Let’s Watch (Retro Edition): Battlefield Earth (2000)

World’s Dumbest Man-Animal Tricks

Since early 2020, the While Rome Burns crew has gathered every week to watch a film of questionable content. As the frames go by, we give our two cents. This is a collection of the best pennies from those sessions for you.

“I was thinking, what if I was in Motorhead but from the future?” — John Travolta, probably

The Film We Watched:

“If the worker revolt takes place, my informants tell me that the first order of business is to separate you from your head.”

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With an unprecedented 2020 nearly overwith, Heather decided the group needed to see a notoriously bad John Travolta movie. I know, that doesn’t really narrow it down, but even so…

What They Say This Movie Is About:

In the year 3000, man is no match for the Psychlos, a greedy, manipulative race of aliens on a quest for ultimate profit. Led by the powerful Terl, the Psychlos are stripping Earth clean of its natural resources, using the broken remnants of humanity as slaves. What is left of the human race has descended into a near primitive state. After being captured, it is up to Tyler to save mankind.

What This Movie Is Actually About:

Dutch tilts. Lots of tilts. This film may have just been naturally filmed at a bad angle. Oh and gold can explode.

This is like almost 45 degrees. For what? And why? There’s no tension here!

Why This Movie Is Actually Good:

Well, it’s considered one of the worst films of all time, winning numerous awards simply for being awful. The production company went bankrupt after lying about the finances surrounding it. Inevitably, there are movies out there that reside at the absolute bottom of the barrel and Battlefield Earth decided to take on that mantle. Something has to be the worst, right?

Plot Points By Point, With The Gang:

In the far off future of 3,000 AD, humanity is one of two things — slaves to alien invaders, or a bunch of cowards living in caves. Jonnie happens to be part of the latter, living with other humans who tell stories of the “demons” above ground. Jonnie calls them on their bullshit and goes up to the surface, only to learn that a) the demons are real, and b) he’s a slave now.

Only at Future Walgreens.

The demons are an alien race known as the Psychlos, and they operate out of what used to be Denver, Colorado. They can’t breathe the Earth’s atmosphere so they built a huge ass dome over the city to make their own atmosphere. Jonnie adapts to being a slave quickly and shows off a rate of efficiency that impresses his fellow humans, as well as Terl, the local security chief (and uhh also a Psychlo).

It doesn’t take much to impress a horse in the future.

Terl’s here as a security chief because he offended a Psychlo politician. After learning that his “temporary” stay on Earth is meant to be permanent, he concocts a plan with his assistant to get the hell off the planet. Their plan? Make the humans mine a bunch of gold so Terl can pay his way off of Earth. Terl’s first step of the plan is to teach Jonnie how to mine that gold with Psychlo tech.

I dare corporations to not be.

Psychlos and Humans don’t have a common language, so Terl yeets Jonnie into a fancypants computer machine that teaches him the Psychlo language and how all their tech works. Jonnie shares what he learned with the other slaves and attempts an escape, but that fails. Terl takes Jonnie aside over to the Denver Library to prove to him that human knowledge is like baby stuff compared to his race. Instead, Jonnie sees the Declaration of Independence, reads it, and gets super patriotic about it to want to escape and conquer the Psychlos.

Feasting on rats and patriotism, baby!

Jonnie escapes, but as it turns out he’s also engaged to be married, which Terl learns about, so he kidnaps Jonnie’s financee and slaps an explosive collar on her. And so, Jonnie finds out and he obeys so that his fiancee doesn’t asplode from the neck up. With that out of the way, Terl resumes his plans to mine gold, and has Jonnie learn how to fly, while also sending half the slaves to take gold from Fort Knox. But Jonnie gets the other half to procure weapons while pretending to work.

Oda’s seen a lot of stuff. And I assume Battlefield Earth is one of those stuffs.

Eventually, the humans revolt with said weapons. Will they blow up the dome? Will Terl ever get off of Earth and say, go to a nice space Shoney’s or something for a coffee? And did anyone check the distance between Denver and Fort Knox, Tennessee? Well, you’ll have to watch this to find out.

Gotta love the Mets!

Should You Watch This Film?

I mean, I can’t recommend it. I’ve mostly erased all memories of this experience. John has been in a few films we’ve covered (Perfect, Lucky Numbers, Gotti) but this one is easily the worst we’ve seen. Even watching it with Rifftrax commentary is tough.

Best Out Of Context Riff Of The Night: