Seeing Is Believing

Sometimes a film comes along that is so bad you as the viewer can actually find something within the confines of its awfulness to enjoy. A famous example of this would be Ed Woods Plan 9 From Outer Space and a personal favourite of mine is Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

There are of course other films that are genuinely so bad that they deserve every ounce of vitriol that critics pour upon them. Halle Berry in Catwoman springs to mind as does the movie that this post is all about Battlefield Earth. Now before I continue I should point out until today I had never actually watched Battlefield although I had of course heard all of the negative stories about how bad the John Travolta vehicle actually is and I had no desire to waste my time sitting through a movie that had ties to the Church of Scientology.

Ah yes the Church of Scientology, a topic that I have no intention of touching with a ten foot barge pole. Why is this? Well I've seen enough documentaries about the church and how it reacts to negative publicity to know that I'm better off keeping mum rather than offering an opinion on their beliefs and practices. With that said however it was the latest film about the church, written in part and starring famed documentarian Louis Theroux, that renewed my interest in the subject and drove me to finally settling down to see if Battlefield Earth is truly as terrible as I had been led to believe.

So to the plot, and I use that term loosely as the word gives the impression that there is a cohesive story with a beginning, a middle and an end which I guess there is it's just so weak and convoluted that I'm not convinced I can actually tell you exactly what the hell was going on.

In brief the movie takes place on Earth about a 1000 years in the future where mankind has been decimated and those of us that are left have reverted back to a savage state. Scared of technology we live in caves and live if fear of demons who in truth are actually aliens called Psychlos who have enslaved some humans and use them for manual labour.

Our hero is a human named Jonnie who is played by Barry Pepper, a fine actor who's three films prior to Battlefield were The Green Mile, Enemy of the State and Saving Private Ryan which leaves you wondering just how the hell he ended up involved in a project as ill advised as this. In fact the same argument could be used for many of the actors who 'star' in Battlefield including Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates and of course the aforementioned John Travolta who at the time (the year 2000) was having a career resurgence following his salvation at the hands of Tarantino by way of 1994s Pulp Fiction.

The fact of the matter is that Battlefield Earth was Travoltas pet project. He was ( and remains so to this day) a prominent member of the Church of Scientology and was inspired to want to make a movie of the novel written by church founder L Ron Hubbard after Hubbard himself had given the actor a signed copy of the book. He not only stars as head Psychlo Terl but he also threw millions of dollars of his own money into the funding of the film too.

Back to the story and Jonnie gets himself caught by the Psychlos and before long he becomes the figurehead for a planned revolution, an act that is ultimately made easier by virtue of the fact that Terl decides for no apparent reason to see of he can train a stupid human to understand the Psychlos language and to use Psychlos weapons and aircraft. It is explained that he does this to make Jonnie mine gold for him but frankly the whole thing is so ridiculous that trying to make sense of what is going on will just give you a headache.

There are a few different story threads going on but none that really add to the overall effectiveness of the plot or are worth covering here. ALl you really need to know is that the humans overthrow the Psychlos and blow up their alien masters home planet leaving just Travolta and Whitakers Psychlos standing, Travolta ending up as a prisoner and Whitaker opting to join forces with mankind as he knows which side his bread is buttered.

The plan apparently was to make a sequel as the film version of Battlefield actually only covers the first half of the source material. However as the movie only took $29 million at the global boxoffice off of a budget of $42 million (the budget was listed at $73 million but it was later revealed that Franchise Pictures had fraudulently over estimated the figure and they were ultimately sued) any further installments were dropped and everyone involved decided to never speak of it again.

Not only did Battlefield Earth bomb financially it also swept the boards at the 2001 Razzie Awards winning all 7 catagories that it was nominated in.

So what went wrong with Battlefield Earth? If we're being honest it was always staring from behind the eight ball due to its association with Scientology but regardless of that connection you have to imagine that Travolta and co had good intentions when they set out to make the film, it does however fail on almost every level imaginable.

The special effects are laughable and incredibly cheap looking, this is especially noticeable when compared to other big effects movies released in the same year such as X-Men and Pitch Black. In the case of Pitch Black the film only cost $23 million to make (around half the cost of Battlefield) but it looks incredible compared to the effort put forth by those behind Travoltas dream. The way the film is shot is perplexing too as pretty much every shot is filmed at a 45 degree angle which serves no purpose other than to make the Psychlos look taller than the actors playing them, at least this is my assumption as to why it has been shot in this way.

The dialogue is clunky and uninspiring and the acting is remarkably bad, especially when you consider some of the actors on display here. Another thing that distracted me everytime it happened was the excessive slow motion that we are treated to in every single action sequence. Literally everytime there is a shootout or chase, or fight it is shown in slow motion which makes zero sense and as already stated is actually quite distracting.

With all of that said however (and I haven't even mentioned the glaring plot holes) I would say that Battlefield Earth is worth watching once just so you can make up your own mind about how bad it actually is. I will state for the record that for my money this is one of those so bad it's bad movies although I would give it a second viewing over some more modern films that have caused me distress (Kevin Smith I'm looking at you).

So all thats left to do of course is give score Battlefield Earth out of 10 and with that in mind I'm going to award it a 4. It is certainly deserving of a higher score than the likes of Tusk, Knock Knock and Yoga Hosers but that does not detract from the general awfulness that Travolta and co brought into our lives.

Lets just hope that nobody involved in Scientology gets wind of this as I'm not sure I want them sending a squad of squirrel busters round to stalk me :)