Battlefield Earth

POOLMAN: It’s wedding week here at the old Olivetti compound, and he’s decided to inflict upon me one of the most hideous movies of our time. Thankfully, he’s at least managed to resist putting me through The Doom Generation… again.

JUSTIN: No, today’s torture… TORTURE… is Battlefield Earth, a movie I’ve seen once, swore never to see again, then saw again right now. To warm up, we watched the trailer, enjoying the goosebumps of mild anticipation that bubbled all over our skin. Then, the movie began. With a hushed awe, Pooly and I watched the Exposition Scroll™ that prepared us for the crapfest to come. Man is, as they say, an endangered species. Good scifi movies are even more rare. Alas, Babylon!

P: Ah, the over obvious green text. Backstory, sweet backstory! Anyways, we’re introduced to man’s few remaining dregs, a gang of people with naugahyde clothes and well conditioned hair. Ooh, and our first 45 degree angle shot, coupled with a slow motion “NOOOOOO!” as we learn that the main character’s father has died. Plus a Lucas Wipe… nice.

J: Barry Pepper rides in on a horse and into our dreams with his wild, untamed hair. Happy sigh. Quickly, we are introduced to BE’s signature camera style, which is that of someone wildly drunk who actually forgets that a camera is attached to the end of their hands. Sometimes we’re graced with bizarre 45-degree angles, a la the old Batman show, even for shots of just people talking. Dramatic! And then… then the Star Wars-style wipes. Because you really want to have your audience make a comparison between your scifi flick and a much, much better one. Barry Pepper rides off from his faux caveman tribe to find food and shelter and a plot that makes sense. Poor, deluded Barry. He ends up attacking a plaster dinosaur. Seriously.

P: Now we have crazy hunter “OOH OOH OOH” action. I really love how mankind has gone to seed in this flick. We’re practically back to worshipping the monolith. Everyone talks about seeing gods and demons… and it’s the saga of the year 3000! Man, these camera angles are making me dizzy and tired.

J: 1000 years in the future, and what has humanity come to? Making bad jokey references to McDonalds and wandering through slightly dilapidated city streets that look as if the gardener just forgot to come for one weekend. Then they go to the mall. Yup. Because in a scifi flick based on the BEST SELLING NOVEL, a trip to the mall is all the excitement we can handle. Yet another screen wipe. And another. And another. It’s like that episode of Simpsons where Homer’s putting together Ned’s dating video and uses a star wipe over and over because he just kinda likes it. But I digress. The screen’s gone green, the aliens attack with laser beams on the par with the special effects of the old Star Trek series, and the Psychlos arrive.

P: Another slowmo NOOOOOOOOO as the Psychlos show up and shoot the secondary characters. I never was all that impressed with the effects in this flick. It’s worth noting at this point that the beams that come from the Psychlos’ guns are green crayon stripes. Pretty. Ooh, and we have a shot of Johnny running through a series of glass panes that’s almost straight out of Blade Runner. May as well steal from the best, I always say!

J: Take it from my lips — slowmo never, ever does a film good. Anywhoodiddle, the cavemen in their matching rags (from the cave version of Abercrombie and Fitch) are taken prisoner and transported to a glass domed Denver. At this point, we know the Psychlos know that humans can figure out how to use nose plugs and build major thriving metropolises, but we shall see that the aliens consistently treat the hu-mans on the level of lower vertebrates. Then Pepper takes a gun and fires it. We so dumb as people. We need our kind alien overlords with — as we’re introduced to John Travolta — their enormous alien crotches. The alien designs in B:E are freaking hilarious, as their foreheads are shaped like hairy footballs, dreadlocks hanging freely, eyebrows whisping all over the place, and long calves that suggest a judicious use of stilts. Travolta makes the wise move of re-arming Barry Pepper and testing to see if he can, you know, fire it into one of the guards. Just for kicks.

P: And shock horror surprise, Barry figures it out. Like he did before. Oh well. Now we’re treated to a water fight between the guards and the humans. Who says processing camp can’t be fun? The random technology show is kind of interesting. We’ve been introduced to the nose plugs, the guns, the transport system… ah, so advanced. Oh lordy, John Travolta just gave the worst bad guy laugh, followed by a faux-English accented “Oh, you’re too much!”. Yikes. Shakespeare, it ain’t.

