Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)

Battlefield Earth was scientology's answer to The Ten Commandments. It was a pet project of John Travolta's, a movie based on an L. Ron Hubbard book. No studio wanted to make it because of the link to Scientology- no studio but Franchise Pictures, that is. It was filmed in Quebec, Canada, for around $45 million.

What we ended up with was a two hour long piece of shit, completely unwatchable and impressive only in that such a horrible thing was able to have been made.

Battlefield Earth starts with a Star Wars like crawl explaining the story this far, not surprising since director Roger Christian worked as a second unit director for The Phantom Menace.

It's kind of like Star Wars, only green and stupid.

The humans are almost wiped out, and aliens called Psyclos have enslaved them. There's a few humans living in little primitive tribes here and there but they're mostly enslaved. The Psyclos call humans “man-animals”.

We go now to one of the aforementioned tribes.

A girl is worried because her boyfriend hasn't come home, he's outside of the little fortress where they stay inside to be safe. He went to get medicine for his father. Some old guy (either her father or a priest) tells her that he's probably dead, so don't worry about it. She won't accept that answer obviously. Then, he shows up- he's alive! But his father died while he was gone. He says, “No! NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

So that night all the tribe is sitting around a fire and this guy, who's named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, complains that he doesn't believe in the gods that his tribe is always talking about. The old guy from the beginning is mad that Goodboy doesn't believe in gods, so Goodboy decides to go out on a hunt to see if he can find proof either way. Before he goes, his girlfriend gives him a necklace that she says his mother gave to him before she died. What? I thought his father just died? I guess she's been holding onto this necklace for a while. She says to make sure that it, and he, come back in one piece. *loads chamber*

So Goodboy gets on a horse and fucks off to the wilderness. Out of nowhere his horse flips him off and he lands next to a giant statue of a dragon, which at first he thinks is real so he hacks and slashes it for a while.

The dragon symbolizes that the rest of the movie is going to just drag on. Haha.

Once he realizes it's obviously just a big rock, he laughs and says to noone in particular “so YOU'RE the beast we're all afraid of.”

Some assholes with spears show up and are about to kill him. Then he offers them some dead rabbits to eat and they decide to show him proof of the gods.

Their proof of the gods is the one and only cool part of the movie. They take him to an abandoned city, overgrown with plants. Goodboy's two new friends explain that the giant statues were gods who the other gods didn't like and so were turned to stone, while mannequins were people turned to stone by the gods. They go to an abandoned mall, it's kind of interesting to see Goodboy, who's been living his entire life in a wild tribe, discover modern day things like glass windows.

They make a bonfire in the mall. One of the assholes, completely unprovoked, says “Where I come from a good woman is hard to find. So if you were stupid enough to leave one behind, why don't you tell me where she is so I can find her for myelf?” Goodboy gets pissed and tried to strangle this guy. All of a sudden, an alien shows up and grabs all three and puts them in a cage on the bottom of a flying alien ship thing.

I'll mention now that 90% of the shots in this movie are canted. It's annoying as hell.

So this ship takes him to a futuristic alien city underneath a glass pyramid. Notice that we've gone from a stone age environment, to the remains of the modern age, to a technologically advanced futuristic environment. Oh boy oh boy!

When they land, the humans can't breathe. The Psyclos give them stupid looking little spaghetti strings to stick in their nose, and then they are able to breathe. A title on the screen informs us that we're now in “Human Processing Centre- Denver.”

Goodboy picks up a gun, the aliens seem unconcerned. Then he shoots and kills one of them and runs like hell, but bumps into John Travolta, who picks him up by the neck and carries him back.

They should never have hired the camera operator with the one short leg.

Apparently, no man-animal EVER has figured out how to use a gun. John Travolta laughs. The aliens, at first, spoke in some kind of grunting language, and then there's a horrible cut and they speak English. We hear the aliens in English, but the humans can't understand them, and they can't understand the humans. John Travolta's accent fluctuates between an American and a British one the entire movie, but I guess it's okay since he's not speaking English at all.

Goodboy is taken to the jails where he's washed down. A Psyclo takes his mother's necklace and destroys it. He doesn't seem that upset by this and the necklace is never again mentioned. Then why include it? Oh yeah, because this movie is stupid.

