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Battlefield Earth

Battlefield Earth

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious! Best Comedy of the Year!
Review: I tell you what, people like Jim Carrey and Mel Brooks can try their hardest, but they cannot match this comic farce! If you want a movie that will leave you in stitches, run out and find Battlefield Earth, if of course it is still in stock! Once word gets out about this hilarious cinema milestone, Americans everywhere will be snatching up copies!

Leave it to John Travolta to make such a daring move into comedy. His genius is not limited to hyper violent crime dramas or disco movies, no no, this highly trained airplane pilot expands his considerable cinema skills to the comedic world. And this is no slapstick laugh fest either, this is a brilliantly written masterpiece using the back drop of a desolated Earth ruled over by brutal 8 foot aliens! Such a risk, such a payoff! Travolta stars in a role he was born for, the wacky alien security chief Terl who is a comic force to be reckoned with. His assistant, played by the man Forest Whitaker, is one dope homie who knows how to jive alien style! Hilarious! Fighting Terl in this [funny]popcorn flick is the lovable redneck Barry Pepper, who plays a caveman with brains who takes on a super advanced alien race with nothing but some sticks and stones. Funny, and inspirational!

The writing of the movie is the best part. I would compare it to that great series of books called Mad Libs. Remember those, those were great! See, the genius of Battlefield Earth is that it skips such things as making sense or having an understandable story. It is up to the viewer to make up his own wacky story! How did the wild cavemen learn to fly fighter jets? Magic, that's how! How did the [crazy] guy figure out how to detonate nuclear weapons? Luck, that's how! How did the woodsmen break into Fort Knox, find classified documents in a devastated Washington D.C, and use weapons that are 1,000 years old? Because they're crazy, that's how! This is true comedy folks, don't miss out!

Also, I understand this movie is based on a book. Now, I don't read many books, but this L. Ron Hubbard fellow sounds like a funny guy! I even hear he started a group who call themselves Scientolgists. They sound like a wacky bunch, I'll think I'll grab my checkbook and go join right away!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Read the book. PLEASE!
Review: This movie is obviously not a great movie. I was however intrigued by the notion of a post apocalyptic Earth where man rediscovers his past. I went to the library and checked out the over 1,000 page book "Battlefield Earth". I read it over the summer and LOVED IT. The book is a million times better than the movie and the movie would anger anyone who enjoyed the book. The only good thing about the movie was to see everything come to life. So watch the movie, get a laugh, make fun of it all you want, but then read the book.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Worst movie ever made
Review: Worst of the worst. Watch paint dry.It will be cheaper and less painful. You wonder how they could get funding to make this pic. I'm surprise Travolta or Whitaker were ever offered any more roles

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Butterscotch [pudding]!
Review: Battlefield Earth is by far one of the worst movies ever made! John Travolta's performances as Terl was just a complete mess and wasted potential. The rest of the cast fare no better with no emotion at all in their characters. The plot was sickeningly stupid and pointless and doesn't do Hubbard's book any justice, a book that was pretty much recycling bin fodder to begin with. No wonder this movie failed so badly at the box office, it's terrible. Avoid this [pudding] like the plague.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Comedy in the year 3000
Review: After watching this movie for the first time I stayed staring at the TV screen completely numb with my mouth wide open by the sheer horror of it. Everything bad you've heard about "Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000" is true!

Based on the novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of the famous Scientology church (The religion of the rich and famous). Apparently comedy and cheese was in the mind of MR Hubbard when he was writting this:

In the year 3000 the good old planet Earth is lay waste by a race of cheesy extraterrestrial called the Psychlos who have slaved the planet. Apparently 90% of the population of earth died laughing at their ridiculous visage: a sort of Cowardly Lion meets Chewbacca meets Bob Marley. A few of the non slave humans survive in the wild without any kind of technology, living as cavemen. One of them, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper, who looks more long haired Mattew Lillard as Shaggy than a movie hero) is taken prisoner.

