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Sci-fi is one of the most popular genres when it comes to movies and there’s a good reason for that. Not only are sci-fi stories often fascinating and thought provoking, lending themselves to complex characters and big action, but they also cover a lot of territory in terms of subject matter. Everything from time travel to alien invasion, to advancements in technology that endanger humanity’s very existence falls under the sci-fi umbrella. It makes for a real feast of entertainment.
However, despite the large range of stories and settings and exciting elements, not every sci-fi movie is a good one. Some are predictable and some are just okay, but then there are those that are honestly just bad and now one of them—Battlefield Earth—is free to stream this month on Tubi. The John Travolta-starring film is a notorious failure, but more than 25 years later, it’s a movie worth checking out both for how overly eager it really is but for just how entertaining it is despite being very, very bad.
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Battlefield Earth Is a Mess (Which Actually Makes it Better)
Based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 1982 novel of the same name, Battlefield Earth was released in 2000, but it took a long time to get to that point. Hubbard had begun to try to get a movie made of the book before his death in 1986, but that didn’t work out. In 1994, Travolta had become a massive movie start, thanks in part to success of Pulp Fiction which led to his involvement in trying to make the film a reality. The independent production company, Franchise Pictures, picked the movie up in 1998 and Travolta invested millions of his own money into things. Production began in 1999 with Travolta very much hyping the film up as a massive sci-fi epic.
And on the surface, it seems like that would be the case. The film is set in the year 3000, a thousand years after an alien species, the Psychlos, came to Earth and conquered it. Now, humans have lost all of their knowledge and their sills and their intelligence, now existing largely as slave labor for the Psychlos who use them to mine all of Earth’s gold. However, one human, Jonnie, ends up starting a rebellion to take the Psychlos down. However, despite having what would seem like a strong sci-fi premise, there are major issues. The film actually only adapts half of the novel—Travolta had originally envisioned it as a duology—and that adaptation is just bad. There’s bad writing, really low-quality acting, and even worse effects.
You would think with bad, well, everything, the film would have no redeeming qualities but the opposite is actually true. The film more or less doubles down on how bad it is and leans into its mess by going bigger and harder. Jonnie helps humanity reclaim its sense, somehow they end up knowing how to use technology like fighter jets and nuclear missiles, things like that that simply make no sense. It’s so awkward that it somehow even botches its own ending and it’s in the botching and the absolute mess of it all where the brilliance is. You know it’s not going to get any better, but you can’t look away if for no other reason than you want to see just how bad it’s going to get. Nothing will make Battlefield Earth good, but there’s some joy in how bad it is—especially if you watch it while it’s streaming for free.
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