My first and natural inclination in starting this review was to fall back on the trusted self-deprecating, and existential rhetoric that has worked pretty well for me in the past, and indeed, that rhetoric would definitely apply well here, but we're experimenting in trying to only say kind things and so I'm doing the thing! Here's hoping that I will come out a better person on the other side because otherwise, we might get some scathing reviews following this month's series. At any rate, as I look at various lists of 'Worst Movies of All Time', I realize pretty quickly that it would have been really easy to fall into a 'Dump on DC Films' kind of pattern as some of the consistent top 10s include Catwoman, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, which I already reviewed by the way. Well, sort of... Anyway, lump Green Lantern into the mix and boom! You've got a month's worth of bad movies to speak kindly about, and you didn't even have to leave studios to do it. Meh. That's lazy, and I maybe many things, but lazy is only one of them some of the time! And darn it, this is not one of those times! I strive to bring you guys as much variety and insight as I can muster so that I can stretch my sensibilities in my efforts to divert you. Thus, in the spirit of diversity, here's Battlefield Earth, also a Warner Brothers picture in case you were wondering. Irony, am I right?
Well that was an interesting experience. Let me just say how thankful I am for this film! It has officially restored my my faith in humanity! Well, not humanity as a whole, just my own because despite the difficult time had, I actually managed to find some good in this film. Mr. Rogers would be proud I think. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let's recap Battlefield Earth real quick for those who may not have seen it. The movie opens with a zoom and pan of planet Earth with superimposed words that say, "Man is and endangered species." That's it. That's all you get for context, but don't worry, the film fills you in a bit later. We're quickly introduced to our main protagonist, Jonnie, played by Barry Pepper, who I actually recognized from from other pieces, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, and We Were Soldiers just to name a few. Jonnie is back from a hunt I think, and finds out that his mom died. He mourns for about three seconds, and then joins the rest of his group to be regaled with stories of the fabled demons. Then he leaves to hunt again. I guess that was his job. He has a run in with some rabid looking fellows, but it's okay because everything deescalates without a hitch through the magic of bribery. Actually, that's kind of a running theme in this film. Jonnie wants to see the gods and the two ruffians claim to have seen where the gods once lived so Jonnie makes a deal to share some food if they show him the land of the gods. They go, and then an obscure, but very real force ambushes them and takes them to a detention center.
There's a really disorienting scene of the three men being processed, and then we're introduced to our main antagonist, Terl, played by John Travolta. A guard has let Jonnie get free because the guard was afraid that Jonnie might kill him after Jonnie got hold of a gun. To be fair, this scene does a fairly decent job establishing the two main characters. Terl tells the guard to accept the risk of possible death at the hands of the human because if he doesn't, then it's guaranteed that Terl will kill the guard himself, and Jonnie does exactly what we had expected he would, he kills the guard. It was a flimsy play at irony, and I appreciate that someone tried to be clever, even if it didn't play out terribly well. Jonnie and his friends are taken to holding cells and it's feeding time. There's a douche who has artificially constructed a social hierarchy wherein douche guy and his friends get food before anyone else. Jonnie challenges the guy, beats the tar out of him, and then offers the guy food as a peace offering, again establishing Jonnie as a pretty level headed tactical mind. On the other side of the spectrum, we see Terl drowning his cares at the bar flaunting the end of his assignment to Earth and the expectation of a grand promotion that will take him back to the home world. We also meet Terl's second in command, Ker, played by Forest Whitaker. Sorry about the pause that you didn't have to experience. I had to take a moment to verify that it was indeed Forest Whitaker playing the role as some genius actually managed to kind of fix his eye thing through the use of contact lenses. I think that might be the biggest win this film achieves.
