From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 12:53:27 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!newsfeed1.telenordia.se!news.algonet.se!algonet!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Ssg722@aol.com (Susan Granger) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 12 May 2000 22:05:40 GMT Organization: None Lines: 61 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fhv7k$djba$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer12.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958169140 445802 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24431 Keywords: author=granger X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer12.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23600 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2709 http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger. Susan Granger's review of "BATTLEFIELD EARTH" (Warner Bros.) THE BACKGROUND AND THE CONTROVERSY: Since 1975, John Travolta has been an outspoken devotee of Scientology, an "applied religious philosophy" that claims to have millions of followers. Travolta credits its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, for all his spiritual and worldly success and fervently believes that Hubbard's writings, particularly "Dianetics," contains mankind's hope for salvation. Hubbard taught that Earthlings are the pawns of aliens. He preached that psychiatry was a timeless evil, that, in a distant galaxy, alien "psychs" devised implants that would ultimately wreck the spiritual progress of humans. The psychs and their "blackened souls" are to blame for sin, violence, and crime. In addition to his religious writing, Hubbard also wrote science-fiction and, for 15 years, Travolta has been trying bring this Hubbard tale to the screen. But Scientology is controversial, teaching that a "suppressive" person deserves no mercy. He may be "tricked, lied to, sued, deprived of property, injured or destroyed by any means by any Scientologist." A California appeals court called Scientology's treatment of a member "manifestly outrageous," awarding him $2.5 million for "serious emotional injury," a ruling that was twice upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, yet the litigant has never collected. In France, last November, Scientology staff members were convicted of fraud. And a German court ruled that Scientology used "inhuman and totalitarian practices." Disaffected Scientologists fear that this movie will entice believers and reinforce Hubbard's anti-psychiatry message. Indeed, in the "New York Daily News," John Travolta acknowledged his mission saying, "If we can't do the things now that we want to do, what good is the power? Let's try to get the things done that we believe in.'" THE REVIEW: In post-apocalyptic 3000, mankind is an endangered species. Alien Psychlos rule, enslaving the "man-animals" they capture as they strip the planet of its mineral resources. The villainous Terl (John Travolta) is the Psychlo Chief of Security - a huge, snarling, dreadlock'd, fearsome creature. The hero is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), a human hunter who leaves his mountain hideout, determined to discover who the demonic Psychlos really are and how to defeat them. Remember "The Postman"? Well, that's the ambiance - only there's no Kevin Costner. It's a mythic good guys vs. bad guys story but Corey Mandell's screenplay, based on Hubbard's book, has so many sappy cliches and ludicrous, far-fetched loopholes that they incite unintentional laughter. For example, Tyler is a primitive caveman, barely able to communicate, yet he discovers a library and is able to assimilate all its knowledge immediately. He then dupes the Psychlos into believing he's mining a mountain but substitutes gold bricks from Ft. Knox which, curiously, the ore-hungry Psychlos have never discovered. And, finally, Tyler's rebellious cohorts from the subterranean dungeons jump into Harrier jets - which have not been serviced in eons - find them full of fuel and fly with precision into a final battle with the Psychlos. So much for believability. Credit the stylish special effects involving art/set direction to first-time feature-film director Roger Christian - that's his background. But the heavy-handed Christian uses an unusual "center wipe" edit device between every scene, which is distracting and annoying. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Battlefield Earth" is an awful, grim, tedious 2. "Please, I made a mistake," pleads Forest Whitaker, Travolta's henchman. But he's shown no mercy, nor is the audience . As for the allegation that this boring movie will recruit youth - I doubt it! From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 12:54:27 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Berge Garabedian" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 12 May 2000 23:50:25 GMT Organization: None Lines: 102 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fi5c1$ga7e$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer04.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958175425 534766 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24493 Keywords: author=garabedian X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer04.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23575 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2702 BATTLEFIELD EARTH RATING: 7 /10 --> Good movie For more reviews and movie wallpapers, visit http://www.joblo.com/ We've seen a lot of alien invasion movies come out over the past few years, but when's the last time we saw a really cool movie about aliens actually running our planet? Not since the original PLANET OF THE APES has such an interesting premise been given such major attention, as John Travolta takes the first half of L. Ron Hubbard's famous sci-fi novel and turns it into this summer's first big science-fiction popcorn ride. PLOT: It is the year 3000, and our planet is being manhandled by evil Psychlos alien beings. Security chief Terl is the meanest sonnova-bitch of them all, ruling with his arrogance, power and blackmailing skills. It isn't until a peasant man who goes by the name of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler takes a stand that the few surviving humans decide to rally in the hopes of defeating their gigantic oppressors. CRITIQUE: Fun cheese. Despite starting off like a bad Star Trek episode, this film eventually graduates to a higher level with great special effects, some really slick bad-ass aliens, an intriguing premise and a good flow of loud, campy fun. Don't bother seeing this movie if you're expecting a film similar in nature to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. This one definitely asks that you bring along a bag of farfetchedness, with many of your likely questions relating to the plausibility of a handful of human beings fighting an entire alien race. But if you consider the pure arrogance of the Psychlos, and the way in which they underestimate and even misdiagnose many of the humans, it becomes a much easier pill of reasoning to swallow. I personally had very few issues with the story, which I found to be interesting and fast-paced enough to keep me entertained. I had an initial problem with the alien beings, their accents and their exaggerated laughs, but all that seemed to disappear about 20 minutes into the film, as I got more and more used to their world. I also loved the fact that the aliens were some real bad muthas! I mean, these guys were nasty boogers! I dug on them completely, and was even rooting for them to stomp our dumb human asses...! Overall, the movie played like a 2-hour sci-fi comic book with many a loud bang, an overly obtrusive score, great scene transitions and some of the better special effects of the year. You truly felt like this was the end of the world as we knew it, and I certainly didn't notice any part of my fair city of Montreal in any of the proceedings (the film was shot on location here). This film is not to be taken too seriously, with many melodramatic human moments sappy as hell (one scene seemed like a carbon copy of Mel Gibson's infamous BRAVEHEART sequence "...fight for our freedom!). And I also could have done without the umpteen slo-mo shots of Barry Pepper running down Matrix-like hallways, but in the end, the film was fast, furious and just a good ol' time at the theatres. Now whether or not you end up liking the film, I think we can all agree that this is certainly an admirable turn for Travolta. Both he and Whitaker chew right into their dirty, grungy roles and truly become these unconscionable alien beings. So if you're looking for a cool, mindless, special-effect laden film starring a couple of bad muthas, this puppy is made prime for you. This movie is loud, sorta campy, over-the-top and certainly not super-tight in narrative. But overall, the energy of the film is slated to "fun" and the last 20 minutes are especially wild. So don't take it all so seriously and enjoy the ride! Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: I was lucky enough to meet and interview John Travolta for this film (http://www.joblo.com/travolta1.htm), and here are a few tidbits from that meeting: 1) Other than the fact that L. Ron Hubbard wrote the novel on which this movie is based and is known as the founder of Scientology, there is nothing in the film which connects the two. 2) A sequel for this film is already slated to begin production in Montreal, most likely next year. 3) John is interested in directing one day, although it will probably be in a limited capacity, and definitely about something personal, most likely an adaptation of his own book, "Propellor One-Way Night Coach". John Travolta's wife, actress Kelly Preston, makes an appearance in this film as one of the female aliens named Chirk. She's the one with the extra-long tongue swirling about. Barry Pepper was born in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada. He had a few small roles in bigger films over the past few years, including parts in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, ENEMY OF THE STATE and THE GREEN MILE. Most of this film was shot on location in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Director Roger Christian was art director on the 1979 movie ALIEN, and set decorator on the 1977 sci-fi classic STAR WARS. The film is actually based on the first 500 pages of the novel, with a few moments from the second part of the book also thrown in. Review Date: May 1, 2000 Director: Roger Christian Writers: Corey Mandell and J. David Shapiro Producers: John Travolta, Elie Samaha and Jonathan D. Krane Actors: John Travolta as Terl Forest Whitaker as Ker Barry Pepper as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler Genre: Science-Fiction Year of Release: 2000 ------------------------------------- JoBlo's Movie Emporium http://www.joblo.com/ ------------------------------------- (c) 2000 Berge Garabedian From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 12:55:06 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!arclight.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: skad13@my-deja.com (Steven Bailey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 18:31:51 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Lines: 63 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmren$hoco$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer32.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958329111 582040 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24550 Keywords: author=bailey X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer32.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23632 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2711 I don't know from L. Ron Hubbard or Scientology, but I do know from bad post-apocalyptic movies. Based on Hubbard's novel--and produced by its star, John Travolta--Battlefield Earth is Travolta's entry into the Kevin Costner Egomania Contest. Oh, and this movie doesn't have a simple title. The opening credits tell us that the movie is "Battlefield Earth --A Saga of the Year 3000," to distinguish it from "Duck Dodgers in the 24th-and-a-Half Century," I suppose. Based on all the millennium information we had to stomach last year, one would think that future civilizations 1,000 years just might be more advanced and easier to live in than our current life. But of course, a bright future isn't as photogenic as primitive people on horseback in the Colorado mountains. The story is that Earth was overrun by an advanced planet called Psychlo, and its chief honcho Terl (Travolta) rules over Earth's "man-animals" as their security officer. Terl tells us that Psychlo's soldiers were so brilliant that their war with Earth lasted only nine minutes. That's hard to believe, though, given that the brainpower of Terl and his henchman Ker (Forest Whitaker) is on the level of Laurel and Hardy. (Supposedly, Terl and Ker have the technology to endlessly monitor their human prisoners. Yet prisoners are constantly escaping, and at one point Terl deduces that humans' favorite food is live rats.) The basic plot--which is all I could figure out from this muddle--is that one of the prisoners, Jonnie (Barry Pepper), is headstrong enough to escape his fate and eventually help other humans to do the same. Jonnie's defiant streak is enough to help him and his cohorts commandeer abandoned American landmarks--gold from Fort Knox, sophisticated aircraft from Fort Hood (which Jonnie's crew learns to fly from just a few hours in a flight simulator). The movie's plot holes gape like abandoned cities, but that probably won't bother the hardcore sci-fi crowd at whom this is aimed. Like Dune, this seems to be one of those "sagas" that you have to be in on from the start. At the screening I attended, a man behind me was babbling on about the various plot aspects that he'd already seen and those he anticipated. And for once, I wasn't bothered by theater chatter; I only wished I had the guy next to me to explain the whole thing to me. Other than his reverence for Hubbard and Scientology, one would be hard-pressed to discern Travolta's motivation for putting this mess on-screen. He certainly does his mentor no favors--buried under pasty make-up, chortling like Orson Welles, and overacting at a level he hasn't touched since "Welcome Back, Kotter." He also manages to humiliate his wife, Kelly Preston, in a cameo that gives us an unfortunate glimpse at what the Travoltas do behind closed doors. Battlefield Earth is rated PG-13 for graphic violence and explosions, and some adult language. Submitted by: Steven Bailey http://pages.hotbot.com/movies/skad13 Steven Bailey, a movie reviewer for The Beaches Leader newspaper in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, has movie reviews posted in The Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Steven+Bailey Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 12:55:31 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Steve Rhodes" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 18:31:55 GMT Organization: Internet Reviews Lines: 75 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmrer$hocq$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer32.