Year:
2000
Studio:
Warner Brothers/Morgan Creek/
Franchise Pictures
Movie: 3/5
DVD:
3/5
Movie
The problem with Battlefield Earth
is that it's too closely associated with Scientology. Many people (me
included) consider Scientology more of a cult than the religion thwy
profess to be. I place Scientology in the same category as any other
self-help philosophy, except that they try to get even more money from
their adherents.
Maybe that's not why Battlefield
Earth failed, but it was definitely one of the big complaints
about the movie. Considering that the movie has nothing to do with
Scientology other than being funded by that group and having a
Scientologist as one of the main actors, it's surprising how much
criticism it got on that score.
So what is the movie about? It's the year 3000 and for the last
millenia Earth has been a conquered world. Long enough for humans to
have reverted to a primitive Native American-looking culture with its
own myths about how the world used to be.
This is the story Johnny (Barry Pepper), a Greener and wanderer, who is
captured by the ruling Psiclones or whatever they're called. Psiclones
use humans to dig up gold, which is the most precious metal in the
galaxy.
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The head
Psiclone at the complex, Terl (John Travolta), has a plan to make
himself rich. But to do that he needs a human leader to server as his
pawn, so he uses a teaching machine to make Johnny smart. But now that
Johnny has all this knowledge he comes up with a plan to overthrow the
Psiclones and reclaim Earth. Much action and explosions follow.
DVD
Commentary is provided by Director Roger Christian and Production
Designer Patrick Tatopoulos. It's kind of funny listening to their tone
as they seem to have a total disconnect of how bad the movie was
received by the public. The only other noteworthy extra is a 15-minute
behind-the-scenes featurette.
Recommendations
In the end it's a fairly standard low budget science fiction adventure
movie. It had a lot of hype and promotion and did a dismal $21.5m box
office take on a $73m movie. But as a rental movie it's not bad. In the
end I guess you should watch it if you've read the book.
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