Bullet Points: Battlefield Earth
I don’t know anyone who would contend that Battlefield Earth is a good movie. Maybe there are some Barry Pepper fans out there who are angry that his big break never amounted to anything and scream to high heaven that he should have become the action star that he was always meant to be. I highly doubt it, though. Battlefield Earth is mostly remembered for being written by L. Ron Hubbard and for being a rubbish movie, but I don’t think it’s a total waste. Maybe I have discovered a real weakness for comic villainy?
Synopsis: It’s the year 3000 A.D.; the Earth is lost to the alien race of Psychlos. Humanity is enslaved by these gold-thirsty tyrants, whom are unaware that their ‘man-animals’ are about to ignite the rebellion of a lifetime.
- In the year 3000: The Pychlo invasion wiped out the Earthling defense in no time. They didn’t stand a chance with all that Pyschlo tech. You know with the flying machines and the guns….wait a sec, how did they conquer Earth so easily? It doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that the film opens with the only remaining free humans running around like cavemen. The focus is on Johnnie Goodboy Tyler, which might be the worst name for a hero in movie history. He’s played by Barry Pepper who has had a fine career but not the kind of guy who I would want saving my skin.
- Planet of the Ape-ish: The alien invaders are pretty tall. Travolta and his fellow Psychlos wore 4 foot tall stilts as part of their costumes. Other than their height, the aliens reminded me of human-faced Predators. Only these guys were much less deadly. They were successful in their invasion of Earth and subsequent near annihilation of the human race but the don’t seem to have any other motivation beyond securing minerals.
- Johnnie Goodtime: Barry Pepper might be Johnnie Goodboy but I’ll call Travolta Johnnie Goodtime. He had been trying to get this film made for some years. I’m sure you’re aware, by now, that Travolta has been a member of the Church of Scientology for years. He originally wanted to play the role of Johnnie Goodboy but has since aged out of the role and took a significant paycut to play the Psychlo Terl. The film went through some serious drama getting made and then through some more due to a smaller than expected budget and unhappiness with the script, but it’s hard to argue that Travolta plays Terl like he’s a villain on the 1960’s Batman series.
- A slap on the wrist: Johnnie Goodboy does not live up to his namesake. He gets captured by the Psychlos pretty early on and spends the next half of the movie fighting against his captors and trying to escape. Any other detention center in the galaxy would have just killed the guy.
- Training for war: Terl sees the potential in Goodboy and educates him on just about everything. He learns the Psychlo language, mathematics, and apparently all about nuclear weapons. Terl’s plans to secretly mine a bunch of gold from Earth using ‘man-animals’ totally backfires when Johnnie Goodboy sneaks away with his counterparts and learns all about war. You know, they train on weapons, tactics, and flying fighter jets in a mater of three weeks. It’s all very impressive.
- Psychlo beatdown: Once the humans learn about war and come up with a plan, they execute it to near perfection. They destroy the dome surrounding the area and take out the air quality that the Psychlos need. Then, a handful of the best and brightest of the humans use some fighter jets to take out the Psychlo ships. The coup de grâce is when they transport a nuclear bomb to the Psychlo planet and totally obliterate it. The battle felt similar to the one in Independence Day a few years earlier. It could have been much better, that’s for sure. The air battle was almost non-existent and most of the humans running around with rifles on the ground were simply distractions so that they could destroy the dome and then transport the bomb. No matter how poorly the final battle was executed, it did work.
The Verdict: I’ve always thought that Battlefield Earth was given a bad rap. It’s not high art, by any means. What it is can be described in one word; entertaining. Whether you’re watching it because you legitimately enjoy it or because you choose to watch really bad movies just to torture yourself I think you’ll find some value in it. I find that if you just focus on John Travolta’s character, it’s very hard not to have some fun watching it. The action scenes aren’t exceptional and between all the scenes of Travolta choking Barry Pepper you’ll find that most of the script is so bad it hurts. But, John-boy and Forest Whitaker are so good to watch in their giant ridiculous costumes that I couldn’t help but smile. Or maybe it was just the liquor…..
