Fight To Get Outta Here!
Main Cast: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates
Director: Roger Christian
Well, let me first state that Battlefield Earth isn’t quite as gut-wrenchingly awful as many people have said. But it is pretty bad.
Now, on to the plot: One thousand years into the future Earth is in the hands of an alien race. They have destroyed society (it took nine minutes to kill all the military in the world, according to one of the aliens) and have confined humans to slave pens. One of the top aliens (John Travolta) is the security chief of the planet now. He wants to get back home, but he receives some news about that, and spends most of the movie trying to rectify his bad position. He has the idea of teaching the humans (rat-brains, as he calls them) certain skills to boost profits… apparently the aliens have similar wants/needs/emotions as, say, the sharks of Wall Street.
The other half of Battlefield Earth trudges along with the hero human and his goal of getting rid of the aliens and saving humanity. The supporting characters are, of course, eccentric and have their own quirky charms… and I include humans and aliens in this mix. I must admit my ignorance of the book by L. Ron Hubbard that this is based on, I can only hope that it is much, much better than what I saw on screen. There is overacting, there are cliched plots, there are wildly improbable situations… all of them presented for your viewing displeasure.
If you have nothing better to do, then I guess you can… wait. Just surf the ‘Net or something. Even sort socks. Or clean the bathroom. Or maybe just choose a different movie. Anything. Just give John Travolta’s Battlefield Earth a hard pass.
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