Dear members of the Church of Scientology,
Please explain to me how L. Ron Hubbard's teaching could not be employed to come up with a better, more successful Battlefield Earth? I really want to hear what the members' opinions are.
From what I know about Scientology and Dianetics, both claim to enable people to be more successful in many aspects of life. Why could noone employing any of this knowledge use it effectively to make BE a good, well received movie? Why couldnt they understand public perception well enough to anticipate what people would or wouldn't like? Why couldn't John Travolta intuit what audiences would find credible. He has quite a bit of experience in movies, and has had a lot of success. He has been a Scientologist for years, and this is his dream project. Why couldn't he make this movie work? The movie only made 11 1/2 to 12 1/2 million dollars opening weekend, and the number of screens is shown on will be greatly reduced. From next weekend on, it plays against MI2, Dinosaur, and Gladiator.What happened?
I'll tell you what I think happened. A bad science fiction writer/ Con-man wrote an unbelieveably long-winded simpy sci-fi novel. It was largely ignored by the world, with the exception of Scientologists, who bought multiple copies continually. This propelled the book into artificial best-seller status. The artificial success of this book was used as a success story for the author, and his church. One adherant of this religion - John Travolta - made the continuing of this success story his personal vanity project. Millions of dollars were spent, much pressure was put on various groups by Travolta to get this movie made. The movie was hyped in the press. Unilateral praise was given in the pre-release press to the effects. The public was set to like this movie. Scientologists anticipated the release more than anyone. The movie screened, and the reaction was the same amongst all non-Scientologists - it was a bad movie, a very bad movie that was badly written, badly directed, and badly acted. Nothing Scientologists did or thought or willed could change that. The Scientologists were in complete denial, they thought the movie rocked, but it flopped, and will lose money. I ask again - What happened? Cheese23
