Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)

Director:

Roger Christian

Writers (WGA):

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

Release Date:

12 May 2000 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Prepare For Battle

Plot:

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

Plot Keywords:

Alien | Gold Bar | Tongue | Run Through Plate Glass Window | Denver Colorado

Awards:

9 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

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

Also Known As:

Battlefield Earth (USA) (short title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action.

Runtime:

118 min | USA:119 min (video version) | South Korea:95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Malaysia:U | Finland:K-12 (2000) (theatrical) | Finland:K-15 (2001) (DVD) (revised version) | South Korea:12 | Canada:G (Québec) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | South Africa:10V | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | Denmark:15 | France:U | Germany:16 | Hong Kong:IIA | New Zealand:M | Norway:15 | Singapore:PG | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #37411) | Philippines:PG-13 | Iceland:12

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

When this film swept all its nominated categories at the 2001 Razzie Awards, it was referred to throughout the ceremony as "Plan Nine from L. Ron Hubbard" (as in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)).

Goofs:

Continuity: When the Psychlo Dome finally breaks, massive sheets of glass and girders can be seen falling onto the buildings below in wide shots. In closer shots with actors, small chunks of glass can be seen falling, without a girder to be seen. Also, whole buildings collapse, and yet we see just dust and small chunks of rock hit the ground.

Quotes:

Terl: You... Hungry, little fella? Want some rat? It's good!

Movie Connections:

Featured in "The O'Reilly Factor: (2008-04-04)" (2008)

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.