After watching this movie for the first time I stayed staring at the TV screen completely numb with my mouth wide open by the sheer horror of it. Everything you heard about "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000" is true!
"Battlefield Lame" is based on the novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of the (in)famous Scientology church(The religion of the rich and famous)
In the year 3000 the good old planet Earth is lay waste by a race of vicious extraterrestrial creeps called the Psychlos which have slaved the planet. Apparently 90% of the population of earth died laughing at their ridiculous visage: a sort of Cowardly Lion meets Chewbacca meets Uruk-hai warrior. A few of the non slave humans survive in the wild without any kind of technology, living as primitives. One of them, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper, who looks like Clint Howard with an anorexic Matthew Lillard combined) is taken prisoner.
(Spoilers)
In captivity he plans revolution and thanks of the sheer stupidity of the Psychlos, the crappy script and a healthy diet of rats (don't ask) he gets away with it, a final battle is set, primitives humans who knew nothing about technology learn how to fly combat jets in a few days in flight simulators with only repeating "Piece of cake, piece of cake" as a motto. Then is Psychlos v/s humans. Who will win?...
(End Spoilers)
According to John Travolta this is a movie he wanted to make for more than 20 years in honor of his dear mentor Mr. Hubbard. It seems that the wait was in vain. Apparently the filmmakers and producers were aiming high with this movie, they were dreaming another "Star Wars" trilogy in the making with thousand of millions wasted in merchandising, action figures and promotion, several spin off were planned before the premiere(including a sequel and even an animation series!) but after the box office and critical slaughter they wake up and realize they got "Robot Monster", "Plan 9 of Outer Space", "Manos, The Hands of Fate", "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", "Terror from the Year 5000" and "Mommie Dearest" all rolled into one.
This lifeless, cliche ridden waste of film is one of the worst movies ever made. No doubt about it. Everything that made the cinema art great is wrong in this one. Terrible script, inept direction, ugly photography and lighting, lame editing, overblown sound, obtrusive camera angles, run of the mill special effects and the acting MY GOD! the acting is incredible bad. The entire cast is making fool of themselves but it seems they thought they were doing Shakespeare in space. The urge of bursting into laughter after reading those lines must have being difficult to repress during the filming. And even under thousand of layers of bad make up you can still notice Travolta hysterical overacting (who takes his character waaaay too seriously, channeling Vincent Vega by the way of Danny Suko with a little bit of Tony Manero on crack) and Forest Whitaker face of complete embarrassment. I felt sorry for Barry Pepper who must have signed the dotted line thinking this part would be his big break. I hope his career recovers. And why is Richard Tyson doing the role of Tarzan in the future? Or is Deathstalker? Or Yor? My favorite is Kim Coates in the role of Carlo, world's biggest wimp and useless sidekick who spent the entire movie cowering in fear, arm waving, over reacting, and eye popping in extreme his green eyes, you'll swear he is Marty Feldman in disguise.
See it to believe it. And then exorcise your TV set.
1/10