Cinema historical past is filled with masterpieces — after which there’s Battlefield Earth. Typically cited as one of many worst films ever madethe notorious 2000 sci-fi epic is leaving Netflix on the finish of February. So if you happen to’ve ever been morbidly interested by what a $73 million catastrophe appears like in gradual movement (and at a everlasting Dutch angle), your time is operating out.
Primarily based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard (sure, that L. Ron Hubbard)the movie is ready within the 12 months 3000, the place Earth has been conquered by an alien race referred to as the Psychlos. Humanity has been lowered to scattered survivors, together with Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), who’s enslaved by the gleefully villainous Terl, performed by John Travolta.
Terl forces people to mine gold — apparently the Psychlos’ most prized useful resource — earlier than Jonnie launches a rise up utilizing the aliens’ personal expertise in opposition to them. On paper, it feels like a pretty customary sci-fi premise. In execution? It’s cinematic chaos. It is so gleefully dangerous, you merely should watch it. Battlefield Earth was a long-gestating ardour undertaking for Travolta, who spent years making an attempt to convey Hubbard’s novel to the display, and it has nothing to do with Scientology, sincere.
How Unhealthy Is ‘Battlefield Earth’?
Oh boy, it is a stinker. It is so dangerous. When Battlefield Earth premiered in Might 2000, critics didn’t simply dislike it — they annihilated itand so they had enjoyable whereas doing it too. Roger Ebert famously wrote, “I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I used to be witnessing one thing historic, a movie that for many years to return would be the punch line of jokes about dangerous films.” Selection dubbed it “the Showgirls of sci-fi shoot-’em-ups.” And Jon Stewart went even additional, calling it “a cross between Star Wars and the scent of ass.”
A Collider retrospective by Collier Jennings added this nugget:
“None of it compares to Travolta’s appearing, which is the top of hamming it up. Travolta delivers strains like, “When you have been nonetheless studying SPELL YOUR NAME, I used to be being educated…to CONQUER GALAXIES!” in an over-the-top register, to the purpose the place you possibly can see the tooth marks he is left from chewing the surroundings. Battlefield Earth ought to be the movie each future filmmaker watches when studying what not to do on set. It was dangerous when it premiered in 2000, and it is nonetheless dangerous all these years later.”
Battlefield Earth will go away Netflix on the finish of the month.
- Launch Date
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Might 12, 2000
- Director
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Roger Christian