Battlefield Earth
"... Battlefield Earth has opened to spectacularly bad notices, many of which have suggested that the film is the worst of the year, the decade, the millennium or whatever exotic time-frame the alien Psychlos recognise ..."
The novel
Battlefield Earth was first published in
1980 by St. Martin's Press, though all subsequent reprintings have been by
Church of Scientology publishing companies
Bridge Publications and
Galaxy Press. This was Hubbard's first science fiction novel since his
pulp magazine days of the
1940s, and it was promoted as Hubbard's "return" to science fiction after a long hiatus.
Written in the style of the pulp fiction era (during which Hubbard began his writing career), the novel is a massive work (over 750 pages in hardcover, 1000+ in paperback) telling a fictional story set approximately 1,000 years in our future. Before the story begins, the reader learns, an evil alien race called the "
Psychlos" invaded Earth near the end of the
20th century, destroying human civilization in a matter of days and reducing humankind to little more than cave dwellers. A thousand years later, a series of events is put into action that finally gives humanity a chance to rebel against their alien overlords and free Earth from the control of a massive galactic empire.
Reaction to the book from literary critics and science fiction fans has been decidedly mixed since its publication. While generally acknowledged to be one of Hubbard's better books, reviews and comments on it have ranged from being thrilling and action-packed to plodding, overlong, and even unreadable. In particular, accusations have been made that the book includes themes of Scientology.
A large number of booksellers, publishing executives, and former Scientologists state that, as with other Hubbard books, the organization of Scientology engaged in a massive
public relations campaign to buy enormous quantities of the book, in order to place it onto best-seller lists and foster the image of Hubbard as a best-selling author. As reported in
The San Diego Union, representatives of Hubbard actually promised the publishing house a particular number of copies would be bought by subsidiary organizations of Scientology. Various bookstore chains (including
Waldenbooks) have cited examples of Scientologists repeatedly coming into stores and buying armfuls of the book at a time. Several bookstores reported that shipments of the book arrived with the store's own price tags already affixed to them, even before they were unpacked from the shipping boxes, suggesting that copies were being recycled.
[ Additional convenience link at [1].]Scientology-related content
Within the book the
Catrists, a pun on
psychiatrists, are described as a group of evil
charlatans, claiming to be
mental health experts, who rule the alien
Psychlo species. This is comparable to the
Church of Scientology's views on psychiatry. Those among the Psychlos who do not share the views of the Catrists or oppose them are subjected to various forms of persecution; particularly, the Catrists use surgical mind control to maintain their power.
It is stated that a supporting character, a Psychlo mathematician named Soth, was shaped by the views of his mother who was a member of a resistance group, a so-called
"church," which held religious meetings secretly.
Early in its history, the Psychlo species had no fixed name, instead being named after the Emperor of the day. The word "Psychlo" is revealed to have originally meant "mental patient" in the alien language, signifying that the Catrists feel (or in any case claim) that the entire population requires treatment as mental patients, and thus making the story an allegory on Scientology's own views of modern society being engaged in a real-life war between psychiatry and Scientology.
Space opera in Scientology doctrine is a common recurring motif, and the
OT III levels of Scientology include stories of intergalactic battles between alien races (most notably the
Xenu teachings), and Hubbard went as far as to claim that the modern-day science fiction genre of
space opera is merely an unconscious recollection of real events from millions of years ago.
After his success in the movie
Pulp Fiction, Hollywood star John Travolta pushed hard to make a movie adaptation of
Battlefield Earth a reality. Travolta, a devoted Scientologist and one of the organization's most vocal supporters, described the book in interviews as "like
Star Wars, only better." The movie adaptation finally came out in
2000, only to meet poor box-office results and even worse reviews.
It was produced by
Franchise Pictures,
JTP Films (Travolta's company), and
Morgan Creek Productions, and distributed by
Warner Bros. in the U.S. It was directed by
Roger Christian and starred Travolta,
Barry Pepper,
Forest Whitaker,
Kim Coates,
Richard Tyson,
Sabine Karsenti, and Michael Byrne. Travolta's wife
Kelly Preston also appeared; her role is often incorrectly described as "starring" even though she only appears in one scene.
In the movie, a greedy alien security chief, played by John Travolta, enslaves human prisoners to mine gold for him. Barry Pepper plays Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a human (or "man-animal", as the Psychlos call them) who decides to liberate his people by fighting the security chief. Originally Travolta saw himself in the role of Tyler, but by the time the movie was actually made, Travolta felt he was too old to play the role, and took the role of the main villain instead. [
2]
Released in over 3,300 theaters,
Battlefield Earth grossed $21,471,685 in the United States [
3] and a total of $29,725,663 worldwide, falling doubly short of its $73 million production budget and $30 million in estimated marketing costs. Financially, it is regarded as one of the great box office failures.
Critically, the movie was also a disaster and reviews were nearly unanimously bad. Acclaimed film critic
Roger Ebert, described it as "something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies."
Rita Kempley of the
Washington Post commented that: "
A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a million years to create anything as cretinous as
Battlefield Earth." The British film critic
Jonathan Ross offered a particularly unsparing critique:
Everything about
Battlefield Earth sucks. Everything. The over-the-top music, the unbelievable sets, the terrible dialogue, the hammy acting, the lousy special effects, the beginning, the middle and especially the end. God above, it's bad. Sweet baby Jesus, it's bad. By all that is holy and sacred on the Earth, this is a bad, bad, bad film.
Particular points that critics held up for censure included its overuse of angled camera shots
(which, according to the director himself, are used in all but one frame of the film)
, derivative special effects, and unbelievable plotting. The film frequently appears on worst film lists, such as the
Internet Movie Database's "Bottom 100" list, where patron voting has continuously kept it listed as one of the 100 worst films of all time. [
4]
The ultimate insult came in 2001, when the movie received seven
Razzie Awards, including
Worst Movie of the Year,
Worst Actor (Travolta) and
Worst Screen Couple (Travolta and "anyone sharing the screen with him"). This effectively classified the movie as the worst film made in Hollywood since
Showgirls, which had become a byword for celluloid awfulness. In
2004, the movie received a Razzie for
Worst 'Drama' Of Our First 25 Years. Plans to make a
sequel were halted by the negative reaction to the movie.
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John Travolta - Terl
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Barry Pepper - Jonnie Goodboy Tyler
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Forest Whitaker - Ker
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Kim Coates - Carlo
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Sabine Karsenti - Chrissy
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Michael Byrne - Parson Staffor
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Christian Tessier - Mickey
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Sylvain Landry - Sammy
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Richard Tyson - Robert the Fox
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Christopher Freeman - Processing Clerk
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John Topor - Processing Clerk/One-Eyed Guard/Teleportation Supervisor
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Shaun Austin-Olsen - Planetship
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Tim Post - Assistant Planetship/Psychlo Guard
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Earl Pastko - Bartender
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Michel Perron - Rock
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Kelly Preston - Chirk
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Films considered the worst ever*
Official book website (Galaxy Press)
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The Writing of Battlefield Earth (lronhubbard.org)
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New York Times review*
Hubbard Hot Author Status Called Illusion (Mike McIntyre, San Diego
Union,
15 April 1990, p1)
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Costly Strategy Continues To Turn Out Bestsellers (Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos,
Los Angeles Times,
28 June 1990, page A1:1)
The movie
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Official U.S. movie website (Warner Bros.)
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