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Critics carve up Travolta's £50m turkey
John Harlow, Los Angeles
A science fiction epic starring John Travolta as a 10ft alien with dreadlocks has been attacked as one of the worst films ever made. Battlefield Earth, which cost £50m to make, has attracted perhaps the most critical notices since Heaven's Gate, the 1980 Michael Cimino western. It has so appalled critics and audiences in America that the distributors have resorted to giving away tickets.
Travolta had tried for more than five years to make the film. It is based on a novel by
L Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, which counts Travolta among its followers. The star insists that the film is not intended to promote scientology.
Set in the year 3000, it describes a world enslaved by Psychlos, a race of aliens in platform boots. Travolta, the star of Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction, originally wanted to play the leader of a "man animal" resistance that fights the aliens. But at 46 he felt too old and settled for the role of a villain, Terl, played in a style described as midway between a Star Trek Klingon and a reject from the glam rock band Kiss, plunged into an Edwardian melodrama.
Critics have called Battlefield Earth's plot implausible and its dialogue clichéd. "A million monkeys with 1m crayons would be hard pressed in 1m years to create anything as cretinous as this," said The Washington Post, which concluded: "This is a contender for the worst film of the century."
The dialogue contains lines such as "the grass is greener on the other side", "a good woman is hard to find" and "I will do it for the children". The New York Times described it as "like watching the most expensive school play of all time".
Film-goers have been equally cool. While Travolta was still talking last week about a sequel, the distributors were reducing the number of cinemas due to screen the film from 3,000 to a few hundred.
Hundreds of scientologists were bussed to the Hollywood premiere and more have been given tickets at local theatres. While Gladiator, the Roman sword and sandal epic, has proved a huge success for Ridley Scott, its British director, selling more than £20m of tickets in its first weekend, the makers of Battlefield Earth may be lucky to earn that during its entire American run.
"Contrary to cult-hater reports, nothing about Battlefield Earth will draw vulnerable movie-goers into the open arms of the Church of Scientology," said Newsweek magazine. "That would be like saying that Showgirls was a recruitment film for strip clubs."
