Battlefield Earth (or sometimes referred to as Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000) is a 2000 sci-fi action film based on the novel 1982 novel by L. Ron Hubbard. The movie was produced by Morgan Creek Productions and Franchise Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Battlefield Earth was written by J.D. Shapiro and Corey Mandell and directed by Roger Christian.
The story is it's the year 3000, Earth has become a wasteland and all of humanity are slaves to an alien race known as the Psychlos. The humans have given up any hope, but not Jonnie "Goodboy" Tyler, he believes there's still some sort of chance to beat them. Soon, Jonnie does in fact known a way, and plans to use this new found discovery to finally put an end to the Psychlos' reign.
My Thoughts
Our movie starts off with a really bad first impression. Basically Jonnie came back with some sort of medicine for his ill father, only to be told that he died last night. When he receives that news and gets angry, the scene is horrible.
-First off, the close-up is way too close. You seen more of his arm and only half of his face. That kind of close-up would only be acceptable in a student film NOT a big Hollywood blockbuster.
-Second, it's very clear that when he shouted "Nnnoooo!", it's clear they used ADR. Because the no and the movement he made with this mouth, don't even look like they match. I'm willing to bet that the actor was suppose to have an angry yell, but for some reason the filmmakers decided to put in that no.
Then we have a wipe transition, and that's the transition from almost every other scene. This wipe transition. Because if there was anything you should rip-off from the Star Wars movies, it's their wipe transition.
Now for good portion of the movie Jonnie doesn't believe in the story of these supposed demons that took over Earth....for some reason. I was so confused by this, like dude. Humanity has been enslaved by these things for thousands of years, how do you not believe this?
So Jonnie goes away from his people...for some reason. Either I forgot or the movie didn't explain, I'm not sure which is which, but anyhow. Jonnie then runs into two men who I have every reason to call the Monkey Dudes. The first thing they is when they meet Jonnie is point their spears at him and just make money sounds. Later on, when the Jonnie and the rest of the humans decide it's time to fight back they all start jumping around and yet again make monkey sounds. No wonder the Psychlos call these people "Man Animals" (by the way, get use to hearing Man Animals, cause you're gonna hear that more times than you've heard both man and animal combined). Despite the fact they can speak perfect English and can act like normal humans, they also act like a bunch of monkeys.
Later, Jonnie and the Monkey Dudes decide to camp out, then all of a sudden they are attacked by a Psychlo. And it's such a bad scene. For starters there's no music which would probably have helped the scene...not by much but still. I have no idea what they were doing with the sound. It's like the sound to this scene is half there but at the same time half not. The sound design is just very confusing. Also and I don't know how you can fail at this, but this VFX artist made a horrible laser effect. Then we have the slow-mo....oh boy the slow-mo.
Now I was gonna lumped that in with the previous statement about but, this actually deserves it's own separate thing. The slow-mo in this movie is incredibly bad. There's nothing good about it. And for the longest time I couldn't figure out what made it so awful, until I started doing for research on the filmmaking process. The reason why the slow-motion in this is as bad as it is is because those scenes were not filmed in a way that was meant for slow-mo. Basically those scenes were shot regularly without the intent to make them be slow-mo from the start, but somewhere during pre-production the filmmakers decided to now have those scenes be in slow-motion.
So after Jonnie and the Monkey Dudes are captured they're taking to a slave prison. Jonnie later escapes by shooting one of the Psychlo and runs off. Only to quickly be recaptured and then were given our first clear look at our main bad guy Psychlos and here's what they look like.
When I first saw this, I laughed. I mean how was anybody suppose to take John Travolta wearing leather, in dreadlocks, and clearly wearing stilts seriously? I wouldn't care how much firepower or more technologically advance they are, THAT is not a good look.
Another thing I want to bring up is after they recapture Jonnie, they manically laugh. And much like hearing the word "man animals" get use to that. Because almost every scene ends with a Psychlo laughing evilly. Something goes right, evil laugh. Something goes decent, evil laugh. Someone who isn't them is the butt of the joke, evil laugh. There's so much evil laughter going on in this movie that I firmly believe that it should've called, Evil Laughter: The Movie.
So Terl (John Travolta's character) meets up with his boss and he gives him the impression that he'll be leaving Earth soon. But big twist, turns Terl will be stuck on Earth for another 50 cycles with endless options for renewal. And this scene was odd. Odd because the endless options for renewal is repeated and we're meant to believe that it was repeated in Terl's head, but with the way it was edited it almost made it seem like his boss said it again and again, despite the fact the camera was focus on Terl.
