The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
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.
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.
Page:
I apologise for my spelling. It's awful today. conscious. lot's of other mistakes. must use a spell-checker.
I would actually recommend the movie, as one of those laughably bad films. Except it really does go into areas, as RM18 mentions, so bad that they stop being funny.
Perhaps it really was 4th generation subliminal messaging, where your subconcious tells you that the movie was bad, to fool you, because subconciously you really love the film. But that would be reaching shaneo-esque levels of sophistication.
Also it's starting to sound Freudian. And as all good scientologists will tell you, "Freud is bad, mmmkay?"
Perhaps it really was 4th generation subliminal messaging, where your subconcious tells you that the movie was bad, to fool you, because subconciously you really love the film. But that would be reaching shaneo-esque levels of sophistication.
Also it's starting to sound Freudian. And as all good scientologists will tell you, "Freud is bad, mmmkay?"
Jimpy (if that is your real name), what did you think I was talking about?
He was describing the movie you tool.
'CR@P' also tends to describe the movie pretty well!
I saw it out of curiosity, and confronted with the monstrosity that I saw before me (and they were just the pipes coming out of John Travolta's nostril) I stopped the video about a thrid of the way through.
You have inadvertantly opened up a chapter of my life I have tried to forget - oh the nightmares I've had! The doctors prescribed me a month course of watching films like The Matrix and LA Confidential. Thankfully, you did it in a well written way.
If you can't be bothered to read the above, I too thought it was crap.
You have inadvertantly opened up a chapter of my life I have tried to forget - oh the nightmares I've had! The doctors prescribed me a month course of watching films like The Matrix and LA Confidential. Thankfully, you did it in a well written way.
If you can't be bothered to read the above, I too thought it was crap.
Oh, and a few myths shattered:
myth: Battlefield Earh did well at the box office! It must have been good
truth: Scientologist devotees, who apparently sign a contract legally dedicating their souls to scientology for 1000 years, were required to see the film up to 6 times each. I really feel sorry for those guys.
myth: John Travolta: "Scientology saved my acting career"
truth: Nope John, you'd be confusing scientology and Quentin Tarantino there. Here's a handy helper, Tarantino = director Scientology = American cult for silly people
myth: L Ron Hubbard was a genius
truth: L Ron Hubbard was a terrible writer. His books are poo. In fact they are so bad that even amazon reviewers slate them, and they're meant to flog the books!
myth: Battlefield Earh did well at the box office! It must have been good
truth: Scientologist devotees, who apparently sign a contract legally dedicating their souls to scientology for 1000 years, were required to see the film up to 6 times each. I really feel sorry for those guys.
myth: John Travolta: "Scientology saved my acting career"
truth: Nope John, you'd be confusing scientology and Quentin Tarantino there. Here's a handy helper, Tarantino = director Scientology = American cult for silly people
myth: L Ron Hubbard was a genius
truth: L Ron Hubbard was a terrible writer. His books are poo. In fact they are so bad that even amazon reviewers slate them, and they're meant to flog the books!
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.
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.
Page: