Mr. Floppy 9.22.07: Battlefield Earth:The Saga of the Year 3000
Posted by Peter Bielik on 09.22.2007
The movie that made a fashion of wearing spaghetti in your nose.
Right from the gate, I'd like to encourage everybody to go and see Stardust. I'm not very big on fantasy (I never understood the craze around Lord of the Rings), but this really is a very good, fun film. So if you don't have any animosity towards this particular genre, you really should check it out. It certainly doesn't deserve to flop this badly (although I'm pretty sure it'll become a success on DVD).
Also, next week, the semester starts and I still have no place to stay at. I found an advertisment where two guys seeked 2 more people as roommates to share a flat with. Me and my friend called them, we agreed and then, on the day when we were supposed to sign the lease, one of the two assholes informed us they already found someone. Fuck you, you no good piece of shit! I hope you die a miserable death. Respectable? Does that mean anything anymore?
Anyway, let's go to this week's column.
You think The Postman was set in a distant future? Think again.
Year of the cock-up : 2000
Budget : $73,000,000
Domestic gross : $21,471,685
Foreign gross: $8,253,978
Worldwide gross: $29,725,663
Scientology is a pesky little thing. This world holds so many different religions, it's fascinating each of them has its devoted followers. And what better followers than the cream of Hollywood's crop?
Over the last few years, scientology has become quite popular with celebrities and nowadays it really is the thing to do, once you reach a certain monetary (and perhaps mental) status as a show-business personality. Like the Rubik's cube in the 80's—everybody wants to try it. The list of official members of the Church of Scientology includes several well-known names: Tom Cruise (the world's number 1 scientology and silent birth ambassador), Kristie Alley, Beck, Isaac Hayes, Jason Lee, Jenna Elfman and of course John Travolta. Now, to Travolta's credit, he jumped on the scientology bandwagon way before it became sort of fashionable. But the ranks of Hollywood scientologists are expanding and they'll soon be able to form a solid little army. And then, the only thing the world is going to anxiously await, is a battle between Hollywood scientologists and Hollywood Kabbalists (among others- Madonna, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Jeff Goldblum)—if nowhere else, at least on a talk-show. I'm sure a Tom Cruise vs. Ashton Kutcher verbal sparring would be worth pay-per-view money. But back to John.
As a respectable member of his community, John Travolta obviously knows that American author L. Ron Hubbard created the set of self-improvement techniques and beliefs, which he called, you guessed it, Scientology. Apart from his prophetic teachings, Hubbard was also a regular, fiction-writing author and from this branch of his creative mind comes the epic story known as Battlefield Earth. It actually was a solid hit and has sold over 8 million copies to date. I haven't read the book, but from what I've read about it- it's extremely long (circa 1000 pages) and the response to it differed, although many respectable sci-fi/fantasy personas praised the story, notably- Neil Gaiman (go see Stardust!), Robert A. Heinlein and Frederik Pohl. The potential for a good movie was there, but a story this long and widespread would require a cautious and sound approach. John Travolta thought he was just the man for the job.
Fueled by passion for his chosen religion, Travolta was somewhat trying fulfill a dream of his, as well as pay homage to Hubbard with this movie. So after his career was reignited by Pulp Fiction in 1994, Travolta started relentlessly pursuing studios in hope of getting Battlefield Earth made. His obscure descriptions of the book started at about this point in time, when he mentioned it in many interviews, characterizing it as "a Pulp Fiction for the year 3000". No comments from Quentin Tarantino are available on this matter. To help him lobbying for the movie, several scientologists came out of their caves and persuaded Bill Mechanic, the head of Twentieth Century Fox at the time. Their antics didn't help matters however, since they weirded poor Mechanic out a lot more than they made him interested in the project.
In 1997, Travolta's long-time manager Jonathan Krane somehow managed to sign a two-year deal with Twentieth Century Fox under which that studio would release Battlefield Earth. This deal also didn't work out and finally fell through, because the studio found the proposed material too risky, too expensive (a lot of visual effects) and the scientology part of it all wasn't helping matters either. Even though many prospective artists bitch about studio involvement, as proven in this case, studio heads can also be right every now and then.
Travolta's pursuit didn't end there and in 1999, he finally got his wish. Franchise Entertainment took the project under its wings, as an independent production for Morgan Creek Productions, which would then release the film through Warner Bros. in the U.S., with Franchise Entertainment retaining the rights for foreign distribution. John Travolta and scientologists worldwide were ecstatic--- the epic novel of their "father" would finally be brought to the silver screen.
The movie was directed by an unknown Roger Christian and starred Travolta himself as the dreadlock-wearing bad guy, Barry Pepper as a heroic caveman and Forest Whitaker, obviously making money to pay the rent, as Travolta's lackey. The production proceeded uneventfully, but suspicions concerning Travolta's involvement arose. The thing is, the movie was directed by an unknown guy like Christian for a reason. J.T. wanted to be heavily involved with the movie's final shape, so it was natural he hired someone who wouldn't protest when he came up with some nifty ideas.