J: The bad acting is spread around liberally, from humans to Psychlos alike. There’s fake jaunty laughter over exterminating earthlings, there’s Travolta getting ruffled, grunting cavemen anger (hey, they get free nose plugs that look like brown snot hanging down their face, what more do they want?), and oh, oh the echoes. It’s all grr-grr-angry-stupid-modern-reference-Leverage. This director is clearly operating in a high state of delusion, but no matter! We have a film to slam! On to Planet Psychlo, brought to you by the color purple!

P: The Joker would have LOVED Psychlo. “Where Purple is Always In!” So we’ve found out that Terl (Travolta) will be reassigned to his current post on Earth for another 50… sigh… cycles (couldn’t scifi movies pick some new words?) because he apparently slept with some Psychlo senator’s daughter. Well, I’d say you earned it. Cut back to the human ranch, and we see them filling some troughs with green sludge. Which they’re fighting over. Jailhouse rock!

J: It bugged me for a second until I placed Travolta’s “evil” acting style… it’s almost the same level of manic bru-HA-HA, arms waving, mouth spitting, eyes bulging melodrama that Jeremy Irons brought to Dungeons and Dragons. Back to the jail cell, as the Pepper fights the resident Jail Cell Tough for his fair share of… um… green sludge. Way to pick your battles, Pepper. Meanwhile, in Stately Wayne Manor, Travolta and Forrest Whitaker (oh, how the mildly talented have fallen slightly more) are having a lover’s quarrel about betrayal and who gets to use the not-so-hidden cameras to spy on who in the shower.

P: One of the funniest things about this flick to me is that the entire motivation behind the Psychlo invasion is to get metal. Metal is valuable. Gold is particularly valuable. So why is EVERYTHING the Psychlos own made of metal? Right down to the paperwork. It’s all metal. Luckily, they’ve found a great big vein of gold to mine. Unfortunately, because the Psychlos breath explodable gases, they can’t go mine it themselves. Hm. Now who will they send…?

J: It’s suggested, for the Psychlos to make a profit (“profit” and “leverage” are two unfortunate words we’ll be hearing a lot in this movie, courtesy of Scientology) that they use the “man-animals” to do mining. Everyone laughs, saying that it’s ridiculous to even THINK that humans could use machines. Yes. Because they just whipped up entire cities out of wishes and rainbow-colored dreams. So the humans go back to slave labor — something which is ALWAYS exciting to watch, even more than being in a labor camp yourself! — and Pepper tries to escape for the fifteenth time. Because he’s plucky! But it’s a no-go for him, as he’s defeated by confusing camera angles and a terrific lack of plot.

P: Backstab upon backstab. Travolta’s been filming Whittaker making statements about stealing the corporation’s money. One really has to pause here. Is Battlefield Earth really more than it seems? Is it a modern day allegory for the evils of the corporate life? Is it a clever metaphor for the nine to five slavery that we all endure?

OOH! Leverage! Leverage! That’s two! The second most used word in the script, after the word “gold”.

J: Pooly is obviously searching for meaning where there is only Travolta crotch and moon boots. Travolta’s mining plan is going ahead, against orders, as he stages an elaborate ruse to figure out what people eat. Apparently, it’s rat. New lows are reached, as we the audience of two wonder if the filmmakers think we need some bimbo in a tube top holding up monosyllabic cue cards to spell out the story for us. SIDENOTE: Here’s another clever use of “scifi speech” — instead of calling a camera a "camera", call it a “picto-camera”! Because that’s five letters and a hyphen longer!

P: Haha… now they’re mining the office! Nah, they’re just fixing the ceiling, but it’s still amusing. Nothing too dull to show in this movie! Anyways, we finally get to the… ahem… meat of the plot. Johnny is being educated in a learning machine, taught by the wimpiest alien ever. This is almost neat, as they pump info directly into his eyes. There’s just been so many places where this movie might have been pretty good… but everywhere there’s a wrong turn to take, it’s taken.

J: For cavemen that believe in putt-putt golf demons, they’ve stopped grunting rather quickly. Johnny (Pepper) has all sorts of info-crap pumped into his head, which he uses to teach the prisoners. Teach. Let me point this out. There’s an entire SCENE in which all that happens is that Johnny teaches math and, urm, “molecular biology” to his fellow grunters. Because this will help them escape, by boggling their captors with problem sets and derivatives. MEANWHILE, back in caveland, Johnny’s girlfriend rides to his rescue! She’s missing his shaved pecs.

P: A couple more “leverages”! I count four so far!

So the prisoners try and stage a breakout, but the guns don’t work. The Psychlos are safety-oriented, and don’t store guns loaded. How conscientious. (Leverage count is now five!) Incidentally, I literally can’t remember one scene transition that wasn’t done via a wipe. Not one.

