This film typically gets brought up when there is discussion of the worst movies ever made. The granddaddy of them all is Plan 9 From Outer Space, but Battlefield Earth always gets an honorable (or dishonorable?) mention. It was only a matter of time before I saw this movie, and I found myself with the need for something awful and a 3 for $10 Blockbuster coupon.
To be honest, I was disappointed. Battlefield Earth isn’t nearly as bad as people say it is, although it certainly does suck. At times it really seems like the story was fetched right from the pre-writing phase and turned into a movie. While most of the criticism for the film’s lack of achievement is merited, it seems like most people declaring it one of the all-time worst are really just taking potshots at John Travolta and his merry band of Scientologists using the film to promote their “religion.”
But let’s be clear- Battlefield Earth has nothing to do with Scientology. There may be some parallels and allusions to Scientologist beliefs, but Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote this story purely for fun. Sure, his bias against psychiatry shines through, but Scientologists do not believe that this film is what our future will become.
The most annoying thing about this film is that virtually every single shot is on some kind of angle. This little bit of artistic expression gets old and annoying really fast and by the end of the film (if you make it that far) you still are not comfortable with it. The script also suffers greatly. All the terminology, like breath-gas, shows just how big a hack L. Ron Hubbard was as a writer- this is a cheap, pulp novel story suffering from too much overconfidence and indulgence. Some updating would have helped, but even though it was published in 1980, it seems Hubbard decided to stick with the fantastical junk science of the 1930s.
Essentially, Battlefield Earth is just a poorly-constructed piece of science fiction that isn’t very original and would have otherwise been ignored had it not been for Hubbard’s connection to Scientology. However, there are sparks of creativity, but any potential that may exist in this film is buried so far down it would cost tens of millions of dollars for a studio to try and rewrite, salvage and turn it into something fit for theaters. It’s kind of like those cheesy, lame Sci-Fi Channel original movies, except someone actually thought this would succeed in the theaters.
It’s bad for sure, but not bad enough to be immortalized.
This film typically gets brought up when there is discussion of the worst movies ever made. The granddaddy of them all is Plan 9 From Outer Space, but Battlefield Earth always gets an honorable (or dishonorable?) mention. It was only a matter of time before I saw this movie, and I found myself with the need for something awful and a 3 for $10 Blockbuster coupon.
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