Battlefield Earth (2000)

After enslavement & near extermination by an alien race in the year 3000, humanity begins to fight back.

Director:

Roger Christian

Writers:

Corey Mandell (screenplay), J.D. Shapiro (screenplay),

Stars:

John Travolta, Forest Whitaker, Barry Pepper

Bottom 100 #77 | 10 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
John Travolta	...	Terl
Barry Pepper	...	Jonnie Goodboy Tyler
Forest Whitaker	...	Ker
Kim Coates	...	Carlo
Sabine Karsenti	...	Chrissy
Michael Byrne	...	Parson Staffer
Christian Tessier	...	Mickey
Sylvain Landry	...	Sammy
Richard Tyson	...	Robert the Fox
Christopher Freeman	...	Processing Clerk
John Topor	...	Processing Clerk / One-Eyed Guard / Teleportation Supervisor
Shaun Austin-Olsen	...	Planetship
Tim Post	...	Assistant Planetship / Psychlo Guard
Earl Pastko	...	Bartender
Michel Perron	...	Rock

Storyline

In the year 3000, humanity is no match for the Psychlos, a greedy, manipulative race on a quest for ultimate profit. Led by the seductive and powerful Terl, the Psychlos are stripping Earth of its resources, using the broken remnants of humanity as slaves. What is left of the human race has reverted to a primitive state, believing the invaders to be demons and technology to be evil. After humanity has all but given up any hope of freeing themselves from alien oppression, a young man named Tyler decides to leave his desolate home high in the Rocky Mountains to discover the truth, whereupon he is captured and enslaved. It is then that he decides to fight back, leading his fellow man in one final struggle for freedom.

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Plot Keywords:

alien | voyager golden record | pulp fiction | resistance fighter | battle | 

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Taglines:

Prepare For Battle

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Official Sites:

Author Services Author Services (DVD news)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

12 May 2000 (Canada)

Also Known As:

Terre, champ de bataille

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$44,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£207,332 (UK) (2 June 2000)

Gross:

ESP 258,210,904 (Spain) (29 June 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros., Morgan Creek Productions, Franchise Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

118 min 119 min (video)

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The initial version of the screenplay by J.D. Shapiro was less serious and a much looser adaptation of the original novel. The producers, and John Travolta in particular, wanted a more faithful version than Shapiro had written (in addition to more action scenes), and he soon left the project. Corey Mandell was then hired and delivered a screenplay much more along the lines of what the producers were asking for, and most of the advertising materials credited Mandell alone for the screenplay, although Shapiro was later awarded joint credit by the WGA.

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Goofs

Where does the power to supply the electrical devices in the bomber base come from?

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Quotes

Terl: Ker, I'd like you to meet Chirk.
[Ker grunts appreciatively]
Terl: She's, um... she's, um...
Chirk: His soon-to-be newly acquired secretary.
Terl: Yes.
Ker: [eagerly] Really?
Terl: [quietly, to Ker] She's stupid enough not to be a menace, good-looking enough to be decorative; she gets drunk with economical speed...
Terl: [normal voice]

• and has other advantages.

[Chirk extends her very long tongue]
Ker: Ooh. I can see that.

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Connections

Referenced in Film Geek (2005)

User Reviews

One of the greatest sci fi comedies ever made!

My spouse and I went to see this on opening night. We were expecting to see an extremely bad and costly film, and we were not really disappointed. It is a testament to John Travolta's genius that his career survived this disaster at all.

As they say, garbage-in, garbage out. Start with an L Ron Hubbard novel (your first mistake) featuring a completely plagiarized dark-skinned, war-like and hairy alien culture with wrinkly foreheads (if this sounds like Klingons to you, I thought so too!), and add unfortunate Barry "can't get a break" (or maybe it should be 'cant pick a script') Pepper and all you need is Travolta himself - playing the arrogant, merciless, slightly effeminate and quite under-sized leader of the alien colonists. Remove any hint of character development from the script and use the worst of the worst black box technobabble explanations for plot devices. Finally, stay true to the idiotic gibberish you based the film on in the first place, and you've got the makings of a rolling-on-the-floor comedy.

In fact, opening night, in a packed theater, people started laughing out loud about 20 minutes into the film and never really stopped. We had a great time that night. Halfway through the film more than half the crowd was actually interacting with the film, asking "Mr Worf, where's Commander Riker?" and asking troublesome questions about how many hundreds of years gas would remain viable in the gas-tank of a Harrier.

If you need to know about the plot - it's this simple - Earth has been conquered by an amazingly stupid group of Klingon-like aliens, and the remaining humans live in a large domed slave labor camp where they are taught that their sole purpose is servitude because they are stupid, weak, etc. Barry Pepper somehow becomes convinced that he's not born to be a slave, and learns to fly a harrier, etc. It's really not worth the effort of typing. There are a few not-so-subtle and not very original but good messages about ethnocentrism to be found here, but not much else. Some day when you need a good laugh, rent this or borrow it from your local bad film collector.