Battlefield Earth

Actually, was anyone involved with this total disaster thinking at all? My personal guess: no, and if they were, I'd rather not know about what.

None of the reviews have done BE justice. Having heard what a start to finish mess this was, my brother and I decided to watch it, just for fun. It was horrible beyond all our expectations - and not in a fun way. And so I can now tell anyone who's interested: You must see this movie yourself to realize the sheer magnitude of its badness, stupidity, and ineptitude.

I've heard that BE cost about 70 million dollars to make - though how anyone could have greenlighted it is a great mystery. Since there was nothing on screen to indicate why it had cost that much, my brother and I have also worked out how the budget was allocated:

* Travolta's salary, plus assorted managers and hangers on: 40 million.

* Special effects, film, sets, costumes, makeup and hair extensions: 25 million.

* all other salaries: $4,999,888.

* script: $112 and change.

Though that still doesn't begin to explain the end result. I give up. I'll never understand how Travolta managed to get BE made, or released, for that matter. Why is he tanking his career again? Who knows? After this, why should anyone care? Ah, well. I hope he finds something better to act in in the future; I honestly can't see how he could come up with something worse.

I never thought I'd give anything a 1, but this is indeed as worthy a candidate as I've ever seen. So, * is my vote, and I'd rate it lower if it were possible. Just... incredible. Watch and learn.

My spouse and I went to see this on opening night. We were expecting to see an extremely bad and costly film, and we were not really disappointed. It is a testament to John Travolta's genius that his career survived this disaster at all.

As they say, garbage-in, garbage out. Start with an L Ron Hubbard novel (your first mistake) featuring a completely plagiarized dark-skinned, war-like and hairy alien culture with wrinkly foreheads (if this sounds like Klingons to you, I thought so too!), and add unfortunate Barry "can't get a break" (or maybe it should be 'cant pick a script') Pepper and all you need is Travolta himself - playing the arrogant, merciless, slightly effeminate and quite under-sized leader of the alien colonists. Remove any hint of character development from the script and use the worst of the worst black box technobabble explanations for plot devices. Finally, stay true to the idiotic gibberish you based the film on in the first place, and you've got the makings of a rolling-on-the-floor comedy.

In fact, opening night, in a packed theater, people started laughing out loud about 20 minutes into the film and never really stopped. We had a great time that night. Halfway through the film more than half the crowd was actually interacting with the film, asking "Mr Worf, where's Commander Riker?" and asking troublesome questions about how many hundreds of years gas would remain viable in the gas-tank of a Harrier.

If you need to know about the plot - it's this simple - Earth has been conquered by an amazingly stupid group of Klingon-like aliens, and the remaining humans live in a large domed slave labor camp where they are taught that their sole purpose is servitude because they are stupid, weak, etc. Barry Pepper somehow becomes convinced that he's not born to be a slave, and learns to fly a harrier, etc. It's really not worth the effort of typing. There are a few not-so-subtle and not very original but good messages about ethnocentrism to be found here, but not much else. Some day when you need a good laugh, rent this or borrow it from your local bad film collector.

This movie makes you wonder why on IMDb we are forced to give a movie as dreadful as this a minimum of 1/10 when it quite rightly deserves a vote of 0/10.

In all my life I have never seen such rubbish!

The alleged "acting" unbelievable.

What was John Travolta thinking when he made this pile of ......... ?

All involved with this deserve to never be involved in the movie industry ever again.

The "story" is unfathomable (is that a word?) , made not the slightest sense from beginning to end. Have not had to sit through something so silly and boring in all my life. Even if you are offered to see this at no cost , just run for the exit!!!

Has to be the worst film ever made, nothing makes actually sense, the filming, framing, style, tone filters, audio, editing, just about everything in this film is horrendous. 2.5 is too high for this film, this is the moment you wished a negative would pop up magically so you could push it further down.

BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000) 1/2 * John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, Richard Tyson, Sabine Karsenti, Michael MacRae, Michael Byrne, Sean Hewitt, Kelly Preston (unbilled cameo). My candidate for worst film for the new millennium: atrociously awful Travolta vehicle (who is totally to blame for his co-producing this pet project due to his Scientology ties) in bringing L. Ron Hubbard's cult sci-fi novel to fruition is just one God-forsaken mess from start to finish in what feels like the ultimate Ed Wood film with a dire need for the gang from MST3K to show up and provide apt ridicule: Travolta stars as 9 foot tall alien Terl, a Psychlo who commands his rampaging race in wiping out mankind in the year 3000 with only rebel Pepper out to thwart his nefarious plans of mining gold for his own just rewards. Ridiculous from the get go: the make-up of the Psychlos: a combination of dreadlocks a la Jar Jar Binks to the 'Coneheads' to the costume rejects of any speed metal band of the 1990s; the dim lighting and production design; the cheezy special effects (except for the climax of Terl's planet - who the HELL cares if I'm giving away the ending?!! IT SUCKS!!!) - which looked kinda cool!) and laugh-out loud dialogue: ('Rat-brains' is the often reviled retort by Terl to the 'man-animals' he despises). Travolta better get his mind straight because his post-'Pulp Fiction' comeback is running on jet vapors at this point and don't even get me started on his evil Vincent Price-inspired chortle! UGGGHH!!! (Dir: Roger Christian)