Subtitled, "A Saga Of The Year 3000", this futuristic dystopian sci-fi action film surprisingly
managed to gross thirty million dollars against its 44 million dollar budget when it was released
in May of 2000.
Loosely based on the 1982 novel of the same by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, this
film's star and co-producer John Travolta had many issues obtaining funding, eventually
resorting to funneling in millions of his own savings to launch the doomed project.
Until Adam Sandler's extremely unfunny "Jack And Jill" came along last year, this movie
had the notably distinction of being "awarded" more Golden Raspberry Awards than any other
movie ever made.
Despite this though, it amazingly is ranked only at number 93 on IMDB's famed "Bottom
100" list... meaning somehow, someway, there are 92 pictures better than this pile of trash.
Opening with bloated expositional title-cards, the plot follows a group of primitive human
survivors 1,000 years in the future, who attempt a revolt against their alien captors, uncreatively
known as "Psycholos".
Seeing clueless human savages hunt for food in the burned out and abandoned shopping malls
of Denver, CO make for some interesting visuals, reminiscence of the exceedingly more entertaining
picture, "I Am Legend".
Following strong showings in Saving Private Ryan, Enemy Of The State, and Green Mile,
Canadian actor Barry Pepper gets his first leading role here, staring as the protagonist
'man-animal', but he does a remarkably terrible job of it, especially considering his normally
capable acting abilities.
But this performance absolutely pails in comparison to the absurdly over-acted and bizarre performance
Travolta turns in as the corn-row wearing Psychlo brute who spends more of his screen-time
yelling at his co-stars in a high-pitched girly voice while wearing unsightly nose-breathing
tubes.
Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker plays the deputy underling character, and his halfway un-terrible
performance saved this picture from a full-sweep of the Razzie's.
The rest of the awful cast is not worth mention, all of the characters reduced to underdeveloped
meat-bags forced to spew repetitive lines of boring and ridiculous dialog.
Presented with an obnoxious amount of unmotivated Dutch-angled shots, silly curtain-style wipe
transitions, and extremely over-tinted and undersatured colors, director Roger Christian's
vision is quite painful to watch at times.
Constantly in reprieve of the terrible dialogue scenes, when anything exciting or action-oriented
finally does happen, mostly all of the audio is muted in favor of a bland background music
and foolishly pointless slow-motion: robbing any potential urgency or entertainment from
the picture.
The "Stranger in a strange land" concept is interesting enough, as we watch the endangered
humans explore the advanced Psychlo facilities during their various escape attempts, but
the story takes far too many curious turns, like killing a character's father off-screen
before we're even introduced to his life at all.
Feeling like a botched mixture of "The Planet Of The Apes", and a bad episode of Star Trek,
this lumbering slow 118 minute feature contains all of the worst elements of a hugely fascinating
literary genre.
Perhaps enjoyable with some drunk friends on a Friday night, this movie has little re-watch
value, and is generally best if avoided.
Plot-holes abound, bad acting, direction, pacing, music, and editing - the only saving
grace here are some interesting story elements, and some fun futuristic visuals early in the
picture.
A large climatic battle is enjoyable enough, but if you're managed to survive the viewing
for that long, you've likely already lost any interest or hope for the events on screen.
It's astonishingly this film received such a wide-release, and wasted great talent, but
it's not hardly the worst movie ever made.
"Battlefield Earth", "Abysmally dreadful experience, decent concept".
Now lets read some of your reviews from the YouTube comments.
Here's the rate-o-matic for "Battlefield Earth: A Saga Of The Year 3000"... a ONE and a TWO.
You positively loathed this movie, almost unanimously rating it a "GARBAGE", citing
the bad acting, cheesy effects, and terrible cinematic techniques.
It pains me to say this, but honestly, I've seen worse... and there were a few short moments
of this picture were I was genuinely interested in the premise, or distracted long enough
from it to not completely hate it.
Hardly redeemable or enjoyable in any way, I'm generously rating this BAD... if only
slightly.