Ugh, main page of Wikipedia...

Duskofdead · Post by **Duskofdead** » Mon May 12, 2008 8:35 am

Battlefield Earth.

Anyone see it?

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon May 12, 2008 10:55 am

Man, that film sucked.

Post by **Mikey** » Mon May 12, 2008 12:46 pm

Terrible. Travolta made the film because of his devotion to Scientology - of course, the books on which the film was based were written by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Shame, too, because the novel of the same title was quite as bad as the movie.

Post by **Teaos** » Mon May 12, 2008 1:20 pm

Never seen it. I dont like Travolta as an actor so try to avoid his movies.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:14 pm

It's worth watching just for the awfulness.

Teaos, lemme give you a quick rundown. Aliens conquer Earth; the conquest takes literally minutes - they say nine minutes in the movie. A thousand years later men are living either as slaves or as little more than cave men, largely unaware of the alien's existence.

One such man is captured and put to work. He proves himself to be smart and resourceful to the aliens (they think of humans as animals. They even call us "man animals"). One alien puts him and some Humans to work mining gold as part of a scam.

The humans find Fort Knox and ship gold to the aliens from there to save themselves the trouble of mining it. Then with their free time they find an airbase and learn to fly a bunch of Harrier fighters that are there, and are still functioning despite it being a thousand years later and all.

Using this same technology that the aliens defeated with ease in the first place, the humans attack the alien city, defeat the aliens, send an atom bomb through to their home planet via a teleport machine, which sets off a chain reaction in the atmosphere and blows the whole thing up.

Doesn't it sound just WONDERFUL?

Post by **Tsukiyumi** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:19 pm

God, it's bad. They even tried touting it as a "Star Wars for a new generation", complete with silly-ass camera wipes. Gah.

Blackstar the Chakat · Mon May 12, 2008 5:31 pm

GrahamKennedy wrote:It's worth watching just for the awfulness.

Teaos, lemme give you a quick rundown. Aliens conquer Earth; the conquest takes literally minutes - they say nine minutes in the movie. A thousand years later men are living either as slaves or as little more than cave men, largely unaware of the alien's existence.

One such man is captured and put to work. He proves himself to be smart and resourceful to the aliens (they think of humans as animals. They even call us "man animals"). One alien puts him and some Humans to work mining gold as part of a scam.

The humans find Fort Knox and ship gold to the aliens from there to save themselves the trouble of mining it. Then with their free time they find an airbase and learn to fly a bunch of Harrier fighters that are there, and are still functioning despite it being a thousand years later and all.

Using this same technology that the aliens defeated with ease in the first place, the humans attack the alien city, defeat the aliens, send an atom bomb through to their home planet via a teleport machine, which sets off a chain reaction in the atmosphere and blows the whole thing up.

Doesn't it sound just WONDERFUL?

What The Fuck? That is wrong in about 8 different ways.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:36 pm

Graham, let's not forget the complete lack of character developement, or any exposition on the backstory at all.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:38 pm

I've never seen this film. Reading the blurb on the Wiki hopmepage, and reports here, it sounds like this state of affairs is good for my sanity.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:43 pm

Believe me, you have no idea.
I'd say it was comparable to watching a 30 car pile-up on a busy motorway, but at least 30 car pile-ups can be pretty cool looking.

Post by **Tsukiyumi** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:43 pm

What film? I never saw any "Battlefield Earth" film...

Reliant121 · Post by **Reliant121** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:45 pm

Dear god....that is raping the entire idea of science fiction. I vote this film be eradicated from existance.

Post by **Tsukiyumi** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:47 pm

Reliant121 wrote:Dear god....that is raping the entire idea of science fiction. I vote this film be eradicated from existance.

Seconded.

Wait, what film? I never saw any "Battlefield Earth" film...

Blackstar the Chakat · Mon May 12, 2008 5:49 pm

I just looked at the IMDB profile for this move and this movie had plot holes all over the place. Some of the stuff is just common sense. Like the humans not being considered smart enough to mine but smart enough to operate a forge. Then they happened to rip out a warhead right out of a nuke? They're designed so that they can't be ripped out exactly like they dipicted in the movie.

And I don't know if it's different for jets but I know when you're putting a car in long-term storage you're supposed to emtey it of all fluids. Also, jet fuel only has a shelf-life of 4 or 5 years. Some of this is just common sense.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Mon May 12, 2008 5:51 pm

ChakatBlackstar wrote:What The ****? That is wrong in about 8 different ways.

There's a whole bunch of stuff I left out. Like the fact that the aliens walk around on stilts, which is meant to make them look tall and menacing, but really just makes them look daft and clumsy.

Like the fact that the aliens hands sometimes have six fingers, but mostly have five (they forgot to put the prosthetics on in some scenes).

Like the fact that some of the cave-man humans are clean shaven.

Like that at least two thirds of the movie is filmed with the camera at an angle, so it constantly looks like the rooms are all tilted.

Like the fact that a third or so of it is filmed through a dark blue filter that makes it difficult to see what's going on.

Like the alien atmosphere blows up when it's exposed to radiation, for no apparent reason.

My all time favourite moment is when the evil alien, Terl, wants to demonstrate his evilness and power to the human. They're in a field, so Terl shoots the leg off a cow. It topples over. We then see Terl as he fires a bunch more times... and each time you hear "Moooo!" <THUD> come from offscreen.

And honest to god, this is NOT done for laughs. This was how they wanted to make him look threatening.