Rating: 
Summary: Why make this into a movie?
Review: L. Rob Hubbard is an amazing author, poet and philosopher. More then that.. he is a genius. The guy has written everything from western classics to his theories on the human mind to great science fiction stories like "Battlefield Earth" and a great series that he put together called "Mission Earth". "Battlefield Earth" would have been a great idea for a film in Hollywood, had it come out when the book was written years ago. Since then every studio has stolen ideas from this fine piece of literature, and what we have here is a film that looks as if it was ripped off of every science-fiction film produced when it should be the other way around. In fact, "Battlefield Earth" was originally suppose to be made into an blockbuster film upon the release of the novel but somehow it never developed until John Travolta funded the project on his own. What you did have was a wonderful story about how a society that was lost and tried to find itself by learning from it's amazing past. The novel read for thousands of pages. It was very deep and covered many aspects of the characters, and made for a legendary story. What you got with this film was everything crammed into a two hour movie, that only Hollywood itself, would every think to pull off. Had this been done, like ABC's attempt to do Stephen King's stand with a weekly mini-series we might have had something. Stephen King's was a similar novel with it's length and depth that a 2 hour setting in a theatre would never have come close to covering. To wrap it up... this movie should never have been made. Had it been a six part, epic? Maybe. But as a film, it should have stayed with Mr. Hubbard as the classic, it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Thanks, But I'll Keep My Money
Review: It's important to disregard the connection between this movie L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. They always get dragged into a discussion of the film and they shouldn't be. Simply as a motion picture Battlefield Earth is bad stuff indeed. Some bad movies are entertaining simply because they are bad but BE is bad in a way that makes it totally unpleasant to watch. For instance, we're expected to accept that technically sophisticated extraterrestrial space-Rastafarians come to earth to take our gold and that it's on the surface where their dehumanized slaves can muck it out. This wouldn't be a good effort for a self-important, nerdy eighth grade boy in a creative writing class. As a key element to the plot of a motion picture it's absurd.
The idea of spending millions to put such obstinately immature stuff on the screen is a perfect example of how the entertainment industry has always been dominated by people who hope to make a buck by assuming audiences are composed of idiots with money they can't wait to get rid of. If Battlefield Earth's poor investment return burnt enough fingers we may be spared any further efforts to put E. Ron's oeuvre on the screen.
Rating:
Summary: A real disappointment
Review: I'll keep this short and simple...I got this movie because I'm a science fiction nut, but this movie just bored me to death. I thought having John as the main character in this movie would mean it would be at least OK...boy was I wrong. Terrible plot and the squence of events just didn't add up. Not recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: DREADLOCKS RISING!
Review: "Battlefield Earth" is not as bad as critics say it is, but the film sure makes for some good jokes. It has some great action and visual effects, but even that cannot help a pretty weak story. Traolta gives his worst performance ever in this as far as I know. Barry Pepper could've done better. He proved himself with "Saving Private Ryan." Overall, an okay film. DVD is better than film. Movie Grade: C+; DVD Grade: B+
Rating:
Summary: Bad, but not THAT bad. I've seen worse.
Review: This isn't the out-and-out turkey that film critics want you to believe. Granted, it ain't great, either. I read the book "Battlefied Earth" about 12 years ago and loved it. The story is MASSIVE in scope and pretty entertaining. Not a drop of Church of Scientology stuff in it, either. I think this was just too massive a project to transform into a movie. It might have been served better as a Sci-Fi Channel mini-series. But because Scientology poster-boy Travolta made it, the public perceived it as his attempt to bring widespread appeal and/or credibility to an L. Ron Hubbard work. Too bad for everyone. The book is good, the movie is not. If I hadn't read the book, I'd have had NO idea what the backstory or main thrust of this movie was. But after seeing this movie I went out and purchased another copy of the book and read it again, and I enjoyed it even more. This movie is more pedestrian than terrible. "Independence Day" was worse than this movie. God, I HATED that movie! 'Nuff said. The only truly bad thing about the movie "Battleship Earth" is that John Travolta was miscast as the lead villain Terl. Terl was written as a greedy company man, a small cog in a larger "alien" organization. Travolta plays him all wrong and just comes off looking silly. The focus of the book was on the hero, Johnny Goodboy Tyler. Travolta wanted to make his character the centerpiece of the film, and the story suffered as a result. In short: "Battlefied Earth" the book is great source material for what could have been a good mini-series. But on the big screen as Travolta's pet Scientology project, it just doesn't work.
Rating: 
Summary: A really great sci-fi movie.
Review: I must be the only one in america that actually liked this movie. It was kinda hokey, the guys learning how to fly military aircraft in two weeks. But the destruction of the Psyclos homeworld was increadable. And no this movie does not turn you in to a scientologist like so many people think. That would be like saying watching E.T. will turn you Jewish because its directed by Steven Speilberg. Over all, it was great and didn't deserve the bad wrap it got.
Rating:
Summary: Too bad the book aint this funny!
Review: One of those campy "so bad it's good" flicks. Goofy dialogue, bizarro production design. Fast paced, unlike the book which meanders for a 1000 pages, the movie portrays the more interesting first half of the overlong longwinded book. The aliens "Psychlos" look like Klinglons mated with Gene Simmons, which is way funnier than the purple wookies in the book. Amazing that they took a boring novel and made it into an entertaining movie! Anyway the plot goes like this. Psychlos, an alien race of psychiatrists, enslave mankind in their quest to mine gold from the planet. the main baddie, Terlvolta, in a scheme to use man to mine the gold, uses a feisty caveman named Jonnie Goodboy to do the work, Terl trains Jonnie on a electro-psychometer which clears his mind and allows Jonnie to learn at a geometric rate, inadvertantly sowing the seeds for a human revolt, with Jonnie "Goodboy" as the human leader against Terl "Antagonist". The movie wisely ommited some of the racial slurs in the book, the movie version's alien Clinkos were based on the novels "Chinkos" an alien race with an asian bent. It was a carryover of the author's well reknowned hatred of the Chinese. Though it may be excused in pulp era writings, Hubbard had the cahones to write that in 1980.
Rating:
Summary: delightfully awful
Review: "Battlefield Earth" bring us two concepts that should never be combined: Forrest Whittaker and codpieces. This is a work of epic miscalculation. It's just stunningly bad. Even simple things, like lighting and continuity - things that the filmmakers might have gotten right by accident - are horribly mangled. The sets? Terrible. The costumes and makeup? Ludicrous. The story? Oh, let's not get started. What I'm trying to tell you si that this is one of the funniest unintentional comedies I've ever seen. I watched this with a friend and we were slack-jawed with amazement throughout. If you're a connoisseur of bad film, this is a must see. But I still recommend a few stiff drinks to take the sting out. Even if you got through "Waterworld" with your sanity intact, this one's gonna hurt.
Rating:
Summary: Every cliche in the book
Review: If you've already seen Planet of the Apes, the Star Wars series, and generally kept up with science fiction in a half-hearted sort of way... you've already seen this movie. I'm usually a serious lover of bad science fiction, but sci-fi that is well-conceived and poorly implemented. This is the opposite. If you don't turn off your brain when you start the movie, expect pain. But hey, at least they spent 100+ million making it, so the effects are great. I'd still rather be strapped to a chair for a week, forced to watch 50's sci-fi over and over than have to suffer this disaster again.
Rating:
Summary: Hideous, Absolutely hideous
Review: This is quite possibly the worst science fiction film ever made, and it shows up on quite a few of the lists of that subject. I wrote this review simply to rate this movie low and hopefully warn innocent movie viewers away from it.
| 
