[Freya-dæg] "While you were still learning how to spell your name..." John Travolta Was Grease-ing up his Hamminess

Introduction
Plot Summary
The Bad
The Good
Judgment
Closing

{Just what Travolta (front left) was getting up to while you were learning to spell your name, or before you were even a twinkle in an eye. Image from The Guardian.}

Introduction

This is a movie that no-one has been kind to. The critics listed at Rotten Tomatoes gave it just 2%, and audiences only 13%. It's quite a bit more reviled by the critics than last week's movie, so let's see just how hard it will be to redeem it.

What's terrible about this movie isn't hard to see, but, to know just what we're getting into let's try to objectively view the plot.

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Plot Summary

It's the year 3000, and humanity has been suppressed for hundreds of years by an alien race known as the Psychlos. The movie begins with the wanderings of Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler (played by Barry Pepper), a man who's simply out and about trying to find something better.

While out wandering, Johnny is cornered and captured by the Psychlos. Eventually he's chosen by the head of security at the Psychlos Earth colony, Terl (John Travolta), for his gold-grabbing scheme. But in the process of preparing his selected group of humans for his secret job, Terl teaches Johnny too much.

With his curiosity fired up, Johnny begins to think dangerously and ultimately drives the remaining humans to organize a revolt. This revolt is a resounding success, resulting in the destruction of the Earth colony and even the Psychlos' home planet. Terl is then imprisoned and Johnny apparently leads humanity back to its old knowledge and technology. And, though the movie was designed to have a sequel, the story ends there.

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The Bad

As you might have already noticed, the story itself is pretty problematic.

Why are humans being suppressed, for example?

The most obvious reason is that the Psychlos appear to be too busy draining earth of its resources to bother with wiping out what little humanity remains. This is a troubling issue since later in the movie we see a more advanced and learned race, the Chinkos, whom the Psychlos did wipe out. So there seems to be little reason for them to keep the few remaining humans alive except to toss them into prison. For some reason.

Slave labor could be a reason. But humans are deemed too stupid and senseless to be able to operate the machinery involved in mining and so even the thought of such a use is laughable to the Psychlos. While they laugh it up, you might well wonder why does an advance race still mine minerals using digging machines? If gutting planets is they're bread and butter haven't they developed something faster or automated?

Maybe the Psychlos are still hands-on when it comes to mining so that the they'll need humans to mine gold found in an irradiated area. The Psychlos being sensitive to radiation can't go there to mine it, and so Terl decides to try and get this gold for himself by sending a group of humans to mine it. This leads to the humans relearning what they've forgotten, striking back, and blowing things up before everyone lives happily ever after.

What's particularly striking about the plot is that it seems divided within itself. The first half of the movie is relatively slow for a film named "Battlefield Earth." It's not until the 50 minute mark that there's even any indication that the movie is about the humans' revolting against the Psychlos rather than Terl's socio-political woes with a side of human hijinx.

Stepping away from the plot before it falls and hurts someone, the next big foible of the filmmakers is how the movie is presented. Widescreen is fine. Good even, in some cases. But what's really annoying is the way that almost every shot in the movie is on an angle. Even more wearying is that every scene transition happens in the same way. A gradual outward wipe, like a curtain opening. Oh - except for the wipe that ends the movie. But I wouldn't want to spoil that doozy for you.

That just leaves the characters. The dialogue is nothing special. But the main characters, well, the way that they're framed is weak at best.

Our lead, Johnny, is the standard post-apocalyptic hero. Once he gets a taste of knowledge he just wants to get more and more. Then there's his love interest, Chrissie (Sabine Karsenti), who the screenwriters introduce and then appear to forget about for a good 45 minutes, is also standard fare - the strong willed woman who can do what she wants because she's "not a child anymore."

