Battlefield Earth

 

Watched January 17, 2025

2000

Starring: John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Sabine Karsenti

Director: Roger Christian

 

I read the book! I found it at a little free library. After starting the book, I found the VHS at a thrift store so it was all coming together. I had listened to several bad movie podcasts about the movie so I knew it wasn't good. The paperback is 1066 pages long, so it took me awhile to get though it, and I didn't want to watch the movie until I finished the book.

 

After starting the book, I knew the movie would be a challenge because it's a lot of internal thoughts of Terl and Jonnie, letting the reader know what their plans are and that is hard to show in a movie...let alone many of the other problems the movie has.

 

The movie is so many dutch angles! Text crawl about alien Psychlos taking over planet Earth. Jonnie (Barry Pepper) lives in a cave man looking village. He's off hunting when his dad dies. Chrissy (Sabine Karsenti), his gal pal tells him and immediately wants to take his horse and see if there is more outside their village. The elder warms of the monsters, but Jonnie heads out anyway. On his journey, he finds some other human tribes, they make it to the ruins of a city. Some Psychlos capture them after running through several panes of glass and more dutch angles. Jonnie is taken to the cages where they keep all the humans. ( In the book he is the only human captured at first.)

 

Terl (John Travolta) is the head of the Psychlo security on this planet. He hates it and hopes to leave soon. The Pyschlos don't breath Earth's atmosphere so their city/working area has a glass dome over the whole thing. Terl want to get gold and leave back to Planet Psychlo. He finds a gold vein but it's near uranium which would explode the Psychlo breath gas. He want to get humans to mine it for him. Terl grabs Jonnie after he tries to escape with two other guys. He throws him in the learning machine from the Chinklo people and Jonnie learns the Pscyhlo language and math, etc.

 

Terl then teaches Jonnie to fly Psychlo planes. Terl sets up Ker (Forest Whittaker) to take the blame for training humans. But Terl also get leverage on his superior because he's been lying about the Earth mine not being profitable. Explained better in the book, duh. This leader signs paperwork that is blank so Terl can acquisition the mining materials he needs to steal the gold he wants for himself without letting the company know about it.

 

The humans are dropped off at the mine but Jonnie discovers Ft. Knox on a map so they go get that gold and go train at an old air force base. Chrissie is captured somehow so that's why Jonnie does whatever Terl wants. She has a bomb collar put on her, Jonnie gets the captured folks to work together.

 

The group of humans uses the learning machine to show Ker the footage that Tern is trying to use as leverage to blame Ker if the 'home office' finds out.

 

Terl gets the gold and plans to transport it to his planet with their special transport thing. But the humans escape then one of them joins the shipment with a nuclear bomb. They blow the glass dome but we don't see the Pyschlos asphyxiate, instead Jonnie and Terl fight. Jonnnie puts the bomb collar on Terl's arm and it explodes. They blow up the Psychlo planet and they win.

 

It ends with the humans putting Terl in a prison made of his gold.

 

Some practical effects. The Psychlos  don't look as they are dexcribed in the book, they are supposed to be nine feet tall, hairy with eyelid and mouth bones. Instead it's John Travolta in huge boots and weird claw gloves. Chrissie is about the same poorly written character as the book. Barry Pepper tries his best as Jonnie. Obviously the book is a lot more involved with the interactions but it also has a huge debt/diplomacy ending about negotiating information about the Pyschlos war profiteering wiht all the aliens in the galaxy. The movie is bad, but nothing like I imagined it. It looks like they had a signaficantly lower budget than they expected so a lot of special effects don't cut it and it just seem slike missing footage in other areas.

 

The story could be a mini series now. It's weird Scientology doesn't make more movies based on all L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi novels because they own it it, right? But this was such a bomb I guess they don't want to go down that route again.