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958329115 582042 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24551 Keywords: author=rhodes X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer32.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23641 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2713 BATTLEFIELD EARTH A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2 In BATTLEFIELD EARTH, grown men get to dress up like Klingons having bad hair days, while uttering some of the silliest dialog this side of a bad 1950s sci-fi flick. The theater should be required to have signs warning customers: "Ye who enter in must be prepared to completely suspend disbelief." Although the film has a few nice, but too dark, special effects, the only reason to see the it is as a guilty pleasure, so you can laugh at John Travolta in an embarrassingly bad performance. His character laughs a lot, too - a hearty and silly "Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha," like a busted toy action figure whose voice chip is stuck in a loop. Directed confusingly by Roger Christian (MASTERMINDS) and adapted for the screen by first-timer Corey Mandell, the film is based, as most people know, on the science fiction novel of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. One can only hope the book was more intelligent than it is portrayed on the screen. Earth, we learn, in 3000 AD will look a lot like 3000 BC, thanks to our having lost a 9-minute war with the Psychlos, an alien race who has no respect for "man animals" or our "puny sized planet." Earthlings have been reduced to cavemen, who worship the stars in the heavens as gods. In an over-the-top performance, John Travolta plays Terl, the Psychlos' security chief for earth and the story's main villain. He is a slimeball who is hated by man animals and other Psychlos, as well. (You'll be forced to stare at the Psychlos' ugly pusses and dirty teeth in endless close-ups until you're ready to surrender.) Even Terl's superiors hate him. "Look up," a visiting mucky-muck tells him. "One day, you'll die. And when you end up in hell, it'll be a step up from this planet." Poor earth, which is mainly in ruins, gets dissed a lot in the movie. The cinematography uses various shades of a slimy blue-green. The picture tries hard to look gross and succeeds. Just to make sure that no one is surreptitiously having a good time, there are some raw rat eating scenes tossed in to spice up the viewing. Against this race of oppressors, a hero rises up to smite them down. He is Jonnie (Barry Pepper), a man animal whom Terl foolishly hooks up to the Psychlos' learning machine. The Psychlos, who act like imbeciles, think man animals are so stupid that they can't even be taught how to operate simple machinery and are good only for manual labor. Try to count the number of films that the movie borrows from liberally. First and foremost is STAR WARS, but others include BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, STAR TREK, BRAVEHEART, BLADE RUNNER, PLANET OF THE APES, MAD MAX and Wagner's "The Ring" series of operas. But whereas the originals are engrossing, BATTLEFIELD EARTH is long and tedious. As a guilty pleasure, nothing is better than BATTLEFIELD EARTH's totally preposterous concluding segment. As the cavemen keep saying "Piece of cake," they become overnight experts in everything from advanced fighter pilot skills to nuclear engineering. Wow, can those guys ever crack a book. All of that time in the cave must have softened their brains into veritable cranial sponges for knowledge, as they absorb facts at light speed. Whatever you do, try not to laugh. It may spoil the effect for those around you. They may be buying the story, hook, line and stinker -- I mean sinker. BATTLEFIELD EARTH runs a long 1:57. It is rated PG-13 for violence and would be acceptable for teenagers. Given the movie's dark intensity, I'd be careful about taking kids under 13. Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:02:27 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Scott Renshaw Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 18:47:59 GMT Organization: None Lines: 98 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmscv$75c0$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer35.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958330079 234880 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24553 Keywords: author=renshaw X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer35.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23648 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2716 BATTLEFIELD EARTH (Warner Bros.) Starring: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, Richard Tyson. Screenplay: Corey Mandell, based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard. Producers: Elie Samaha, Jonathan D. Krane and John Travolta. Director: Roger Christian. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (violence, profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 117 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw. BATTLEFIELD EARTH ... is ... 117 minutes ... long ... which is ... plenty long enough ... to spend ... watching ... a very ... bad ... film ... but I grew even ... more ... annoyed ... when I realized ... the film ... could have been ... at least ... 15 minutes ... shorter ... (therefore ending ... all our torment ... 15 minutes ... sooner) ... if someone ... had told ... director Roger Christian ... to stop ... using ... slow ... motion ... for ... every ... freaking ... action ... scene. Lousy summer action films are nothing new. It is still a bit shocking, however, when you have the misfortune to stumble upon one so fundamentally inept even as grandiose adventure. BATTLEFIELD EARTH is such a shambling behemoth, a film not even bad enough to be funny-bad (at least not often enough). Based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, it tells of an earth 1,000 years after a conquering alien invasion by the profit-hungry Psychlo race. Bands of humans live primitive hunter-gatherer lives on the outskirts of the Psychlo mining colony in Denver, while most humans work as slave labor. Leading the Psychlo security force is the arrogant Terl (John Travolta), embittered by his posting on earth and prepared to con his superiors out of a recently-discovered gold deposit. But he's about to meet his match in Jonnie (Barry Pepper), a feisty human keen on leading a rebellion against the Psychlos. I've never read the L. Ron Hubbard novel on which BATTLEFIELD EARTH is based, so I don't know how much of the film's narrative idiocy is his responsibility. I do know that the film could set you to scratching your head so furiously you could draw blood. How is it that in 1,000 years of occupation strictly for the purpose of acquiring precious metals, none of the Psychlos bothered to investigate Fort Knox, or noticed the big glowing vein of gold in the rocks a few miles from their headquarters? What miraculous change in the planet's weather patterns allowed books in the Denver Library to survive 1,000 years' exposure to Rocky Mountain winters? And would it have been so hard to explain why the Psychlos' domed habitat is so strategically important when both humans and Psychlos must wear breathing devices (strangely like high-tech Breathe Right strips) in order to survive inside it? Even with so much slipshod storytelling involved, I might have settled for an action-adventure that seemed concerned about making its action somewhat ... adventurous. Instead, Roger Christian turns every confrontation, every chase and every battle into parade of slow-motion explosions. The device has certainly become popular thanks to Hong Kong directors like John Woo, but in such cases the film-maker is usually giving viewers the opportunity to appreciate a particularly cool stunt, or Chow Yun-Fat flying through the air with a pair of guns blazing. Christian, on the other hand, uses slow-motion to turn the film into an agonizing crawl towards its conclusion. It's clear he wants BATTLEFIELD EARTH to be something epic and mythological; the frequent George Lucas collaborator even uses the familiar wipe-dissolves from the STAR WARS films. In Christian's hands, unfortunately, the wipes are yet another way he takes us far too slowly from one place to another. You know a film is failing on its most fundamental level when an entire sell-out preview audience responds to the climactic explosion with stony silence. BATTLEFIELD EARTH does offer the chance to watch Travolta -- who has shown no reluctance to ham up his villainous characters in films like BROKEN ARROW and FACE/OFF -- whooping it up as the gleefully duplicitous Terl, which occasionally makes the film watchable. Sadly, his gusto only makes it evident that someone involved in the film was actually trying to make it watchable. It certainly wasn't the casting director, who chose as a protagonist the capable but uncharismatic Pepper (who may just be the separated-at-birth triplet sibling of Skeet Ulrich and Johnny Depp). It wasn't screenwriter Corey Mandell, whose gifts for absurd plotting are rivaled only by his deft way with mangling dialogue and character development. And it wasn't Roger Christian, who appears to have learned absolutely nothing about pacing from his work as second unit director with Lucas. In his attempt to tell a "saga of the year 3000," Christian has chosen ... the sneaky trick ... of making ... the film ... so ... plodding ... that you'll leave ... the theater ... wondering ... whether ... 1,000 years ... have ... passed ... since ... you ... went ... in. On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 alien somnabulations: 2. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit Scott Renshaw's Screening Room http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/ *** Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email! See the Screening Room for details, or reply to this message with subject "Subscribe". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:03:11 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Jon Popick Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 18:48:04 GMT Organization: Planet Sick-Boy Lines: 73 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmsd4$75ce$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer11.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958330084 234894 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24554 Keywords: author=popick X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer11.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23646 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2714 PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema" My thesaurus lists several synonyms for the word “dumb,” but I’ve crossed them all out and printed just two words in their place: "Battlefield Earth." This film adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s best-selling 1982 sci-fi book is just as silly as the religion he created, and it probably never would have been made if it weren’t for the constant lobbying by the film’s star/producer (and raging Scientologist) John Travolta. Comparisons to Planet of the Apes will be inevitable, but Earth comes off as more of an ill-conceived cross between the 1984 Brat Pack film Red Dawn and Styx’s concept album “Killroy Was Here.” It’s a heavy-handed good-versus-evil story that is poorly directed, poorly written, poorly acted and plays like a movie made for 2:00 AM viewing on basic cable rather than the summer blockbuster season. The best description of the film I’ve seen is as follows: “Give Ed Wood a $100 million budget, and you get Battlefield Earth.” Earth is set in the year 3000 (it’s actually subtitled A Saga of the Year 3000), where a sadistic alien race from the planet Psychlos has taken over Earth and wiped out most of its inhabitants. Terl (Travolta, The General’s Daughter) is the Psychlo Security Director of Earth who, as the film opens, finds out that his proposed transfer back to Psychlos has been postponed for several years. Terl has a sidekick named Ker (Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog), who looks like a melange of The Next Generation’s Worf and the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz. Meanwhile, Johnnie (Barry Pepper, The Green Mile), one of Earth’s few remaining humans, decides he’s fed up with living in fear of the Psychlos and rides horseback to what used to be Denver to confront the aliens head-on. Johnnie is immediately captured by Terl, who tries to use the spunky young Earthling to mine gold in an area of the planet containing radioactive air that is deadly for Psychlos. What unfolds is a predictably conventional story of the meek inheriting the Earth – literally. With a story this unimaginative, you would expect some decent, over-the-top violence, or at least cutting-edge special effects, but Earth offers neither. Instead, the film attempts to be inventive by shooting every scene off-kilter and using a completely annoying dissolve from the center of the screen as a transition between scenes. Some of Earth’s dialogue is bad enough to induce mock laughter and applause from the audience, MST3K-style. Travolta is just plain silly in the role he’s been waiting his whole life to play. His Terl kind of sounds like Stewie on The Family Guy – another person with an oddly-shaped head and, in a harmlessly evil kind of way, ambitions beyond his means. The cackling Terl and his alien cohorts all look like Coneheads with dreadlocks and disgusting baked-bean teeth (Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston makes a brief cameo and has perfect white choppers). I’d like to comment on the other actors in the film, but Earth is one of those pictures where you’re not sure what anybody’s name is. And to make matters worse, Earth only covers half of Hubbard’s 1,000-plus page novel. The filmmakers plan on releasing a sequel in two years. Much has and will be said about the similarities between Earth and Scientology. Travolta swears one has nothing to do with the other, but he’s as honest with himself as anybody else that’s this into their religion. Scientologists believe that psychiatrists are responsible for the majority of evil in the world, so it’s no coincidence that the bad guys in the film (and Hubbard’s book) are called Psychlos. I have a lot more to say about Scientology but won’t, as their figureheads have a tendency to sue people that don’t think Hubbard hung the moon. Some people have even accused Scientologists of inserting subliminal messages into Earth. Don’t worry – if they did, I’m sure that I would have liked it a lot more. Or, at least, I would have cluck…cluck…cluck. 