Snap! Snap! Snap! Humans evolved from Clams! Right! But wait you haven't seen the 'Producer's Cut' version it is much better.
I had thought about doing a leafleting of the major theaters in the area and then I saw this and well . . . This movie got nearly a full page of exposure as a real stink bomb. The pictures of Terl (Vinny Barbarino) with his "Up your nose with a rubber hose" costume really topped it off. The big full-color picture of some cheesy scene really left people with a sort of belly laugh at the office that came to show me the review.
Who could have asked for a better coverage of all of Rochester? The two inch tall letters in the Front page of the weekend entertainment section (hard copy edition) declared, "Battlefield BOMB" The folks at the office got a real belly laugh at this stinker. During the week many had talked about seeing the film this weekend and how the hype from Travolta and the trailers looked convincing of a well spent buck to see some great sci-fi. But . . . After seeing the reviews they found something else to go and see that didn't require nose plugs or a mindless 'True Believer" status to enjoy with friends and family.
Hey, I just thought of how if Travolta had successfully done the OT Challenge perhaps he wouldn't have 'pulled this in' for the cult. But wait the sequel is going to be better, really trust me cuz the ole Sweat-Hog Vinny Barbarino can't be wrong, Right?
http://www.rochestergoesout.com/mov/b/battle.html
BATTLEFIELD EARTH
An incredibly stupid sci-fi action film that is unintentionally funny when it isn't just plain ludicrous
By Jack Garner Democrat and Chronicle
(May 12, 2000) -- Do you know the problem with a labor of love?
Love is blind.
For proof, check out Battlefield Earth, the project an impassioned John Travolta has espoused for 18 years.
Now that it's finally on the screen, we discover that the science-fiction epic Travolta considered a Holy Grail is silly junk. And the sight of Travolta, mercilessly hamming it up as a seven-foot-tall, dread-lock sporting evil alien, doesn't help.
Now we can see why Hollywood impeded the superstar's attempts to make a film from L. Ron Hubbard's long, pulp sci-fi novel for 17 years. And now it's clearly on the screen only because Travolta's "Pulp Fiction" comeback gave him the necessary clout.
Travolta, of course, is one of Hollywood's most high-profile practitioners of the Church of Scientology, the eccentric techno-religion which was founded by Hubbard in the years following his stint as a sci-fi novelist.
The film version of Battlefield Earth reportedly is based on only the first half of Hubbard's giant-sized novel (which I've managed to avoid reading). The film details life on a post-apocalyptic earth, circa 3000. The planet was long ago taken over by a race of greedy alien giants called Psychlos, who've converted earth into a wasteland junkyard, only good for the mining of gold.
Most humans were killed; a few remain as Psychlo slaves -- and are called "man-animals." A few have remained at large, living a retro Stone Age existence in the mountains near what used to be Denver.
Running earth is a scheming Psychlo slimeball named Terl (Travolta), who plots ways to hoard the planet's gold for his own purposes. Part of his plan is to use man-animals to help dig it up.
From among the humans, a hero emerges; a blond-haired youth of high ideals named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper). You recognize him because he's the only creature in the film -- human or Psychlo -- who isn't filthy dirty.
The plot is the tried-and-true fight of the righteous against oppressors -- it could be Indians against the cavalry, the "Star Wars" rebels against the evil Empire, the colonialists against the Redcoats, etc., etc. But while most of those stories achieve mythic stature, this never rises above an array of ludicrous improbabilities and comic-book dialogue.
Mull over just this one example: In exactly seven days, a tribe of cavemen humans who barely know how to strike a flint and couldn't add two plus two, teach themselves how to fly sophisticated Harrier hover-jets. (The jets have been standing unused for several centuries and still work like they had an oil, lube and filter job yesterday.) P-L-E-A-S-E!
Battlefield Earth has been directed by Roger Christian, a former "Star Wars" second-unit director and set decorator. For visual style, though, Christian has chosen a dark, murky look that makes it almost impossible to follow much of the action. He also favors extreme close-ups of fight scenes, which further clutters his images.
And, apparently, he also declined to tell his superstar (and producer) to tone down his performance. Travolta's Terl is the Snidely Whiplash of sci-fi, a laughable villain who would twirl his moustache if he had one.
The actor is on the record declaring that Battlefield Earth is not Scientology propaganda. "(Hubbard) was a famous science fiction writer," he has said. "That's the deal with this. It's an entertainment piece, and that's all it is."
Travolta can be believed, because there's nothing in this inane film that would make me walk across the street, let alone change my way of life ++++++
The best part of the 'entertainment' is watching the cult self implode on their narcissistic delusional "True Believer" goose-stepping nonsense that their Messiah claims he wrote. I am glad he did claim that. If Hubbard was alive he would have an urgent bulletin out today declaring that somehow the "Squirrels" had altered his original work and that the movie was a flop because someone, perhaps (*), had altered his words and that is why this 'blockbuster' was a bomb. hee hee hee
Perhaps Jar Carr of the Boston Globe is right when the film makes MysteryScience3000 and those three little campy front-row kibitzers are added to the show along with a fair dose of clam jokes and some sanctimonious rhetoric added about the 'secret' OT Levels and we might have a B-Movie Classic on our hands. . . . With the re-dub in reverse, have foreign sounding persons re-dubbed over with comical scripts added that don't lip sync as usual in 'English' with their native language subtitles . . . and those three campy kibitzers along with a dose of perhaps those little scratch and sniff cards and screen queues . . . well may be not.
Wanna "buy' your salvation from the Messiah? Come on! The planet is falling apart and the only way to save it is to join now and get busy helping the Messiah 'Clear' Earth so we can dig up the space ships that are buried along with Xemu in the mountain top hideaway and just like those 'thousand year old jets' the space planes that looked exactly like DC-8s will start up and fly under the command of the Messiah's minions alone!
