Battlefield Earth (2000) is the infamous Scientology propaganda film commissioned by John Travolta. It is considered one of the worst moves ever made, but I'd never seen it before yesterday.
It is now one of my favourite films. 
Literally everthing about this movie is hillariously bad. The sheer incompetence is awe-inspiring and I didn't want it to end.
Story & Writing
In Battlefield Earth, a species of 10-foot tall aliens called Psychlos (seriously) run a mining colony on Earth after conquering the planet a thousand years ago after a war lasting just nine minutes. Humans are now reduced to stone-age tribes in irradiated wastelands, or slaves of alien masters.
I can't really say much more except it makes no sense. The Psychlos believe "man-animals" are too stupid to mine for gold, but they already employ humans as a labour force in their city. 
The film is filled with the most ham-fisted exposition I've ever heard. As an audience-member, can you understand what blackmail is? Yes? Too bad! We're going to tell you anyway in 90 additional seconds of dialogue!
The Acting
John Travolta stars the scheming Psychlo security chief named Terl (seriously), trying to earn a transfer off the planet. His nemesis is the human Johnny Goodboy (seriously), played by a wooden Barry Pepper, who must lead humans to freedom.
Travolta's (and everyone else's) performance is so far over the top, he can't see all the way down. He isn't chewing the scenery, he is engorging himself upon it. Hense my favourite line in any movie anywhere:
If you ever wanted to see John Travolta in dreadlocks and a codpiece shooting the legs off a cow, this is the film for you.
Even Forest Whitacker, who's acting talent is undeniable, is wasted with nothing to do except deliver terrible dialogue.
Cinematography
A "Dutch angle" is a filming technique where the camera is tilted off the horizon to portray a scene of uneasiness or tension.
Literally the entire film is shot in this way. It looks like the DP had a stroke.
Also, there are loads of corny slo-mo shots, an over-use of wipe transitions, and most scenes are shot with an ugly, sickly purple filter.
Pacing
Battlefield Earth is all over the place. Fast-paced action set pieces are inter-cut with corny slo-mo. Thematically important scenes are not allowed to breathe, but are immediately followed by more exposition or John Travolta overacting.
Special Effects
Honestly, for 2000, the special effects aren't half bad. It all looks ugly as sin, of course. But I think this was a deliberate choice rather than technical negligence.
Summary
This film is worse than I ever thought possible and lives up to its reputation. But it's so bad, it became a joy to watch. I found myself laughing many times at the sheer absurd awfulness of this movie.
If you haven't seen Battlefield Earth, I thoroughly recommend it. I love this movie.
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Underrated gem
Hubbard was a pulp writer. Battlefield Earth was meant as a throwback to stuff like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan or John Carter books. These sorts of stories tend to star hyper-masculine characters who are out of sync with the tamed values of modern (over)civil society, but (thanks to the laws of boys fiction) get to make a difference the old fashioned way
Every weird choice in Battlefield Earth has a reason behind it, even if it ends up looking goofy onscreen. To give a quick example, the "Spell your name" line is set in a bar after Terl has been humiliated. He's a pathetic drunk. It's a laugh line. Many people shit on it without the context. The main objection to this sort of defense is that Travolta's Terl is not an intimidating character. But that's kind of the point.
The Psychlos are a pathetic, effeminate, deeply idiotic society that only appears intimidating because of the whims of fate. Their race is older and vaster, their bodies physically bigger, and they're flush with powerful technology. But when someone (at least, a manly human hero) actually takes the fight to them, they're a paper tiger and they go down quick because they lack that raw animal energy. Basically, it's a movie about a literal caveman smashing industrial society to bits. Essentially "nah I'd win" the movie. With an over-the-top orchestral score to match.
If it had come out 15 years later, chuds would have used it as /their/ film, while leftoids would argue that ACTUALLY the Psychlos represented Marxian alienation while Jonnie is the class-conscious anarchist warrior. And the Redditors at /r/HFY would have peepeerode it to oblivion.
I think the filmmakers' main error was going for the queasy fever-dream atmosphere to compensate for the shit budget. The Psychlo stuff probably benefits from it, but when you put the humans onscreen you should be using a much simpler and more direct cinematic language to match the masculine motif and the "epic adventure" score. They also should have picked someone with the Gigachad look over Barry Pepper.
!kino
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HOLY BASED
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Was it low budget? I've got no idea because I don't know if any of the actors actually got paid or they all did it for free because they're Scientologist true believers like Travolta.
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The listed budget was $70 million, but there was an unrelated scam going on and the studio fraudulently overstated it by $30 million.
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A cult was involved in some massive fraud???
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That's great and all, but I asked for my burger without cheese.
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It's awful but so much fun. Say what you will about L. Ron Hubbard but at least he was creative.
The reason why the bad guys are called "Psychlos" is because he hated psychiatrists so much. Wonder why...
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I read the ENTIRE Mission Earth series because I just couldn't believe how bad it was but how much I simultaneously couldn't get enough of it.
He's the car crash of science fiction authors.
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Did you know Mission Earth has a companion prog-rock soundtrack? Yes, a series of novels has a soundtrack. According to our tour guide at the L Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition this was a world first innovation from the man himself.
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Lmao no frickin way. This is as terribly bad but good as the books
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Ugh that soundtrack is so bad
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Wasn't some of his early work supposedly not absolute dogshit? I never bothered because Scientology is insane and we had shitty science fiction at home (all the Dune books written by the son).
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Hubbard was known as a fast writer who could spin fun adventure stories. He wasn't a lolcow but there's also not too much reason to read him today. The general literary talent level in Golden Age sci-fi was lower, and the stuff we remember today is the stuff that pushed interesting ideas (which wasn't really Hubbard's forte).
