Trying not to let all the terrible reviews of "Battlefield Earth" influence me, I went to see the movie today in Stavanger. It was cinema number 7. 77 seats only, so it's one of the smallest in Stavanger (Norway). BE has only been shown in this cinema since it had premiere June 2. Today it was only half full and I took place on the first row where I could sit alone to enjoy the show.
My first impression was the incredible lousy titles at the start. One of the great things with major sci-fi movies has been their extravagant use of great introductions with apocalyptic music to get the audience in just the right mood before impressive battleships or massive explosions are folded out on the big silver screen. In "Battlefield Earth" it looked like the title were made using the built in features of a Sony Handycam. I strived hard, but I did not manage to get in any galactic mood.
I've seen a lot of bad movies that I've enjoyed. Sure they did not deserve an Oscar, but when it comes to adventure and sci-fi I'm easy to entertain. I guess that would be my reactive mind. ;) I'm still at 35 a big fan of cartoons and as most of us know there isn't a big demand for a story line if just the story telling and craftsmanship is good enough. The same goes for a movie. I treasure movies like the Star Wars and ID4 because of the entertainment value, they gave me something exciting and I willingly let down my critical guard just to be entertained. This never happened during the two hours watching BE, even though I really looked for an opening. In ID4 for example the human air fights with the aliens was rather silly, but still enjoyable to some extent. We all knew the president of America would save the world and the drunken father would give his life to save the day, but at least it had some charm. When cavemen grunted while flying jet planes in BE I was just stunned by how silly a 80 million dollar movie could be.
I mean, they start off walking into this city that is supposed to have been left to erode for 1000 years, still the car wrecks looked like they were left there not more that 20 years ago. That's not cute errors, that's an insult to my intelligence when in a movie presented to be a major event. Having been spoiled with the special effects used in the previous century I can't help that I expected something better than what BE offered. Even "Brasil" had a better scenery than this so this is not a budget thing.
After a while the ill-placed grunting by the humans and the put on laughter by the psychlos just became silly and you smile with them in pity. I've never liked Travolta very much as an actor but he's had a couple good roles where the directing and character has fitted his talent. Since this movie was Travolta's pet project the only excuse I can make for him is that it was probably difficult to direct him to make a good appearance in this movie.
The story line was basic enough, nothing to write home about. Aliens take over the world and the small group of helpless humans that are left wins it back when they get the right leader. If this is the best Hubbard fiction book then he wasn't a very inventive writer. You know all along how it will end so what could have made it a good movie would be how surprising and inventive the makers bring you to the known ending. There are few, if any, news or surprises in BE. After "Planet of the Apes" and "ID4" I can't understand why they bothered to make BE based on this script. If you can't do it better or very differently then it's good advice to drop the whole idea. In retrospect one can only laugh when reading how people defend their decision to join the making of this tragedy after reading the script.
There are many things to get annoyed over. Make-up and costumes that are just plain bad and effects that wouldn't convince anybody unless it was made before 1980. Like the double chin on the guy that ruled the psychlo colony on Earth. When you turn your head it doesn't move with the head like it was a baby's bib. They had done a lot of effort making the details look realistic because of all the close-ups, but it only worked to a certain point as long as the actors did not move a muscle.
The use of echoing voices and slow motion in the action scenes was so put on it looked silly. Tons of debris falling and people running in slow motion is boring after awhile. They have not succeeded hiding the very poor cutting of the movie by adding splitting scene effects all over like it was an episode of a TV detective episode from the seventies.
Can anybody explain to me why Terl let Jonnie spend time at the human library catching up on human history when he was in a hurry to mine the gold? Or how come the psychlos claims they know everything about humans but still they had no idea about what they liked to eat? Where's the logic in Jonnie learning human mathematics when pumped full of information in the psychlo learning machine, but still psychlos knew so little about humans? The rat thing and the human mathematics were just stupid and didn't have any meaning for the story. Psychlos lived in an old city with skyscrapers built by humans, but still they laughed when talked about humans operating machinery. And what about they finding the door to the vault at Fort Knox open so they could just walk straight in?
A 1000 year old storehouses with military equipment is of course all intact, even the walkies and the flight simulators are full of power ready to use. Learning lots of cave men to fly jet planes in 7 days is of course no problem and in the end a whole planet is blown up with a bomb so small it can be carried by one man. Get out of here! That might almost have worked in a Marvel comic, but this movie is aiming much higher than that and that is why the result is a joke. Had Christoffer Reeve showed up in a blue suit I might have at least found the story funny.
Another scene that is strange and evidence of the lack of logic in the movie happens in the cages where psychlos keep the humans. Someone shouts that one of the humans know the psychlo language and plan to fight them. Then all the humans suddenly goes ecstatic, shouting and climbing up the grates like crazy monkeys. The characters in this movie aren't even suited for a cartoon, that's how shallow and unreal they appear.
Someone should count how many times the word "leverage" is used, I felt like shouting "Use the damn leverage, Jonnie!" several times. Poor Barry Pepper had the leading part but Travolta stole the show as the villain. His character was not suited to take over that role and Travolta lacked the talent to get even close to fill the misadjusted role.
There might be a good twist in the rest of the story, since this is only half. I can't say. But when it comes to this movie things just didn't add up. It surely didn't do much good for the reputation of L. Ron Hubbard when his name was shown with green letters early in the end credits. If that is how he is to be remembered by the masses (assuming this might haunt us on national TV for years to come) then he does not need any critics.
People started walking out after one hours but I stayed to the end. I don't agree that it was a big pain to sit through it all, but it wasn't any pleasure either. Also sat through all the end credits to see if I could spot any interesting names. Found nothing I could recognize, except that the guy responsible for the 2D effects was called Steve Fishman. ;)
Do I recommend it? Yes, for people on ARS who have been following BEs release it should make a great excuse to invite some fellow critics over for some snacks and beers when it is released on video. Knowing what you will get I guarantee a fun evening, though probably not in the way intended by top Scientologist chill John Travolta.
This truly is a miscarriage of a movie.
Well, this is my layman opinion, as a sci-fi and movie fan.
0 out of 0 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
Tell Your Friends