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Every year, there is at least one Hollywood big name who makes
a big budget movie that turns out to be a big flop. Last year,
there was Wild Wild West. But that was a masterpiece compared
to this expensive waste of time from John Travolta. Beware -
this review contains spoilers. If you insist on going to see
this nonsense and don't want to know the ending then stop reading
now.
Battlefiel Earth is based on the novel of the same name by
L. Ron Hubbard. This author was also the founder of the Church
of Scientology of which Travolta is a devoted follower. This
was part of the reason why Travolta has put so much effort into
getting this project onto the big screen but to be fair to John,
there is nothing about this film that has any religious undertones.
The story is set in the year 3000 AD, where man has become
an endangered species due to the fact that Earth has been taken
over by an evil race of alien overlords called Psychlos whose
main aim is to drain the planet of its natural resources, especially
gold. Travolta plays Terl, the 8 foot tall, dreadlocked head
of Psychlo security who is continually looking to manipulate
others to further his political ambitions. There is not much
to stand in his way. The high tech humans the Psychlos encountered
a few centuries ago could only put up a measly 9 minutes of
resistance before being taken over. The humans who are left
have been reduced to a stone age existence. There is now no
chance of anyone standing up to the Psychlos.
Well, actually, because this is a movie, anything can happen
and this is where things start getting a wee bit silly. The
saviour of the human race comes in the form of a longhaired
firebrand improbably named Johnny Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper).
He is captured by the Psychlos but shows enough intelligence
to occasionally overpower his captors and briefly escape. Impressed
by this brilliance, Terl decides to hook Tyler up to a machine
that teaches him the Psychlo language and everything about their
technology and culture (good move). Terl's next act of genius
is to send Tyler and his buddie off into some desolate mountains
to mine gold, conveniently leaving them with a flying machine
(which Tyler now knows how to drive). In the few days they have
alone, Tyler and gang fly all over the world grabbing gold from
Fort Knox, stealing weapons, and most ridiculous of all,coming
across a whole squadron of fully functional Harriers jets (which
the stone age men manage to become experts in within hours!).
With all this, the humans manage to not only wrestlt back control
of Earth, but also succeed in blowing up the Psychlo home planet!
The only redeeming features of this film are that the special
effects are OK, and that Barry Pepper tries pretty hard to hold
everything together despite not being given much to work with.
This film is ridiculous, but it is also very scary for two reasons.
Firstly, the ending looks tailor made to allow for a sequel.
And secondly, this movie only covers one third of the original
book . . . . . . .
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