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I think Hubbard is what Gene Roddenberrry would have become if he started to believe that he was a god.
I hope someone makes a film about the Xenu thetan story, I would watch the shit out of that. It'll never happen though, we'll just have to live with the 2-minute South Park animation.
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Psychiatrists are fairly evil/ incompetent. They've done some of the most vile shit possible.
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Lol they told him he was crazy and he should be in the loony bin.
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Is it more or less fun than The Core?
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they dont make enough fun science movies anymore like the 90s, everything has to be serious or
moonfall could have been great if the characters werent so gay
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I just wish modern sci-fi movies would stop sucking China's peepee in every scene.
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Is this a bit or am I really that out of touch with post-2010 movies?
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Fellating China is Hollywood's highest priority after abusing children. Voracious film studios want those sweet chinashekels
but the CCP won't allow a film's release unless it strokes the enormous Chinese national ego.
Take the Godzilla franchise, for example. It's as Japanese as bukkake. But in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, they have a chinese actress and Mothra hatching in China for some reason. In the attrocious Godzilla vs Kong, the climax is set in Hong Kong.
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China only allows a certain number of foreign movies to play each year (I think it's like 20?) so if your big r-slurred capeshit movie is accepted then you're guaranteed to get like $300 million from lowbrow Chinese.
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I hope that the Twister sequel is at least gonna be fun.
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funny I just got a bunch of old VHS from my moms dead friends estate and I rewatched both Twister and The Core. Twister does science parts good, its too long tho
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It won't be
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Did he really say "the core (of the Earth) is the size of Mars"?
Why couldn't you just say "the moon"? It would have been less wildly wrong. It's not some obscure astronomy fact that Mars is twice as big as Earth.
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Thats not even the worst science error in this movie.
Watch it.
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ngl made me do a double take
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Somehow more r-slurred. The Core is a solid b movie for science fiction playing Saturday afternoon for children
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The Whaaaaales.
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DJ qualls with his xena tapes and hot pockets
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if you want a good bad 80s movie, RLM recommended this like 10yrs ago
the father who is always drinking in every scene, chases his uppity daughter around with a shotgun and comes across an alien, and proceeds to immediately shoot it without consideration
I watched the entire thing last night on youtube
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Sometimes botw movies are a miss especially the ultra low budget ones but galaxy invader was awesome
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WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL
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YOUR FRIENDLY BARTENDER!
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It's just perfect
for a bad movie night.
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It's up there with The Room and Sharknado (only the first one) where it's so terrible it's just funny
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I know what you mean. But I didn't get a kick out of Sharknado, nor any of that 2000s-2010s SyFy Channel schlock like Dinoshark vs Supergator.
Those movies are deliberately made to be cheap-as-shit, awful films.
The Room, Battlefield Earth, The Wicker Man (2006) etc are so much fun to watch because sincere effort was put into making them. The side-splitting terribleness is unintentional.
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It goes to show you how trash Hollywood would be without the Jews.
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I feel like Nation of Islam is black scientology, and I've always wanted their battlefield earth. The best star power they can wrangle is Nick Cannon though, so I don't think we'll get anything good.
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There's actually been some kind of merger between NoI and Scientology where Farrakhan is telling his people to read Dianetics. The Scientologists must be paying him a heck of a lot.
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Wow, you weren't kidding.
I love how their biggest problem with Scientology is that it's majority-white. Also:
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Thought this said "Seinfeld Earth"
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Frick yes dude BE is one of my all time favorites as well. "Our friendly bartender!" is such an epic delivery
and the whole piece oozes cheese like an American 
fast food commercial.
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This is how I streamed with friends
a while ago. Worked great 
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Whenever you post this I don't read it.
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Stop downmarseying me you fricking meanie
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Stop not reading my hilarious yet informative effortposts about politics in foreign countries.
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I read 
Btw did it really take you 18 minutes to find this gif?
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I don't have special alerts to wake me up every time you post something r-slurred. I'm not a SAC pilot on 5 minutes notice to get airborne before the missiles land.
As for the gif that goes back a billion years. I think I got it from Ed.
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Matrix and its consequences...
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Have you seen the new Rebel Moon part 1 and 2?
It gives me Battlefied Earth vibes, it's so bad that it's almost entertaining
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No. That is Zack Snyder's latest abortion of a film, yes? I'll go and
it to to see if it's enjoyably bad.
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Correct. It's mostly just bad.
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This was what he wanted as a Star Wars movie.
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Hey, I saw that you just joined rdrama and a group of people who hate me are trying to smear my name by calling me a date male feminist. I just wanted to let you know that it's not true. If you want all the receipts proving it they're right here.
The TL;DR is that I hooked up with one of the hot girls on rdrama, and since I was twice her age, a lot of the guys here who wanted to bang her got jealous and assumed that the only way I could have managed that was by raping her, even though she herself said both before and afterwards that it was all completely consensual. So now that you're the new hot girl on rdrama, I guess they think that I'm going to somehow seduce you into flying all the way across the country (or some crazy shit like that) to hook up with me and they're trying to talk shit about me to make sure that doesnt happen. I don't understand it either, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm a nice guy and I hope you'll look at the evidence and make up your own mind instead of listening to all the jealous haters.
Anyway, with that little intro out of the way, welcome to rdrama! The culture's a little rough here and you're probably going to get tons of requests to •show boobsU but if you talk to some of the women here first before engaging with all the creepy dudes, they'll give you some good advice to avoid stalkers and predators. Or (If you haven't been scared off by the rumor mill) you're welcome to ask me and I'm happy to help.
Just out of curiosity, how did you find this place?
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Engaging with a film because it is bad is the troglodytic behavior
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Then call me Ooga Booga, because I love it.
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