Battlefield Earth Reviews

Battlefield Earth, often considered to be the worst science fiction movie of all time, is an ugly, incomprehensible, and chaotic dystopian mess from start to finish. Based on a work by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, this movie focuses on the ultraviolent alien species Psychlos that enslave and study the last living humans in the 31st Century. The humans rebel and join forces to destroy these damn dirty aliens once and for all. As a person who’s not quite into science fiction movies, I found out early on why this movie is often considered the worst. The laughable Psychlo designs look like troll dolls covered in moss with dirty mops on their heads. Despite being the leader of the superior conquering alien race, Terl (John Travolta) has no idea how to communicate with the humans or what food they eat. The humans also have inconsistent tendencies, the shopping mall mannequin worshippers that give away their weapons to villains, but yet know to use a nuclear bomb to take out the Psychlos’ planet. Seriously, you’d think Terl and his gang would have wiped out the human race on Earth with the use of radioactive fusion, rather than the other way around. So, with that said, Battlefield Earth is one miracle of a sci-fi flop. With the horrendous art direction, baffling idiotic inconsistencies and complete stupidity in the writing and characters, this movie is one giant intergalactic dog that has to be seen to be believed.

(1/2 Fort Knox Gold Bar out of 5)

To be honest, it has been a while since I have seen this movie but since it is considered as one of the worst movies ever, I don’t think I will waste my time by watching it a 2nd time. In fact, even though it might sound surprising, I actually saw the damned thing when it was released in the movie theater. To make things clear, it wasn’t my idea. Indeed, apparently, my best friend at the time had seen the trailer somewhere and he thought the whole thing looked pretty neat so we ended up watching the damned thing in the movie theater together. I wonder if there were a lot of people when we saw it, probably not. Obviously, my buddy had no idea that this movie was actually adapted from a book written by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. Anyway, to be honest, even though it was definitely a weak SF feature, that’s for sure, we didn’t think it at the time that it was the worst movie in the world.  Still, I remember it very well, the worst thing about this movie was the ending which seriously didn’t work at all. Anyway, to conclude, this movie was pretty much the worst egotrip delivered by John Travolta and it is not worth a look at all, except if you are interested in very bad movies. 

Worst movie ever? Not to me! One of the worst? Absolutely, ‘Battlefield Earth’ is being considered one of the worst movies ever. Alas, that is true! 'Battlefield Earth' has a silly storyline as well as an overuse of tilted angles and slow-motion, aliens that don't look like aliens, worthless action scenes and don't even get me started on acting (especially John Travolta)!!!

It is so ugly; John Travolta and Forest Whitaker play aliens but they look like the ugliest humans in the world, honestly, you turn a good looking man into an ugly, creepy alien who doesn’t even look like one, they're aliens, they're nine feet tall? They sound exactly like humans!

I'd agree with Roger Ebert who said:

"Hiring John Travolta and Forest Whitaker was a waste of money as we can't recognize them behind pounds of matted hair and gnarly makeup"

Agreed! I can hardly recognize Travolta but I can't recognize Whitaker at all! And I'd like to add, that matted hair, gnarly makeup, pointy nails and those tubes were a waste of money as they don't make them look threatening in the slightest!  

The action scenes are worthless; there are too many scenes of nothing but explosion and the effects don’t make a difference and around 95% of scenes are tilted?! Who the hell filmed those crappiest angles ever

Don’t even mention the awful acting (especially John Travolta and Forest Whitaker), I cannot believe that John Travolta offered to do a role in this awful movie (and because he's a scientologist, he even funded it and lost a lot of money), I also don’t really understand why Ker joins the good side while Terl is locked up and can only look at tons of gold

‘Battlefield Earth’ is a truly crap movie and is definitely not worth a look at all, unless you want to see how bad it is

Worst movie ever made? Boy howdy, they weren't kidding. Who could have possibly thought that Battlefield Earth was a good idea? Who? Surely someone working on the set could've seen how absolutely moronic this whole thing is. Even The Last Airbender had some decent special effects and tons of unintentional laughs. Battlefield Earth has absolutely nothing going for it, and now holds the honored position of being my least favorite movie.

