Battlefield Earth

Rating:
Summary: Don't Believe Everything You Hear
Review: No matter what you've heard about this, It's Worse!

Rating:
Summary: Great movie, better book
Review: The movie was very good I thought, very interesting. You had to look over a few fake parts, only what a true movie watcher can do, and the movie was great! It left out about half the book, which is excellent, but it is a good job of cramming 1050 pages of excitement into 100 minutes. A defenite see, if not a buy. Watch it first, as most people (some how) seem not to like it that much. If you are watching it for just a good time and a good movie without criticizing it, then this is a movie for you!

Rating:
Summary: Major disappointment...
Review: When I heard that John Travolta was going to make Battlefield Earth, I was ecstatic, yet worried. After all, Battlefield Earth is the best pulp sci-fi epic ever. But how do you condense a 1,000-page epic into a 90 minute movie?

The script basically leaves some of the bones of the book in place but put in such ridiculous changes as to make the movie utterly, laughably unbelievable. For example, a raid on the main Psychlo city that involves months of planning and training humans to use gee-whiz equipment is condensed into a meager 1 week!

Battlefield Earth would have been far better, actually as a true to the book Anime, with 24 or perhaps 48 (two seasons) episodes.

A damn shame. BTW, don't let this detritus prevent you from reading the book.

Rating:
Summary: How bad could it be?
Review: I bought this film because I did not believe it could be as bad as everybody said. After all, WaterWorld turned out to have some redeeming concepts and nice scenery. But, geeze, this movie is bad! I mean, how could Hollywood throw that much money at anything and have it be so silly and dull? Not one appealing character. .... I was not able to make it to the end. Uncle!

Rating:
Summary: Worst Movie I've Ever Seen
Review: Instead of boring you with why this movie was horrid, which would be counterproductive, I'll highlight a few elements which really stood out as being "good" or something resembling that.

Barry Pepper (main character, heroic and bright Johnny Goodboy Tyler) really is the only reason to watch this movie. With unconventional good looks and raw talent, he manages to perfectly play Johnny, even down to mannerisms I can only assume are unique to this character. The script is unbelievably autrocious, but somehow he manges to add humor, light, warmth, and intelligence, and even a bit of believabilty to the dead words. Another key element would be the sets, which are pretty good, when they are not color-tinted green or startlingly fake. A scene in which Johnny stumbles upon an ancient, decaying Mini-Golf course is perhaps the best scene in the entire movie. All the other characters are rather useless, with the exeption of some of Johnny's rebel friends.

John Travolta, usually a great actor who adds fun and intelligence to movies, is horrendous. He seems to just jump around, in a really ugly and stupid costume, laughing sardonically and saying "Oh lookit, I'm the BAD GUY!!". Very odd.

You won't miss out on anything if you skip this movie, but definitely check out some of Barry Pepper's other movies, like Saving Private Ryan or 61*, an HBO production. He's about the only thing the producers (of which Travolta was one, I believe) got right with this film, turning a really interesting and fresh story into utter garbage.

Rating:
Summary: 1 horrendous movie that deserves 0 stars
Review: A crime against L. Ron Hubbard's book, Battlefield Earth, has been committed in the guise of Battlefield Earth, the movie. I spent the whole movie, eyes glued to the TV, telling everybody "No, this is nothing like the book! The book is great and this is awful". The characters were flat and some were not at all as written. Most of the characters in the book never made an appearance in the movie. The plot had only the vaguest resemblance to the book.

I wondered how they could make a good movie from a book that is 1050 pages long. Now I know they just took the name and trashed the rest. I was amazed that L. Ron Hubbard did not come back from the dead to sue them for destroying his work. The book is GREAT, read it but avoid the movie like the plague!

