 minutes: Where's the exit! Take me home please.

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• Why no option to vote 0/10 ?

  ozdavid2010-09-08

  This movie makes you wonder why on IMDb we are forced to give a movie as dreadful as this a minimum of 1/10 when it quite rightly deserves a vote of 0/10. In all my life I have never seen such rubbish! The alleged "acting" unbelievable. What was John Travolta thinking when he made this pile of ......... ? All involved with this deserve to never be involved in the movie industry ever again. The "story" is unfathomable (is that a word?) , made not the slightest sense from beginning to end. Have not had to sit through something so silly and boring in all my life. Even if you are offered to see this at no cost , just run for the exit!!!

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• Lives up to the Hype

  on_the_can2011-06-27

  Battlefield Earth has become something of a legend. It's the Holy Grail of Hollywood crap from the decade if not beyond and is quite possibly "that which we do not speak of" among scientologists. I was never one to pay much attention to critics, I always liked to watch and decide for myself but even I couldn't resist being strayed from any interest by the aura of disdain that surrounded this movie back in 2000. I was 16 then and any sci-fi adventure movie should've been worth a view, but not this one. Now, eleven years later I finally sat down to give it a shot and not only does it live up to it's reputation, it surpasses it. I was expecting a bad a movie. I was expecting cheesy performances and a weak a script but I got so much more. Battlefield Earth is a garbled mess from start to finish. We begin, as you might have guessed, on earth. A tribe of caveman-esque people struggle to survive. They're warned of a beast that prowls the land just beyond the horizon and are told of demons that rule the planet. But one brave dude, played by Barry Pepper decides there's more out there worth seeing and sets out to prove it. That beast they're all scared of? That's a statue from a long since abandoned mini-golf course. And those demons they're always whining about? They're a race of aliens from the planet Psychlo that have enslaved the human populace. For you see this isn't earth billions of years ago but earth in the future where the humans are no longer the dominant lifeforce and it's been so long since they had any power they're not even aware of how badly they got screwed over. This might seem like a spoiler...like I just blew a twist for you...but nope...fear not. Because thanks to a lame subtitle at the opening we already know this is "A Saga of the Year 3000," and thanks to some other on screen text that we apparently needed we also already know that the human race is nearly extinct. Which basically means that if you actually managed to get to this movie without having seen any previews you still won't be in for any surprises. Because who wants to be surprised by a movie right? That would be stupid. The basic idea behind this introduction to the world isn't actually bad, having us start on what seems like a primitive society and seeing the truth revealed in layers has been done before but it can be effective even in spite of those spoilerific titles at the beginning. The problem though is this information is thrown at us within about 15 minutes of screen time. The whole movie feels very rushed and none of the scenes have any room to breath and we're treated to the same split wipe transition every 5 minutes or so. I won't break down the plot any more than that because there's really no need...let's just say the badguys do some stuff, the goodguys get involved and they want to stop being slaves...because well, being a slave sucks. The director seems determined to make this movie a visual feast but really doesn't know how. Every camera in the entire movie is tilted, which can make for an interesting shot, but when EVERY DAMN shot is done the same way it holds no artistic merit what so ever...instead it looks like they were working with a broken tripod. There's really nothing visually interesting about this movie at all except for the establishing shots of the planet Psychlo, which is only because they remind you of Blade Runner. In fact I'm pretty sure they just tinted a few shots from Blade Runner purple and cut them into this movie. The aliens are essentially just people with dreadlocks and slightly bigger, hairier hands with an extra finger and apparently they're also really stupid. You see, they have access to all of Earth's history and the capability to learn how to decipher it but evidently nobody thought it was a good idea which is why they think the favorite meal of a human is uncooked rat, and they can't be sure of man's ability to fly without tossing them in the air as a test. To top it all off the alien performances are so goofy they lose all menace. John Travolta and Forest Whitaker have careers full of great performances but with this material they look like a High School theater troupe. There might've actually be a decent story to be mined out of this mess but the people involved just weren't able to find it. I like to give credit where credit is due even in movie's I'm not fond of, it's not too often I find a movie with no redeeming qualities to be found but I'm afraid Battlefield Earth just made the list.

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• Whoever thought that making this movie was a good idea should be shot.

  garyvanhorn2011-01-11

  It was with a certain morbid curiosity and a near certainty that I would be seeing an awful movie that I rented Battlefield Earth, and I must say the movie exceeded all of my expectations, it is indeed exceptionally terrible. Upon finishing the film I immediately checked to see if Ed Wood had directed it, then I remembered he has been dead for some time, but no worries Roger Christian is here to take his place. I'm not real sure where to begin because there is nothing good to start with and so much bad to describe, but I might as well start from the top. Earth has been taken over by an evil alien race that is scouring the universe for gold....yeah gold, don't know why but they want it. Earth has been occupied for a thousand years by these aliens and they are still here, searching for gold. They haven't bothered to raid the bank vaults of the world, they are too busy digging for the stuff....no really, part of the plot later hinges on the humans finding and raiding Fort Knox to supply gold to the aliens to fool them into thinking the humans are mining when they are secretly planning a revolt....I'm not kidding, but that comes later. The few remaining humans are savage tribal creatures scratching out a miserable existence as primitive hunter-gatherers. Later on they learn to fly Harrier jets and dogfight alien ships with only a few days of work, they must have been passing down fighter pilot lore for the last ten centuries or so. The main character, Jonnie Goodboy (Barry Pepper) and no I'm not making up that name either, leaves the safety of his tribe because he doesn't believe in the aliens and his dad has just died. His dad's death is very emotional, even though he never appears on camera, is never referred to ever again in the film, and the mourning lasts for about three seconds before the cut to the next scene. Anyway he gets captured by the aliens in a shopping mall and taken to their base. There follows a terrible scene where Jonnie Goodboy does battle with the alpha male in the prison population over who gets to eat first, Jonnie defeats him, and proclaims that everyone will eat at the same time from now on with thunderous cheers from the riff raff....pretty powerful stuff. I've already wasted a lot of time bashing this film so I'll just finish by saying that Jonnie Goodboy gets hooked up to a learning machine, becomes really educated, learns to fly, plans a revolt, does a little nuclear engineering, and blows up a planet. Pretty good for a guy whose most advanced tools were sticks and rocks earlier in the film. Oh one last thing, at least half the film is shot at a fifteen degree angle, we're not sure why, and once again slow motion doesn't make a bad scene better, it just makes it take longer.

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