Battlefield Earth is a 2000 American science fiction action film directed by Roger Christian from a script by Corey Mandell and J. David Shapiro. Based on the 1982 novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth is set in the year 3000 and follows a human rebellion against the "Psychlos", a tyrannical alien species that has ruled Earth for a thousand years. John Travolta, who produced the film, stars as main antagonist Terl alongside Barry Pepper and Forest Whitaker.
Before his death in 1986, Hubbard himself had campaigned for a Hollywood adaptation of his novel since its publication, asking support from Scientology figures in the industry, including Travolta. After the financial and critical success of 1994's Pulp Fiction revitalized Travolta's career, he decided to use his newfound influence to revive and lead the project with the involvement of other Scientologist figures, although funding from major studios proved troublesome to obtain due to concerns regarding the script and Hubbard's connections to Scientology.
In 1998, it was picked up by the independent production company Franchise Pictures, which specialized in rescuing pet projects. Production began in 1999, largely funded by the German distribution company Intertainment AG, and with Travolta personally contributing millions of dollars; he envisioned the film as the first in a duology, as it only adapts the first half of the novel.
Battlefield Earth premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on May 10, 2000, followed by a wide release on May 12 by Warner Bros. and Morgan Creek Productions. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, who criticized virtually every aspect of the film, including its writing, disjointedness, acting, pacing, lack of action, and visuals. It was also a box-office bomb, grossing $29.7 million worldwide against a $44 million budget.
Met with widespread derision from both audiences and mainstream media, Travolta stayed away from the film after its opening weekend. It was immediately labelled, and remains regarded as, one of the worst films ever made and the worst-received film in Travolta's career alongside Staying Alive (1983), ridiculed for its dialogue, performances, Psychlo makeup, and overuse of Dutch angles. It earned eighteen awards from different sources, all pejorative, including a then-record of eight wins at the Golden Raspberry Awards, which later named it "Worst Picture of the Decade" in 2010.
In 2004, Franchise Pictures was sued by its investors and went bankrupt after it emerged that it had fraudulently overstated the film's budget by $31 million. This, coupled with the film's poor reception, ended Travolta's plans for a sequel that would have adapted the second half of the novel.
Plot In 3000 AD, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler lives in the Rocky Mountains with a band of cave-dwellers who fear the "demons" that rule Earth. Jonnie doubts their stories and rides into the lowlands, where hunters Carlo and Rock show him a desolate and overgrown city. While exploring it, he is captured by the demons, a cruel alien race called Psychlos, and taken as a slave to a base in the ruins of Denver. The base is covered with an enormous dome that provides the Psychlos with a breathable atmosphere. Jonnie shows resourcefulness, drawing the respect of the other human slaves and the interest of Terl, the high-born Earth security chief.
Terl learns from a visiting supervisor that his temporary assignment on Earth will be extended indefinitely as punishment for offending a politician. Desperate to leave, he hatches a plan with his assistant Ker. They know about a recently exposed gold deposit in an area with elevated radiation levels. Gold is valuable to the Psychlos, who have been reporting losses from their mining operations, but radiation causes their air mixture to explode. Terl and Ker will train humans to mine the gold, and Terl will use part of it to bribe his way off the planet.
Terl places Jonnie in a learning machine that rapidly teaches him Psychlo language and technology. Jonnie shares his knowledge with other slaves while hiding it from Terl and Ker. After Jonnie stages an unsuccessful escape attempt, Terl takes him to the Denver Library hoping to impress him that human knowledge is no match for the Psychlos, telling how in the 21st century the Psychlos destroyed the human militaries in mere minutes. Jonnie reads the Declaration of Independence and is inspired to seek not only escape but reconquest. Jonnie's fiancée Chrissy is captured while searching for him and fitted with an explosive collar. Terl tells Jonnie that she will be killed if he does not obey, also making an example out of a fellow slave, Sammy.
Believing that the slaves are subdued, Terl blackmails the planet administrator into letting him order the gold mining operation. Jonnie receives further training to pilot aircraft and is sent to the mining site with a team. He leaves half of them to pretend to work while the other half gather abandoned human weapons and take gold from Fort Knox to pass off as mining production. Ker tries to blackmail Terl for a greater share of the gold at Jonnie's urging, but Terl detects the attempt and shoots off Ker's hand.