Some Psyclo asshole shows up and meets with John Travolta. They talk about how much they hate man-animals and laugh a lot. There's a meeting with JT, this new guy, and a bunch of other Psyclos. Watch it here, I'm sure as hell not explaining it.

Yes, that is Forest Whitaker.

Yeah so Travolta's pissed about having to stay on Earth forever. He immediately goes out and starts drinking some cups of green alcohol that he calls “Pans”. I hope that's not a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster reference from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Meanwhile, aliens pour some gunk into the cages where Goodboy is. Goodboy beats the shit out of a guy and teaches the other humans to share, something they've never thought of. A recurring theme in BE:ASOTY3K is that Goodboy is smarter and better than anybody on Earth at everything, and everybody else is a big idiot.

Later, all the humans are walking through the city chained together. Suddenly, things start exploding. Goodboy grabs a chunk of something that just blew up and uses it to break his shackles, then he starts running away.

Did the camera operator just get fillings on one side of his mouth?

John Travolta is busy being a dick to Forest Whitaker. He tricks him into saying something incriminating and records it so he can show use Forest as a patsy in his evil plan. I am not going to describe John Travolta's evil plan, because it's not important to the movie.

Meanwhile, Goodboy is in a place he can't breathe so he jumps into a pipe and winds up in the sewers, where he CAN breathe. Good job man!

I cant stand this cinematography.

Somehow, John Travolta and Forest meet up with Goodboy in the sewers, even though they weren't in the sewers when we last saw them and they weren't even chasing after Goodboy. They decide that Goodboy is pretty smart and would probably be good at mining, so they take him to a mine.

When he gets to the mine, instead of picking up an axe and digging for gold like all the other humans, he goes straight for the computer that's set up right by the miners. John Travolta realizes that this man-animal is actually pretty smart and decides to teach him everything ever. He picks Goodboy up and straps him in a chair where knowledge is beamed into his head.

Just too much Dutch.

Goodboy learns mathematics (which he calls “The unifying language of the universe”), the principles of composition and design (if only HE had shot this movie), how to fly alien ships, and how to speak the Psyclo language.

CUT TO! His old girlfriend back in the camp. His horse trots into the tribe's lair without him, so she gets on her own horse and goes after him, not before that old guy tries to discourage her. “Hope is an admirable emotion, but foolishness is not.” “I'm not a child anymore! I believe he is alive!” *cocks pistol*

AND WE'RE BACK! Goodboy has used his new knowledge to break into to alien's weapons storage and he's given all the miners guns. They try to rise up and kill John and Forest, but it turns out the guns aren't loaded.

All the sets were built on the side of hill.

WHOOPS! John Travolta beats him up a little, then Travolta growls, “I think it's time that we show our little friend here a thing or two.” FIELD TRIP!

John Travolta takes Goodboy to the remains of the White House an explains that when the Psyclos attacked, the entire war lasted only nine minutes. The humans were utterly demolished and made into slaves. Wow, kind of crazy. He says to Goodboy, “Look at anything you wnt- BECAUSE NOTHING CAN HELP YOU!” Goodboy finds the Declaration of Independance and reads it, nodding in agreement with the founding fathers. It's stupid.

Then John Travolta takes a bunch of humans to a field in the middle of nowhere to watch him shoot cows. While he's got his back turned, a human tackles him and they all gang up on the fallen Psyclo, pointing a spear at him. He's as good as dead.

Sometimes the Psyclos have five fingers, sometimes six. Here, John Travolta has five.

While John Travolta's down, Goodboy riles up all the other troops ad convinces them that the best way to eventually escape is to let John Travolta capture them again so he can go back to the knowledge machine an learn more. They agree. So they let John Trvolta up and he immediately takes control of them again. So why did they push him down in the first place? Because this movie is stupid.

Travolta reveals to Goodboy that the Psyclos have captured his girlfriend, then they kill one of Goodboy's friends. Then they go back to Denver.

Back in jail, everyone hears about how Goodboy can speak Psyclone and starts freaking out with happiness. The Psyclos don't know what's going on.

Was the camera itself just too heavy?

Meanwhile, John Travolta gets an alien hooker to lick him all over his fully clothed body with her gigantic tongue. No, really.

Hey, remember Pulp Fiction? That was a good movie.