After the shooting was finished, Travolta hyped the movie everywhere he showed his face, once again pulling out very strange descriptions of the film from his sleeve. For example, he was quoted saying: "It's going to be the best movie in history. Star Wars combined with Indiana Jones." To this day, nobody was able to decipher what exactly he meant by that.
To add to the hype, speculations about subliminal signals, promoting the Church of Scientology ran rampant, but fortunately for the public, they were proven to be false. Could these rumors be the reason why people didn't go to the cinema? After all, the image of going to a movie and coming out with hunger for scientology is very, very disturbing, not to mention downright scary.
The movie about the remaining humans existing under brutal tyranny of Psychlons (aliens who came here to mine gold, know everything there is to know about us and yet have no idea about Fort Knox) was released on May 12th, 2000 and its opening weekend earnings stopped at a dismal $11,548,898. Disappointment is too weak of a word for the feelings good John must have been experiencing at the time. It stayed in the theaters for two months, but 95 % of the total income was made during the first two weeks. The critical response was extraordinarily bad, as the movie was trashed for virtually every single aspect. Roger Ebert said that the film is going to become synonymous with movie failures for decades to come. He may have been right. Travolta was ridiculed in many of the reviews and his sinusoid of a career found itself once again right at the bottom. The film covered only half of Hubbard's book as Travolta obviously had a sequel in his mind. After the film's colossal failure, it never happened.
The film was also criticized for shamelessly stealing every single visual finesse from different movies. Apart from stealing a plenty from Star Wars, Travolta also all but duplicated the lobby shootout from The Matrix. Of course, none of these interpretations were even remotely close to the original and combined with the headache inducing camera tricks (John's attempt at being cool), the film's visual was downright atrocious.
Just like our last week's inductee, Battlefield Earth was a huge success at the Razzies, taking home seven awards, with Forest Whitaker being the only one who didn't get one. Reportedly, he wasn't saddened over the loss. Also, the film is a mainstay in imdb's Bottom 100, currently having the average rating of 2.3.
Surprising thing is that Travolta still hasn't admitted his dream project ended-up sucking worse than Look who's talking now (and take my word for it- that is saying SOMETHING). He still wishes to make the remaining part of the story and refuses to admit Battlefield Earth really is one giant, steaming turd. A turd like this one right here:
L. Ron Hubbard was a controversial persona, but scientology aside, his sci-fi novels really might be pretty good. And this is how his legacy is going to be represented and remembered- by a desperatly bad movie and Tom Cruise jumping on a couch. Poor guy. At the very least, he had the luck of dying 14 years before this atrocity hit the cinemas. No matter how big of a loony this guy was- he would have to be ashamed to have his name attached to this.
Mr. Floppy
John, John, John. You are the one to get the award this week, since you were pushing for the project right from the start and you could have definitely realized that what you're creating is downright idiotic.
I remember seeing this thing and shaking my head at the idiocy of the plot. Not naivity, which was reportedly characteristic for Hubbard's novel. I'm not talking about the idea of aliens coming here to mine fuckin' gold. OK, we all can use the neat little thing called suspension of disbelief. But I can not accept the strong illogicality, which the characters demonstrated through the entire film (mainly the Psychlons, since humans were idiots basically). I can not accept that the film takes part in the year 3000 and yet, all the books in an old, dusty library where Travolta's character takes Pepper's caveman have pages white as a snow. The dreadlock-wearing Psychlons also had to be complete morons if they lost the battle with humans in this movie, since they were an ultra-advanced, technocratic civilization and yet were defeated by a group of Neanderthals. Another true pearl is that the humans really lived like cavemen within this story, but of course Barry Pepper was able to teach them how to pilot a Harrier in 7 days (let alone the fact those Harriers were unattended for 1000 years, yet still worked perfectly)! The folks at RAF must have been nodding in approval- 7 days folks, that's all you need. And then, these ape-like creatures manage to defeat The Psychlons, using those Harriers. Yes, this movie sucks, but is a pretty satisfying guilty pleasure.
John Travolta is notoriously known for not having the best nose for scripts, but even he should have known better. It didn't end his career, but his Tarantino-created comeback basically came to an end here. He was on a stabile decline until this year, where he managed to score two big hits- Wild Hogs and Hairspray. But the sinusoid rule really fits his career to a T, so it's probably just a matter of time before he manages to flop again. Fortunately, Forest Whitaker's career wasn't slaughtered by this (like Barry Pepper's for example) and he was able to still receive good roles on his way to finally win an Oscar earlier this year.
Since Battlefield Earth was a John Travolta vehicle, I hereby award him the title—Mr. Floppy.
That's all I have for this week. Next time, I'll look at a certain little treasure, involving none other than Mr. Bruce Willis.
Enjoy yourselves, while you still can, because one day, you're going to wake up with a hangover and realize you have no more coffee at home.