J: The director speaks. “You see, there are many ways to do a scene transition in movies. The most common is a quick ‘cut’. However, I’ve taken a shine to a ‘mid-screen wipe’, as a method to point out to the audience, Hey! We’re changing places in the movie! We’re fancy! It’s like pulling a curtain open from the middle!”

But I digress. We get to the infamous Cow Scene. This is where Travolta proves his superiority over man-animals by – we kid you NOT – shooting the legs off cows, for no real reason. I swear, once you see the cow listing over like a bovine Titanic, your life will never be the same. But at least Johnny makes some new friends out in the wildnerness – sweaty, strong, musky friends – and gives a fourth-generation copy of Wililam Wallace’s speech from Braveheart. Because you always want to compare your underdogs-against-the-Big-Bads with a much better movie. Much better. Hey, can we get back to the cows?

P: The Cow Scene is, perhaps, perfection in cinema. Watching a slowmo John Travolta in bad makeup and on stilts shoot the legs off cows, including a behind the back shot just for saucy fun, is tremendous! I swear, I can’t watch that scene without laughing like a hyena. It’s amazing. They were denied an Oscar.

Once again, however, as the wild men knock Terl over and put him right over the proverbial barrel, a character once again gives up the initiative. I swear, every single time a character manages to get the upper hand in this movie, they give it up.

J: Flash forward to a pivotal jail cell scene, where Our Hero is in despair over the death of a friend, but is buoyed by the patriotic gruntings of his fellow captives. Freedom is worth dying for! Cages aren’t living! And so the music swells as all the humans grab their cell bars and put up a ruckus. It’s a moving piece of the score, but the funny thing is that if the music wasn’t there, there’s honestly nothing different that the humans are doing in this scene than they were doing back when they showed feeding time.

Travolta goes to a bar and gets his freak on with a Psychlo chick with a four-foot tongue. Which is as unsexy as you’d imagine. By the way? I’m officially tired of the term “man-animals”. Why can’t we use a contraction and go to “manimals” or something?

Then, Travolta teaches Johnny how to fly. Because you really want to arm your tortured captives with valuable information – and, dare I say, LEVERAGE – to kill you with.

P: Every part of the logical progression of this story hurts my brain. (Leverage: six!) Nothing makes sense at all. The character just keep handing each other one-ups. Ah well, I guess hoping for a story that makes sense from a Scientologist would be expecting a bit much.

So it’s on to the actual mining operation. They touch down in the ships that Johnny now knows how to fly and start unloading gear. Luckily the gold is all visible to the naked eye. It’s literally hanging out of the mountainside. So half the team will be pretending to mine gold while the other half go and… I don’t know… build a theme park. Or maybe try to learn script writing from the learning machine.

J: I want to go back a bit, to when Johnny was in his cell getting inspired by his buddies. At the end of this, as Johnny’s tortured eyes flicker up and show a glimmer of hope, he does something really inexplicable. He take his knife, cuts off a lock of his hair, and gives it to a guy there. The guy takes it, wraps it sensually around his hand, and… that’s it. Guh? Does Johnny like giving away free hair? Was he handing out souveniers that would become valuable in ten years after the human liberation?

Johnny reveals his Great Plan. They pretend to mine gold. Then fly to Washington for sight-seeing. Then they will steal gold from Fort Knox to deliver to Travolta. Then they get some thousand year-old military hardware to fight back with. Then destroy the alien planet. Why not? It’s not like they were admiring cave drawings ten days ago.

P: And right about now is where the ol’ logic circuits REALLY go for a dive. All the vehicles have fully inflated tires. Nothing has dust on it. There’s electricity for the flight simulator. All of this after ONE THOUSAND YEARS in the future. Literally everything happening at this point is entirely impossible. Buckle up, we’re going for a ride!

Oh, and by the way. Why oh why is everyone saying “piece of cake” so damned much? The colloquialisms being thrown around are just mind blowing. Even the cavemen with tribal tattoos on their faces are running around calling each “dude”.

J: Things That Last 1000 Years: electricity, Harrier simulators, paper, dust-free surfaces, assault rifles, slide show projectors. At least, according to this film.