Afterwards we get this beautiful scene,
I just love how he really hammed it up in this. Thank you for that Travolta.
After that glorious bit of dialogue and acting, Terl comes up with the idea to make the humans to go gold mining, but for whatever reason his buddies just doubt him. I mean it, they look around him and then laugh at his idea when they have no reason for it. As far as we know they've never tired this before so they can't say it won't work like previous times, so why the doubt? I just don't get it.
Then we cut back to Jonnie and he yet again tries to escape but he fails...yet again. But what made this scene worth bring up is, Jonnie is running then a Psychlo shoots him....but it's only a sound effect. I mean it, the Psychlo shoots him but we don't see the laser effect, we just hear the sound. What happened? Did the CGI artist take a break that day or not show up at all?
Later on, Terl still wants to do his "let's get man animals to mine for gold" plan. Now Terl wants to know what humans like to eat so it may persuade them to do his plan. He does by and a kid you not, sending Jonnie and two other guys onto an icy mountain. Then after a couple days Jonnie and the men are naturally hungry, so after they find a rat of course they're gonna want to eat it. And because of that Terl comes up with the idea that humans' favorite food is rats........WHAT?!?! If Terl wanted to know what humans' favorite food is why didn't he just ask? They would've been a more simpler plan then sending three guys on an icy mountain. It's even more confusing because later on in the movie, when him and Jonnie are having some sort of fight, Terl brings up that humans use to hunt for game. If he knows that we use to hunt for sport, doesn't that mean he should also know that we hunted animals for food....and nobody's favorite food is RATS! There was absolutely no point to that scene whatsoever!
So because Terl doesn't believe humans are smarter enough to mine, he hooks up Jonnie to machine to make him smart. But he doesn't let the machine stop at how to mine for gold, no. Jonnie is now a freaking genius to the point where he knows molecular structure. WHY?! Why did Terl let this happen? He just wanted Jonnie to know how to mine! He doesn't need him to be the newest Einstein! So this means, that everything bad that happens to the Psychlos is Terl's fault! WORST. VILLAIN. EVER!
After that bit of nonsense, we later find Terl, Jonnie, and some other people at a forest, where out of nowhere a bunch of Forest People (that's what I'm calling them) show up, attack some Psychlos including Terl, and then they decide with no hesitation at all to join Jonnie in his rebellion. I mean it, the entire scene with the Forest People come be summed up like this,
Forest Person: Hi.
Jonnie: Howdy.
Forest Person: I don't like these alien guys.
Jonnie: Hey, neither do I. Wanna join my rebellion?
Forest Person: Sure!
Also, during this entire scene Jonnie has Terl at gun point. But instead of killing him right there, right now, he gives the blaster back to Terl.....why?! Jonnie has him right there! And it's not like Jonnie's an idiot like he was before, he's now smart. So why would he not kill Terl right there?! WORST. HERO. EVER!
After a couple of boring scenes later, Jonnie along with the Monkey People and the Forest People tell them that they all have to go to a radiation bomb center in Texas, and they all know what Jonnie is talking about. How? They weren't hooked up to the same machine Jonnie was. There either Monkey People or Forest People, neither of these groups should be smart enough to understand what Jonnie is saying.
Later on, they finally arrive at the bomb center in Texas, and somehow Terl and the other Psychlos don't know about this despite a previous scene saying they were watching them. Where they find perfectly working fighter jets. And I'm not using perfectly as some sort of comedic effect or anything, I literally mean despite it being over a thousand years, those jets work like they just came off the assembly line. With fully functionally controls and fuel that still somehow makes the jets work. But what I really love about these jets is later on during the finally battle the Monkey People and the Forest People know how to fly these things. I guess despite only having a week maybe two, Jonnie taught them how to use them.
Finally....finally! We get the "battlefield" in BATTLEFIELD Earth. All ten minutes worth of it. And it's so poorly done. The CGI is sh*t, the slow-mo is just making everything look worse, and the final fight between Jonnie and Terl is awful. The close-ups aren't necessary and neither was some of the slow-motion.
So that's Battlefield Earth and it's a perfect guidebook on how NOT to make a sci-fi movie. It has hammy or over the top acting, terrible special effects, both an awful hero as well as an awful villain, and overall it just doesn't make any sense. But holy cow, is it amazing for that.
My final rating is So Bad, It's Good.
Well I'm finally done here. Come back on Saturday, Aug 28th for my review of Demonic. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.
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