(Spoilers, like you care)

In captivity he plans revolution, apparently just for the kick of it, and thanks of the sheer stupidity of the Psychlos (mainly to the comedic duo of John Travolta's Terl and Forest Whitaker's Ker, who put Martin & Lewis to shame!), the script and a healthy diet of rats (don't ask) he gets away
with it. Then there is a final battle, primitives humans who knew nothing about technology learn how to fly combat jets in a few days in flight simulators with only repeating "Piece of cake, piece of cake" as a motto. Then is Psychlos v/s humans with lot of explosions and mediocre FX, guess who wins?

(End Spoilers)

According to John Travolta this is a movie he wanted to make for more than 20 years in honor of his dear mentor Mr. Hubbard. Looking at the results it seems that the wait was in vain.

The filmmakers and producers were aiming high with this movie, they were dreaming another "Star Wars" trilogy in the making with thousand of millions wasted in merchandising, action figures and promotion, several spin off were planned
before the premiere (including a sequel and even an animation series!) but after the box office and critical slaughter they wake up and realize they got "Robot Monster", "Plan 9 of Outer Space", "Manos, The Hands of Fate", "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", "Terror from the Year 5000" and "Mommie Dearest" all rolled into one. That is the greatest Sci-fi comedy ever made!

The movie is full of plot holes of the size of Brazil, useless plot points, lack of pacing but full of precious moments of camp and hilarity for the whole family! Everything that made the cinema art great is wrong in this one: terrible script, inept direction, ugly photography and lighting, confusing edition, overblown sound and music, obtrusive camera angles, run of the mill special effects and the acting MY GOD! the acting is incredible bad. The entire cast is making fool of themselves but it seems they thought they were doing Shakespeare in space. Even under thousand of layers of bad make up you can still notice co-producer John Travolta hysterical overacting. He takes his character waaaay too seriously and read his lines channeling Vincent Vega by the way of Danny Suko with a bit of Tony Manero on crack. And you can still see Forest Whitaker face of complete embarrassment. But I really felt sorry for Barry Pepper who must have signed the dotted line thinking this part would be his big brake. And why is Richard Tyson doing the role of Tarzan in the future? Or is Deathstalker? Or Yor? But my favorite is Kim Coates in the role of Carlo, world's biggest wimp and useless sidekick who spent the entire movie cowering in fear, arm waving, over reacting, and eye popping in extreme his green eyes, you'll swear he is Marty Feldman in disguise.

See it to believe it. Buy the DVD or the VHS, fired up the popcorn, have a few drinks and laugh your head off. And then exorcise you tv set.

1/10 quality value

10/10 "So bad it's good" value

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Certainly not the worst movie I've ever seen
Review: I've seen my share of bad movies, and "Battlefield: Earth" isn't anything new. It is bad. There's no doubt about that. It isn't however, terrible. It suffered from many faults. Many, many faults. Many, many .... (if I keep it up I'll sound like a Pratchett troll counting, so I'll stop.)

Okay, first of all: Terl. This entire message in this paragraph is a message to John Travolta himself. I never had a clear voice of Terl in my head from the book, but he most certainly did not sound like Harry Potter (heck, Harry had a deeper voice in "Chamber of Secrets)! Terl was too flamboyant; his character was supposed to be intelligent, but crafty. Crafty is NOT gesticulating wildly and ... GAH! It hurts! John-boy's Terl came off like some second rate Bond villain.

Rather than give myself an ulcer ranting about Terl, I'll move on. Ker was just as bad as Terl! I thought that Forest Witaker was a good choice to play Ker, but he's nothing like he was in the book! Ker was supposed to be a kindly Pyschlo, different and a midget! Not some halfwit trying to follow in Terl's footsteps, those foppish, British footsteps.

The Pyschlo's themselves looked all wrong. Dressed in KISS outfits and looked sufficiently enough like Klingons to have fooled at least a handful of Star Trek fans into seeing it, these are definitely not what Hubbard had in mind. They're supposed to be bony and hairy and not have fake rubber paws! They got their height about right, but the Pyschlo girth was missing. They really didn't look all that more intimidating than a basketball team (granted, the Globetrotters freak me out, but ...)!