2:07 – PG-13 for sci-fi violence and mild adult situations From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:03:26 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Max Messier Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 18:48:13 GMT Organization: filmcritic.com Lines: 80 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmsdd$75ci$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer11.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958330093 234898 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24556 Keywords: author=messier X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer11.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23647 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2715 filmcritic.com presents a review from staff member Max Messier. You can find the review with full credits at http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/31d858b804fd3a7e882568dd00060db8?OpenDocument Battlefield Earth A film review by Max Messier Copyright 2000 filmcritic.com There are two things the American film industry should avoid at all costs. One is letting an ambitious actor convert one of his or her favorite novels into a feature film. Two is never greenlight a sci-fi film starring John Travolta. To wit, we present the disaster that is Battlefield Earth. A science-fiction opus starring the Barbarino of the Actors Guild, Battlefield Earth should be shown only at maximum-security prisons when a prisoner is tossed in solitary for bad behavior. Sci-fi is always a tricky beast: Tight script, a good director, an ensemble cast of decent actors, and the ability to suspend even the most difficult of disbeliefs. Battlefield Earth fails at achieving even one of these attributes. Here’s the “plot.” The year is 3000. Mankind has been become an endangered species thanks to the conquest of a race of aliens called the Psychlos (sounds like either the latest clown act from Cirque de Soleil or a white rap group). A small band of humans dwell in radioactive caves located in the Rockies in fear of the “demons” who dwell in the cities below. The Psychlos are strip-mining the Earth for its resources and Terel, played by Travolta, is the head of security for the mining/slave base located in Denver. A young rogue named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, played with dramatic flair by Barry Pepper, ventures from the safety of the caves into the city to uncover the truth about the “demons.” He is promptly captured and taken to the alien base. After several attempts at escape, Johnnie is placed in the middle of an underhanded subplot of Terel’s, involving circumventing gold from an exposed vein in the Rockies to his own end. Jonnie, assumed leader of the mining slave group, then manages to attain all Psychlo and human intelligence through a learning machine Terel forces him to use. Then the story just runs along until Jonnie teaches the rest of the humans the basics of trigonometry, the Bill of Rights, how to use a machine gun, and how to fly a Harrier jet. The whole mess concludes with a big, loud, obnoxious gun-and-plane battle that had me praying for the end credits. Roger Christian, the director of this lumbering beast, must have rented Dune, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, Independence Day, Stargate, Beastmaster, the Airwolf episodes, the “V” miniseries, The Matrix, and The Omega Man... and decided to steal every scene he could for Battlefield Earth. Christian even shoots every scene in a weird Dutch angle titled left or right for every frame of the movie! And every scene in the movie ends with a middle wipe -- really. The Psychlos reminded me of a cross between Jamaican basketball players with bad teeth and bloated hands and Klingon extras working the Star Trek convention circuit. Travolta’s acting hasn’t been this bad since The Experts or maybe Perfect. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler evolves into William Wallace with lines like “You can have your freedom if you fight!” Then there's the script: The film just never convinces you that the plight of Jonnie in teaching his fellow humans to fight and “take back the planet” would be a difficult task to achieve. Why? Because Terel provides all the necessary tools to incite a revolt -- for no particular reason beside the fact that “humans are stupid.” Terel may be right, you know. Humans made this movie. Director: Roger Christian Starring: John Travolta, Forrest Whitaker, Barry Pepper, Kim Coates, Richard Tyson Screenwriter: Cory Mandell Producers: Jonathan Krane, John Travolta, Andrew Stevens Rated: PG-13 1 star out of 5 stars -- Christopher Null - cnull@mindspring.com - http://www.filmcritic.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:03:59 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Steve Rhodes" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 18:48:53 GMT Organization: Internet Reviews Lines: 75 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmsel$75dc$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer17.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958330133 234924 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24563 Keywords: author=rhodes X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer17.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23654 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2717 BATTLEFIELD EARTH A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2 In BATTLEFIELD EARTH, grown men get to dress up like Klingons having bad hair days, while uttering some of the silliest dialog this side of a bad 1950s sci-fi flick. The theater should be required to have signs warning customers: "Ye who enter in must be prepared to completely suspend disbelief." Although the film has a few nice, but too dark, special effects, the only reason to see the it is as a guilty pleasure, so you can laugh at John Travolta in an embarrassingly bad performance. His character laughs a lot, too - a hearty and silly "Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha," like a busted toy action figure whose voice chip is stuck in a loop. Directed confusingly by Roger Christian (MASTERMINDS) and adapted for the screen by first-timer Corey Mandell, the film is based, as most people know, on the science fiction novel of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. One can only hope the book was more intelligent than it is portrayed on the screen. Earth, we learn, in 3000 AD will look a lot like 3000 BC, thanks to our having lost a 9-minute war with the Psychlos, an alien race who has no respect for "man animals" or our "puny sized planet." Earthlings have been reduced to cavemen, who worship the stars in the heavens as gods. In an over-the-top performance, John Travolta plays Terl, the Psychlos' security chief for earth and the story's main villain. He is a slimeball who is hated by man animals and other Psychlos, as well. (You'll be forced to stare at the Psychlos' ugly pusses and dirty teeth in endless close-ups until you're ready to surrender.) Even Terl's superiors hate him. "Look up," a visiting mucky-muck tells him. "One day, you'll die. And when you end up in hell, it'll be a step up from this planet." Poor earth, which is mainly in ruins, gets dissed a lot in the movie. The cinematography uses various shades of a slimy blue-green. The picture tries hard to look gross and succeeds. Just to make sure that no one is surreptitiously having a good time, there are some raw rat eating scenes tossed in to spice up the viewing. Against this race of oppressors, a hero rises up to smite them down. He is Jonnie (Barry Pepper), a man animal whom Terl foolishly hooks up to the Psychlos' learning machine. The Psychlos, who act like imbeciles, think man animals are so stupid that they can't even be taught how to operate simple machinery and are good only for manual labor. Try to count the number of films that the movie borrows from liberally. First and foremost is STAR WARS, but others include BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, STAR TREK, BRAVEHEART, BLADE RUNNER, PLANET OF THE APES, MAD MAX and Wagner's "The Ring" series of operas. But whereas the originals are engrossing, BATTLEFIELD EARTH is long and tedious. As a guilty pleasure, nothing is better than BATTLEFIELD EARTH's totally preposterous concluding segment. As the cavemen keep saying "Piece of cake," they become overnight experts in everything from advanced fighter pilot skills to nuclear engineering. Wow, can those guys ever crack a book. All of that time in the cave must have softened their brains into veritable cranial sponges for knowledge, as they absorb facts at light speed. Whatever you do, try not to laugh. It may spoil the effect for those around you. They may be buying the story, hook, line and stinker -- I mean sinker. BATTLEFIELD EARTH runs a long 1:57. It is rated PG-13 for violence and would be acceptable for teenagers. Given the movie's dark intensity, I'd be careful about taking kids under 13. Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:04:04 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: bobbloom@iquest.net (Bob Bloom) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 19:36:28 GMT Organization: None Lines: 85 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmv7s$dj8i$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: bobbloom@iquest.net NNTP-Posting-Host: homer17.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958332988 445714 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24565 Keywords: author=bloom X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer17.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23675 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2718 Battlefield Earth (2000) No stars out of 4. Starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates and Richard Tyson. Screenplay by Corey Mandell and JD Shapiro. Based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard. Directed by Roger Christian. OK, bear with me now. Here's my theory. "Battlefield Earth" was meant to be "The Producers" of the science fiction genre. You remember "The Producers," don't you? Mel Brooks comedy about two men (Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder) who decide to make a fortune by producing the worst play ever written. They sell about 1,000 percent of the play to various investors because they believe it will close after one night and they can just keep the money. They hire the worst director and cast the most inept actors. But something goes wrong and the play becomes a hit. Thus Mostel and Wilder go to jail for embezzlement. So, how does this relate to "Battlefield Earth." Well, John Travolta, who is listed as one of the film's producers, seems to have taken the opposite tact. He hired whom he believed were the best actors — himself included — as well as the strongest writers to adapt L. Ron Hubbard's massive novel and the correct director to helm the opus. Well "Battlefield Earth" is no "Springtime for Hitler." If only Travolta and company had played "Battlefield Earth" as a send-up, a parody, a satire, anything but a straight, dramatic vehicle. If they had just been able to put their tongues in their cheeks and say, "Come on, folks. We're having a great time kidding around." Maybe some blooper outtakes during the closing credits. Anything. Unfortunately, "Battlefield Earth" take itself seriously, way too seriously. And because of that, it is one of the most wretched, embarrassing and clumsy features ever put on celluloid. It is a movie that makes you cringe and chuckle simultaneously. You sit in disbelief as this lumbering behemoth staggers along. You watch in amazement as Travolta gives the worst performance of his career. And you wonder: What was he thinking? Could his passion for the novel so overwhelmed his sense of judgment that he would allow himself to be ridiculed in such a manner? Compared to Travolta, Kevin Costner's turns in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," "Waterworld" and "The Postman" and nearly Shakespearean. Travolta goes through the film spewing inane dialogue and laughing like a straight-jacketed man in a padded cell. The laugh is neither menacing nor evil, merely obnoxious. Most every line in "Battlefield Earth" is spoken with an exclamation point. Every plot turn and revelation is punctuated with Elia Cmiral's overwrought music. There is no point dissing the cast members. Most of them have done fine work in previous films. And every actor is entitled to his "Parnell." (Clark Gable fans will understand the reference.) The plot is ridiculous, The action — even by s-f standards — beyond belief. Humans, reduced to almost caveman-like existence, teach themselves to fly sophisticated fighter jets in a week. Not to mention the jets and their payload of weapons are in perfect condition after 1,000 years of inattention. At least give the audience some credit for having brains. There is really no need to go on. "Battlefield Earth" is a major blunder. It will go down in history with such infamous titles as "Hudson Hawk," "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "Showgirls." However, to be fair. "Battlefield Earth" can have one positive purpose. It can be used by film schools as a teaching lesson. It can stand as the quintessential example of big moviemaking ineptitude. Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Bloom also is an associate member of the Online Film Critics Society. His reviews can be found at the Internet Movie Database Web site: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:06:01 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!skynet.be!newsfeed.cwix.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Serdar Yegulalp Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 19:36:37 GMT Organization: Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers Lines: 53 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmv85$hvp4$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer05.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958332997 589604 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: root Summary: r.a.m.r. #24577 Keywords: author=yegulalp X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer05.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23689 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2721 Battlefield Earth (2000) 1/2 * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 2000 by Serdar Yegulalp Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the worst film of the year 2000. I say this in blanket confidence because if there is a film worse than "Battlefield Earth", I don't want to know it exists. I'll take my chances with being wrong. Derived from the only-science-fiction-by-association novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, "Battlefield Earth" opens in the year 3000, when a bunch of aliens named the Psychlos have taken over the world. Humanity has descended to the stone-age level. The head Psychlo on Earth, Terl (John Travolta), has literally struck gold and has a plan to have human slaves mine the gold out for him. He also engages in some dimwitted blackmail scheme with his fellow Psychlos, a plot item that feels more at home on one of those websites where someone puts a secret camera in a restroom. The human hero, Jonnie "Goodboy" Tyler (Barry Pepper), winds up becoming the chief guinea pig in Terl's schemes. He manages to organize a human-led revolt, in scenes of such astounding stupidity and incompetence that B-movie directors like William "One-Shot" Beaudine would be holding in their sides with laughter. Does anyone here believe for a second that a flight simulator -- or for that matter a fighter jet -- would still be working after a thousand years? Or that there would still be fuel, electricity, spare parts and so on just lying around? I've never seen so many people work so hard to defy common sense and logic at every turn. John Travolta is not a bad actor, but he is completely wasted in a movie that does not give him anything better to do other than stomp around and gloat unconvincingly. He's just not a very good bad guy -- we've got far too much of a nice-guy teddy-bear persona in mind for him already, a problem that dogged him in "Broken Arrow" as well. His one really menacing thing to do, other than laugh, is Narrow His Eyes. With all the mugging that goes on, this might as well be a silent film with title cards. Come to think of it, that alone might make it more entertaining. In a film loaded with bad things, the worst thing is probably the movie's obsessive-compulsive ugliness. The Psychlos look like nine-foot-tall rejects from a Rastafarian cover band that plays Kiss. Every set is dark, cramped, trash-strewn and badly photographed. The sound effects are nerve-deadening. The camera looks at everything like someone ran into it full-tilt before it was switched on. I've seen films made on digital video in people's basements that looked better than this. THe film's one claim to fame is its origins: L. Ron Hubbard is also the creator of the controversial Church of Scientology. But the film is devoid of anything to explicitly connect it with Scientology, just as it is devoid of anything to explicitly connect it with entertainment, thought, feeling, or coherency. Maybe that's for the better. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:07:18 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!uio.no!newsfeedZ.netscum.dQ!netscum.int!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Ronald O. Christian" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 19:38:25 GMT Organization: Northwest Link Lines: 84 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmvbh$ad4a$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer39.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958333105 341130 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24595 Keywords: author=christian X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer39.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23681 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2719 Battlefield Earth John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker Directed by Roger Christian Writing: Who knows? If a major religion decides to sink nearly an hundred million dollars into a movie version of a scifi novel, couldn't they at least have picked a decent author? I must confess, I don't really know anything about Scientology, and although I've seen the book Dianetics on the night table of various roommates in college, I've never read it and have absolutely no idea what's in it. I walked past the bright yellow Scientology sign in downtown Portland without ever having the urge to find out more about it. I'm dimly aware that there is some controversy surrounding the funding of the film, but don't feel qualified to talk about it. But God, what a movie. I do not mean that in a positive way. How do movies like this get made? Before I start, I'd like to say that I absolutely do not believe, as reported by other reviewers, that Scientologists have been assigned to break the kneecaps of anyone giving a less-than-favorable review of this turkey. From what I've read so far, they'd have to take out practically every professional film critic, a move that surely would have been reported in the popular media. Nor do I believe the story that "hollow-eyed Scientologists are passing out free tickets on streetcorners so that the movie will have a good opening weekend". First of all, I haven't seen anyone doing any such thing, and secondly, all three of the screens in which it was playing Saturday May 13 at the multiplex in Hillsborough, Oregon were barren. (I know this because I didn't catch the theater number at the ticket counter and had to ferry the family's popcorn and drinks through each one until I found them.) If they *are* passing out free tickets, they've been profoundly unsuccessful at it. And if Regal Cinemas thought Battlefield Earth would have the kind of opening as, for instance, Gladiator, they're now profoundly disappointed. There's no decent way to say it. This movie sucks. There really is absolutely no reason why a reasonable person would waste his time seeing it. Really horrible dialog, laughable makeup, surprisingly un-special effects for the purported $90 million cost of the film, and a plot that leaves all thinking beings going "Hunh?" My daughter was bored out of her skull, and kept asking "is the movie about over?" Now, to put this in perspective, she *liked* Supernova. She saw Batman and Robin *twice*. She sat thorough all 3 hours of Titanic and wanted to see it again. But about 20 minutes into Battlefield Earth she was done. I don't know how many times I'll have to sit through Dinosaur to make it up to her. John Travolta puts in the performance of his life. I mean that literally. He seemed to be determined to put every ounce of his not inconsiderable talent into single-handedly saving this film from being the most expensive direct-to-video release ever. If you absolutely must see this film, (as I did -- my wife, a rabid "saturday night fever" fan, forced me) watch the scenes with Travolta and snore through the rest. But this is not unusual for Travolta, post-comeback. His performance was the best, make that the only, thing watchable about "Broken Arrow". You have to give him this -- he plays larger-than-life villains to absolute perfection, and his "Terl" is a masterpiece. But just as a masterful performance by Tim Curry in Legend couldn't save that film, Travolta has been given too great a task to pull Battlefield Earth out of the muck. How can I say this? It was a horrible experience. If the theater had paid *us* eight bucks a seat to sit through this piece of crap, I would still feel cheated. My wife owes me big time. And on the day before Mother's Day. Ouch. Ron www.europa.com/~ronc "CBS News could make a simple change and save themselves millions of dollars. Turn Dan Rather's teleprompter around." -- Oliver From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:08:56 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!skynet.be!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: xfire905@aol.common.man (K. Harris) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 May 2000 19:39:05 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 108 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fmvcp$hvt6$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer10.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958333145 589734 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24599 Keywords: author=harris X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer10.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23682 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2720 R e v i e w : B A T T L E F I E L D E A R T H by K. Harris - Copyright © 2000 Disclaimer: I'm not a professional film critic, and I don't play one on TV either This review is intended only as a comparison between the film and the novel - for a review of the film itself, check other sources -------------------------------------------------------------- Sci-Fi Novel, Film Meet In Bloody Collision Very Few Survivors Found In Wreckage -------------------------------------------------------------- Any film based on a book, especially a well-known book, must invariably be compared to that book. In this case, the spectacular L. Ron Hubbard sci-fi novel BATTLEFIELD EARTH is vastly superior to its film version in every respect. Having read the paperback twice and being more familiar with the complexities of the story than the majority of the film's critics, I found countless major discrepancies between the two, as will anyone else who has read the book even once. The screenwriter has taken very broad liberties with the story and, in doing so, has created a script full of events which seen to occur almost at random and often without discernible reason. A great many of the film's elements with which critics have found fault are due to the merciless hatchet job which was performed on the original story. It would take far too long to detail the many differences between the book and the film, particularly in the finer details of the story, most of which were hacked to bits or ignored completely. To be fair, it is a rather lengthy tome - over a thousand pages in paperback form - and any attempt to turn such a large novel into a screenplay will undoubtedly require some amount of cutting and rewriting, but the screenwriter seems to have edited the story with a chainsaw. In fact, only the most basic plot remains: In the year 3000, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler - one of Earth's last remaining humans after an invasion and takeover by the alien Psychlo race a thousand years prior - leaves his secluded mountain village, is captured by the evil Psychlo Terl [security chief of planet Earth], is taught the Psychlo language and basic mining techniques courtesy of an instruction machine [a device invented by an extinct alien race called "Chinkos" in the book and, for some reason, "Clinkos" in the film] and, as a secret experiment, is forced with other humans ["man-animals"] to mine a huge gold deposit in the Rocky Mountains near the ruins of Denver. Anxious to end his tour of duty on the hideously ugly, weak-gravity, poisonous planet Earth, Terl plans to teleport this cache of gold back to his home planet in coffins normally used for shipping dead Psychlos, dig up the coffins after a time, and retire an incredibly wealthy and powerful Psychlo. What the film only hints at, by way of several small unexplained flashes of fire in the cockpit of Terl's personal transport plane, is that this gold deposit is in an area full of uranium ore pockets, which means that no Psychlo can get anywhere near it because radiation makes their "breathe-gas" explode. It also makes no mention of the point that this vast gold deposit had been buried until recently, when an earthquake and resulting rock slide uncovered it, allowing it to be discovered by Terl's reconnaissance drone. Since it is impossible for any Psychlo to mine the gold, Terl forces "man-animals" to do the work for him after determining, in his initial experiments on our hero, that humans can in fact be trained to perform certain tasks. But, he underestimates humans and refers to them as "rat brains" - what he doesn't know is that Jonnie Tyler has learned what radiation does to Psychlo breathe-gas. Tyler procures a supply of old nuclear warheads from an ancient U.S. Air Force base and substitutes them for Terl's gold in the lead coffins [marked "Radiation-Killed" by Terl so that no Psychlo will want to open them]; they are then teleported to planet Psychlo and detonated. In the book, the Psychlos, in their infinite greed, have mined the crust of their own planet [using their "deep-core mining technique"] to the point where it resembles so much Swiss cheese, making it a bit fragile and easily vulnerable to a nuclear blast - which, when Tyler's warheads are detonated, punches a hole in the planet's crust reaching nearly to the core because the teleportation receiving platform on Psychlo had been sealed off in every other direction by an emergency force field, giving the full force of the blast nowhere to go but down. The film does show the result of this blast