Terl and Ker attend a meeting with the Planetship, Terl's boss, and the District Manager. It's here that Terl learns that he will, in fact, not be getting promoted or transferred, and because audiences crave consistency, it's done in the most heartless, and smug way possible. Terl finds out that the reason for the pass over is that he apparently had a fling with a relative to a very powerful alien, and has now found himself in the social blight zone. As Terl and Ker skulk off to Terl's office, Terl finds a picture showing a vein of gold. This is when we find out why it is that the aliens invaded Earth. They simply wanted gold. Too bad they didn't take a closer look at the asteroid belt, there's tons of it there. At any rate, Terl kindly informs Ker that he's aware of Ker's treachery, and that he's actually kind of proud except that the atmosphere that the aliens breathe doesn't react well to radiation, and being as there's also uranium around this vein of gold, the aliens can't mine it. A tragic waste of treacherous tendencies, but Terl has a plan. He wants to train the humans to use the alien mining equipment in order to mind the gold and hopefully curry favor with those that decide who gets what assignment. Of course, Terl's boss thinks this is a terrible idea, but Terl is so convinced that it will work that he goes ahead clandestinely anyway. As leverage, a word that gets used entirely too often in this film, Terl finds proof that his boss is artificially deflating profit margins in order to pocket money for himself. Armed with that, Terl makes his boss basically a puppet, and uses new found authority to begin his operation.
To accomplish this, Terl has to find a way to control the humans. He lets Jonnie and friends go in order to observe them, and finds out that they like rats. Of course what they really like is protein, but who could be bothered with such trivial splittings of hairs? They also learn that Jonnie has a pretty bright mind. He's defiant and hard to control, but it's okay because Terl has officially found leverage over Jonnie. The men are rounded up and then assigned to do some renovations on Terl's office. It's during this time that Terl puts Jonnie in a teaching chamber and teaches him things that will help Jonnie to speak the alien language. Jonnie learns much more than that, and uses his new found knowledge both to better understand how the aliens work, and to teach his friends, and their friends, and really anyone who will listen. I feel like we basically move into an extended montage as Jonnie and his ever expanding group of friends learn how to mine gold, and also how they're going to rid themselves of the aliens once and for all. This plan is helped when Terl allows Jonnie to browse a library for a while. How long, they don't say, but Jonnie learns enough about where he lives to tweak a few things with his plan. It seems like hubris on Terl's part as we've seen that Jonnie is a sharp cookie, and I'm sure that it's meant to so go team.
While teaching Jonnie and company to mine, Terl takes them to a pasture to show them what will happen if they attempt escape. He then proceeds to shoot the legs off of cows. I'm dead serious. I couldn't make that up even in my wildest dreams, and it looks at least as ridiculous as you're imagining. During the demonstration, some wild humans from the forests ambush Terl, and Jonnie gets control of Terl's weapon. Jonnie uses the time to explain to everyone that it's a good idea to get rid of the aliens once and for all. They all agree, and then Jonnie gives Terl back the weapon. Terl then reveals his master stroke of leverage getting by revealing that he's found Jonnie's main squeeze Chrissy. Yeah, she gets like 12 seconds of screen time at the beginning, and they're totally in love. I'm buying it, yep. Anyway, Terl tells Jonnie that the collar on her neck will decapitate her if he triggers it, and then demonstrates on one of the guys in Jonnie's group, which I'm just going to refer to as the Fellowship. I think the blowing off the head scene would have carried more weight if I had actually known the name of the character, and if I had remembered under what context I was supposed to care about that character, but he was just a rando with no name, and I've watched enough Star Trek to know how these sorts of things end.
Anywho, after a lot of tense training, and learning, Terl takes the Fellowship to the area where the gold is so that they can mine it. Jonnie sees firsthand the effect that the radiation has on the alien's breathing gas, and makes a mental note. They're given their instructions, and Jonnie is given a brief, threatening demonstration that Terl is totally capable of keeping an eye on him. Once the aliens leave, the Fellowship get to work. Jonnie has found Fort Knox, and declares that they're definitely not wasting their time with any actual mining. Instead, they raid Fort Knox, turn over half the gold, and stash the rest. They're left with two weeks to do this first bit. When Terl sees that they've had time to smelt the gold, the cuts the deadline for the other half in half. Huh. I didn't think about that that way at the time, but that's almost kind of clever. Jonnie doesn't really care about the deadline being shorter because he found where 'Murica stored some of their nukes... A millennium ago! And so the Fellowship head to Texas to grab themselves a nuke, and some of the wildebeests take advantage of a miraculously operable flight simulator to learn how to fly Harrier jets, again, in the space of a week.