Okay, Psychlo-bashing aside the plot was lacking and badly translated. Perhaps if it had been more faithful to the original story, it might have fared better. I'm not the biggest fan of the book, but I did find it enjoyable enough to seek out the movie and I now awake screaming from nightmares of an "Ender's Game" movie that was as bad as this (with Travolta as Graff! Nooo!). Jonnie was the only one captured, and captured by Terl since it was his plan from the start. (Incidentally, why were the Pyschlos caging humans in the movie if they couldn't us them for work? This film had more holes in it than a Michael Bay film!) Jonnie's people came off less like cavemen and more like Indians. And where was Robert the Fox? If he was in the movie, he neither looked like he should've nor was mentioned by name. Same with Brown Limper and Pattie.

Now what I LIKED about the movie.

Jonnie was well cast and well acted, although Pepper's effort here is like trying to add dab of chocolate to a vat of offal and calling it edible. Pepper seems to have the talent to go far in the movie industry and displays it in "The 25th Hour". Chrissie wasn't near as annoying as she seemed in the book. And Terl's fate was nicely ironic, I thought (in the last scene, not with the collar). Aside from that, the whole movie was an amalgam of movies I didn't care for ("Independence Day" and "Total Recall" to name a few).

The movie is bad, but not unwatchable. I can think of several that were plenty worse and much more campy. "Virus" was a terrible, terrible adaptation of a great comic and Jet Li's "The One" ... THAT is probably the worst movie I've seen recently. "Battlefield Earth" is pretty bad, more of a "MST3K" movie than anything, but it's better than a tiny handful of movies. If you're looking for a good sci-fi film though, just stick with "The Matrix".

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Botton-of-The-Barrel Sci-Fi/Action filmmaking
Review: I cannot even begin to explain just how despicable that Battlefield Earth really is. Even when I brush aside the negative talk about this movie by numerous critics and reviewers I still cannot deny how much that I agree with them. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with them one hundred percent. This movie is just total garbage. I have no trouble wondering why I see tons and tons of movie merchandise that is cluttering up the flea markets and yard sale shops.

The performances by the cast are all completely ridiculous to a vomit inducting degree. The beloved John Travolta, who brought us Grease, unfortunately completely falls flat onto a large pile wet cement with the completely laughable role as the villain who hardly even looks like a true villain and the villain looks more like someone who hasn't shaved for the past 40 years and living in the sewers or a cave. Travolta is SOOOOOO much better than this. The whole laughter is more like a bad reject from a Men In Black throwaway scene without J and K than of a true science fiction movie. The names of the characters are predictable too. I could've come up with far better alien names in 30 seconds! Even some of the dumber characters from the Star Wars movies had far better charisma and intelligence. Bloody Hell, the loathed Jar Jar Binks that a lot of movie-goers hate is a thousand times better than any character from Battlefield Earth. I think that Jar Jar is alright in my opinion but let's not change the subject of this review. Everyone else on this movies cast fare no better and all of them show signs of wanting to immediately leave the set when the day was done and their characters combined show as much emotion and intelligence as a dead cockroach!

The whole storylines is just downright idiotic. The plot is unbelievably stupid. What gives the OK to simply alter the laws of chemistry in the 31st Century, such as a fire burning in an environment that has no oxygen? Even the lines don't fare well at all.