This is where I'd usually explain the plot of the film, but in Battlefield Earth, everything is so needlessly confusing and sloppily made and edited, it's almost impossible to tell what's going on most of the time. To the best of my ability, the story is about John Travolta dressed up in awful attire and make-up, trying to take advantage of the primitive human race by using them to mine for gold. The humans, of course, are trying to break free from their captors.

This nearly two hour Sci-Fi film seems to never end. While the novelty of being unbelievably terrible may keep some entertained for a short while, I quickly became bored. One can only endure so much awfulness before becoming just plain tired of it.

To explain everything that Battlefield Earth did wrong would to be to write for years and years. And seeing as this movie has already wasted too much of my life, I'll just explain a small fraction of Battlefield Earth's flaws. This should be more than substantial evidence that this is a film to be avoided.

First off, the story is cliched, unintelligent, and told with such laziness, and terrible editing, there's no way to tell what's going on most of the time. In fact, after the movie was over, I didn't recall a single character's name. The manner in which the story is presented makes no sense. I hardly understood anything.

The film appears to repeat itself dozens of times. There were at least a dozen times in this film where Jonnie Tyler (the human protagonist) is being choked by Terl (John Travolta). At least five scenes involve Terl babbling about how stupid Ker (his assistant) is. And Jonnie Tyler makes at least three escape attempts. Not to mention the excessive use of slo-mo and slanted camera angles. Seriously, every other camera shot was done at a slanted angle, even when people were just talking with each other. People today complain about shaky cam, but if more audiences saw what too much angled camera shots looked like, they would have nothing to say.

Special effects are terrible. Costumes are terrible (Breathing devices that go into your nostrils? What were they thinking?!). Make-up is terrible. Dialogue is laughably terrible. And don't even get me started about acting.

The score by Elia Cmiral is loud and obnoxious (like the movie). It focuses too much on poor percussion than actual music. I can only remember two scenes where the score actually had a tune.

If you're dying to see what many proclaim to be "the worst movie ever," the full version of Battlefield Earth is on YouTube. If you want to save yourself two hours of painfully terrible (and painfully boring) cinema, you'd be better off staring at a blank wall for the same amount of time. Unintentional laughs last only as long as you can tolerate bad and boring cinema. Ugh, I can't believe John Travolta still has a career.

0/10

One word: Craptacular.
Written by a Sci-Fi writer who completely ignores the fundamentals of physics. Continuing, after 1000 years ONE guy finally figures out the Cylon language in a matter of hours? Humans easily figure out how to get into Fort Knox after 1000 years and find jet planes that are still capable of functioning and flying after sitting for 100's of years? I could go one but it hurts my soul.

I so wanted to walk out on this movie, but I was on a first date & since she was the one that recommended this, I didn't want to diminish my chances of getting laid.
Probably the only movie that I ever sat thru where upon the diasterous feeling that resulted from watching it, along with the diaster that the movie itself is, overwhelmed the story of diaster that the movie was supposed to depict.
I may have survived watching this movie,
but the sane aspect of my mind & every part of my soul have been permanently scarred.
A diaster flick in every sense that is possible to imagine.

I genuinely wanted to die during this movie.

( I know, I know......"So why did I award this film even a 1/10 when it actually deserves a 0/10?"
B'cuz at one point, there are scenes that have cavemen flying around in Harrier jets.
And with those kinds of balls, this movie, at least, deserves something ....)

Movie version of L.Ron Hubbard's pseudo classic. Basically John Travolta's scientology version of Mel Gibson's the Passion, only with english dialogue. Oh
this is so very bad in so many ways. Not even good for a laugh. Just grotesque an embarassing