and of a large amount of radiation being released into the breathe-gas atmosphere of planet Psychlo, but it does so in such an anti-climactic way that you have to wonder what just happened and why it happened in the first place. There is no clue that this is, in fact, one of the most crucial plot points in the original story - the film basically depicts this event as "...and then planet Psychlo exploded." In the film, planet Psychlo is reduced to a cloud of dust; in the book, it becomes what amounts to a small star, a point which is more than a little bit important to the remainder of the story. The very concept of teleportation, one of the most crucial elements of the original story, is only a minor element of the film - I can only recall its having been used twice, and even then only as a third-rate special effect. It is in fact the very key to the Psychlos' vast power; having an exclusive monopoly on teleportation, the technology and mathematics of which they will guard to the point of berzerker suicide, they control sixteen universes. The film doesn't even begin to hint at any of this, and in its absence, we learn almost nothing about the Psychlo race itself - little more than that they come from a purple planet and claim to have conquered Earth in nine minutes. This, in broad summary, is the plot of the FIRST HALF of the original L. Ron Hubbard novel - the second half presumably will be used as the basis of the sequel, should anybody actually want to see one after this debacle. Personally, I do want to see a sequel, but only in the hope that they can get it right next time. As a fan of the novel, I eagerly awaited the film. Now, having seen the film, I am greatly disappointed by it - while the novel is a fantastic, intricate, and highly imaginative piece of science fiction, the film is a piece of something else entirely. _O_ <\_/> _/ \_ Crossfire. ---------------------- "...and the greatest of men would be silly and lazy," so I would be king, if the world was crazy" - Shel Silverstein From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 15 13:10:48 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Ross Anthony Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 15 May 2000 05:00:48 GMT Organization: RossAnthony.com Lines: 86 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fo0a0$6o26$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: "ross@rossanthony.com" NNTP-Posting-Host: homer25.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958366848 221254 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24610 Keywords: author=anthony X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer25.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23698 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2722 Psychlo Killer Battlefield Earth By Ross Anthony John Travolta and Forest Whitaker do some Hollywood slumming in this tenement of a sci-fi thriller. You know, I do my best to keep from saying a film is "bad." A good teacher finds little use in value-judging a report by a student. There are so many criteria that we can "objectively" talk about -- strong here, weak there etc. But this is just one of those scripts that you know the student must have whipped out five minutes before class. I'm really surprised with all the writing talent available in this town, that no one said "Hey, this is just a bad script." And the only reason I can think that Travolta and Whitaker did it was to spoof themselves; relax in the lowest-of-brow movies to wind down from a thick script or something. Perhaps it was a dare? Maybe they lost a bet? Of course, they're decent, even the lead hero is good - as good as you can possibly be with nearly nothing verbally to work with (in fact at times nothing would have been better said). The acting is not the problem. Even the premise is decent ... it's the contrived conflicts, advancements and worst of all the dialogue of this film that makes one embarrassed to be a lover of movies. Basically, it's the year 3000, an ugly group of corrupt back-stabbing aliens (the Psychlo's) have wiped out nearly all Earthlings and the remaining few are used as slaves to mine gold for their home planet (I'm not sure why gold is valuable to aliens). Until ... one of those slaves decides to fight for ... you guessed it "Freedom!" Introductory dialogue is expository and would have been better left to "Star Wars" type text preface. The look of the film is a bit too digital. Our hero gets shot through a series of glass windows in shattering slow-mo - and yet, it's just not thrilling. Travolta (lead Psychlo) in an effort to better control the humans explains, "We'll let it think it's escaped, just to see what food it likes best..." as if the monopoly on oxygen wasn't enough to motivate "it". But, the scheme gets even more ridiculous, instead of killing this rebel human (who had already vaporized a couple of Psychlo guards) Travolta teaches it to speak Psychlo and then gives it access to a library of knowledge. (Yeah, that should teach it to behave!) Of course, now armed with brains, brawn and revolutionary fervor, the lead human proclaims to the mass of human slaves waving rocks and sticks, "We're going to blow up their home planet ... of course, we'll need some extra supplies." The delivery of this line was met with a robust round of chuckles from the audience. But, alas, there is rarely a film that has nothing at all redeeming to offer. So due, here are a few kudos to those things well done: Shot of hero from bottom cage of craft as it lifts off ground is strong and visually stirring! In fact, the alien transport units were created and manipulated well - they look very good on screen. Language nuances were handled nicely. To the Psychlo's the chattering of humans sounded like "Ooga ooga" animalistic or fraternal (in the college sense of the word). While the Psychlo utterances warp into English so that we, the audience can understand them (w/o subtitles). Lastly, ten-year-olds may very well enjoy this film. Battlefield Earth. Copyright © 2000. Starring John Travolta, Forest Whitaker, Barry Pepper, Kim Coates. Directed by Roger Christian. Screenplay by Corey Mandell and JD Shapiro. Based on the Novel by L. Ron Hubbard. Produced by Elie Samaha, Honathan D. Krane, John Travolta at Warner Bros/Morgan Creek/Franchise Pictures(C)2000. Rated PG-13. Grade..........................C -- Copyright © 2000. Ross Anthony, currently based in Los Angeles, has scripted and shot documentaries, music videos, and shorts in 35 countries across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. For more reviews visit: http://RossAnthony.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed May 17 10:13:38 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: linaweaver@my-deja.com (Sean Linaweaver) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 May 2000 16:49:56 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Lines: 48 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8fru7k$gbj8$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer07.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958495796 536168 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24625 Keywords: author=linaweaver X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer07.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23709 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2723 Anyone who ever read John Campbell's "Astounding" or "Analog" magazines, or admired a painting by Frank Kelly Freas will recognize what has been accomplished in the film version of "Battlefield Earth." This is real science fiction on an epic scale. The heroes have to use their brains. The villains take too much for granted. Some of the reviews I've seen appearing are by critics who take too much for granted. It is painfully obvious when a reviewer hasn't bothered to see the film he lambastes. One reviewer was babbling about robots and puppets. What movie is that, hmmm? Look, H.G. Wells was a Socialist. But you don't have to be a Socialist to enjoy "The War of the Worlds"! C.S. Lewis was a Christian. But you don't have to be a Christian to enjoy the Narnia books! The point should be obvious. L. Ron Hubbard was a great science fiction writer. "Battlefield Earth" is one of his best stories. Roger Christian has made a fine film and if there are any hidden messages, it is that kids should read books. John Travolta plays the most sarcastic villain in the history of motion pictures. That alone would justify seeing the film but there is much more. Barry Pepper, Kim Coates, Christian Tessier and the rest of the freedom fighters make you believe that the human race will never be defeated. On the other side, Forest Whitaker provides a superb foil for Travolta's character. Between the two of them we experience the Satanic side of bureaucracy. When I saw this film at its Hollywood premiere, I paid close attention to the kids in the audience. They don't have any agendas. They just want to have a good time. They could tell the good guys from the bad guys. They loved the action and explosions and here's the most important part: they didn't run to the concession stand during the dialog scenes. I'd like to see someone try and convince them that they didn't really enjoy the movie. Brad Linaweaver Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri May 19 14:10:20 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Homer Yen Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 18 May 2000 17:54:59 GMT Organization: None Lines: 105 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8g1apj$djou$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer39.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958672499 446238 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24647 Keywords: author=yen X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer39.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23739 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2724 A “Battle” to Avoid by Homer Yen (c) 2000 To watch “Battlefield Earth” is to wallow in misery. It is one of the most ludicrously conceived efforts in recent history. It has a clumsily told story, insipid dialogue, shallow characterizations, ugly scene transitions, no evidence of dramatic arc, headache-inducing sound effects, and a resolution that is completely implausible. Worse, there’s the promise of a sequel. Why?! Save your money. Some films go quickly to video. This one, however, should go straight to the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Mystery Science Theatre.” In the year 3000, Man has become an endangered species. Most of humanity (called ‘man-animals’) was destroyed generations ago in a battle against a race of plundering aliens (called Psychlos). Survivors have either taken up shelter in caves or were enslaved to mine Earth’s resources for the rest of their lives. The aliens are a menacing looking humanoid species that stand nine-feet tall, who resemble inbred Klingons. Dimwitted as they are tall, their culture is predicated on power, extortion, and getting ‘leverage.’ Travolta, the leverage-using star, plays Terl, the conniving security chief that oversees the mining facility on Earth. Much of the movie is spent showing us examples of Terl’s petty machinations. He routinely employs deception and then punctuates his statements with maniacal laughter. But one thing is certain; he hates being stationed on Earth. When the home planet informs him that he will be spending the rest of his life on this planet, he begins to devise his latest plan. He will select a group of slaves to secretly mine out a gold ore site. It’s not clear how this benefits Terl, except that it makes him richer in a place where he has no use for it. The scrappy Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Peppers) is selected as the slave group’s leader. A Psychlo knowledge machine gives him the mining know-how. But the machine also teaches him other things such as the Psychlo language, the principles of our founding fathers, Euclidean geometry, and the location of Fort Knox. This enlightenment just doesn’t prepare him for the mining assignment. It also prepares him to organize and stage a massive revolt against their captors. “We’re going to blow up their home world,” he says. “But first, we need a few more supplies.” In days, he and his comrades evolve from cave dwelling, loincloth wearing, rat eating slaves to fighter pilots and nuclear weapons experts. By now, the audience is laughing as maniacally as Terl. The media have been working overtime to let the public know that John Travolta’s labor of love is a piece of sci-fi drivel. Numerous journals have called it an ill-conceived idea stemming from blind hubris, arrogance, and poor planning. And after watching this movie, you’ll wholeheartedly agree. This is a terrible film that is illogically constructed, tediously acted, and frequently begs the question: Why was this ever made? At a price tag of $90 million, this film will be remembered as a gigantic folly, assuredly becoming “The Avengers” of this summer. Both films were unforgivable and this promises to suffer the same speedy fate and subsequent indignity. In addition to the universally pejorative reviews, there’s another bizarre element to the “Battlefield” saga. This film would never have been made if not for the star power of Travolta, who for over a decade, had been trying to persuade studios to bring the story to the big screen. The controversy is that Travolta is a Scientologist, and “Battlefield” is based on a 1982 novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the religion’s late founder. This led some to believe that “Battlefield Earth” would amount to Scientologist dogma, laden with subliminal messages. But the story is so poorly told that any message, subliminal or otherwise, is totally undetectable. If the audience got anything out of this film, it was this: we are not too unlike the Psychlo leader. Like Terl, the audience felt imprisoned, dreaded their situation, and looked for any opportunity to leave. Could that be the Scientology message? Grade: D S: 1 out of 3 L: 0 out of 3 V: 2 out of 3 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri May 19 14:10:28 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Michael Dequina Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 18 May 2000 18:20:33 GMT Organization: None Lines: 114 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8g1c9h$d5o$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer14.