Battlefield Earth

Ok, look. Everyone has reviewed “Battlefield Earth”. There is literally no ground left to tread, and no stone left to turn over. Here are just a handful of existing “Battlefield Earth” reviews that are totally worth your time to check out:

If that’s not enough for you, go give a listen to the eviscerating episode of “How Did This Get Made?” on the movie.

Now that you have watched and listened to all of those reviews, you are at the point where I was when I started watching this movie for the first time. I already knew about the hammy acting, the bad effects, the baffling editing, the behind-the-scenes troubles, the Razzies, and the whole cavalcade of incompetencies and bizarrities surrounding the movie. And, really, there isn’t anything else to say. Here is the opening to Roger Ebert’s half-star review, who sums it all up as well as anyone could:

“Battlefield Earth” is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It’s not merely bad; it’s unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum.

I will note something about “Battlefield Earth”: it is a near-perfect example of a Hollywood bad movie. I’ve covered a lot of movies in the IMDb Bottom 100, but most of them have been foreign or independent productions. However, there is nothing quite like an all-star failure that had high expectations. I think the only other IMDb Bottom 100 flicks that had a comparable fall are “Gigli” and “Foodfight”, and neither of them were quite as catastrophic or public as “Battlefield Earth”.

This movie was supposed to be *big*. There was tons of money behind it, lots of marketing,  a line of toys, blueprints for sequels, and everything you would expect from a top-tier box office performer. The colossal failure of this movie, particularly in the wake of successful sci-fi flicks like “The Matrix”, was a real shock.

As you would expect, the behind-the-scenes hubris is palpable when you watch this movie. The overconfidence exudes from every frame, which is part of what makes the failure of this film so damn satisfying in comparison to its low-budget cohorts in the IMDb Bottom 100. Here is a relevant quote from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax member Kevin Murphy, as recorded in “Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies” by Michael Adams:

“When you see a film like Warren Beatty’s “Town & Country”, you can see all of the ego in the world on the screen…Schadenfreude is a classic human emotion. We have a passion for seeing people we hold up as models of success fall down. That goes back to Aristophanes. All the badness just comes off the screen – incompetently made and morally bankrupt, a nice combination.”

Murphy absolutely nails a major part of why it is so much fun to watch a big-budget bad movie. These flicks aren’t necessarily the worst things out there, but they very much failed to meet blockbuster expectations. Movies like “Batman & Robin” and “Spider-Man 3” immediately come to mind in this category: they are nowhere near as incompetent as “Oasis of the Zombies” or “Monster A Go Go”, but they are way more entertaining failures to watch through due to that sweet, sweet schadenfreude.

I absolutely recommend “Battlefield Earth” to any bad movie fans. Despite some issues with pacing, the things that are bad about this movie add to the unintentional entertainment value. Objectively, it isn’t realistically bad enough to make an honest Bottom 100 ranking, but I have no issue with it being in the IMDb Bottom 100: there is just to much to hate and enjoy about this movie that it fits right in down there.