MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD (as if anyone cares)
So I just finished watching Battlefield Earth. I’m still in a state of shock. My extremities are a bit numb, but at least my vision is starting to come back. The dog wouldn’t even stay in the room while this was on.
The film starts with some scrolling exposition, similar to the beginning of Star Wars except without the cool music and excited anticipation for what will come next. We learn that it is the year 3000 and for the past 1000 years Earth has been under the rule of aliens from the planet Psychlo. sub[/sub] The Pschlos mine metal and teleport it back to their home planet, gold being the most coveted metal. (Of course it’s gold, we wouldn’t want to verge on creativity and say they valued copper or nitrogen on their planet, now would we?)
Humans are on the verge of extinction and live in tribes like cavemen. Evidently, minorities groups died off a while ago, cuz it seemed from this movie only white people will be left on Earth in 1000 years.
But Johnny (played by Barry Pepper from Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile) is a rebel and he’ll never, ever be any good. He’s a trouble-maker, he is, and wants to leave the cave to find somewhere the food is more plentiful. Johnny meets up with two other men - Carlo and Rock - and during dinner is promptly captured by a Psychlo and taken back to the Psychlo city, what used to be Denver. sub[/sub]
Finally we meet the Psychlo Security Chief of Earth, Terl (played by John Travolta, who was brilliant in his performance as Vincent in Pulp Fiction, but unfortunately I’m stuck watching him in Battlefield Earth). Travolta’s performance sucked so badly, there were times he was on camera that the TV screen would dent inward. Twice I stopped the DVD to go outside for a smoke and let the TV have a rest before it imploded completely.
We also meet Ker, Terl’s right-hand man… er, right-hand Psychlo sub[/sub], played by Forest Whitaker of Good Morning Vietnam and Ghost Dog, who is in this film I guess because he needed some work or owed someone a favor, or someone had Poloroids of him and a sheep or something. Terl was trained to conquer galaxies and being stuck on Earth as chief of security is considered an insult. It’s this disgruntledness that drives Terl to set the plot in motion.
Terl and Ker have found a vein of oh-so-precious gold, but the Psychlos can’t mine there because their breathing air is explosive near the radioactive area (there’s uranium there as well as gold). After being told he cannot train humans to do the mining for them, Terl plans to train them anyway and keep the gold for himself and Ker. So Terl captures Johnny and some of his friends and educates him. In an attempt to crush his fighting spirit, Terl takes Johnny to a library to show him all that mankind was once capable of but was wiped out in 9 minutes once the aliens arrived.
Johnny, now educated to speak and read Psychloian language (not to mention mathmatics and a couple other things) attempts to teach the other captives and soon has them on his side, willing to fight for freedom. The humans are even taught to fly the Psyclos’ aircraft so they can go mine the gold. They are left near the mining site, given 14 days to bring the gold back to Terl. Here Johnny reveals his plan.
The plan is to split the men up. Half will stay behind and pretend to mine for the sake of the spy satellites, the other half will go off in search of a way to defeat the Psychlos: specifically to get a nuclear bomb to teleport back to their home planet to destroy it so no more show up on Earth.
So how about a little recap, so far? By now, Johnny knows how to fire Psychlo weapons, how to fly their aircraft, that the air they breathe is explosive when exposed to radiation, and how to read and write their language. But we see him reading and understanding English (which the Psychlos don’t even understand). So if he was taught in Psychlos, how does he know how to read English? And how does a Pschlonian education (I guess that’s what you’d call it) teach him about human technology and specifically nuclear weaponry? WTF?!
So not only does Johnny know how the nuclear bomb works, he’s also found an airplane hangar and a flight simulator and the other humans will be using it to learn to fly. Now, let’s take another break here and consider this, cuz here’s where the film goes from bad to downright stupid.
Earlier in the movie, we are told that the Psychlos had conquered our armies in 9 minutes. That’s using the same aircraft Johnny wants to use now. The same weapons. The same technology. In the meantime, the Psychlos have had 1000 YEARS to advance their technology. So trained soldiers and pilots didn’t stand a chance 1000 years ago, but these primitives - who can’t even read - stand a chance now? Plus these planes haven’t flown in 1000 years. I wouldn’t climb my fat ass into anything 1000 years old, and especially not some unused flying machine that was built by the lowest bidder. Shouldn’t the planes be rusty? Wouldn’t the tires on the landing gear be rotted away? What about fuel? And let’s not even discuss where the flight simulator is getting its electricity. I rolled my eyes so hard my vision is still blurred.
So back to our story:
To cover their tracks for not mining like they were supposed to, Johnny and his band of merry men steal the gold from Ft Knox. That’s right. From Ft. fucking Knox. In 1000 years, no Psychlo thought to check that out. So the conquering race doesn’t plunder the new world? When has this never happened in a war? It never occured to them that humans may have dug some metal up before they arrived, even though they saw our buildings and aircraft and, I’m guessing, our jewelry? This caused another eye-rolling of such immense proportions that I briefly thought I might swallow my own eyeball.
So the revolt goes into full swing and of course all that 1000-year-old equipment still works. The airplanes take to the air, rocket-launchers launch, and walkie-talkie batteries are still charged 1000 years later (I tell ya, Energizer just doesn’t fuck around!). I’ve rolled my eyes so much and with such great force by this time that I can’t voluntarily roll them anymore; my eyes are just floating freely in their sockets.
Of course the plan works. The nuclear bomb is teleported to Psychlo and is set off, causing an atmospheric chain reaction just as planned and their home world is destroyed. Our saga ends with Ker teaching the humans Psychlo technology in exchange for being made Head Psychlo and Terl in a cage surrounded by the gold he coveted so badly (oh, the IRONY! Gee, anyone think there’s a MESSAGE in this?)
(PSYCHLO?!)
Anyway, this is the worst of the four movies I’ve watched so far. It’s the kind of movie that after watching makes me want to rinse my eyes with Clorox and snort Scrubbing Bubbles till my brain is clean.
