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Battlefield mirth
Review: Battlefield Earth
By Shaun de Waal

Before founding the quasi-religion of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard was, in the Thirties and Forties, the author of much pulp science-fiction. In the Eighties, he began publishing a successful series of humungous sci-fi tomes, of which Battlefield Earth, now filmed with Scientologist John Travolta, was the first. Travolta was apparently a driving force behind the movie's getting made, but he has enough of a sense of humour to play the villain, not the hero.

Subtitled A Saga of the Year 3000, the movie is about how Earth is now a colony of ruthless aliens from the planet Psychlo. Just so there's no confusion, they are called Psychlos. They are very tall and wear big clumpy boots, like glam-rockers in 1972, have hands that seem borrowed from the American werewolf in London, and more hair than Marie Antoinette. They also keep bursting into evil, manic laughter, like villains in an old B-movie, which I suppose in a way they are.

Most of what is left of humanity is condemned to slavery, working for the Psychlos, who are motivated by profit and the desire to gain "leverage" over each other. In this respect, they are not very alien at all. Their unfortunate "human animal" slaves are kept in cages and fed Soylent Green.

Those humans who haven't yet been enslaved are living in stone-age luxury somewhere in the outback. The movie begins when one of the cave-dwellers, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), out of what appears to be pure bloody-mindedness, sets out to disprove the mythology of monsters lurking out there. Of course he gets captured and put to work by those very monsters. But our Jonnie is not just going to submit; he's determined to break free, and soon gets his chance. When he is dragged into a nefarious plan concocted by Psychlo security chief Terl (a rather podgy Travolta) and his sidekick Ker (an unhappy-looking Forest Whitaker - is he a Scientologist too?), Jonnie sees a way to rid Earth of this menace from outer space. Or wherever the planet Psychlo is. It doesn't really matter, since you can beam yourself over there quite easily if you know how.

You can also learn all sorts of things about the Psychlos, including their language, by using a special learning machine that spews light into your eyes. Jonnie does, at any rate. But when he needs to learn how to fly a Psychlo aircraft he has to do it by getting into a flight simulator, as pilots do today. Luckily that technology hasn't changed much in a thousand years, as there is just such a machine available when, as the climactic battle nears, Jonnie and his fellow stone-agers have to use what's left of the United States Airforce to fight the Psychlos. Presumably they do this so we can have a bit of recycled Star Wars on top of all the other borrowed sci-fi clichés.

There's something curiously old-fashioned about Battlefield Earth; at times it feels like it predates Star Trek. Characters are constantly getting "vapourised" - how Fifties is that? And having the aliens played by humans with contact lenses and wigs that would frighten RuPaul doesn't help either. I kept thinking of the Psychlos as Klingons, though the latter are more convincing. Couldn't the film-makers afford computer animation?

Much of the movie is simply ludicrous. Apart from the many, various logical absurdities we are expected to absorb, there is the pace and structure of the plot itself. That is to say, it doesn't have any. It's just one damn thing after another, without build-up or dynamics, without tension or release, all thrown relentlessly at the viewer.

I thought this might be because of an attempt to be as faithful as possible to the 800-page novel, as if it were of scriptural status, but someone who has actually read it (no, more mind-bogglingly, re-read it), informs me that that is not the case. So it's just a matter of incompetence, then.

There isn't even any fun to be had trying to work out where they're slipping in the Scientology by stealth. It isn't there, as far as I can tell, not that I know much about Hubbard's ideology. Unless it's just a variety of stylised Reagan-era Cold War propaganda laid over some kind of parable about colonialism. And the triumph of the human spirit, perhaps. As opposed to the Psychlo spirit. Who knows?