Battlefield Earth (no stars, just one black hole)
Roger Christian directs John Travolta in Battlefield Earth, a sci-fi tale about some bad aliens from a place called Psychlo. These Psychlo beasts have plundered Earth of its resources, leaving it a vast wasteland.
A few humans have survived, living in remote mountains. The Psychlos, according to director Christian, come from a world in which their atmosphere is a "quite purply, a kind of purply polluted hell. That’s what they love."
On Earth, they’ve set up housekeeping in a domed Denver. When they’re outside the dome, they need bizarre-looking breathing tubes that hang down from their nostrils.
Travolta plays Terl the Psychlo security chief--in nose tubes, lots of prop hair, and bad false teeth. His marching orders are to eliminate all forms of human life before returning home. Forest Whitaker plays Travolta’s sidekick, a far cry from the modern samurai hit man he played in Ghost Dog.
Barry Pepper, who played the American sharpshooter in Saving Private Ryan, is the leader of the Earthlings. Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston, is Chirk, a Psychlo with a big head and a snake-like 6-inch-long tongue.
Battlefield Earth was written in 1982 by L.Ron Hubbard, who developed dianetics. That’s the basis for Scientology, the philosophy he founded, and Travolta is among its celebrity followers.
Travolta has said he has wanted to do this movie for a long time, not because of Hubbard’s Scientology, but because his novel "is a great piece of science fiction." Maybe so, but Battlefield Earth, is nowhere near a great movie. In fact, it’s a pretty gruesome mess.
Travolta has been working overtime promoting the film and his name alone will probably give it a halfway decent opening weekend, but once word of mouth spreads, I’ll bet it’ll deep-six fast, especially when Disney’s Dinosaur and MI-2 (Mission Impossible 2) open in the next couple of weeks.
Travolta says they could only film half of Hubbard’s more than 1,000-page novel, and he’s already talking about a sequel for 2002. Don’t hold your breath! I’m already "Psychloed" out.
