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Battlefield Earth

It’d be one thing if John Travolta took the lead role in this adaptation of fellow Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard’s best-selling 1982 Star Wars rip-off novel for a paycheck, but no-Vinnie Barbarino bought the rights himself to single-handedly bring this lumbering pile of shit to the silver screen. Hence, this film will go down as Travolta’s Waterworld. As evil alien Terl (Darth Vader), Travolta and sidekick Ker--bad career move, Forest Whitaker--control earth as Barry Pepper (Luke Skywalker) and a group of "man animals" attempt to take back the planet. They even fly X-Wing fighters and blow up the Death Star, setting the stage perfectly for The Empire Strikes Back. John, if you wanted to please L. Ron so badly, why couldn’t you have done the books-on-tape version instead of putting us through this catastrophe?

(Mike Seely)