Rating:
Summary: Bad movie. Excellent DVD
Review: When I saw this in theatre, I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the movie. Seems like the movie jump from one scene to another like bad editing. So when I got a used DVD that is real cheap, I decided to give it another try. Well, I still don't like the movie but the DVD itself is great. The Dolby 5.1 is excellent and so is the picture transfer. Director Roger Christian provided a commentary track. I would suggest you listen to it even if you hate the movie. It is really insightful. The plot about earth that is enslaved by Alien race. The Alien general is played by John Travolta with heavy make up. Barry Pepper (the sniper from Saving Private Ryan) is the hero. Like I said earlier the story is confusing but I really think that is because of poor editing. But this DVD is really good to show off your sound system.

Rating:
Summary: An excruciatingly bad movie
Review: I almost felt pain at watching this. I had heard stories but nothing prepares you for the horror of how bad this movie actually is. John Travolta, Forrest Whittaker, Barry Pepper...all good to very good actors, in a stinkbomb of a movie. At least "Plan 9 From Outer Space" was so bad it was funny...

Rating:
Summary: Okay, just hear me out . . .
Review: This movie went wrong from the opening line, but it's not entirely the fault of the movie makers-- well, it is, but the problem is they just took on a project way too big. Battlefield Earth, the book, was 1050 pages long. It just isn't physically possible to condense the sum 400,000 words into a two hour movie. That's of course setting aside the fact that, in my opinion, the movie would take a 2 million dollar budget, at least, with over a year to film everything on loctation in rual Colorado where it takes place. It would also help to have an actor playing Jonnie that could carry off the hero role successfully. At least John Travolta stuck to his charater. I don't know what the reviewers are talking about when they say he did an awful job-- he's the only one who actually palyed his character properly! Though I think that this movie took more abuse than it rightly deserved, it still didn't live up to the potential material availible in the book. The one thing that could easily have been avoided was how the majority of the main book charaters were cut out. Sure Jonnie, Terl, Chrissie and Ker were there, but I didn't even realize there was a Robert the Fox until I read a cast list. And who in the world was "Carlo"? It seems like the writer got overwhelmed and roled Dunneldeen, Glencannon, Stormalong and numerous other Scottsmen into the neat little package of Carlo. That's setting aside the Chinise and Africans in the last third of the book. The movie only covered approximately one-third of the book before jumping to three-quarters where you find out the Psychlo home planet has turned into a sun. Overall, it would have been better to leave L. Ron Hubbard's masterpiece alone rather than disgrace its name by giving people the impression that it was just like the movie. If you plan on reading the book, which I highly recomend, pay no attention to the movie. The only resemblance they share is in title and the four main charatcters mentioned above, though Ker is completely different in the book. I'm truely sorry that the addaption didn't go more smoothly after all the material that was supplied for its making and the anticipation leading up to its release. This is just one of those situations where the only way to make a good book to movie adaption is to take the dialogue and action word for word in the movie. It would also help to make it into episodes (like Star Wars) or a miniseries (like what was done for Dune by the Sci-Fi Channel recently) so it could be longer which would allow time to cover everything mentioned in the novel. Any other way just doesn't work as unfortunately can be seen in this movie bearing the now misrepresented name of Battlefield Earth.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Money, Folks...
Review: Catch this on cable, just to say that you've seen it. Then, for your own good, forget about it.

I don't always agree with the critics, but in this case, they had a point. This movie is BAD. It's not quite entertaining enough to be so-bad-it's-funny, like Ed Wood movies (although Travolta's strange performance adds some amusement). It's just BAD.

The director can't seem to understand the artistic purpose in tilting a camera, so he does it through most of the movie, like a kid playing with a toy. The plot is hopelessly garbled; the script is horrendous. (Now, I know that most people don't see an action movie for the script, but is it wrong to hope for better dialogue than this?) Barry Pepper is given little to do but run from various Psychloes and flip his hair around. (I was quite surprised to learn that he was in "Saving Private Ryan." What happened?!) I didn't care if the "good" characters lived or died. I just wanted the movie to end. By the climax, I didn't even care if it made sense, just as long as it ENDED.