It all starts with some alien force from some planet names Psygor who hate the Earth's humanity but are after its gold and they look more like a whole bunch of mutilated humans who are walking on stilts and they don't even show any intelligence nor the fright factor of an enemy alien race, nor even the rivalry expressions of rival human beings on Earth. The name of the alien's planet Psygor is just downright laughable. It almost sounds more like they are calling their planet "Psycho"! The aliens themselves get drunk on some sort of yellow fluid like humans do with alcoholic beverages! How ridiculous not to mention disgusting. Even the human alliance is dumb and trite. They go to a derelict library, and then an abandoned army airbase with planes that are loaded with 1000 year old fuel and learn and become pilots and explosive experts.....IN SEVEN DAYS?????!!!!!!! HELLO!!!!!!!! It takes years of training to learn how to fly a plane, and even more training to be even an amateur explosives expert!! What were they thinking when they made this terrible movie. And they blow up the alien planet in that short amount of time? Don't ask........... It all simply goes downhill after the first few minutes after the opening and ultimately plummets into a whole bunch of useless and monotonous clichés, stupid lines, horrible acting, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...........

Even the space scenarios and special effects weren't enough to rescue Battlefield Earth from being left to rot in the junk pile! A complete and utter waste of film and talent! This movie is complete and total [junk] that should never have even been put into existence!. All of the actors and actresses as well as everyone else involved in the making of this...should be deeply ashamed of themselves and this is a huge and ignominious and absolutely crushing blow to modern day sci-fi.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I'd rate it -5 stars
Review: Plot: And I use the word loosely here. Earth has been conquered by an alien race of supermorons called the Psychlos, who have enslaved most of humanity. Among the few who live freely is Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler. After being captured by the Psychlos, our hero gets knowledge shot into his brain through his eyeballs (I kid you not) by the enemy. ...

Opinion: Wow, we are talking about Plan Nine from Outer Space type of material here. I watched with a friend for a laugh and, man, did we ever laugh. I wonder what the script writer was thinking! He uses the words rat-brain and leverage so often that I wonder if these were words that he would throw in whenever he didn't know what to write next (which is, apparently, fairly often). Just the lead character's name is stupid (Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler). The psychlos (gee, I wonder from what word the author derived the name) are so profoundly idiotic that I wonder how they ever managed to have a space program. Maybe their ship had a slow leak that caused air rarefication, causing severe brain damage?

The acting is all-around mediocre, especially when Travolta tries to ham it up. And the plot is so full of holes that I wonder if it was written on swiss cheese (which would explain the cheesy factor, which is off the charts). For example, how come there is still electricity to supply the flight simulators used to train the "cavemen" to fly Harrier jets. By the way, I am somewhat awed by Euclid: apparently he was known even to an alien race. The only suspenseful moment in the film is the finale, which lets us suppose that a sequel is on the way (yeah right). I sort of wish they make one just so I can laugh hysterically like I did watching this awful film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The VHS has more scenes than the DVD ! !
Review: I have this movie on VHS, and now when I bought it on DVD I got shocked. I found that the VHS has more scenes than the DVD! How that could be??

The first missing scene is supposed to be between chapter 5 and chapter 6 on the DVD, In the VHS after Jonnie shot a Psychlo, John Travolta had a conversation with the bartender... .

The second missing scene is when a Psychlo decided to kill Jonnie, the Psychlo said to his partner "Double or nothing I can blow off one of its limbs", and his partner said " A lot harder to blow off his head", but on the DVD the answer of the second Psychlo is missing, and the funny thing is that you can read the missing answer if the English Translation is on. I think they forgot to remove the translation when they removed the partial scene.

The third missing scene is at the Denver Library, when John Travolta was leaving the library, he said to Jonnie "But I am sure you will find plenty of recipes on how to prepare raw rats ha ha ha".

They removed very fine scenes form the DVD, but the DVD still great because of the special features section.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: An absolute classic!
Review: This is the worst movie I have seen in years! It, in fact, manages to transcend bad to a new, indescribable level.

That aside, I absolutely loved it. I couldn't help but laugh through every stupid line, and I couldn't help but find the entire premise of the movie extremely funny. Noticing the way John Travolta played his role, I'm not the only one who feels this way (it's quite clear he's also bemused by his being an 8 foot tall alien with dredlocks).

So, why the 1 star? The problem is that the movie wasn't actually intended to be god awful. So, in spite of the enjoyment factor, I have to rate it on face value, which is what it would have wanted.

Regardless, you must see this movie. Bring friends


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