Johnny and Da Guys work on the nuclear warhead, since Johnny is learned and all that. They’re meticulously pouring through a manual, but get stuck when they can’t find… APPENDIX A. Yes, the movie, already crawling at a torturous pace before, comes to a complete standstill as they search for APPENDIX A. Finally, an accident reveals that APPENDIX A is on a projector, which causes Our Heroes to cheer. Presumably, the director thought the audience would also rise up out of their seats, tears running down their cheeks in joy, with the glorious presence of APPENDIX A! Wooo!

Leverage count: 115. Barry Pepper’s hair: cleaned and conditioned.

P: Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to ask something. How is it that all the humans, Johnny in particular, are all so well groomed? His woman’s eyebrows are plucked, his chin is ALWAYS perfectly shaven, and those who aren’t clean shaven have perfectly groom goatees. Unfortunately, poor Terl isn’t so lucky. He’s got that brutal bald spot (leverage!) right in the middle of his forehead. Middle age can be so cruel.

OOH! Our first blown off hand! Terl blows off the hand of Kerr, and KERR DOESN’T REACT. His hand has been shot off at the wrist, and the guy doesn’t even flinch. He just shuffles off to do more work. I love it. I LOVE it!

J: The human rebellion begins, sponsored by random smashings and breakings. Lots of slowmo running, debris flying everywhere, Barry Pepper’s dreadlocks flowing majestically, undoubtably full of vitamin Leverage. One guy unloads a truck full of boxes titled “Explosives”. I add the world “Acme” to the beginning, but Pooly adds “diarrhea” at the end. It’s a close call.

Guards “move fast” at two inches per second, firing at the humans, who are fighting unfair by not moving in slow motion. Shots and scenes happen in such a way that no one is quite sure of what’s going on, other than that the director is getting small bursts of pleasure in his genitals whenever he captures a sharply tilted shot on camera.

The Psychlos, having captured the Earth in nine minutes, are losing the Earth is just about the same amount of time. Why? As Pooly puts it, The Barbarian Airforce, swooping in with vastly inferior jets to eradicate centuries-advanced technology!

P: I love the caveman air attack. These guys are flying thousand year old Harrier jets that they JUST learned to fly not a week prior, and they’re BEATING the alien forces that took over the Earth in just nine minutes. Brother.

Instead of a wipe, just now they cut to a new scene by just stopping everything (including the swelling music) dead in its tracks and cutting over to something else. It’s all about subtlety, folks. You half expect to see Adam West strung up over a giant blender while an erstwhile announcer makes bad puns about gold and radiation. Same Psychlo time, same Psychlo channel!

So they make to blow the dome, but the explosives aren’t enough. The glass merely cracks. Oh no, what’s a noble cave hero to do?

J: This exciting action scene contains numerous shots of humans running, random shots being fired, and the SAME EXACT shots of Psychlos exiting doors and stalking about like the hairy popsicles they are. Piece of cake. It brings great happiness to my heart to see that the cavemen are still wearing furs and makeup while flying the aircraft.

The dome is blown, and shards of glass fall everywhere, mostly onto the humans. Johnny neglected to tell his buddies about the power of gravity – which holds nary against leverage – and thousands of people are shredded into beef chunks. Or so you’d think. Fortunately for them, the dome collapses in slow motion while they’re running around in normal time, so they have plenty of opportunity to duck below ground and become CHUDs.

P: Just fifteen minutes left. Just enough time for Terl to make yet another speech about power and leverage. Right up until he blows his own arm off. And predictably, that hardy Psrchlo physiology allows him to almost completely ignore the resulting pain. There’s a slight “ungh”, but it’s mostly an uncomfortable itching sensation.

Now blond little brother beams to Planet Psychlo and manages to set off the radiation bomb. So humanity has committed near-complete genocide of the Psychlo race. Good thing we’re not as evil as they are!

J: Johnny grimaces for an appropriate amount of time for a fallen comrade (6 seconds), then gets all happy as his shaved-armpit girlfriend runs into his arm. The hu-mans are free, and no longer an endangered species. John Travolta is – were this but true in real life! – locked into a cage inside Fort Knox. Who’s gonna stay there and guard him? It’s not like there’s a lot of spare humans going around these days.

Travolta’s such a tool. I just needed to say that.

P: Now we have the final betrayal. Kerr screws Terl over one last time. Complete with maniacal badguy laughter. And irony, cruel irony, Terl is locked away with all the gold in Fort Knox. But at least we can say this: IT’S OVER! Hooray! Any closing comments, Justin old boy?

J: Last words, as the movie ends on a Raiders of the Lost Ark homage. Homage or rip-off, I don’t care. It’s just over. OOOOVERRRR!