Viking Night: Battlefield Earth
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
By Bruce Hall
January 27, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Let's start with that fantastic title. "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000" (or BEAST3K, as I shall henceforth call it) is not just a title born of hubris. It is a major motion picture steeped in it, forged in the brazen fires of it, and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world in a mad, orgasmic, molten metal tsunami of it. John Travolta swore he'd make a movie for the ages and was mercilessly mocked for it. He begged, cajoled, threatened, whined, huffed and puffed until he got his movie made - and it will truly outlast the ages. It is, in a word - no, TWO words - unholy perfection.
BEAST3K is one of those things that can only happen when one man has so much power and influence that no matter how stupid the plan, he WILL eventually get his way. It is that rare combination of unbridled ego, misguided passion and garden variety hucksterism that happens maybe twice a century. You don't need to see this film; you must see it, simply because it's a great example of what can happen when you don't listen to people.
When it was released, Travolta compared it to everything from Star Wars to Pulp Fiction to having unprotected sex with an angel. He was correct on all counts, not because it's that good, but because it's that BAD. You know how Nazis are so far right and Fascists are so far left they're pretty much the same thing? BEAST3K is so far bad, it's actually kind of brilliant. But to make a movie this horrifically perfect, you've got to start with the right source material. And there's no better source for bad science fiction than L. Ron Hubbard.
I'm not saying Hubbard wasn't a genius. He was so much MORE than that. He was a writer of questionable ability who realized he could make more money by starting a fake religion, and he was absolutely right. BEAST3K the novel is unreadable dreck - so much so that only the passion of a True Believer could get it on screen. So, I guess if you've got a novel sitting around about an exotic dancer who solves cold cases by shooting ping pong balls out of herself at old mugshots, here's your blueprint. Just reinvent yourself as a god and send free copies to your supplicants.
You certainly couldn't do worse.
BEAST3K takes place 1,000 years after an alien race called the Psychlos devastated the Earth and enslaved humanity. The story begins in the Colorado Rockies, where a primitive band of humans eke out a living in caves, wearing obvious prop animal skins. The men are mostly clean shaven with perfect teeth, and the women have flawless skin and meticulously crimped hair. One man, Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler (Barry Pepper), can no longer live this way, and longs for a better life. So he takes his horse and his 1940s nickname and sets off into the wilderness. There, he meets Tig from Sons of Anarchy (Kim Coates) and his friend, who we'll call Casualty #1. Tig (I’m just going to go with "Tig" because that would be awesome) and Johnny are immediately captured and taken to Psychlo HQ, which is a giant dome built over the ruins of Denver, because...why not? They immediately try to escape, and almost as immediately are introduced to Terl (Travolta), the Psychlo security chief, and his right hand man Kern (Forrest Whitaker).
Travolta makes the most of his introductory scene, teetering atop a pair of KISS platform boots and coquettishly sporting a set of Bob Marley space dreads. He cranks the Shatner up to 11, self-consciously bellowing his lines in a way that makes it clear he believes he’s delivering the performance of a lifetime. Whitaker, a future Oscar winner, just looks happy to be in a movie. I’m not sure what personal struggles induced him to take this role, but my heart goes out to him in retrograde. Anyway, Johnny makes himself such a pain in the ass that Terl decides - naturally - to bring him aboard Team Psychlo as a sort of trainer for the other humans. They hook Johnny up to a Magic Brain Blaster that teaches him everything the Psychlos know. This of course includes Euclidian geometry, but sadly skips right past how to write a believable screenplay.
It’s a foolish decision, of course, but we will soon see that the Psychlos - Terl in particular - are quite possibly the most insanely dumbshit villains in the history of cinema. Evidently, the whole reason they invaded Earth was to steal all the gold - a basic element that can be widely found throughout the universe. Also, it turns out the Earth’s atmosphere is poisonous to them - hence the dome (and the weird shoelaces that dangle from their noses when they're outside). Furthermore, radiation in general apparently causes the Psychlo atmosphere to...um...explode or something, which makes no sense, because radiation is pretty much everywhere in the universe.
Screw you, science!
So in summary, the Psychlos spent 10 decades and gazillions of space dollars to invade and occupy a hostile environment just to acquire something they could have easily found almost anywhere. It's a little like the United States invading Mexico for the Mexican food.
Oh, but it gets better. In an effort to impress his superiors, Terl requires humans to mine a particularly inaccessible gold vein near Denver, because I guess he's too lazy to check the rest of the planet. Johnny, of course, decides to use this opportunity to mount an insurrection in an attempt to overthrow his moronic alien oppressors. I’d really love to describe his plan, because it’s pants-crapping hysterical. In fact, I’d love to tell you absolutely EVERYTHING about this movie. I could bust out another 10,000 words without even trying, but it would be fundamentally unethical of me to spoil a film even this bad. You really just to see it to believe it - and then you need to share it with someone you hate, so they will understand how much you hate them.
Aside from Travolta, the brains behind this ironic masterpiece include director Roger Christian, who was the Oscar-winning art director on Star Wars. That pedigree manifests itself entirely in the occasional screen wipe. Beyond that, Christian's gross overuse of super slo-mo, nauseating Dutch angles and ugly piss yellow or gunmetal blue light filters would sufficiently ruin most films. But you have to combine that with Corey Mandell's witless, derivative screenplay for maximum horribleness. As I've already illustrated, the plot makes no sense on any level. But the pacing is also so uneven, the humor so leaden and the dialogue so desperately inept, the first time you watch it, you're sure it must be a joke.
Even the damn soundtrack gets in on the act - it's the most ear shatteringly obnoxious racket since Krull. The saddest part is, all they needed to do was add a laugh track and some wisecracking robots, and they might have pulled off the greatest Sci Fi send up since Spaceballs. And to tell you the truth, in a way they already did. BEAST3K is one of the most improbably, unintentionally hilarious things that has ever happened. It's like watching a train full of soda crashing into a train full of pop rocks crashing into a fireworks factory - for two hours. Thank you, L. Ron Hubbard, for being such a bad writer. Thank you, Scientology, for abducting John Travolta. And thank you, John Travolta, for making a movie about it.
You are my hero.