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958674033 13496 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24663 Keywords: author=dequina X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer14.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23754 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2726 _Battlefield_Earth:_A_Saga_of_the_Year_3000_ (PG-13) no stars (out of ****) Although trailers for _Battlefield_Earth_ have been playing in moviehouses since December, the reaction has remained constant over the last few months. With each new audience for each different film at each different time of day, no less than thunderous peals of derisive laughter greet the sight of John Travolta done up like a ten-foot-tall alien beast bearing talons and a moptop of dreadlocks. The television ad campaign, bearing the ludicrous catch phrase "Get Psychlo!" (Psychlo being the name of the monstrous alien race), has done little to change the negative public perception. That said, I must give credit to the Warner Bros. marketing people. As poor as all the ads look, they don't even begin to touch upon the unfathomable awfulness of _Battlefield_Earth:_A_Saga_of_the_Year_3000_ (the film's full, onscreen title). Not only is it hardly presumptuous to declare it the worst film of the year 2000, it is no exaggeration to call this wretched piece of incompetence one of the worst films ever made. As stated by the complete title, the film takes place in the year 3000 A.D., where the planet is in post-apocalyptic ruins after being taken over by the evil alien race from the planet Psychlo a thousand years prior. "Man is an endangered species," as an insanely large text card states, with most of the remaining humans being held prisoner and/or enslaved by giant, grotesque Psychlo. A certain few, however, live freely as primitives in secluded mountain villages. One such person is a bright, resourceful young hunter (Barry Pepper) who may very well be the one to lead the human race to winning back its freedom from the alien invaders. That summary could've been written by anyone who had just seen _Battlefield_'s trailer, which makes clear what is completely incoherent in the complete film. _Battlefield_ tells a simple, simplistic story, but somehow director Roger Christian and screenwriters Corey Mandell and JD Shapiro have made it virtually incomprehensible. After twenty or so dead-end minutes of people wandering through an obviously matte-composited wasteland comes the first of the showcase action scenes--which are all haphazardly cut and slow-mo'ed to oblivion. Pepper's doozy of a character name--Jonnie Goodboy Tyler--is not made evident until about halfway through the film. But at least his name has a consistent pronunciation, unlike that of Terl (Travolta, who also produced), the "head of security" for the aliens' Earth operation; sometimes it rhymes with "girl" and other times it rhymes with "Carol." However you say his name, Terl devises some sort of evil scheme against his superiors after being passed up for a cushier job (yes, even aliens get frustrated by career stagnation), but it beats me just how exactly it's supposed to work. Even so, his plan is not nearly as nonsensical as the humans' plan for revolt. Travolta has called Terl "the definitive evil character." With creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos failing to come up with a menacing look for the Psychlo--their appearance looks ridiculously slapped together from bits of cheap leftover Klingon and rastafarian costumes, with a touch of bondage gear thrown in--it's up to Travolta to turn Terl into a convincingly vicious, truly hateful villain. But his smug, jokey take on the character is a complete miscalculation. A similar approach worked for him as the bad guy in John Woo's _Broken_Arrow_, but there that flip cockiness fit the quirky character. Terl is supposed to be pure, unironic evil--not so much a character to hate as one to feel genuinely threatened by. With Travolta punctuating nearly every passage of dialogue with a ridiculously overdone "evil" cackle, it's little wonder that Terl--and, consequently, the film--can never be taken seriously. However, the filmmakers take _Battlefield_Earth_ extremely seriously, and their reverence of the source novel--and its writer, Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard--blinds them to the fact that the story they're trying to adapt is nothing more than a pulpy genre piece, not an "important" work of literature. Hence, the film is riddled with laughable and utterly baffling moments of self-importance: a crowd is inspired to give exuberantly savage grunts and barks--by flowery statements about the value of freedom; pseudo-profound ruminations about destiny incongruously pop up during a big prison break sequence. People who treat lines like "We're gonna blow up their planet. Needless to say, we're gonna need more supplies before we do that" with grave seriousness are in no position to condescend to their audience, but that's exactly what Christian does. At one point, Jonnie is shown reading a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence, but so ignorant are we movie audiences that he has to then flip to a page that says "Declaration of Independence" in huge type. Usually a subpar sci-fi film can at least fall back on its visuals, but _Battlefield_Earth_ can't even count that as a saving grace. Forget the not-so-special effects--Christian and his crew can't even get the basics right; the rubbery Psychlo creature design is just the tip of the iceberg. Matte paintings are not only obvious, the image compositing is shockingly inept; the three-dimensional actors are clearly standing in front of flat backdrops. The would-be futuristic weaponry and gadgets don't look quite as state-of-the-art as stuff you'd find on a toy store shelf. Catch Travolta on any talk or magazine show, and you'll see him all smiles over _Battlefield_Earth_. Exactly why is up for question. Given the fact that he's tried to bring to the project to the big screen for nearly twenty years, the obvious read is that he's beaming with pride that it finally came to fruition. But after seeing the final product, I cannot help but think that maybe, just maybe, he's laughing that he was able to sucker otherwise sensible people into pouring tens of millions of dollars toward making such an unspeakable, inexcusable waste. Michael Dequina twotrey@juno.com | michael_jordan@geocities.com | jordan_host@sportsmail.com | mrbrown@iname.com Mr. Brown's Movie Site: http://welcome.to/mrbrown CinemaReview Magazine: http://www.CinemaReview.com on ICQ: #25289934 | on AOL Instant Messenger: MrBrown23 ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 22 13:13:39 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: John Beachem Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 19 May 2000 16:54:45 GMT Organization: University of Washington Lines: 126 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8g3rkl$8cus$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer20.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 958755285 275420 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24681 Keywords: author=beachem X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer20.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23780 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2727 BATTLEFIELD EARTH Review by John Beachem * Directed by: Roger Christian Written by: L. Ron Hubbard (novel), Corey Mandell Once in a great while there comes a movie which is regarded as an instant classic. Movies like "Ben Hur" and "The Godfather" were known to be great films the moment they hit theaters. Roger Christian's "Battlefield Earth", based on L. Ron Hubbard's thousand page epic, is not one of these movies. "Battlefield Earth" is more akin to "Plan 9 From Outer Space"; a movie so incredibly bad that it will one day develop a cult following. "Battlefield Earth" is a movie words cannot adequately describe. I hate to say this, but I truly believe it must be witnessed to be fully appreciated. Most bad films have at least one redeeming quality to them; whether it be unintentional laughs, one truly good scene, or some interesting special effects. This movie somehow manages to possess no redeeming qualities. I must admit, it's not an easy task creating such a movie, which is why they only come along once in a great while. Appreciate this movie for the few weeks it will be in theaters folks. You'll not see another one like it for a great while. It's the 31st century, and man is an endangered species (so the opening credits tell us in a cheap, green home computer font). The Psychlos, a race of nine foot tall whiners, have taken over the planet in a battle which took only nine minutes. Now, 1000 years later, there are only a handful of humans remaining, and they are used as cheap labor by the Psychlos, led by the maniacal Terl (John Travolta). A lone woodsman, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), is on a quest to find what happend to his people when he is captured by the alien invaders. Found to be somewhat intelligent by the Psychlos, he is trained in how to speak their language and handle their machinery. Tyler soon decides that he must lead his people in a revolt or the human race will become extinct. With nothing but his wits, a few fellow captives, some explosives, and a handy fleet of Harrier jets, he leads his people in a final strike against their oppressors. Let me start by listing the things I liked about this film. Okay, now on to the rest of the movie. You can tell from the opening titles that you're in for a very bumpy ride. The picture leaps right into its narrative without explaining anything. Instead, we meet Barry Pepper's ("Saving Private Ryan") character, and before we know anything about him, he is off on his quest. In fact, there is no emotional involvment with any character in this movie. At one point, Terl has captured Tyler's girlfriend and threatens to kill her if Tyler doesn't obey him. I think this was supposed to be an emotional scene, watching Tyler grapple with how to save his girlfriend's life. The problem, however, is that we know next to nothing about Tyler, and his girlfriend has just been introduced so we couldn't care less about her. Things are even worse with Tyler's comrades. they die all the time without anyone really knowing just who died. Everytime anyone dies, the music blasts through the theater, the characters scream silently, and the audience stares at the screen in complete confusion about who just bit the dust. Allow me to now list everything that is wrong with this movie. The scenery is obviously fake and created mostly from models or really bad mat jobs (watch for the mat job on a scene where a character falls off a cliff; it's laughably bad). The special effects look like they were done on the same home computer used for the opening credits. The costumes consist of cheap looking furs for the humans and shoddy silver things for the aliens (Travolta manages to appear even more overweight in his costume). The battle scenes are shot entirely in slow motion and with no sound. These fights consist of watching humans and aliens getting hit by little white bursts of light which bounce off them but cause the victims to fall dead to the ground (except Jonnie Tyler, who gets shot numerous times but always springs back). The dialogue is amazingly cheesy, and is made even worse by the over-the-top performances from all the cast members. The score is quite obnoxious, booming dramatically through the speakers all the time regardless of what the characters are doing. Barry Pepper raises his hand, the music booms dramatically; Barry Pepper eats a raw rat, the score plays so loudly you'll be vibrating in your chair. There is much more to hate in this film, but I don't have room to mention it all in one review. In case you're wondering just who Roger Christian is, allow me to give you a quick biography. Christian is the fellow who directed 1997's "Masterminds", and little else. He also worked as a crew member on the first "Star Wars" movie, which would explain his affinity for using wipes. The problem is, while George Lucas may have used all sorts of different wipes throughout the "Star Wars" movies, Christian uses the same wipe over and over again in "Battlefield Earth". The wipe starts in the middle and goes outward, again and again, between nearly every scene. Not only is it amateurish to use the same wipe repeatedly, but it's a cheap looking, unimaginative wipe. The actors are given very little to do, and they chew the scenery like you've never seen. Barry Pepper, who was interesting and a little creepy as the Christian sniper in "Saving Private Ryan", is given nothing to do as the always grunting Jonnie Tyler. John Travolta overacts like you've never seen before, and rather than appearing menacing as I believe was intended, he looks like an eight foot tall clown. Only Forest Whitaker ("Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"), playing Terl's henchman, appears to realize what a horrendous movie he is in. For nearly any science fiction film, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary. "Battlefield Earth" requires more than any other movie I have seen in recent years. Nearly every scene contains some ludicrous idea that an eight year old wouldn't buy. Try this out: the Psychlos are interested in mining gold from a mountain, and they use the humans to do so. Jonnie Tyler, being the genius he now is, takes bricked gold from Fort Knox and gives it to Terl in place of the gold they didn't mine. There are two serious oversights here. First, Terl actually believes that Tyler smelted the gold into bricks for him; second, Terl's scanners could find gold ore in a mountain, but he couldn't find any sitting in a demolished Fort Knox? Not ludicrous enough for you? Try this one on for size: Tyler and his troops just happen to find a fleet of Harriers sitting armed, fueled, and in perfect working order after one thousand years. Tyler's men, who could barely speak intelligibly not too long ago, then proceed to learn how to fly them like experts in less than a week. There are dozens of examples like these two, but I've wasted enough time writing about this stupid movie. I'd recommend "Battlefield Earth" to aspiring directors so they can see how NOT to make a sci-fi movie, but to no one else under any circumstances. The movie runs a torturous 117 minutes, and I give it one out of five stars. Any past movies you want me to review? Send to: johnbeachem@dependentfilms.net For past reviews, movie news, and other fun stuff, visit: http://www.dependentfilms.net * * * * * - One of the best movies of the year. * * * * - Great flick, try and catch this one. * * * - Okay movie, hits and misses. * * - Pretty bad, see it at your own risk. * - See this one only if you enjoy pain. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 29 15:30:47 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: moviefan983@aol.comBiteMe (Brandon Herring) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield: Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 26 May 2000 18:40:52 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 55 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8gmgfk$4ebg$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer38.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 959366452 145776 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24759 Keywords: author=herring X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer38.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23851 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2733 Zero Stars out of * * * * Rated PG-13: Sci-fi action, violence, language. Starring: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker. Directed by: Roger Christianson Running Tim: 127 minutes. So I went and saw this film right, it was called "Battlefield: Earth", I was never interested in the previews, and never too terribly interested in the book, nor do I find scientology interesting, but after reading advanced reviews of how bad this film really is, I had that weird urge just to watch it. Well let me be the first to say, and so far in my view it's safe to say: Battlefield: Earth might be the worst film I have ever seen, yes even worse than "Mr. Magoo", "Blue In The Face", or "Jaws: The Revenge". Roger Christianson whos credits include set direction, and art direction for such great films as "Alien" and "Star Wars", directs this film with such amateurism, that the film looks and feels and in fact sounds so dumb, that it's quite depressing. The look of the film, is dark and drabby at times, but then bright and happy at other times. The sound is terrible, and has the worst surround sound effects I've heard. The acting is nothing, the dialogue poor, and the make-up effects hideous. Here's the so-called plot: Earth 3000....man is a endangered species, while aliens from the planet Psychlo (the aliens are named Psychlo...I wonder why?!) are invading Earth, destined to put an end to those "man-animals" to an end, and destroy Earth once and for all, of course we have our typical hero (played terrible by Barry Pepper, who was great in a small role in 1999's "The Green Mile") who is destined to go out, and save his planet! One thing: he has to go up against, Terl, the chief of security Psychlo, who is played frankly, quite bad by John Travolta, whom with dreadlocks, a big head, and green eyes just doesn't work. Of course the sidekick to Terl, is played by (LOL!!) Forest Whitaker, who looks like a deformed werewolf of some kind. Our friendly human Johnny (Barry Pepper) looks just as bad as well, with long scraggly hair. I'm not really sure how to quite explain the badness of this film, except just to say it's terrible. Everything in this film is imcomprehinsable, from the make-up effects, which by the way aren't good, to the phony looking special effects, everything in this film is faulted. In fact I don't remember one part in this entire movie where I was having a good time, or enjoying myself. In fact there is no part in the movie that I liked or enjoyed. Throughout the entire 127 minute running time, I was dying, constantly looking at my watch, and hoping maybe the projectioner would blow a bulb or something, sadly it didn't. My advice to Hollywood: Get new scripts, new acting classes, better directors and damnit, make films like American Beauty More. Reviewed by Brandon Herring 5/12/00. For more reviews please visit MOVIE REVIEW CENTRAL at http://www.geocities.com/moviefan983/moviereviewcentral.html Email me at MovieFan983@aol.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Jun 11 09:41:26 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!cyclone2.usenetserver.com!news-out.usenetserver.com!traffic.uncensored-news.com!news-in-la.newsfeeds.com!newsfeeds.com!sea-feed.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Michael Redman Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 7 Jun 2000 15:57:15 GMT Organization: ... Lines: 96 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8hlrcr$cn3c$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: redman@indepen.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer15.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 960393435 416876 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24974 Keywords: author=redman X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer15.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23977 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2743 Battlefield long, boring and just plain stupid Battlefield Earth * (out of ****) A film review by Michael Redman Copyright 2000 by Michael Redman In my mid-teen years, I had a horrendous re-occurring nightmare. Behind the wheel of a car, I was driving down a straight road in the middle of a desert. No scenery except the horizon line and the converging parallel lines of the highway. No matter what I did, the view didn't change: travelling but not getting anywhere. Each time I awoke in a sweat, terrified. You don't have to be Carl Jung to understand that dream. Powerless to make changes, trapped in a boring situation with no hope of rescue, this is the stuff of nightmares whether we are asleep or awake. This is exactly how you will feel 15 minutes after "Battlefield Earth" begins. For all of its flash and style, L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction epic is the earliest and best entry for the dullest summer film of 2000. Dull "and" stupid. In the year 3000, the Psychlo aliens have ruled our planet for 1,000 years. Humans either work as slave labor in mining operations or live as barbarians. There's no hope. The future is bleak. Then the Psychlo make a mistake and capture feisty Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) who organizes a revolution against Chief Of Security Terl (John Travolta) and the alien race. It's an archetypal post-apocalyptic plot full of promise. Considering some of the talent involved and all the millions thrown at the screen, it's difficult to see how it could have failed so miserably. But it does. The story is so full of holes that it falls apart within minutes of the opening credits. Are we really supposed to believe that after a millennium of looking for gold, the Psychlo never discovered Fort Knox? Or that fighter planes are still in pristine condition after all that time -- and gassed up? Or that the cavemen become such expert pilots in seven days that they can easily down the advanced alien ships? Or that the Psychlo spy cameras somehow don't notice that their slaves are missing for days? Travolta prances across the screen hamming it up for all he's worth and is almost entertaining. Almost. The rest of the actors are wooden mannequins trying not to laugh while delivering lines that no person -- "man-animal" or not -- would ever utter. Some of the film _looks_ good, but it also looks so familiar. A race of large hulking ape-like creatures has taken over the world while our cities lie in ruin. Sound like something Charlton Heston might be in? The Psychlo look like overweight Klingons in gear from "Dune". The final air battle between the Air Force fighters and the Psychlo ships in their high-tech city is something George Lucas might have been associated with. It's too loud. It's too oppressive. It's too slow. It's too long...far too long. And on it goes. The list of the problems with "Battlefield Earth" is endless. It's difficult to find anything in the film that does work. Oh yeah. The color scheme is nice. The real question is how this movie ever got made. Could it have something to do with the fact that L. Ron Hubbard was the founder of Scientology? And that John Travolta is a member of the church. That might explain why Travolta bought the rights to the novel years ago. But it doesn't give us a clue as to why first-time screenwriter Corey Mandell's atrocious script was used. Or why the high-profile project was entrusted with Roger Christian who had never before directed a major film. Or why no one looked at this thing before it was released and realized there might be problems. The one bright spot is that no longer will Kevin Costner's "The Postman" (which I begrudgingly admit as a guilty pleasure) be "the" big budget science fiction failure. "Battlefield Earth" has the honor sewed up. Often reviewers will recommend that you skip mediocre films and wait for the video. That's not the case here. You can act now and make the decision to not see it on the big screen or on the small one. Don't hesitate. Strike now while the iron is cold. (Michael Redman has written this column since before this novel was published and he's still not a Scientologist. Send tales of religious science fiction experiences to redman@bluemarble.net.) [This appeared in the 5/15/2000 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at redman@bluemarble.net.] -- mailto:redman@bluemarble.net Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Jun 11 09:43:07 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Ukcritic@aol.com (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 9 Jun 2000 16:21:13 GMT Organization: None Lines: 82 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8hr5hp$463o$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer36.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 960567673 137336 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24854 Keywords: author=waldron-mantgani X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer36.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:23963 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2740 Battlefield Earth * Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by Warner Bros on June 2, 2000; certificate 12; 118 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1 Directed by Roger Christian; produced by Elie Samaha, Jonathan D. Crane, John Travolta. Written by Corey Mandell, J.D. Shapiro; based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard. Photographed by Giles Nuttgens; edited by Robin Russell. CAST..... Barry Pepper..... Johnny Goodboy Tyler John Travolta..... Terl Forest Whitaker..... Ker Richard Tyson..... Robert the Fox I sometimes get angry, looking at the smug cynicism of organisations like the Golden Raspberry Awards and www.thestinkers.com, which exist to discuss bad movies. After a while they forget about their purpose, and just rip into everything they can, regardless of the quality. It takes a movie like "Battlefield Earth" to remind us why they were formed in the first place; it's a big-scale disaster that brings back memories of all the shoddy space-opera crap that came out when I was a kid in the 80s. Watching those grainy tapes in the early days of VHS, I wondered what the same crappy special effects and drab colours would look like on the big screen. Now I know. "Battlefield Earth" is based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the new-age religion Scientology, but if the book contains any moral messages or symbols, then they've been lost in the transition to the screen, in favour of dimensionless sci-fi. The story takes place in the year 3000. An alien race, the Psychlos, has taken over Earth, and man is an endangered species. The few humans who are not enslaved in manual labour camps roam the countryside, hunting for food and making weird noises, like cavemen. The hero of the movie is one of these Neanderthal chaps, Johnny Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), who announces, in his own grunting way, that he is going to find the Psychlos, arrange a revolt against them and reclaim the planet. When his plan gets underway, Johnny comes to the attention of Terl (John Travolta) and Ker (Forest Whitaker), two chiefs of staff in the Psychlos' security command. They try to stop him by keeping him busy, having him mine gold for them in some kind of secret corrupt operation. Humans grumble, aliens snarl, and then there's an action climax that attempts to rip off the Death Star attack in "Star Wars" but looks more like an Atari game. Throughout everything, plot holes and contradictions abound. At the start of the movie, everyone has to wear breathing apparatus resembling big lines of snot, because Earth air is unbreathable -- people are even executed by being deprived of their tubes. Next thing you know, Terl comes up with his idea of having humans mine for gold, because they don't need breathing apparatus. Eh? How about the fact that the Psychlos are obviously a bunch of incompetents who can be defeated by rebellious cavemen, and yet they apparently conquered all human armies in nine minutes? Why doesn't Terl have a clue about human levels of intelligence or behaviour patterns, when he has a computer programme full of details about our languages, history, biology and technology? Why does Terl want to mine gold, when it is a worthless substance to the Psychlos? Why does Johnny seize Terl's gun, make a rousing speech about how human comrades should fight for freedom, then return the gun and go back to work?? The production values are just as inexplicable. Travolta and Whitaker are virtually unrecognisable underneath pounds of rotten makeup, they talk like drunkards telling jokes, and they wear codpieces that restrict their movements. And everything is seen in tilt shots or slow motion, through a pall of bluish mist that makes everything look grubby. Although special effects have improved dramatically in the last twenty years, those in "Battlefield Earth" are a throwback to worse times -- the soundtrack is made up of distorted echoes, and the visuals are a collection of blurred model shots and weird-looking props scattered around cheap sets. The movie is so outrageously, spectacularly, unbelievably bad that we stare at it with some sort of appalled curiosity. It fails on so many levels that it's fascinating, although not so much that I'd sit through it again. Remember all that "Who Shot JR?" merchandise? Maybe one day they'll also have T-shirts and bumper stickers declaring "I SAT THROUGH BATTLEFIELD EARTH!" COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani Please visit, and encourage others to visit, the UK Critic's website at http://members.aol.com/ukcritic From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 12 13:50:49 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!erinews.ericsson.se!uab.ericsson.se!newsfeed1.telenordia.se!news.algonet.se!algonet!