Right well I said at the end of my Superman IV review that my next review would be of a film or something else of better quality. But....I decided just for the fun of it to review another film that has often been panned for being one of the worst of all time. And the film in question is Battlefield Earth, which was based on the novel by the founder of scientology L.Ron Hubbard and it stars John Travolta (also a scientologist).
So is this film really as bad as they say it is??? Well let's find out again!
And as usual here is a warning for PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!
STORY
Right so the story is set in the year 3000 where the human race are now been ruled by the Pyschlos, a war fueled race of large humanoid aliens. And the remaining humans either work as slaves for the Psychlos or survive as primitive tribes in remote areas outside the control of the aliens. And one member of a tribe, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) decides to leave his home to explore the outside world. Jonnie soon joins up with a hunter named Carlo (Kim Coates) however they are both captured by the Psychlos and taken to a slave camp at the Psychlos main base camp on Earth, which is a large dome built over ruins of Denver (in Colorado). Meanwhile one of the Psychlos, Terl (Travolta) a security chief has been condemned to remain at his post on Earth indefinitely alongside his deputy, Ker (Forrest Whitaker) after an unknown incident involving a Psychlo senator's daughter. Terl however decides to make a plan to ensure that he can buy his way off the planet by making a fortune using human slaves to mine for gold in areas affected by radiation, which the Psychlos due to the air they breathe are unable to go to.
Terl on watching Jonnie's resilient nature decides to use him as the foreman for the project and he begins to train Jonnie in the Psychlos language and also how to fly one of their ships in order for him to pilot a ship to the areas they need to dig for gold. However after learning the Pyschlos language and history Jonnie plans an uprising against them with the help of a party of slaves who have been assigned to help Jonnie find the gold. Jonnie instead sends his team to Fort Knox to pick up the gold and uses his free time to plan the revolution. Jonnie also finds an abandoned underground US military base with working aircraft, nuclear weapons and fuel and his team use the flight simulators there to learn aerial combat. And its from here that Jonnie starts to stage the human's fightback in an attempt to take back their planet and destroy the Psychlo threat....
THOUGHTS
Well it has to be said that there isn't much doubt that Battlefield Earth is a pretty poor film as it really is a bit of a joke in terms of its story and its technical presentation as well (I will get all that in more detail in my flaws section which will be quite BIG!). Travolta himself who to this day is still a scientologist (who joined the Church of Scientology in 1975) was the catalyst for getting the film made he himself was a big fan of the book and he was very keen to see it make it to the big screen. Unfortunately however the enthusiasm from everyone else was very little to say the least and the film went to be heavily panned by the critics on its release. And it has to be said its easy to see why as thee story itself just doesn't hold well at all and there are so many plot holes you could make a decent Swiss cheese out of them!
PERFORMANCES
As for the film's performances well they are a bit of a mixed bag but they are not too bad overall given how piss poor the film's material actually is that's saying something! Anyways I will not go into any great depth on the performances here as its not really worth it for this film lol but I will say a bit about the main cast.
So for starters we have John Travolta who actually provides the film's most over the top performance as he seems to have alot of fun playing the villainous Terl, a ruthless Psychlo security chief who wants to escape Earth and his tedious duties. Travolta hams it up about as much as he can here and he plays his part with a Shakesperian twang as he delivers his dialogue in the most flamboyant way imaginable. Travolta also has some fun moments and lines and the one that particularly stands out is in the scene where Terl get's drunk and he tells off his deputy, Ker by saying to him "While you were still learning to SPELL YOUR NAME, I was being trained to conquer galaxies! To do anything less is a disgrace to my entire family line!".
Another scene is when Terl and Ker are monitoring the humans and Terl bangs his head on the ceiling and he yells "Crap-lousy ceiling! I thought I told to get some man-animals in here and fix it!". Then there is the scene where Terl boasts he is a great marksman to Jonnie's recruited men for Terl's mining task. And in the scene Terl says "And if any of you get any bright ideas about escaping just keep in mind I graduated top marksman in my class and I can kill any one of you at over a 1000 paces!" and he demonstrates by shooting some cows. And in the same scene Jonnie and his men ambush Terl but Jonnie decides to hold out so he can plot a way to bring down the Psychlos once and for all (and Terl doesn't understand this clearly!) and he gives Terl his gun back. And lastly there is the scene near the end where Jonnie and the others have started their attack and Terl get's on the speaker system and addresses his other Psychlos "Attention. This is Terl, your chief of security. Exterminate all man-animals at will, and happy hunting!".
Barry Pepper while his role is far less flamboyant he does do OK in his role as Jonnie, the human slave who stages an uprising against the Psychlos. Pepper doesn't really that many great lines of dialogue and you wouldn't really expect him to either but he still has one or two good moments such as the scene where he holds Terl at gun point and he tells the other slaves how they can overthrow the Psychlos and take back their own planet. And in the scene Jonnie says "What kind of life is it to run?! Always living in fear of being hunted!" and one of the slaves says "We can't defeat them!" and Jonnie says "Yes we can! Yes we can!". And later there is the scene where (SPOILER!!!) Jonnie has captured Terl and placed him in a cage surrounded with all the gold bars and he tells him he intends to keep Terl alive so they can use him as "leverage". And Jonnie says to Terl "If there are other Psychlo colonies out there they'll send out their gastrons and exterminate us. But if they learn that it was your greed that destroyed their home planet then all the credits in the universe won't be equal to the bounty put on your head!".
And last of all Forrest Whitaker does what he can in his role as Ker, Terl's rather slow witted deputy (well let's face it this race aren't bright sparks anyway!) although he later does figure out with the help of Jonnie that Terl planned to double cross Ker. Whitaker doesn't really have that many good lines either but he still does have one or two good moments in the film and the way in which Ker taunts the imprisoned Terl at the end of the film is not too bad and one of the film's slightly better scenes where he says to Terl "Look on the bright side. At least you finally got your gold!" and he walks off laughing loudly.
