Or: “The Year John Travolta Declared War on Coherent Filmmaking”
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If Battlefield Earth were a sentient being, it would apologize as you walked into the theater. It wouldn’t even wait for you to sit down. It would greet you at the door with a stale cup of popcorn, whisper “I’m so sorry,” and then slap you across the face with two hours of Dutch angles, space dreadlocks, and dialogue that feels like it was written by an alien who once saw an episode of Star Trek and blacked out.
Based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard—which, depending on your tolerance for pain, is either a towering sci-fi epic or a doorstop made of lies—this film is a front-row seat to what happens when no one says “no” to John Travolta. It’s not so much a movie as it is a $73 million hostage situation with bad prosthetics.
Plot? We Don’t Need No Stinking Plot!
Here’s the gist, as best as one can tell through the lens flares and acting atrocities: It’s the year 3000, Earth has been conquered by an alien race called the Psychlos, who look like Wookiees with receding hairlines and wear platform shoes from the Gene Simmons Casual Collection.
Humans are now a scattered race of loincloth-wearing cavemen. Enter Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (yes, that’s the name they went with), a man with the charisma of boiled cabbage who dares to believe that freedom is more important than serving giant Rastafarian aliens who speak in grunts and sneers. Travolta, playing Psychlo security chief Terl, delivers lines like “I AM GOING TO MAKE YOU VERY RICH!” with the nuance of a chainsaw reading Shakespeare.
The plot pivots around Jonnie learning algebra, flying Harrier jets, and apparently mastering military strategy in under a week so he can lead a rebellion against the Psychlos. Yes, humanity was conquered by these buffoons, but a guy with no shoes and a library card can take them down in the third act.
A Film School Case Study in How Not to Do Anything
The movie is filmed almost entirely in tilted shots, as though the cameraman had vertigo or a personal vendetta against horizontality. Every scene looks like someone dropped the camera and just kept filming. Combined with the desaturated green-blue filter and sets that look like a Hot Topic exploded inside a water treatment plant, it’s a visual war crime.
The dialogue doesn’t help. Characters speak in exposition-laced riddles, bark threats that wouldn’t scare a poodle, and grunt through teeth too large for their faces. Travolta and co-star Forest Whitaker (who deserves a formal apology from the Academy for this career detour) deliver every line as though it’s dripping with meaning, when in fact it’s just dripping.
And the special effects? Oh, sweet Xenu. Watching these CGI explosions and laser blasts is like watching someone play Doom on a toaster. The aliens’ home planet, Psychlo, is referenced often and terrifyingly, but looks like it was rendered in Microsoft Paint and then forgotten about.
Travolta: The High Priest of Ham
John Travolta’s performance is what happens when unchecked ego meets facial latex and too many layers of velvet. He’s clearly having fun—too much fun—cackling, strutting, and delivering lines like “leverage is power” with all the subtlety of a bass drum in a funeral procession.
This is a man who watched Star Wars, read Dianetics, and said, “I can top both.” His villainy is cartoonish, his expressions are operatic, and his teeth deserve their own zip code. It’s not a performance—it’s a cry for help in platform boots.
The Cult in the Room
Let’s not pretend this film wasn’t backed by the Church of Scientology with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for actual religious crusades. They thought they were launching a sci-fi franchise on par with The Matrix. What they launched was a cinematic cautionary tale that now exists only as punchline fuel and insomnia therapy.
And while the studio publicly distanced itself from Scientology, the Hubbard influence is everywhere—from the obsession with leverage and domination to the vaguely messianic hero who masters complex technology in days with no prior training. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler may as well be Tom Cruise’s subconscious wearing a goat-skin vest.
The Aftermath: What Remains
Battlefield Earth bombed so hard it left a crater in the careers of nearly everyone involved. Travolta tried to spin it as misunderstood art. The audience spun it into gold—by laughing at it. It won eight Golden Raspberry Awards and has become the sacred text of bad movie lovers everywhere. But make no mistake: this isn’t the fun kind of bad. This is the long-haul, soul-eroding, should I go back to school and get my HVAC license? kind of bad.
Final Verdict
0.5 out of 5 exploding cows
(Yes, there are exploding cows. No, I will not explain.)
If watching Battlefield Earth teaches you anything, it’s that money can’t buy taste, cults shouldn’t make movies, and sometimes a battlefield is just a pile of dirt with a camera crew and shattered dreams.
