Battlefield Earth aka Scientology: The Movie stars - wow... this movie is dog shit. Okay, so the year is 3000 and Earth has been ruled by Psychlos, a giant humanoid race of alien beings. The humans are either enslaved by the Cyclones - I mean Psychlos - or surviving in primitive tribes. Terl (John Travolta), the head security chief of whatever the fuck they're called, has been condemned to remain on Earth indefinitely for an unclear incident involving the the Senator's daughter. Who's the Senator? I don't really give a shit. With the help of his deputy Ker (Forest Whitaker), Terl cooks up a plan to buy his way off the planet making some big bucks using the slaves to mine gold for him. Meanwhile, a tribal uprising is brewing against the Psychlos.
Some are, understandably, wondering why this film's making this segment just now. Unless your name is John Travolta, most everyone - eh - no, I'm going with pretty much everyone else thinks this movie is akin to the massive deuce I dropped at work earlier today... except my deuce smelled way better. I remember the first time I watched this film. It was years ago, and I remember crying as I was witnessing the death - well, the second death of Travolta's career. When I recently watched it again for this post, the thought of Quentin Tarantino throwing a brick through the screen screaming, "I resurrect your fucking career and this is how you thank me?!" kept running through my mind. This film is bad, and it's so bad it actually circles around "so awesome it's orgasmic" and back to bad sixteen times before crashing and burning back on bad. It's so - I mean, Ed Wood wouldn't even be able to comprehend what the hell is going on here and he's the king of shitty films. The acting is so bad it has to be seen. Combine the performances with the bizarre makeup art consisting of bloated foreheads, lots and lots and lots of hair, and those stupid nose plugs and you get... well, I can't really describe it, but it's sorta similar to witnessing a school bus full of small children get set on fire. Yeah, it's a bit on that level of bad. You almost start to drum up conspiracy theories such as, "Wow, Forest Whitaker was so incredibly bad here, as great as he was in The Last King of Scotland, I'm beginning to think they gave him the Best Actor Oscar out of sympathy." I mean, you tend to expect John Travolta to do this. His acting career is in a way kinda like a raging alcoholic trying to put down the bottle. Yeah, he'll clean his act up and give you a Pulp Fiction or a Get Shorty, but then he's off the wagon once again with three Look Who's Talking movies. Then we have the story and I really don't know what to say. It's not shock. I literally don't know what to make of this bull shit, convoluted story. You could take Bob Dylan, stick him inside a wind tunnel while he reads Finnegan's Wake, with Tom Petty reciting "Bohemian Rhapsody" to his left and Craig Mack belting out R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" to his right and that would somehow come out more coherent than the jumbled up pile of words collected together to form what could very well be something that may or may not have been mistaken for a rational script. I can't even praise something like the cinematography. Normally, a film can be really bad... I mean, really bad, but I can at least say, "The makeup was first rate." or, "Well, in spite of the bad film it does have some terrific cinematography." Nope, not here. Even the camera work, in all its "Why the hell are all these scenes angled?!" glory can't sway me away - even in the slightest - from thinking that I'm gonna have to watch Staying Alive now to erase L. Ron Hubbard's acid trip from my memory.
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