Then there are the humans, who shout a lot and seldom blink. They hold interminable meetings in which they’re essentially nasty and petty to each other, and they have a fascinating habit of concluding their sentences with lengthy, maniacal belly-laughs. The Psychlos aren’t just stupid, selfish and ungainly – they also behave like a group of unemployed Shakespearian actors after two bottles of sherry. Clearly, they’d never bothered to watch Goldfinger, the idiots. Yet somehow, in all their millennium-long occupation of the planet, they’ve never stumbled upon Fort Knox – which houses one of the largest reserves of bullion Earth has to offer. Obsessed with gold, the aliens plan to occupy Earth long enough to strip mine it of all its shiny minerals. One final example of the Psychlos’ stupidity. As an experiment, Terl gives Jonnie back the gun, which he promptly uses to kill another Psychlo. He spends most of the film bossing around his underling Ker (Forest Whitaker, who looks like the Cowardly Lion here, bless him) and formulating a plan that involves using humans to gather huge quantities of gold from high-radiation areas – this will, he hopes, provide his ticket back to the Psychlo home planet.Įven when the film’s hero Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) snatches a gun from a Psychlo and kills him with it, Terl refuses to believe that a man-animal could operate a firearm. Terl (John Travolta) is the most cunning of the Psychlos, which isn’t saying much. There, they live in self-induced squalor, alternately dragging their pet man-animals around and forcing them to engage in slave labour, or scheming against each other, or getting drunk. Standing at around ten feet tall, with hair like the cast of Rock Of Ages, bad teeth, giant hairy hands and a penchant for leather trench coats, their refuge is a giant greenhouse in Denver, Colorado. Its numbers devastated, humanity has devolved into a huddle of long-haired cave-dwellers a percentage of humans are kept as slaves by the invaders, who refer to them as ‘man-animals’, keep them in cages, and occasionally feed them with gruel pumped in via a fire hose.Įxactly how the Psychlos conquered Earth isn’t made clear, since they’re easily the most cretinous race of aliens ever to appear on a cinema screen. It features some of the stupidest aliens in cinemaĪ thousand years in the future, the planet will be dominated by a race of giant aliens called Psychlos. Is Battlefield Earth really as bad as everybody said it was? More than a decade on, isn’t it about time the movie went through a period of critical reassessment? Join us, reader, as we try to find ten remarkable things about this oft-maligned film.ġ. The film was quickly dubbed a bomb, and it’s commonly described as one of the biggest flops ever to emerge from Hollywood. In spite of Travolta’s attempts to talk up the movie’s chances (he unwisely described the script as “the Schindler’s List of science fiction” in one interview), the overall air of negativity surrounding Battlefield Earth refused to go away. The film’s scientology connection and expensive premise made most studios nervous, but Travolta eventually found support in a company by the name of Franchise Pictures – a new venture set up by a businessman who’d previously made his fortune from a dry cleaning chain and a successful LA nightclub. With Travolta’s star wattage positively humming again after the Oscar-nominated success of Pulp Fiction reversed his fortunes, the actor used every inch of his Hollywood influence to get Battlefield Earth made.
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