Battlefield Earth: Retro-'80s sci-fi silliness makes you lose faith in Travolta
By Wesley Morris EXAMINER FILM CRITIC
THERE'S SOMETHING wrong with the cameras in the new John Travolta vanity project, "Battlefield Earth."
Each scene has been shot from a canted angle, forcing more literal-minded viewers to tilt their heads in order to follow the story and determine which of the alien baddies is roughing up what human.
The choice to slant your head enhances the interactive moviegoing experience -- "tilt for maximum cinematic effect." But using your erect noggin to watch Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) run in slow motion through breaking glass like Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson or Chow Yun-Fat in anything is to undergo a life-, mind-, body- and soul-altering experience: Please, no more John Travolta sci-fi action fantasies based on L. Ron Hubbard pocket books directed by the man who did the second-unit directing for "The Phantom Menace."
Apparently "Battlefield Earth" has come under fire for possibly subliminally enticing audiences to join the Church of Scientology. But if hurling a copy of "Dianetics" at the screen is all you want to do, maybe you've been brainwashed, too. It's 3000 A.D., and young Jonnie is trying to save an already decimated earth from further harm by wiping out an advanced race of nine-foot-tall aliens called Psychlos who've enslaved humans for construction work. Jonnie is forced to lead a crew to loot the gold in Fort Knox for Terl (Travolta), a mid-level functionary. A rebellion ensues, as does a relentless supporting performance by flying debris, which, after so many explosions, gave me a headache and invaded the camera frame enough to prevent me from keeping track of which character with hair extensions was running through the underlit production design.
With his bad skin, uncouth dreds and ridiculous, ornate costumes, Travolta looks like an extra on the greatest White Zombie-GWAR music video ever. As menacing as Terl appears, Travolta's performance scales the walls of camp, as though he was starring in "Butterfield Earth." His scenes with dim sidekick Forest Whitaker -- who, wearing day-glo contacts and mounds of fake hair, looks like a sleepy doppelganger for rapper Lil' Kim -- resemble episodes of the Warner Bros. cartoon "Pinky and the Brain."
A Scientology recruiting film would be more fun, and they're shorter. I actually left "Battlefield Earth" angry that the filmmakers, including director Roger Christian, didn't try to proselytize me. Or did they? All that lamentably crooked cinematography, the edit job that serves a new cut every five seconds: negligible sci-fi ploy or unsuccessful enlistment attempt? A raging bore no matter which way your head is slanted.
If filmmaking has ever been less thrilling and more disengaging, I'd like to see it. Subliminal messages would have made it more endurable. The only real amusement the film can hope to stir will be if a rash of American moviegoers actually exits the theater and heads to their local Scientology headquarters. "Yes, I've seen the film, now I'd very much like to achieve the State of Clear, please."
Hubbard was careful to separate his religious philosophy from overtly impinging upon his science fiction, and his 1982 book "Battleship Earth" doesn't perform any message-mongering, although the kids I went to school with who opted to read his "Mission Earth" series instead of Ray Bradbury or Robert Heinlein are Internet millionaires.
Back in the early '80s, when he was a budding Hollywood millionaire himself, John Travolta wanted nothing more than to bring "Battlefield Earth" to the screen. On the Travolta time line, the book would have to have entered his life just after "Blow Out" in 1981. Denied backing for a big-screen version and apparently without Dino De Laurentiis' home number, Travolta was forced to defer his dream and star in "Two of a Kind," "That's Dancing!" "Staying Alive" and "Perfect" instead.
Now, two decades later, we have "Battleship Earth" which, visually, doesn't miss a beat between 1981 and 1983. It's set in the future, but looks like the queasily retrograde, apocalyptic aftermath of John Carpenter's two "Escape From ....." movies. The aliens kill with big clunky guns that look like drainpipes and wear bulky uniforms from the Michael Jackson Gestapo collection. You'd think a full millennium from now, aliens would be killing with their Palm PDAs, picking up their weapons of mass destruction at Staples without having to worry about whether the camera's crooked.
Movie Review "Battlefield Earth"
CAST John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker
DIRECTOR Roger Christian
WRITERS Corey Mandell, adapted from L. Ron Hubbard's book
RATED PG-13
THEATERS Metreon, Kabuki, Galaxy, Stonestown and Century Plaza (South San Francisco)
EVALUATION 1/2