Speaking of the humans more generally, the biggest issue with them is that they pick things up too fast. They take to technology that they're supposed to have been away from for centuries like a fish takes to water. The writers and directors try to make it seem like these people are rediscovering things for the first time, but when your examples of this are things like people chewing on the word "warning" like it's something new and exciting it seems like there just wasn't a whole lot of effort put into it.

Granted, the bar that's being used as standard here was set by the Doctor Who serial The Face of Evil. In this serial the Doctor encounters two tribes of people - the Sevateam and the Tesh - who are the descendants of space explorers and who currently regard their technology with sheer religious and superstitious reverence and fear.

These reactions are present in the movie, and it does need to be given some credit for the scene where Johnny is going through the city with two others while they explain to him what happened with stories. But this nod to the basic human compulsion to explain things with stories never goes far enough.

If the first half of the movie is meant to set the humans up as believable people given their situation and the second half is meant to be the sweet tender action, then everything is overshadowed by at least two things.

First, Johnny's cry of despair when his unseen father dies a few minutes into the movie is the same as when his horse dies. Both of these happen in the first 12 minutes, and so we're not really allowed to care for either of them.

Second, John Travolta's Terl really steals the show.

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The Good

Yes, Terl as played by John Travolta is one of the good things in this movie. Psychlo society might be a thinly veiled analogy for capitalism or profit-driven business practices, and a lot of their culture and behavior might seem too human to be alien, but they've got campy, scenery chewing John Travolta, by gum.

The way that Travolta overacts with his character is great. Everything he says is blown out of proportion - and made incredible as a result. Most memorable, perhaps, is his "while you were still learning how to spell your name, I was being trained to conquer galaxies." In fact, if you haven't heard this line, check it out right here:

Another good thing in the film is the new vocabulary that the humans use. There are just a few words, but they're rather clever additions. "Greener," meaning explorer and derived from the saying "the grass is always greener on the other side" is really cool. "Man animal" is also delightful because of just how much disgust Travolta puts into his every utterance of it. The movie's action isn't anything to phone home about, but there are two scenes that are kind of neat. One is when Terl has taken the humans he's going to be using as minors to a field to put the fear of him into them. He's waylaid by a group of humans and Johnny gets a hold of his gun. But, instead of shooting Terl, Johnny hands it back to him saying that he's probably got some way to kill him before he pulls the trigger. The pause on Terl's end suggests that he had no such leverage, and that Johnny thought he did makes him seem appropriately naive. The other is the sequence where they're trying to simultaneously blow up the dome that covers the Psychlos colony on Earth, and send the nuke to Psychlo to destroy it via the teleporter. Not the whole scene, just when the simultaneity of the two actions is emphasized. It makes for some gripping viewing! Although, it's so enjoyable to watch partially because when the humans blow up Psychlo (spoiler!) you know that the movie's almost over. Back To Top Judgment And that speaks louder than anything good or bad about this movie. When you already know how it's going to end thanks to the internet (specifically things like the Nostalgia Critic's review), and the indicators of its ending excite you more than anything else in a movie, you know that it's a stinker. Maybe if they had called it "John Travolta's Campy Alien Acting and Slo-Mo Angular Action Roundup" instead of "Battlefield Earth" it would be easier to forgive its many failings. But this movie hardly has any battle going on in it, save for the last 30 minutes. Just 30 minutes out of a total of 118 is not enough to toss that event into your title. If there was a lingering sense of battle throughout, that would work - but there is not. The movie feels like it doesn't know what it's supposed to be about, nor how it wants to tell its story until the last third or so. So, Freya, despite its fervent, over-enunciated cries of protest, leave this one down below. That is truly for the best. Back To Top Closing Let me know what you thought about Battlefield Earth. Leave your most favorite/despised moments in the comments! Next week, check back for a logical look at the pros and cons of freelance writing in Canada, an entry on something newsworthy, and a review of the 2003 bomb, Gigli. Maybe Christoper Walken will do a better job of buoying a terrible film than John Travolta did, but only time will tell. Back To Top