So then John Travolta drops Goodboy off in the middle of nowhere and tells him to mine a bunch of gold and bring it back in some timeframe. Goodboy read somewhere back at the White house that there's a bunch of gold in Valley Forge. So instead of mining, they go to Valley forge and get all the gold they need. They spend the rest of the time training for Goodboy's complex and brilliant plan to defeat the Psyclos and restore freedom to all the humans. It boils down to:

1.Blow up the glass pyramid with all the Psyclos inside it.
2.Blow up planet Psyclon.

TRAINING MONTAGE. The humans (who are all primitive, totally uneducated wildmen) learn how to pilot F-16s in one day. It's stupid.

Meanwhile, Forest Whitaker has made an incriminating tape of him own of John Travolta talking about his evil plan, which, again, I'm not going to get into. John Travolta shoots off Forest Whitaker's hand. Forest is pretty unconcerned about the whole thing.

Everyone on this set was likely drunk, the entire time.

So now Blondie's back at the prison, even though he's supposed to still be mining. He lets all the humans free and gives everyone guns and rocket launchers.

There's a giant uprising. Things explode everywhere. The explosions aren't the fiery kind, they're more just dust, like when you clap chalkbrushes together. In any case, the humans do pretty well with thousand year old weapons and it's hard to believe that the war between them and the Psyclos lasted only nine minutes because they're doing pretty well.

Right as they're about to blow up the pyramid (which everyone in the movie calls a dome), John Travolta appears and just fucks up everyone's day as usual. The explosives don't manage to destroy the entire dome, so the one guy crashes his ship into it, but it doesn't work. He looks over and sees a bunch of barrels labeled “FUEL”, so he shoots them with a bazooka and the dome finally collapses.

This man's horrible journey is finally over. The audience still has a half hour left.

I'll sum up the next sequence by saying that huge chunks of glass fall everywhere, all the Psylos die and all the humans live.

Well, John and Forest are still alive. Goodboy fights with John Travolta, giving his friend the opportunity to sneak into the teleporter with the bomb, teleport to Psylon, and blow it up (scrificing his own life). Goodboy explodes John Travolta's arm. John Travolta looks at his smoking arm socket with disapproval.

It's just a flesh wound.

EPILOGUE: The humans are back on top. What's this, though? John Travolta is still alive! Imprisoned in a cage surrounded by gold.

Straight up, every shot is canted and it makes the movie look retarded.

Ironically surrounded by the very thing that he tried to attain! Hoho! Goodboy comes by and taunts Travolta for a bit. Suddenly, Travolta laughs and says “There's one thing you man-animals weren't smart enough to figure out. Kill them!” Everyone spins around and there's Forest Whitaker with a gun in his hand! He walks up to Goodboy- and hands him the gun, saying “I fixed the problem with this gun. It works now.” Because he's now their technology expert, you see! *puts barrel up to head*

THE END, directed by Roger Christian.

Numbers out of ten:

Acting: 1
While there are some actors I liked in it, like John Travolta (yes) and Forest Whitaker, nobody has done anything close to a passable job. The shifting accents, the odd noises everyone makes, nothing Oscar worthy here. If I were Forest I'd be pretty embarrassed right now.
Directing: 0
Hoho! The director is an idiot. Everything he knows about moviemaking he learned on the set of The Phantom Menace. This movie has too many canted angles, repulsive editing and awkward jump cuts, long series of close ups, and bizarre performances from actors otherwise proven to be talented. Never watch this movie.
Dialogue: 4
It's bad but it's not the worst I've ever seen.
Plot: 0
It's hard to believe that anyone liked this as a book. Religion can make smart people do stupid things.
Entertainment: 0
I want to give this a negative score. This movie didn't entertain me at all, it just made me angry.

Total: 10%

The Psyclos are the lamest aliens I can recall. They're humans with yellow teeth, yellow eyes, big disgusting beehive dreadlocks, stupid facial hair, enormous crotch bulges and giant boots. Oh, and they have gross hands that change digit amounts shot to shot. John Travolta's voice is too high pitched and wimpy to sell him at all as an antagonist. The plot is overly complicated and assumes that the audience gives a shit. I was bored as hell the entire time. Every time I paused to take a screenshot, I'd find myself a couple of minutes later surfing the web, and I'd force myself to keep watching. If I wasn't writing this review there's no way in hell I would have watched the entire thing.

I'd like to say that everyone involved in this movie is an asshole. It's a movie by assholes, about assholes, for assholes. I will never watch it again. It was one of the most unpleasant two hours of my life.