Battlefield Earth

    Battlefield Earth is a 2000 sci-fi film that takes place in the year 3000. The film is based on the the first half of the L.Ron Hubbard novel of the same name. Hubbard is the inventor of Scientology, and as a long-time scientologist John Travolta had to do wanted to make a film based on the Hubbard book. Travolta had a lot of trouble raising money and finding a studio to back the film. In the end Travolta ended up spending millions of his own dollars to make this film. The book takes place in the year 3000 where an alien race called Psychlos have taken over Earth and controlled it for about 1000 years. Humans, or man-animals, as they are called for some reason are an "endangered species". Humans are either living like prehistoric tribes or as slaves in the Psychlos home base, which is basically a giant greenhouse.
   The film follows human, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, as he travels from his primitive tribe to explore. He meets up with a hunter and then they are both captured and enslaved by the Psychlos. Travolta played the head Psychlo on Earth, Terl, who was forced to remain working on Earth because "he didn't know that it was the senators daughter". The Psychlos are on Earth to mine for gold and Terl decides that he will use the 'man-animals' to mine gold for him so he can try to get back to his home planet. He takes Jonnie and decides to teach him using a 'teaching machine'. Jonnie learns to speak the Psychlo language, although you wouldn't know that they speak a different language because they make no distinction. Everyone talks in eEnglish it is not until Jonnie learns the second language that you realize they haven't been talking to each other. Eventually Terl leaves Jonnie and a bunch of other 'man-animals' in the middle of nowhere to mine gold. The Psychlos cannot comprehend the fact that humans are capable of really anything even though they are surrounded by the destroyed civilization that humans built. At one point Terl and his secondhand Psychlo argue if 'man-animals' can fly. You would think that such a powerful race would be able to remember the past, even humans know what life was like 1000 years ago.
     Jonnie decides to save Earth and leads a revolution. Somehow he trains other humans to fly in flight simulators while giving Terl gold from Fort Knox, which somehow was not found in 1000 years of looking for gold. Jonnie also finds a hidden group of military jets, that are fully functional and loaded after 1000 years of sitting. The revolution is of course a success as the greenhouse that the Psychlos use to breath in is destroyed and somehow the entire Psychlo planet is blown up.
The entire film is just painful to watch. The script was ruined by Travolta  because when writer JD Shapiro, who was originally brought in to write the script, refused to implement various changes requested by Travolta, screenwriter Corey Mandell was signed up instead. This made the whole script just a mess. The Psychlos them self look ridiculous. They all have dreads, weird chin beards, hairy hands, and are just slightly bigger than humans. They are also surprisingly stupid for being a superior race. The entire production looks just bad. The breathing nose plugs that they use look like shoelaces stuck up their noses, the cgi is pitiful, and everything just looks ugly. The soundtrack is so loud and over the top that is just gets in the way. Eveything is so loud for no reason. As David Edelstein, a film critic for slate magazine, says "that is not an overstatement. A horse hitting the ground sounds like a bomb going off. A bomb going off sounds like a planet exploding. A planet exploding sounds like—I'm out of hyperbole. People in the audience dig their fingers into their ears and howl in agony"(Edelstein).
   This was a film that was based on a best selling sci-fi novel that still couldn't be good. It was the obsession of John Travolta, who managed to ruin the movie. Battlefield Earth really is just terrible. It tried so hard and failed just as hard. It just goes to show that maybe you shouldn't look at Scientology to help you make a film.