The humans launch their revolt, assaulting the base while using Harrier jets to combat the Psychlo air defenses and explosives to rupture the dome. Terl orders the execution of all humans and alerts the Psychlo homeworld to teleport an extermination force. As the teleporter activates, Jonnie fights with Terl, reattaching Chrissy's collar to his arm and tricking him into detonating it. Sammy's brother Mickey rides the teleporter to the homeworld with a nuclear weapon. The fallout from the weapon incinerates the atmosphere, causing the entire planet to explode.
At Fort Knox, Jonnie gloats at a captive Terl, telling him that surviving Psychlos will pay any price for him after they learn that his scheme led to their defeat. Ker agrees to teach Psychlo technology to the humans and gloats along with them.
Cast
Production
Initial deals 1982–1986: Hubbard period After Battlefield Earth was published in 1982, L. Ron Hubbard suggested that a film version of the book was in the works. He gave an interview in February 1983 to the Rocky Mountain News in which he told the reporter, "I've recently written three screenplays, and some interest has been expressed in Battlefield Earth, so I suppose I'll be right back in Hollywood one of these days and probably on location in the Denver area for Battlefield Earth when they film it."
Hubbard's comments suggest that he saw himself being involved in the film's production; author Stewart Lamont suggests that Hubbard may have envisioned directing it, having previously helmed Scientology training films. In October 1983, the film rights were sold by the Church of Scientology's literary agency, Author Services Inc., to Salem Productions of Los Angeles. Two films were envisaged, each covering half of the book and tentatively budgeted at $15 million each. William Immerman was set as the producer for the film. Veteran screenwriter Abraham Polonsky and British director Ken Annakin were hired to produce a film breakdown, with production scheduled to begin in 1985. In November 1984, Santa Monica public relations firm Dateline Communications announced a nationwide contest to promote the film. First- and second-place prizes were an all-expense-paid trip to the film's production location and a paid walk-on part in the film, and other announced prizes included a trip to Los Angeles for the world premiere, records, cassettes, and hardcover and paperback copies of the novel. A 30-foot (10 m) high inflatable figure of the film's villain, Terl, was erected by Scientology officials on Hollywood Boulevard in 1984 in an effort to promote the production, and auditions were held in Denver. The project collapsed, and Hubbard died soon afterward, in 1986.
1990s: Travolta's development John Travolta had converted to Scientology in 1975 and became one of the Church of Scientology's most prominent supporters. Hubbard sent him an autographed copy of Battlefield Earth when the book was first published in 1982; he reportedly hoped that Travolta would turn the book into a film "in the vein of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind". While Travolta was interested, his influence in Hollywood at the time was low after participating in a series of flops. He gained renewed influence with the success of the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, which garnered Travolta an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He took on the task of making Battlefield Earth into a movie. Travolta described the book in interviews as "like Pulp Fiction for the year 3000" and "like Star Wars, only better". He lobbied influential figures in Hollywood to fund the project and was reported to have recruited the aid of fellow Scientologists in promoting it. Bill Mechanic, the former head of 20th Century Fox, said that "John wanted me to make Battlefield Earth. He had Scientologists all over me. They come up to you and they know who you are. And they go, 'We're really excited about Battlefield Earth.'... Do you think in any way, shape, or form that weirding me out is going to make me want to make this movie?"
Travolta's involvement in Battlefield Earth was first publicized in late 1995. He told the New York Daily News that "Battlefield Earth is the pinnacle of using my power for something. I told my manager, 'If we can't do the things now that we want to do, what good is the power? Let's test it and try to get the things done that we believe in. It was assumed from the start that Travolta would star in and produce the film, which would be distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM); J. D. Shapiro was to write the screenplay. Shapiro was eventually fired because he refused to accept some suggestions from the studio producers that changed the tone of his script, including removing key scenes and characters. In 1997, Travolta's long-time manager, Jonathan Krane, signed a two-year deal with 20th Century Fox, under which the studio would release Battlefield Earth instead of MGM, but the deal with Fox fell through. James Robert Parish, author of Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops, comments that both MGM and Fox regarded the project as too risky on several grounds: its heavy reliance on special effects would be very expensive, pushing the budget up to as much as $100 million, Hubbard's narrative was seen as naive and outdated, and the "Scientology factor" could work against the film, negating Travolta's star power. As one studio executive put it, "On any film there are ten variables that can kill you. On this film there was an eleventh: Scientology. It just wasn't something anyone really wanted to get involved with."
Franchise Pictures