| Product: |
Battlefield Earth - Take Back The Planet (DVD) |
| Date: |
07.09.05 (40 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Hmm... tough one
Disadvantages: Script, acting, special effects, camerawork, direction...
Battlefield Earth, the $73 million project led by John Travolta, won 7 out of a possible 9 Golden Raspberry awards, including worst film, worst actor, worst director, worst script and worst supporting actor.
I'll give you a brief summary of the plot, which is pretty brief anyway. Barry Pepper play some human that gets captured by some evil aliens called Psychlos (lol) and gets taken to a prison camp and made to work for the Psychlos mining the Earth of all its mineral etc. However, when he learns how to speak the Psychlo language and learns about how they work, he hatches a plan to overthrow the Psychlos and, incidentally, blow up their planet, with the help of all the other human slaves. As you do.
However, do not be fooled by the mediocre story, the film itself is even worse. First, the acting. John Travolta isn't all that bad really, he's probably the best thing about the film, it's just Barry Pepper's complete woodenness and the inability of the audience to relate to him that completely ruins everything. Forest Whitaker should also be ashamed at his involvement, other than that, the cast are nobodies.
The direction is similarly awful; every scene is shot through either a blue or orange tint, and it's more than just a tint, it completely changes the colour of the screen and its ridiculous. Every action shot is filmed from a crazy angle, which means that you can literally not tell what is going. Then there is the ultra-naff slow-motion minute long scene when Pepper is running alon whilst everything on either side of him is exploding, which has been done many times before and infinitely better.
The script is dire, the special effects are really nothing to shout about considering it was made in 2000, and the plot as I mentioned is boring.
But it's the continuity, or rather lack of it, that spoils it the most. We are supposed to believe that a load of cavemen can just learn how to fly jet planes in about a week, or that they can just waltz into Fort Knox and steal all the gold, then get back with it all in blocks and fool the aliens, who are supposed to be so much more intelligent, into thinking that they cast the gold themselves.
The line that got me was when they have the code to John Travolta's safe, they type it in and it doesn't work, so Pepper says "They're smarter than that, let's try it backwards", and what do you know, it opens.
Overall, everything about this film is unitentionally funny, so see it for a laugh by all means, just don't expect it to be good.
Summary: Truly awful
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