It’s one thing to read how bad a film is but until you actually experience it first hand it’s hard to appreciate just how truly awful it can be. Case in point Battlefield Earth, a film that scores a measly 2.3 and ranks at number 89 in the IMDb Bottom 100 films and gets just 3% on Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. Yet those figures don’t prepare you for just how bad this is, it’s a galactic sized turkey, the sort of film even Alan Smithee wouldn’t want his name on.
It starts out innocently enough; humanity’s last few survivors have reverted to little more than barbarism, a bit like one of those cheap ‘80s Italian Mad Max knockoffs. Everyone has scruffy clothes, dreadlocked hair and perfectly made-up faces (particularly Sabine Karsenti). It’s all a bit silly but no worse than many other films I’ve seen. Thinks reach a whole other level of crap though with the arrival of John Travolta and the other eight feet tall Psychloians, an alien race that has taken over the earth in order to steal its natural resources, primarily gold. Quite why these intergalactic thieves have such a need for gold is never really explained, but that’s just one of the many holes in the story and doesn’t come close to our intrepid survivors being able to learn how to fly jets after a go in a flight simulator.
Thankfully Travolta provides a few (unintentional) laughs, with his greedy Terl played with the sort of evil menace usually reserved for pantomime dames. Travolta has always been an actor for whom the word restraint holds little interest and in this, his vanity project based on Scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard’s novel, he’s given free rain to be as over the top as he wants. Forest Whitaker, by comparison, just looks embarrassed, I doubt he ever thought he’d win an Oscar after this, in fact he was probably worried he’d ever work again.
Travolta is only funny for so long though and, at two hours, the film goes way beyond that point. With a budget exceeding $70 million you expect to see some decent special effects but there’s nothing here that suggests that kind of moola, perhaps it was siphoned off to build a new Scientology temple. What we do get is a few ships zipping about, some explosions and the alien’s dome being destroyed, none of which is very awe inspiring.
This is a BAD film that all concerned should be embarrassed by, particularly John “rat brain” Travolta.
Horror and Western film buff, Marvel comic geek, music lover and occasional gamer. 