Battlefield Earth: Movie Review (2000)

Directed by Roger Christian, written by Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro, based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, 117 minutes, PG-13.

(Editor's Note: From the Archives)

Save your money! Save your time! Save yourselves!

Roger Christian’s “Battlefield Earth” puts audiences directly under attack with a film that’s so mind-bendingly awful, disjointed and weak, it feels as if it were written, produced, directed and acted by a bunch of hillbilly, trailer-trash troglodytes.

And I’m being kind.

Based on L. Ron Hubbard’s novel of the same name, “Battlefield Earth” easily was the worst film of 2000. It’s a cosmic wasteland of pockmarks and potholes, featuring characters so grotesque, their green grinning mouths and rotten teeth so dirty and furry and vile, the only way to counter the staggering effect of their foul, grunting presence is to mainline penicillin midway through.

This movie wouldn’t entertain a monkey. Everybody involved either looks like Doris Duke five years in the grave or like Milli Vanilli cross-pollinated with Loretta Young. You can imagine how unsettling that is.

When people weren’t noisily getting up to walk out at my screening last May, some paused long enough to gape in horror at the film’s unfathomable dialogue, a sampling of which would curl a Hun’s toes: “If Man Animal prefers his rat uncooked, that makes our job that much easier!”

Mine too, buddy.

The film stars John Travolta in the lead, but what was he thinking to star in this? Yes, Travolta is nuts about Scientology, the religion founded by Hubbard, but is he so blinded by his faith that he’d agree to star in a film that makes “Amazon Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death” look like the film of the century? Apparently so.

Still, here he is barking out orders as Terl, an evil alien from planet Psychlo who sports a headful of dusty dreadlocks, dirty ropes of twine spooling out of his dirty nose, and massive clawlike hands that look exactly like something you’d find at Spencer Gifts around Halloween.

Cheap doesn’t begin to describe the film’s special effects, but they’re gold compared to the mucky plot, which lands with a thud in the year 3000. As the film opens, humans are an endangered species and Earth is being stripped of her natural resources by the evil Psychlods. Will the humans, led by Jonnie “Goodboy” Tyler (Barry Pepper), be able to rise up against and thwart the Psychlods?

What do you think?

If this film were an intentional homage to Ed Wood, all could have been forgiven. But it’s no homage. It’s just bad. Bad bad. So bad, in fact, that it vindicates Ed Wood’s entire career while managing to bury itself 6 feet under our terribly embarrassed, battle-stricken Earth.

Grade: F-