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"Battlefield Earth: better than Star Wars?"

Never before has a film had such an effect on me.

Never before have I had such a dive to find out about a religion.

Then again, never have I seen a film so woefully bad that I've had to find out why it could have reached such a depth of badness.

Oh and the answer to the question is an emphatic no. In fact this film is so woefully inept that it coul well spoil your enjoyment of Lucas' films if you see something that vaguely resembles a Battlefield Earth moment. And that's quite likely as the film steals brazenly from Star Wars. Except they make everything good that they steal bad.

In many ways I don't really know where to start. Perhaps the most worrying thing about this film is that it was meant to be a promo for Scientology. It was accused of having "4th generation" subliminal messaging in it, which was meant to turn you into a devoted scientologist. Well, as far as I can tell, the uber-subtle, "4th generation" subliminal messaging was alien warmongers called "psychloes". Now I'll take the next step real slow, because we're dealing with ultra-subtle subliminal messaging here.. the scientologists hate psychiatrists. There do you see the link?! Also, being an evil psychiatrist, sorry Psychloe, who enslaves man with his strange mind techniques, and destroy the planet Earth, they end up being destroyed by primitive man, who presumably then goes on to form intelligence-expanding methods of learning, and so blow those psychiatrists out of the water.

Yes. The imagery is about as subtle as being hit in the face with a frying pan. This pretty much sets the tone for the whole film. Which is rather what scares me. This film was meant to make me think "yay! scientology!" but I ended up laughing pretty much all the way through it and then going to find out why scientology was such a moronic pathetic cult. Other examples of heavy handed film-making include one of the most button-pushing soundtracks of modern times. So bad in fact that it would give Steven Spielberg nightmares.

Perhaps best of all is the entirely ludicrous plot. Highlights include the compunded joy of cavemen finding fully working Harrier jumpjets (1000 years old and still running) and then learning to fly them in 7 days. Oh and this all takes place in 15 minutes of screen time, in which you see the cavemen at the start, unable to communicate in anything more than grunts, and within 15 minutes they're flying harrier jumpjets like pros, weaving in and out of buildings and taking down alien ships with stinger missiles. Also a human blows up the entire psychlo planet with one nuclear missile. Which is just silly really.

On the acting front, the cast (and crew) reads as a litany of the not-so-great and not-so-good of the scientology movement, with Johnny boy Travolta heading the cast as the "villanous" Terl, as the blurb described him. Of course being "villanous" merely envolves continually laughing in a cartoon evil-villain laugh, that ends up sounding as camp as a glastonbury festival full of tents. He's accompanied by fat boy Forrest Whittaker, who's no stranger to poo psychobabble movies, having starred in the appallingly bad "Ghost Dog". Forrest subverts the gay boy laugh by dropping it an octave, and so sounding like you grandad after he's had too much to drink at Christmas. All of the Psychlos are meant to be 9ft tall as well, which means that the actors, presumably, had to walk around on stilts, which would explain their stupid walk. Oh and all the psychiatrists have yellow eyes, because they're evil don't you know..

However, on the good guys side you get some guy called Barry Pepper. Who's basically a butch Mark Hammill. He gets put on a psychlo learning machine and ends up learning Euclidean geometry among other things, which as an imdb goof-spotter points out, must have meant that the psychlos were big fans of the ancient Greeks.

While writing this, I stumbled across a scientologist interpretation of the film, because let's face it can't be an objective review. I'm going to quote some of it because it's laugh-out-loud stuff:

Here he refers to a man with a camp laugh who walks on stilts.

"When you're not marveling at the eye-popping special effects or set design, you'll probably be marveling at the performance of John Travolta. Starring as the Psychlo Security Chief Terl, Travolta firmly cements his star status both in terms of screen presence and acting chops. Forget Tony Manero from `Saturday Night Fever.' Here, Travolta plays one of the screen's great villains, with equal parts of Shakespeare's Iago and George Lucas's Darth Vader. Terl's underhanded interaction with Ker (Forest Whitaker) serves as a microcosm for the Psychlo's own faux-Machiavellian machinations of death, betrayal, power plays, and secret identities (with lots of faux-Machiavellian dialogue ladled on to keep the proceedings appropriately "classical"), but it's all briskly shot, edited, and paced with a contemporary sensibility."

Here he marvels at scene transitions which involve a screen wipe similar to one of the effects on powerpoint, and of about the same level of artistic ingenuity:

"Similarly, the wipes, dissolves and transitions between scenes are handled with an artistry that I haven't seen in motion pictures in years; in fact, I can't recall the use of such dissolves unless I go all the way back to the original 1977 `Star Wars,' and the editors on that film won an Academy Award for their work. In `Battlefield Earth,' the transitions between the different scenes move the story forward like pages turning in a novel...and this artistic texture reinforces the story's literary heritage."

a moment of lucidity:

" For reasons totally unrelated to the production, critics trashed this saga of alien conquest and human rebellion during its theatrical run, and chased many fans away with their hateful and denigrating remarks. They completely ignored or missed the film's true artistry and fun."

Yes you silly scientologist fool, the critics didn't care about production, they trashed it because it's a festering pile of crap. This review also took pains to say how wonderful the use of light and dark was. Indeed he is right. What mastery! What genius! The psychlos are always in dark sets, and, wait for it, the humans are always associated with light. Oh-my-god-give-the-director-an-oscar! Clearly he's a visionaty of unparalleled genius. Alternatively go and watch anything by Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, or indeed "The Man Who Wasn't There" and you'll see what intelligent people do with shadows and light.

In short: the worst film ever made by an intergalatic distance of incalcuable length.

And the pyschological effects of growing up in a large shoe (or it might have been a small shoe, which in turn would have inhibited Mr. Hubbards brain size, thus explaining Battlefield Earth)

It single-handedly proves that drugs are bad mmmkay, one puff and Old Mother Hubbard was having a night of passion with god-knows-what, and produced a man of unrivalled silliness.

What do you think about my Mother Hubbard theory?

(Copyright RM18)

I was on MSN, but it has an annoying tendancy to make my computer crash at random intervals, so I've stopped.

In the event that microsoft release a patch to sort it out, I might return to MSN, but each patch they've brought out so far hasn't had an effect, so I'm still waiting.

Son of Mother Hubbard?

Perhaps living in a shoe in his formative years affected his brain.

(Mr. Happy, you on MSN?)

RM18 wrote:
> Battlefield Eart 2, anyone?

Yes actually, it's underway I am led to believe. As they only managed to bungle their way through half of L Ron Hubbard's book. I strongly suspect that L. Ron Hubbard, was in fact called Ron Hubbard and just added the L to look sophistocated.

Just in case you're getting your hopes up, I refer you to the words of a wise amazon reviewer:

"Rather a disappointment, and a long one at that. I was tempted to stop half way when there is a logical stopping point after a 'victory' for Johnny Boy and his band of kilted rebels. Nevertherless I pressed on, in case some characterisation or well written dialogue appeared. It didn't."

Mr. Happy wrote:
> Life's too short for arguments.
>
> Let's unite in a universal hatred of Battlefield Earth.

Agreed

Life's too short for arguments.

Let's unite in a universal hatred of Battlefield Earth.

Apology accepted.

Some films have a certain quality, popularised under the phrase 'it's so bad it's good'. Battlefield Earth would love to have that quality, its that bad. Or maybe, it's so good it's bad. Doubt it though.

Battlefield Eart 2, anyone?

Mr. Happy wrote:
> He was describing the movie you tool.

You talking to me?
If you are, RM18's post wasnt there when I started to reply to your topic.