I'm not going to lie, things get kind of fuzzy at this point, but I'm pretty sure that the Fellowship don't wait for Terl to show back up. They just take their newly acquired weapons, and knowledge and the launch their assault. The crux of the plan is that one of them will take the nuke through a teleportation device and detonate it on the alien home world. Jonnie thinks that the destruction of the home world will result in enough chaos and demoralization that Earth will finally be left alone. I gotta say, the last 45 minutes of the film feel like they were written and directed by someone completely different from the rest of the movie. As the film gears up for the climax, everything feels better explained, and better executed in terms of action. The humans launch their attack, and one of the lead Fellowship members, Carlo, sacrifices himself to destroy the dome that held the atmosphere for the aliens to breathe. The thought was that without the dome, the aliens would be less effective in repelling an assault. The only thing that I was left wondering was why he needed to make this sacrifice when there were a half-dozen Harrier jets flying around with missiles that could have done the job for him. Eh, anyway, Jonnie annnnd... That other guy who volunteered for the suicide mission make there way to where the teleportation chamber is, and to be fair, it does get a little tense as the underdogs struggle against the aliens, and we can't destroy the dome until the teleportation happens because if we do the thing will be disabled from the home world, but everything we had planned is falling apart. I seriously doubt that it was hard to do chaos in this film.
Jonnie and Terl have to have a final showdown so they do. Jonnie has gotten the boom collar from his girl, and he wraps that around Terl's arm. Then he pleads with Terl to spare the girl. Of course Terl takes the bait and blows the collar only to suddenly realize that he's now short one right arm. Jonnie beats the snot out of him as... Other guy... Teleports to the alien home world. There's a slow-mo shot of alien soldiers on the home planet rushing to take "C-string" into captivity and then a close up of C-string's face as he sheds a tear of joy just before detonating the bomb. I'm pretty sure the tear seemed joyous because he knew that the audience was almost free of this lackluster experience. But, the bomb explodes and vaporizes the entire planet. Geez, talk about genocide. I mean I figured that the bomb would do a lot of damage, but somehow it destroyed everything. Once the bomb goes off, it's pretty much over. We get a short scene where Jonnie explains to Terl, who is now imprisoned in Fort Knox, surrounded by gold, that Terl is being kept around for leverage, and then we get a surprise reveal that Ker is still alive, and that he's joined the humans. Whew!
Okay, I'm only saying nice things, and this one really doesn't make that easy, but here's what I've got. The makeup was kind of cool. We get to see a few different species, and each has their own unique look, and the execution is pretty good. I thought that the way they jumped between the alien language and English was kind of clever. When we're being treated to establishing shots of more organic locations, the vistas are really nice. Whoever chose those particular locations did a good job. To the film's credit, it manages to do tension reasonably well. I didn't have much stake in the game, but I did find myself rooting for the human team at times, and getting at least a little caught up in their struggle. Travolta played tyrannical pretty well too. There were... other issues with his performance, but he was a pretty legit baddie. Lastly, that last 45 minutes came as a welcome almost-payoff to the rest of the film. I got to see some moments that were well acted, and well directed, and that I didn't find completely repulsive. However, that's all I've got guys. I took a solid page and one half of notes in a college ruled notebook, and that's all the positive I got.
This film really tested the limits of my ability to find the hidden good in things. I had seen it once before just after it was released to home video, and had, surprisingly, blocked that from my mind. Nearly twenty years of growth and wisdom have brought me to this day where I was able to find as least a little good in a film that was universally panned harder than the Sierra Nevada region during the gold rush. It didn't manage to win me over, but it did surprise me in its ability to not stink as bad as the stigma had led me to believe, and that's definitely a tall feat where I'm concerned. I'm glad that I can confidently say that I'm still actually looking forward to seeing where this experimental journey leads me. I imagine that it's all downhill from here, we just have to see in what fashion so stick around for next week to see what critically panned gem I'll be taking on in my attempt to build character!
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