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Chuck Dowling Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 11 Jun 2000 20:36:11 GMT Organization: The Jacksonville Film Journal - http://www.jaxfilmjournal.com/ Lines: 105 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8i0t7r$a95o$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer09.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 960755771 337080 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24881 Keywords: author=dowling X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer09.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:24008 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2745 Battlefield Earth (2000) Rating: 0.0 stars out of 5.0 stars Cast: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, Richard Tyson, Kelly Preston Written by: Corey Mandell Directed by: Roger Christian Running Time: 117 minutes Battlefield Earth is the worst film of 2000, and I guarantee you that nothing else this year will even come close. In fact, I'll be surprised if I see anything this bad in the next TEN years. Based on the novel by Scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth begins and we immediately find out two pieces of key information. It's the year 3000, and an alien race called the Psychlos (which sounds like a tag team of Mexican wrestlers) conquered our planet in nine minutes. Ok, we are all of 10 seconds in and I have a zillion questions racing through my mind. When were we conquered? The audience is led to believe that this happened about 1,000 years earlier, and if that is the case then we're going to get into a whole BUNCH of problems later (trust me... keep reading). Also, why don't we get to see Earth get conquered? How the hell do you make a popcorn sci-fi flick and not deliver the goods on the one event that sets up the film? Humans now live as cavemen or slave labor, and for the film's first act we focus on one particular cavemen group outside of Denver, Colorado. They grunt and groan and babble about monsters. So, when the Psychlos conquered Earth, were the only humans not captured a herd of newborn babies that crawled their way to safety in the hills? None of these characters have any knowledge of the planet being conquered (whenever that was). This is definitely NOT the way to start an action/sci-fi film. One of the humans wanders out into the wilderness and stumbles across what he thinks is a monster, and he begins to fight it. The "monster" turns out to be a dinosaur from an old miniature golf course. He turns around and sees all sorts of other characters from the golf course, with some shrubs growing over them. So, in 1,000 years this stupid little golf course has stood the test of time, with only a few weeds growing over it? Anyway, some of the humans are captured by the Psychlos led by Terl (John Travolta) a smarmy and opportunistic alien planning on stealing a recently discovered gold deposit. The cavemen (led by Barry Pepper) are forced to do their bidding or whatever, but eventually they gain the upper hand and reclaim the planet, or something. So these cavemen are able to do what Earth failed to do 1,000 years earlier? And, we're supposed to believe that Earth was conquered in nine minutes by a group of buffoonish aliens who can't even handle a few cavemen? One of the ways the humans reclaim the planet is by taking control of abandoned Air Force jets and using them to fight the Psychlos. So jets left unattended for 1,000 years are still able to fly? Please, if I leave my car unattended for two weeks I have to replace every fluid and hose under the hood. Why did the Psychlos leave jets around anyway? Shouldn't they have destroyed military installations during their massive nine minute campaign against us? The Psychlos refer to humans as "man animals" but yet dogs are still "dogs". Why aren't they "dog animals"? The Psychlos are after mining Earth's precious resources, but for 1,000 years are unaware of Fort Knox? Why do I even care at this point? I'm a fan of Travolta's and I'm glad to see he's back on the A-List in Hollywood (despite the fact that he occasionally puts out crowd pleasing dreck like Michael and Phenomenon). But how did he possibly think this was a good movie? And how did he think he was giving a good performance here? He's more than capable of making a menacing villain (see Broken Arrow and Face/Off) but whenever his character came on screen I couldn't hold back my laughter. Now despite the different facial features members of this alien race seem to have, Travolta just looks like Travolta. All of the other aliens have weird foreheads or other pointy bones on their face, but Travolta just has a goatee. Also, Travolta's acts with a sort of phony upper-class snooty accent and constantly whines about bureaucratic nonsense back on his home world. Ooooo, scary villain. As a producer he should know better and as an actor he should DEFINITELY know better. You can make a dumb but good sci-fi film (I love Independence Day for example), but there is absolutely NOTHING entertaining about Battlefield Earth. I did everything I possibly could to stay awake during the screening... I cleaned my glasses, walked around the theater, made a grocery list, chose my lottery numbers for the week, replayed Super Bowl XXV in my head (with commercials)... and still was compelled to scrutinize the insides of my eyelids. By the time we actually reach the year 3000, people should still be avoiding this film. Folks, save your cash.. don't go see it, don't rent it, and don't buy it. You'd be more entertained by taking the money you'd use for this movie and just throwing it into the wind, watching it sail away (hell, send it to us here at The Jacksonville Film Journal... we'll entertain you plenty with that kind of money). Unless of course you're just captivated by countless slow motion shots of Barry Pepper running, which is just about all you'll come away with from this movie. That, and a headache. [Editor's Note: For some reason though, the day after my screening I converted to Scientology. I'm not sure why... something just made me feel compelled make the choice.] Reviewed by Chuck Dowling - chuckd21@fdn.com AOL Instant Messenger: FilmJax The Jacksonville Film Journal - http://www.jaxfilmjournal.com/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 19 15:19:38 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.skycache.com!Cidera!63.211.125.72!cyclone2.usenetserver.com!news-out.usenetserver.com!traffic.uncensored-news.com!news-in-la.newsfeeds.com!newsfeeds.com!sea-feed.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Shay Casey" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 18 Jun 2000 18:41:13 GMT Organization: None Lines: 114 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <8ij549$i0oa$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer35.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 961353673 590602 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #24947 Keywords: author=casey X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer35.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:24063 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2748 * out of **** Year: 2000. Starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, Sabine Karsenti, Richard Tyson, Marie-Jose Croze, Kelly Preston. Screenplay by Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro. Directed by Roger Christian. Rated PG-13. "Battlefield Earth" is the best comedy of the year. It has to be. The other prospect is just too horrifying to consider. Bad Movie Syndrome struck me again, so after witnessing how much "Battlefield Earth" has been proclaimed a train wreck in both critical and popular circles, I felt the masochistic urge to see the disaster first-hand. Is it as bad as advertised? Oh yes, very much so. The plot is incomprehensible. The acting is atrocious. The special effects are mediocre. The action is dull. The implausibilities are legion. The dialogue is cringe-inducing. The whole package is funny when it wants to be serious and irritating when it wants to be funny. I don't even want to continue reviewing this movie; I'd like to purge the atrocity from my mind as soon as possible, but you probably want to read my thrashing in all its sarcastic glory, so here it is: The premise is basically a rip-off of "Planet of the Apes," only minus the apes and philosophical discussion, and plus a race of evil aliens from the planet Psychlo. The year is 3000, the Psychlos have conquered Earth, and the human population has been enslaved. Only a handful of humans escaped to radiation-rich areas to escape the aliens; they live out their lives in fear. One man, Johnny Goodboy (I know, I know) Tyler (Barry Pepper), ventures to the outworld and is captured by the Psychlos. There he confronts the Psychlo head of security: a big, ugly, Klingon-looking creature called Terl (John Travolta). Pressed into slavery, Johnny vows to lead a revolution and take the planet back. Meanwhile, Terl is faced with his own problems: He has recently learned that he's stuck living on Earth (which he hates) for the rest of his career because he pissed off his boss by sleeping with the big man's daughter. He decides to give Johnny knowledge of the Psychlo language and technology (this is where the plot gets ridiculous . . .) so the "man-animal" can lead a mining expedition into places the Psychlos can't go. Terl then plans to keep the mined gold for himself. Of course, his plan doesn't work. So many things wrong with this movie -- where to begin? How about with Travolta, whose Hollywood clout brought about this, the cinematic version of Scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi novel? Early previews for "Battlefield Earth," with constant shots of a makeup-laden Travolta cackling like Lex Luthor, had me (and several audience members) remarking, "What the hell is Travolta thinking?" The movie did nothing to stem such remarks. All that ridiculous cackling he did in the trailers is in full force here: Terl cackles after nearly every line, and so does every other Psychlo. Of course, this makes every scene hilariously overwrought, no more so than when the script clumsily stumbles into political commentary. The Psychlos are probably supposed to be some kind of satire of corporate America, but CEOs generally don't laugh maniacally after denying pay raises to their employees. ("You were going to be promoted -- but now you're not! Fwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!") It's no big surprise Terl loses to the humans -- he's an idiot. He breaks every kind of supervillain rule in the book. He underestimates his enemies, assuming he'll win just because he's smarter. (He uses the word "leverage" like some sort of Scientologist mantra.) Not content to go the James Bond villain route of explaining his plans to the hero, he hooks him up to a machine that gives him knowledge of all the Psychlos' language and technology. (Why this machine is even around in the first place is beyond me.) He then appears shocked that Johnny points a gun at him. No wonder this guy never got his promotion. The plot inconsistencies are too numerous to mention. Why do the Psychlos build an Earth base in which both they and the human slaves must wear little breathing apparatuses to survive? How come the Psychlos are wasting their time mining for gold when the doors of Fort Knox are wide open? How in the world did all those fighter jets survive sitting in a hangar for 1,000 years? And how do all these previously brain-dead cavemen learn to fly them so quickly? There's a whole lot more to scratch one's head about in "Battlefield Earth." Bring a scorecard to track the plot holes. Director Roger Christian shoots "Battlefield Earth" in the most distracting way possible, tilting nearly every shot sideways for no discernible reason. All the characters appear to be standing on the walls, and it's awfully difficult to watch a movie when you must tilt your head just to watch ordinary passages of dialogue. The action sequences are atrociously edited, every one turned into an endless slow-motion parade that drains all potential excitement. Are these things really so hard to construct? My respect for supposed "lightweight" action directors has grown by leaps and bounds after witnessing in "Battlefield Earth" how badly an action sequence can be shot. This movie is an absolute headache. It's not just the shot selection and editing; the movie, quite frankly, makes no sense. For most of "Battlefield Earth's" running time, I just didn't know what was happening. It didn't have anything to do with me finding the events stupid or illogical (though they certainly are) -- I really had no idea what the hell was going on. When I pieced the plot together later, it didn't look any better. Here's how much of a disaster this is: "Battlefield Earth" is already the worst movie of the year, and it's going to take something really, really inept to top it. The only thing we can take comfort in about the film is that no one will be suckered into joining the Church of Scientology because of it. In fact, I'd think that Hubbard's cult would want to distance themselves from this bomb as fast as possible. That'll teach me to give into Bad Movie Syndrome again. -reviewed by Shay Casey For more reviews, go to http://www.geocities.com/sycasey/movies.html