Eye Candy #34 - "Battlefield Earth"

Battlefield Earth: In my continuing saga to watch the worst movies of all time, once more into the breach. Based on the sci-fi novel by L. Ron Hubbard, Mr. Scientology himself, this film, which is the essence of vanity project, is really and truly terrible. Set in the year 3000 (for some reason I can‘t get the song “In the Year 2525“ out of my head), 1000 years after the alien Psychlos (large, brutal, and remarkably stupid) have conquered earth, humanity is on the brink of extinction. Barry Pepper is Johnny Goodboy Tyler, one such human survivor, who, through his own crappy choices, finds himself enmeshed in the plot of Psychlo Terl (John Travolta, who also produced), to mine gold so that Terl can buy his way off planet. To do so, Terl educates Johnny, teaching him everything he needs to know to lead a rebellion against the Psychlos which results in their overthrow and the destruction of their planet. Way to go, Terl! The dialogue is crap. The plot strains credulity. John Travolta’s acting is unabashedly ATROCIOUS, chewing scenery like it was taffy. The production values look like a SyFy original film. There’s really so much cheap and bad about this film, how could it do anything but fail? The cinematography is gratuitous, the editing slipshod. Director Roger Christian proves that just because you win an Academy Award for set decoration doesn‘t mean you have any business helming a major motion picture. Did everything have to be shot at an angle? Seriously? When you use the same special angle in almost every shot, it means it’s not special anymore! Especially when you film it all in slow motion! Long, boring, under produced…this film is a huge hulking mess of a movie and deserves the scorn heaped upon it. Criminal charges might even be appropriate. Woodchuck sez, “Worthless.”