Battlefield Earth

BATTLEFIELD EARTH

Rating: D
I don't watch television (and neither should you). But back in the days before my enlightenment, flipping through the channels would always turn up some alien man or woman with a funny nose in some lousy science fiction series. Now science fiction can either be really good, and challenge the way we think about ourselves, our society, and our place in the universe, or it can be really bad - what's technically referred to as "funny-nose science fiction." And Battlefield Earth is basically funny-nose science fiction.

John Travolta plays a member of the alien Psychlo race, a race which conquered Earth sometime around the year 3000 A.D. He notes with contempt that the human resistance lasted only nine minutes before it was crushed. It's easy to see why: in the year 3000 we're apparently still fighting with year 2000 vintage weaponry. Those Pentagon budget cuts sure take their toll. Of course, the notion of the Psychlos' technological superiority goes straight into the dumper later in the film, when their super-duper spaceships get blown into matchsticks by a squadron of harrier jets piloted by men with seven days flight simulator experience. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Anyway, back to Travolta. He's the Psychlo chief of security on Earth - a job he considers beneath him, on a planet which he hates. The best scenes in the film involve his scheming to get rich and return to his home planet. The acting is deliberately campy, and watching the Psychlos trying to screw each other over is occasionally amusing. The problem is they're so devious and manipulative you wonder why they had to conquer humanity in the first place, since they would have fit in so well. Travolta hatches a scheme where he'll train the human prisoners (the "man animals") to mine gold as slave labor. He'll get the gold, and he won't have to pay wages to the Psychlo mine workers. See what I mean? Fortune 500 companies would be climbing over each other to hire this guy as their next CEO. Unfortunately, Travolta's plan requires him to educate one of the humans (Barry Pepper) in mining techniques, the Psychlo language, etcetera. And as we all know, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

When Pepper leads the inevitable human revolt, victory is remarkably easy. You'll argue with your friends over whether "ridiculous," "preposterous," or "just plain stupid" best describes the plot. (But don't despair - this is one of those arguments when you can all be right.) Without going into ugly detail, suffice it to say that if someone straps an explosive onto your arm, it probably behooves you not to pull the detonator out of your pocket and press the button.

Roger Christian is credited with directing this movie, although "directing" is probably too strong a word for what transpires onscreen. The cinematography is similarly poor, with virtually every shot in the film rendered in bluish and greenish casts. Even when the visual effects are relatively interesting (amid a flurry of phony-looking digital matte paintings), the beauty of the image is often ruined by its overly green appearance. Not to mention all the annoying tilted camera angles (Smile, you're on canted camera!). Such childishness was supposed to be left behind at film school.

Perhaps worst of all is the film's editing. Rarely do I mention the editing in my reviews because, frankly, if it's done right it goes by practically unnoticed in the film. If someone gives you a long lecture on how a particular film's editing was so brilliant and masterful, you can bet that person is a complete idiot. But the editing in Battlefield Earth is so awful in many places (particularly the beginning), it's a wonder studio executives ever let it get out the door. Scenes and dialogue exchanges are chopped up so badly, it looks like the editor either had Attention Deficit Disorder or expected the audience to. Some shots are held on screen so briefly that they're rendered totally pointless. Jaw-droppingly bad...