I just watched 'Battlefield Earth'........... YOWZA!!!! (1 Viewer)

[Paul_D]

In a perverse kind of way, because I went into it with absolutely rock-bottom expectations, I found it kinda entertaining. I feel like splitting it into two ditinct camps of good and bad. Here goes.
PROS
-Even though the special effects weren't great, they did create an atmosphere that was conducive to the specific vision of they future they were trying to create.
-Barry Pepper did an astonishing amount of running, which while not explicitly a good thing, certainly ain't all that bad!
-Forrest Whitaker was the only Psychlo who didn't totally suck.
-Johnny T's name was Terl, which sounds a lot like 'Terrell', a member here at this forum. So whenever he came on screen, I was totally distracted from his craptastic dialogue by the expectation that he would spontaneously come up with a list of reasons why Episode 1 didn't suck! It really enhanced the film actually. Let's face it, it would have made more sense in context than a lot of the garbage he was droning on about: "check the compo gradients." :rolleyes
-Also, Kelly Preston was OK, UNTIL she stuck out her tongue. :frowning:
CONS
-everything not listed above
-It was absurdly long, and yet still less than 2 hours.
-The story is ludicrous beyond belief - humans only managed to put up a 9 minute fight to begin with, but the minute they've devolved into cavemen, they manage to blow up the home planet, and rid earth of the aliens! Give me a break.
-Some of the dialogue was so awful, it made me want to stick red hot needles in my eyeballs, just so that I'd have something different to think about.
-(insert whatever gripe you like in here and probability is 99% that it'll be spot on.)
Interesting viewing for sure.

 

[JasenP]

Paul,

Just look at the back of the box. The only good blurb from a critic they could find was "Great scene transitions" from some small newspaper in the US. It's there on the R1 release, does R2 have anything as equally pathetic?

 

[Lars Larsen]

Paul, did you watch it on DVD? On the R2 release there's a commentary track by the director. Did you listen to that? I should think that would be quite amusing. BTW, I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I can't wait.

 

[Paul_D]

Paul, did you watch it on DVD?

No, it was a TV broadcast. So, I must admit that I broke the pact of the HTF-brotherhood and watched the panned and scanned version. :b Though in this case, I would consider being able to view a severly cropped version a privilege, rather than an insult.

 

[Dan Brecher]

I'm sure the R2 would have a Paul Ross quote deeming it the "best film ever"....
Dan

 

[Shayne Lebrun]

The book is surprisingly compelling.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

The book IS great, and bears almost no resemblence to that hunk of garbage

The scene transitions were great? Does he mean the ENDLESS BARN DOOR WIPES!!???!??!!?!?

"A million monkeys with a million crayons in a million years would be hard pressed to come up with a film as cretinous as Battlefield Earth" New York Post(I think)

 

[Terrell]

It's good to know I'm so popular. Although, I'm not sure I've ever given reasons to why TPM didn't suck. I liked it, despite it's flaws, which I have pointed out numerous times. However, I will say that Battlefield Earth is so craptastic that it makes TPM look like a masterpiece.

 

[Vickie_M]

-The story is ludicrous beyond belief...
-Some of the dialogue was so awful...

Not surprising, considering the talentless psycho who wrote it!
This is a funny site, it lists all the reveiws of BE:
http://www.lermanet.com/reference/BatEarthfaq.htm

 

[Jeff]

I actually didn't mind this movie at all. I'm a sucker for stories where the "little guy" wins in the end at impossible odds.

Of course, if I saw this in the theater, opening night, I most likely would have thought it stunk like everyone else. But after hearing so many bad things, I ended up liking it.

Jeff

 

[Chris]

What always bothered me was that the screen was always tilted where it appeared everything was at a weird angle; I was waiting for scenes where people would appear upside down.

The movie was bad, bad, bad.. sure, not quite "North" bad, but bad.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Paul,
as great as those 'CONS' are in your post, i'm afraid that you havn't even BEGUN to touch the tip of the iceberg!
How about that extremly annoying 'camera tilt'? It lasted the entire movie! This kinda makes sense since the cameraman was probably driven to use crack/cocain just to stay awake to film the movie.
Logic and continuity errors abound as we witness some of the most ludicrous things happen before us! Like fighter jets that still fly after 2000 years, and even more amazing, flight simulators that still work, AND have power! I guess Con Edison was spared.
Feast your eyes on without a doubt, THE most inept group of aliens ever to disgrace the screen! As bad as some think the aliens in 'ID4' were, at least they're plan was simple, come down, blow the living shit out of us, period. These guys make Wile E Coyote and his master plans look like Hans Gruber from 'Die Hard'. Where's ACME when you really need it huh? Oh, and they're observant too, they want gold for "The Home Office" right, well, apparently they forgot about FORT KNOX, DOH!!
How about cavemen who learned to not only fly fighter jets in a couple of days, but learned strategic combat manuevers, and launch missels that helpfully say 'EXPLOSIVES' on them! Oh, and how exactly did the phrase "Piece of cake." survive 2000 years, when all else in our history was long lost? Good question.
And ah yes, Barry Pepper. What's to say about this guy that hasn't been said? I love one critic who reffered to his charactor as 'Girly man' who would on occasion channel William Wallace from 'Braveheart'. Let me state that I normally like Barry Pepper, just not here.
John Travolta you say? I won't even begin to go there, it would take too damn long.
A friend and I rented this on dvd after months of slams and insults by critics all over the globe, so we were sure we would laugh our asses off at this thing, it didn't disappoint, it almost put us in the hospital. If it was ever possible to ACTUALLY die laughing, we came as close as anyone has come.
One last thing, if it's possible for a movie to be so bad that it transcends all boundries and creates an all new level of foulness, it's this movie. In all fairness, as John Travolta was utterly convinced of, it did make a mark on sci-fi films, it will go down in history as the first historical bad movie ever made.

 

[Paul_D]

Good post John! You've collected the world-wide opinions of this film and reorganized them into one nice big thumbs down.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Thanks Paul, I try.
I did neglet to mention one very interesting thing about Travolta's charactor 'Terrell', um er, I mean 'Terl', this interstellar dimwit inadvertantly gave Pepper's charactor all the knowledge he needed to overthrow them with that brain machine, OOPS! He should have read the instruction manual first.
I gotta go now, I have to go get "Leverage" over someone.

 

[Terrell]

Wouldn't you know that the one movie that had a character with a name like mine, would turn out to be one of the worst films of all time. :frowning:

 

[Paul_D]

Wouldn't you know that the one movie that had a character with a name like mine, would turn out to be one of the worst films of all time. :frowning:

 

[Carlo_M]

Dude, John, SPOILER TAG PLEASE!!!
Great, and I was just about to buy this sight unseen. Now what's the point?

 

[Edwin-S]

I especially like the comments he made in another of his films:

Quote:

Maybe he wasn't but the director of his film must have been, if not a grungy, existentialist filmmaker, looking through a haze of bong smoke when he agreed to direct......or maybe he needed the relaxation of a haze of bong smoke when he saw what was being shat out onto the screen.
Not quite to the level of "Plan 9 from Outer Space" but close enough.

 

[Angel Pagan]

Some of the dialogue was so awful, it made me want to stick red hot needles in my eyeballs, just so that I'd have something different to think about.

LMAO

Haven't seen this movie yet but it's on my Netflix rental queue. It's coming up soon.

Angel

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

Wouldn't you know that the one movie that had a character with a name like mine, would turn out to be one of the worst films of all time.

What about Captain Terrel in Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan? That's a great movie.

As for Battlefield Earth, the book is a lot of fun. The movie is downright painful to watch.

Neil