Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)
Dir: Roger Christian
Stars: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forrest Whitaker
So we start with number 83, Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000.
As this is my first film on the list, I won’t have any comparisons to make, but that’s alright. The real problem is, where do I start?
Actually let’s just begin by stating that this movie is based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Right there is a caution sign, no?
But from that point I’ll hit my biggest pet peeve, the cinematography – if you could call it that. The whole movie is shot diagonally, or on an “angled shot,” and by that I mean that almost every single frame of this film is shot with a titled camera. That annoyed me to no end, but at least it shows that they were trying something new I suppose (?); it was still terrible.
Then there is one of my least favorite ideas that has completely permeated cinema, and that’s the notion that in the case of the end of the world that everyone would break down to a caveman-like existence. The protagonists are dumb (seriously though, dumb. As in that’s a major plot point), they wear what look like animals skins, believe in “the gods” and all have long scraggly hair.
In this film especially, there were supposed to be survivors of Earth’s apocalypse, and if that’s the case, those survivors could teach new people things, right? Apparently not, because the characters here are literally dumbfounded about what stars are. I look at a movie (but much better book) like The Road and how people in it are broken, but not dumb; but then again, this movie is dumb so I guess this makes sense.
Also, very basic plot points are not explained to us until almost an hour in. For that first hour, sometimes the aliens are speaking a different language and sometimes they’re speaking English, but why? Well it turns out, sometimes the filmmakers decided to have them speaking and put subtitles and sometimes just have it in English, but it turns out, in the movie world, they’re always speaking in that alien tongue. Did that make sense when I explained it? Of course not. That’s because it doesn’t make sense.
Finally, there’s really no story to speak of. Yes, I mean, it’s kind of about how the “human-animals” try to free themselves, but it’s a stretch. The story is just a bunch of half-assed ideas strewn into one attempt at a cohesive narrative. The world has ended and people are hunter-gatherers, but wait! There are also aliens that the people aren’t aware of. So they’re prisoners now, but no! one of the aliens is going to teach the human their language and then, um… take him to a library! Yea! A library! It is there that he’ll learn the secret of life.
But that’s not enough, no no, what else, let’s have them mine gold! But because they’re smart they’ll just fly to… oh man, where is there gold? Fort Knox! They’ll get gold from Fort Knox and then heavy munitions and bombs and planes from Fort Hood! That makes sense, right?
No. No it doesn’t. That sounds like a story I’d hear from a crazy guy on the Metro, not a pitch for movie — or a book for that matter.
And that description says nothing of the acting, which should be called atrocious at best. I say that not trying to be funny, but because they deserve it. This was supposed to be a serious movie; a serious drama. Travolta called it Pulp Fiction for the year 3000. These guys were really trying to act, and on a big budget. And on that note, what was up with Travolta’s accent? Was it British, or American bourgeois or what?
But that’s the thing about Battlefield Earth: it’s a bad bad movie. There are movies that are so bad they’re enjoyable, perhaps they make you laugh, or there’s enough gore to entertain you, but this is not one of those movies.
It’s not funny, it’s not uber-violent; there are just no redeeming qualities to it. The only reason to see this piece of garbage is if you’re winning a bet, or are on some dumb quest like I am.
What have I gotten myself in to?
Critique (review as a film): ½ star out of 5
Bad Movie Rating (Is it “bad movie” good?): 1 out of 5
Notes:
- 2001 Razzie Award wins: Worst Supporting Actress (Kelly Preston), Worst Supporting Actor (Barry Pepper), Worst Sreenplay, Worst Screen Couple (John Travolta “with anyone sharing the screen with him”), Worst Actor, Worst Director, Worst Picture.
- 2005 Razzie Award Win: Worst ‘Drama’ of Our First 25 Years
- 2010 Razzie Award Win: Worst Picture of the Decade
- Roughly $65 mil. budget after marketing; grossed just under $30mil
- Original screenwriter JD Shapiro left production halfway through, and later wrote a letter of apology to the LA Times for the final product
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