Sunday, August 3, 2008

Battlefield Earth

What with the amount of money innocent celebrities seem to be sinking into the very legitimate religion of scientology, you have to wonder where that money ends up. Surely they’re not sending it to the alien souls they’re carting about, at least John Travolta isn’t. No, he’s sinking it into spreading the world of L Ron Hubbard. Or, more specifically, making god-awful flicks based on novels by his dead, insane saviour.

Often considered the worst film ever, it’s pretty difficult to find someone who’s actually watched this thing, aside from Tom Cruise, his brainwashed sex-bitch, and their mentally scarred, sub-primate offspring. But I’ve seen it, and I’m here to spread a little gospel of my own:

Watching Battlefield Earth is like being clit-deep in rancid shit.

This is just the first half of what was meant to be a two-parter, based on Hubbard’s sci-fi book. In the flick, Travolta is Terl, a corrupt security chief from the evil profit-obsessed planet Psychlo (I’m not making this up), whose people have enslaved the human race and given them radiation poisoning. A couple of bands of free human tribes are hanging about, wearing loincloths and discovering putt-putt courses, when one of them (Barry Pepper) is taken by the evil Psychlonians and Travolta decides to ‘educate’ him, not realising Pepper’s character Jonnie “Greener” Goodboy Tyler (still not making this up) is plotting to lead a human uprising against him.

I don’t even know what the worst part is. Travolta’s acting, which ranges between an American accent, an English accent, and grunting Psychlo gibberish; the direction by Roger Christian, whose skills basically encompass the ability to put every moment without speech into slow motion (without which it would have been mercifully shorter), as well as tilting his camera on an angle for the whole film; the hideous, self-congratulatory, stupidity-inducing dialogue; the special effects, which have a lovely blurred photoshop look, or that Travolta gives good enough head that Forest Whitaker agreed to co-star.

There is nothing right about this film. Almost everyone with the slightest bit of intelligence looks like they know the ship is going down, except of course for Travolta, whose yellow contacts don’t do much to hide the religious glaze in his eyes. And if this embarrassment wasn’t enough, we have to watch it with the camera on a perpetual angle. Word to the director – this does not create a sense of transition, unease, and chaos. It makes you look like a self-important arsehole. Just like everyone else who actually believed in this movie.

This isn’t one of those movies that works if you’re drunk. It’s not so bad it’s good. It’s not even so bad it’s laughable. Battlefield Earth is a soul-crushing, interminable experience with no entertainment value whatsoever unless you like looking at Travolta’s leather-clad cock. And I don’t mean that figuratively.

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