DIRECTOR AND MUSIC
As for the director of this film??? Well what can you say! Roger Christian! Dear oh dear! Well given that Christian was hardly a first time director there is not much excuse here for how BE turned out but ultimately Christian's direction is a total mess. Christian also for some bizarre reason decided to shoot the whole film with slanted camera angles so there is not one scene in the film where the camera is on a straight horizon, which tends to become tiresome pretty quick! Christian also seems to employ a half-assed use of curtain wipes like it was his attempt to do Star Wars (which let's face it, it was!) but that also becomes tedious after a while. So in short Christian misfired with this one and whether or not it was down to the creative control from Travolta, the studio or whoever else (most likely Travolta!) its a pity that this is the film he will be remembered for!
Music wise the film has a rather forgettable score by Elia Cmiral which isn't horrible but its noting special either and ultimately its just music that sits in the background and as such doesn't make any impact on the film or helps to make it better in any way, shape or form.
FLAWS
OK flaws.....Battlefield Earth??? Nah surely not! (Ahem!!!). Yes it does have quite a few flaws so let's take a look.
Well for starters it has to be said that one of the main problems with the film is that simply its story is incoherent mess and its riddled with various plot holes. And the Psychlos themselves must rank as one of the dumbest alien races ever put on film as while they conquered the humans they barely know a thing about them! And this is noted in the scene where Terl asks Ker "what do these man-animals like to eat?" and Ker says "There is no way of knowing that, sir".
Now as far as I'm aware in the film the Psychlos do not speak English so they can't understand the humans and it takes for Terl to place Jonnie in the learning machine for him to communicate with them by learning the Psychlos language. But it begs the question....why the hell didn't they think to do that before???? I mean it would make the whole communication process alot easier or better yet if they were such an advanced race why couldn't the Psychlos devise some sort of universal translator?! In the end as I said it just highlights how stupid a race they are! They have the power and weapons to take over the human race for a thousand years but they can't be bothered communicating with the humans in any way whatsoever! God!!
Also further to this the Psychlos are intent on mining for gold BUT they were totally unaware of the existance of a certain Fort Knox! And it yet again shows the ignorance of the Psychlo race that they didn't bother their arses to learn anything about the humans and if they had in this instance they could have gotten their gold alot sooner! Terl even in one scene takes Jonnie out to a destroyed library containing books on American history, which again the Psychlos never bothered looking at to find out any clues about the people they had conquered. But well that's the way it goes.
And for further proof that the Psychlos are diddies well the biggest proof is Terl himself who is in short a friggin idiot! Terl does nothing else but plot his own race's downfall by giving Jonnie the tools to learn the Psychlos language and history, which in the end Jonnie uses to his advantage so that way he knows he can defeat them! So basically the destruction of Psychlo is entirely Terl's fault and could have been avoided had he not chosen Jonnie or even bothered with his plan in the first place! Terl is also so dimwitted and arrogant that he can't understand the notion of Jonnie being able to discover hidden microphones that are place on his clothes yet Jonnie discovers them pretty quickly and get's rid of them to knock out Terl's video cameras!
Terl also even trains Jonnie in how to pilot the Psychlo's ships and gives him his own crew to mine the gold and he warns him "I will be watching you". But by watching him all Terl does is occassionally send out some sort of photographic drone to take a picture of the area where Jonnie is now and then and that's it! I mean the guy doesn't even have any kind of constant surveillance to know what is going on and in the meantime Jonnie is hatching a plan to destroy the Psychlo race and its all thanks to Terl's training. What an absolute dick!
And yet another scene that backs up Terl's stupidity comes in the scene where Jonnie struggles with Terl and manages to attach an explosive collar around Terl's arm and eventually Terl threatens Jonnie by planning to use the detonator and Jonnie says to him "I wouldn't do that if I were you" and Terl decides to use it anyway and it ends up blowing his arm off. Now.... how the hell did Terl NOT even notice that the explosive collar was attached to his arm in the first place?!! Surely to God he would have felt it on his arm!! To quote the Nostalgia Critic who did a review on Battlefield Earth "THIS IS STUPID!!! STUPID!! STUPID!! STUPID!!!" (cue speeded up rant!). So yeah basically most of this film's flaws and idiocy come down to Terl who is a complete and utter, total dickhead!
And lastly it has to be said another problem with the film aside from the incompetence of the Psychlos is simply to do with the whole human uprising subplot which is frankly quite boring as are pretty much all the human characters in the film as well. And it has to be said that despite their stupidity the Psychlos make for the more entertaining characters and here the humans are just dull dull dull. Its basically not a very interesting story overall and the scenes involving the humans just feel slow and drawn out and you keep waiting to see John Travolta came back on the screen for the sake of being entertained.
Anyway so that's it for the flaws.
SUM UP
So that's it for my look at Battlefield Earth and it has to be said it sure ain't a great film as its story makes no sense, the characters are either dull or stupid and the performances are a real mixed bag. However the film still is at times weirdly enjoyable mainly due to Travolta's entertaining and over the top performance as well as a decent turn from Forrest Whitaker as the two of them almost make for an amusing double act. But that aside its a film with alot of problems and given that it was connected to L. Ron Hubbard in the first place it left alot of people cold before the film was even completed. So in short Battlefield Earth is a pretty naff film but to call it one of the worst films of all time is a bit harsh to be fair to it, but one thing it isn't is a good one.
And that's it for this one (and despite my verdict it was still a fun review to do!) and I will be back with a BETTER quality film or other type of post soon, promise!
Until the next one bye for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment