R E V I E W S
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Starring: John
Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates Studio: Warner Bros. Review Posted: 5.14.00 Rating: 3/10
By Stephen.
"Battlefield... Hollywood"
Certain movies will make you go say, "daaamn," "whoa," "awesome," and "sweet" for instance. Although, there are those movies that will make you go say, "yeah right," "whatever," "suuure," "my ass," and "whaaat?" -- a situation which I found myself in as I sat in the theater that was playing one of those movies. As you no doubt have guessed, I'm talking about Battlefield Earth. There isn't much to say about this film, neither in a good or bad sense as Battlefield Earth doesn't even exist. No, wait, that can't be, I've read reviews of this movie on the net. Or maybe, all of this was just a dream? Eh, no way, I was alive that day.
So what exactly is Battlefield Earth? I'll be damned if I knew. I'd assume it's an end-of-the-humanity epic. No wait, this is what it tried to be, but ain't. Certainly, it's based on the best science-fiction novel in the world, or so they say, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be the best science-fiction movie in the world. Well, of course it doesn't mean that. But I'm still trying to figure out what exactly the purpose of this movie is? To scare us? Might be. To entertain us? Probably. To bore us? Most likely. To short-change us? Somewhere in those lines.
I actually paid for this movie. I still can't believe it. Why the hell did I go and pay for this movie? I haven't paid to see movies for several weeks. And to say the least I paid $8 when I could have gone with $6, providing I show my school I.D. which I certainly had with me that day. Anyway, I went in with my friend and saw it.
Battlefield Earth is about many things: 1) A refugee (Johnny) lives in the mountains with a bunch of other refugees, avoiding the Psyclos - a mad alien race. 2) The Psyclos take over the world, or just America? It was not at all clear if they just invaded America or all of the Earth. But nonetheless, they rule over the land. 3) Nothing. Among the high-ranking Psyclos is Terl (John Travolta) and he absolutely hates Earth. So why doesn't he just shoot himself? Because if he would then Ker (Forest Whitaker) would take his place and Terl doesn't want that because he's a jealous bastard. Terl is ordered by Psyclo government officials to stay on Earth much much longer than he was supposed to, which pisses of Terl a lot.
Now, Johnny leaves the mountains for the quest of finding other humans and what's out there. In case you didn't know, this is the year 3000 and Johnny don't know jack squat about Earth's history, but he has this urge to find out more. He meets two other refugees but they are soon apprehended by Terl - what a bad ass he is. They spend time in prison, do hard labor, and get harassed by Psyclo guards (haha).
The rest is just a pure waste of time as basically what happens is Johnny breaks out of prison to start a ridiculous revolution against the Psyclos in an attempt to save humanity -- not that they aren't already totally screwed. Anyway, he pulls it off and destroys them all. It only took him 2 hours of screen time, eh, which would be about a week in the movie's world -- somebody call Guinness. We got a new record. No? Well, yeah, it's not real anyway.
There are several good things about Battlefield Earth but they are not all too evident. Barry Pepper gives a good performance even though his character is way too hyper and confident, providing his chances of survival and succession are not good at all. The FX looked pretty decent, too. The cinematography was probably the most, though only outstanding part of this film (great scenery and shots). There are a lot of bad things about this movie, too.
First of all, I thought that John Travolta would be a cool alien, but goddamn was I wrong. It was absolutely wrong on his part as he looked ludicrous the entire time, not forgetting the ever-repeating dialogue throughout. The script seemed dull as hell. As far as direction goes I can't see what could possibly be directed in this movie for a lot of stuff was FX and dark shit, I don't know.
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