Battlefield Earth (film)
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 Take back the planet, and prepare for the worst battle when combining Star Wars, Star Trek, with a mediocre, earth-bounding book written by the founder of Scientology spawns an even worse film adaptation on the battlefield.
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Battlefield Earth, also referred to as Battlefield Earth: Take Back the Planet or Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000, is a 2000 American science fiction action film based upon the first half of the 1982 novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard. The film was directed by Roger Christian and written by Corey Mandell and J.D Shapiro. The premiere was held on May 10, 2000, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, while it was released in cinemas on May 12, 2000.
Infamous for virtually every aspect, the film was a critical and commercial failure. It has also been considered one of the worst films of all time. It also won almost all the 21st Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture of the Year.
Travolta envisioned the film as the first in a two-part adaptation of the book because it only focuses on the story's first half. A sequel based on the novel's second half was planned, but the plans were ended due to Franchise Pictures' bankruptcy and the film's negative reception.
Plot
In the year 3000, there are no countries, no cities... Earth is a wasteland. And man is an endangered species. As the leader of the evil Psychlos, Terl (portrayed by John Travolta) and his race have taken over the world's natural resources and disregarded everyone and everything else. It's up to Jonnie "Goodboy" Tyler, a brave human, to battle the Psychlos and restore normalcy to the world.
Why It Can't Take Back the Planet
- The main reason for the film's massive criticism is its infamous cinematography; over 95% of the shots in the entire film are shot in Dutch angles, which are distracting and irritating, with many of the film scenes feeling like they're sinking because of said angles.
- Even the director claimed there is only one un-slanted shot in the entire film and that he apparently wanted the film to look like a comic book.
- Horrible acting for the characters, even from Travolta and Pepper, with elements of overacting and underacting throughout, which is over-the-top laughable. This is pretty ironic for Travolta since this film was his passion project.
- Unlikable characters such as the protagonist, Jonnie, who looks nothing like his book counterpart, and Terl, who is a bad excuse for an antagonist.
- Unconvincing and terrible character development; mainly, almost everyone in the film is hugely dumb, even the Psychlos, and they claim they are the most advanced species in the universe. At one point, Jonnie tries to destroy a Psychlo ship by throwing a wooden stick at it, and a hunter jumps off an edge and breaks his ankle.
- There is almost no action scenes whatsoever, despite the film being called Battlefield Earth.
- Most of the action scenes are mostly indoors and are poorly edited, as they tend to overuse slow motion; the actual battle only happens in the climax, where most of the action, especially with the Dome, breaks in the final act.
- Too much use of color filters throughout, most notably whenever the Psychlos are at their lair.
- Abysmal sound effects: One offender is the sound used for Psychlos' weapons, which sound more like actual guns than laser weapons.
- The film is extremely unfaithful to its source material; an example of how it's so unfaithful is that the invaders don't attack Fort Knox as they did in the book.
- Boring art designs, most notably the backgrounds and models.
- There are nonsensical and numerous plot holes, inconsistencies, and illogical events:
- For some reason, the remnants of the former human civilization somehow lasted for a millennium.
- Terl is informed by his district manager that he has to stay on Earth for a long time after having an illicit relationship with the Senator's daughter.
- In the third act, the humans keep repeating the phrase "piece of cake", although they shouldn't have an idea what cake is since humans in this future is set in are rather primitive.
- Despite the total breakdown of society where much of the knowledge from a millennium prior has not been passed to the era the film is set in, the humans speak perfectly constructed English, including more complex tenses and irregular verbs.
- Terl informs Jonnie that soldiers with their technology have only lasted nine minutes against the Psychlos, yet barely trained cavemen were later seen to be capable of defeating them using the same technology, which had been sitting unmaintained for a millennium.
- After spending time in the Knowledge Machine, Jonnie acquires the Psychlo language and other things, specifically mathematics. For some reason, this also teaches him terms such as "Euclidean geometry" and enables him to translate that into the English of an uneducated, primitive human culture and to read English texts, even though the Psychlos appear not to know English.
- Much is made of humans' alleged inability to mine, yet there is a scene where many of them are seen operating a forge, which requires know-how beyond digging for gold.
- When the humans go to the abandoned Fort Hood base in Texas, they find a U.S. Marine Corps flight simulator. This makes no sense because, in reality, Ford Hood is a U.S. Army base.
- For some apparent reason, all of the F-18 jets in the abandoned military base which the humans find managed to keep the fuel, not to mention that their jets are still working after a millennium. The jet fuel has a shelf life of about four years. Not only that, but a fully-fueled jet found after a long period of time wouldn't even be able to start, let alone take off and fly, at all.
- Even with that, the batteries in the hand-held radios used in the final battle would not have maintained a charge after a millennium.
- After 1000 years of enslaving humans, Psychlos do not know humans, including the basics such as culture, language, or food.
- Horrible pacing makes it even worse and makes the film even more uninteresting. Unsurprisingly, it takes up most of the film; it's also extremely lifeless and generally makes it boring.
- The directing by Roger Christian, even for a film based on a book and as a 2000s film, is absolutely horrible in every fashion. The direction is weak and never helps with how bad the aforementioned cinematography is.
- Laughably stupid costumes, with both the humans and Psychlos having long, messed up hair with dreadlocks similar to metal bands or rastafarian people; the Psychlos fail to appear intimidating or convincing. Not helping matters is that the Psychlos share a jarring resemblance to the Klingons from the Star Trek franchise and even think that the humans are just generic "tribe clans" and act like Rebels and Resistances from the Star Wars franchise.
- The Psychlos are also downright ugly, especially on Terl.
- Despite their name, the Psychlos are incompetent in terms of warfare, which makes them idiots because they literally train their enemies in weaponry and piloting their ships, yet they do not expect them to fight back.
- The dialogue is even more laughable than serious, and as a result, it also feels out of place.
- Notable examples include when Terl asks "Jonnie "Do you want lunch?" while offering him a live rat and the infamous "While you were still learning how to spell your name, I was being trained to conquer galaxies!"
- The editing is so atrocious that the scenes are highly out of sync and poorly mixed.
- Several scenes are copied from much better science fiction films, such as the original Star Wars trilogy, some of the Star Trek films, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and The Matrix.
- The visual effects and CGI feel incredibly outdated and are bad, especially on the alien ships, which look fake.
- The motion picture soundtrack (musical score) is lackluster and doesn't feel John Williams-esque, and the songs in its soundtrack are no better than those in the film.
Redeeming Qualities
- The film could have had some potential without its poor execution, tremendously negative reception, and failure at the box office.
- Not only that, if the film did better at the box office, didn't suffer from all the bad things mentioned above, and had proper execution, it could have gotten a sequel two years later, which would adapt the second half of the book; unfortunately, they all wasted it with bad performances, cinematography, and everything about the film.
- The film has some unintentionally funny moments.
Reception
Response
Upon its release, the film was hugely panned by critics and audiences, who criticized virtually everything about the film, including the acting, cinematography, script, special effects, editing, musical score, pacing, character development and art direction. It is often considered one of the worst films ever made. The film has a "rotten" score of 3% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 153 reviews with an average rating of 2.3 out of 10. The critical consensus states: "Ugly, campy and poorly acted, Battlefield Earth is a stunningly misguided, aggressively bad sci-fi folly". The same site later ranked the film 27th on their "Worst of the Worst (2000-2009)" list for the top 100 worst-reviewed films of the 2000s. On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 9/100, based on 33 critics indicating "overwhelming dislike". The film also holds a 2.5/10 on IMDb and is ranked #15 on IMDb's Bottom Rated Movies list.
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film the rating of half a star out of four and described it as "like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies."[1] Leonard Maltin labeled the film a "BOMB" in his book Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide stating, "Clumsy plot, misplaced satire, unbelievable coincidences and a leaden pace trample Travolta's weird but amusing performance." David Bleiler gave the film one star out of four in the TLA Video & DVD Guide, writing: "This is disjointed, tedious, and every bit as bad as its reputation." Jon Stewart mocked the film on his television program The Daily Show, describing it as "a cross between Star Wars and the smell of a**".
WatchMojo.com called it the worst film of all time. In the updated list of the worst films, it was ranked #2 (with Gigli being #1).
Box office
Battlefield Earth opened at #2 on its opening weekend with a domestic gross of $11,58,898. The film's domestic gross would later go up to $21,471,685. In foreign countries, the film grossed $8,253,978. The film made $29,725,663 worldwide against its reported $73 million budget. It was later revealed that the actual cost of making Battlefield Earth was $44 million. The film was a box office bomb, and its failure at the box office led to the end of its independent studio, Franchise Pictures. They had already suffered losses from this film and their other films' disappointing performances at the box office. Still, their final blow came in 2007 when one of Franchise's investors, the German-based Intertainment AG, filed a lawsuit against them, claiming that they had faked the budget for this film to be $75 million when it was actually $44 million. Entertainment won the suit and won $121.7 million in damages, while Franchise was declared bankrupt after the lawsuit.
Awards and nominations
Battlefield Earth won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture. It was even given a Worst Picture of the Decade Award in 2010 and Worst Drama in our First 25 Years in 2005 until that record was beaten by Jack and Jill, which won ten Golden Raspberry Awards. This film and Showgirls were a tie for the most Golden Raspberry Awards. Screenwriter J. David Shapiro accepted the Awards for Worst Screenplay and Worst Picture of the Decade and it also won a Worst Picture Award at the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards.
Trivia
- John Travolta used a lot of his salary to fund Battlefield Earth.
- In the 100th episode of The Nostalgia Critic, when he reviewed this film, he lambasted the film. However, when he commented on the episode himself, he said that while the film was bad, he actually found it enjoyable to watch. He praised the production design and said Travolta was very entertaining to watch.
- John Travolta was originally going to star as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, but since he was too old to star as the protagonist, he was cast as the film's antagonist, Terl.
- Forest Whitaker regretted starring in the film, and he later apologized for it.
- Ever since the film was universally panned, John Travolta has heavily defended it, stating that he would remake it if he had to.
- The original plan was to make a sequel to the first film, which was intended to cover the book's second half. It was canceled due to overwhelmingly negative reception, poor box office performance, and the financial ruin of Franchise Pictures. The premise is unknown, but it supposedly occurs after the Psychlos' war against the humans. The title sequel covering the second half of the book was never given. It was initially intended to be released in 2002 but was later delayed to 2003 to avoid competition with Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.