Battlefield Earth (film)

Battlefield Earth
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.
Genre: Sci-Fi Action Drama Adventure Directed By: Roger Christian Produced By: Jonathan Krane Elie Samaha John Travolta Starring: John Travolta Barry Pepper Forest Whitaker Kim Coates Richard Tyspn Sabine Karenstine Cinematography: Giles Nuttgens Editing: Robin Russelle Music By: Elia Cmiral Distributed By: Warner Bros. Pictures Release Date: May 10, 2000 (Grauman's Chinese Theatre) May 12, 2000 (United States) Runtime: 117 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $73 million Box Office: $29.7 million

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 nearly every aspect of the film; the film was a commercial failure, and received tremendously negative reception: The film has also been considered as one of the worst films of all time. It also won almost all of 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 first half of the novel's story. A sequel based on the second half of the novel was planned, but the plans were ended due to bankruptcy of Franchise Pictures, alongside the negative reception of the film.

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

1. The biggest reason the film faced so much criticism is because of 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 feels like they're sinking because of said angles.
   • Even the director himself 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.
2. 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 the fact that this film was a passion project for him.
3. Unlikable characters such as the protagonist, Jonnie, who looks nothing like his book counterpart, and Terl, who is a bad excuse for an antagonist.
4. Unconvincing, and terrible character development; particularly, almost everyone in the film is extremely dumb, even the Psychlos as well as they claim there 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.
5. 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, in which most of the action especially with the Dome breaks in the final act.
6. Too much use of color filters throughout, most notably whenever the Psychlos are at their lair.
7. Abysmal sound effects, one offender of this is the sound used for Psychlos' weapons, which sound more like actual guns rather than laser weapons.
8. The film is extremely unfaithful to its source material; an example of how its so unfaithful is that the invaders don't attack Fort Knox as they did in the book.
9. Boring art designs, most notably the backgrounds and models, with the Psychlos' ships resembling flying trash cans, as seen on the poster art.
10. There are nonsensical and numerous plot holes, inconsistencies, and illogical events:
    • For some reason, the remnants of the former human civilization somehow managed to last 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 including 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, despite the fact that the Psychlos appear to have no knowledge of English.
    • Much is made of the alleged inability of the humans to mine, yet there is a scene where many of them are seen operating a forge, which requires know-how exceeding the simple act of 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, on the other hand, 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 have no knowledge of humans including the basics such as culture, language or food.
11. Horrible pacing that makes it even worse and makes the film even more uninteresting and unsurprisingly takes up most of the film, it's also extremely lifeless and makes the entire film boring in general.
12. The directing by Roger Christian, even for a film based off 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.
13. Laughably stupid costumes, with both, the humans and Psychlos having long, messed up hair with dreadlocks similar to that of 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 thinking 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.
14. In spite of 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.
15. 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?" whilst 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!"
16. The editing is also downright atrocious to the point where the scenes don't get combined properly and is poorly mixed.
17. 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.
18. The visual effects and CGI feels incredibly outdated and are just bad; especially on the alien ships, which clearly look fake.
19. The motion picture soundtrack (musical score) is lackluster and doesn't feel John Williams-esque, the songs in its soundtrack are no better than the film.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. The film could have had some potential, if it weren't for its poor execution, tremendously negative reception and failure at the box office.
   • Not only that, if the film did better at the box office and didn't suffer from all of the bad things that are mentioned above, it could have gotten a sequel two years later, which would adapt the second half of the book, but they all wasted it with bad performances and cinematography (as well as everything about the film).

Reception

Critical response

Upon its release, the film was hugely panned by critics and audiences alike, who criticized virtually every aspect of 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." 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 version of the list of the worst films, it was ranked at #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. Overall, 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 the film's failure at the box office led to the end of it’s independent studio Franchise Pictures. They had already suffered losses from this film and their other films disappointing performance at the box office, but 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. Intertainment won the suit and won $121.7 million in damages, while Franchise was declared bankruptcy 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 own 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 made a commentary on the episode as himself, he said that while the film is 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, to the point he later issued an apology for it.
• Ever since the film was universally panned, John Travolta has heavily defended the film 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 second half of the book itself. It was canceled due to overwhelmingly negative reception, poor box office performance, and financial ruin of Franchise Pictures. The premise is unknown, but it supposedly takes place after the Psychlos' war against the humans. The title sequel covering the second half of the book was never given. It was originally intended to be released in 2002, but it was later delayed to 2003 in order to avoid competition with Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

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