It is with a heavy heart that I must report that the long, pointless national nightmare that is my oft-thwarted attempt to secure a workable copy of a Free Money DVD is far from over. This morning when I greedily inserted my Netflix copy of Free Money into my DVD player, the ecstatic sounds of Handel's "Messiah" soaring through my mind, I made a horrifying discovery: the disc was cracked. I can only assume this had nothing whatsoever to do with the part in my The Fountain My Year Of Flops entry where I wrote about Netflix slipping anthrax into every third envelope to keep customers in a state of perpetual readiness.
So I was forced to improvise and bump my Thursday movie into today's slot. I can't believe I've somehow made it 66 entries into a feature about historic failures without writing about John Travolta, an actor who makes so many flops that when other actors fail spectacularly they have to pay him royalties. Yes, rat-brains and puny man-animals, today I am going to be writing about 2000's Battlefield Earth, a fiasco that occupies a distinguished place high atop the pantheon of widely reviled crap.
I previously reviewed the film and covered it for my very first Commentary Tracks Of The Damned, which means I officially saw Battlefield Earth for the third time before writing it up. This is the life I chose. I don't regret it. Having listened to the commentary track I feel like I have a much clearer sense of director Roger Christian's authorial vision. I can now report with great certainty that that vision is, to use a critical term, a bit shite. And by "a bit" I of course mean "complete".
When Battlefield Earth was released all the bad will and resentment that had been building up throughout the years towards Scientology exploded into a world-wide orgy of schadenfreude and Bronx cheers. A legendary disaster well before it finished completion, Battlefield Earth hit theaters with a "Kick Me" sign on it so massive it could be detected from outer space.
The movie became a vessel through which people could vent their frustrations with Scientology without coming off as bigoted or small-minded. I of course have nothing but respect and admiration for Scientology and the powerful Scientologists at the top of the Hollywood food chain but lots of people who aren't me, my family or my co-workers resent Scientology. They resent the way Scientology is as secretive, paranoid and litigious as Disney yet far more devoted to spreading fantasy and make-believe. They resent those obnoxious human-interest stories where Johnny CareerTrouble opens up to People about how Scientology helped cure him of his debilitating marijuana addiction. They resent the way Scientology seems to have made kissing up to celebrities a major component of their faith.
They resent those self-righteous press releases where Scientologists compare their treatment in Germany to that of Jews during the Holocaust. They resent prominent Scientologists lecturing about the evils of psychology on television and condemning women who use psychoactive drugs to treat post-partum depression as weak-minded pawns of the pharmaceutical industry. They resent the idea that an undistinguished novelist could be a religious leader on par with Jesus or Buddha.
Of course if a preeminent figure in my faith had a lucrative sideline writing ridiculous pulp fiction I'd probably downplay that aspect of his life and teachings. If, for example, Moses used his downtime writing the Torah to hastily compose a series of fantasy novels exploring the lives, loves and adventures of Thoretta, She-Ogre of The Barbarian Realm, I'd probably steer clear of publicizing his side-gig too aggressively. I certainly wouldn't try to lure Bridgette Nielsen into starring in a feature-film adaptation of Thoretta, She Ogre Of The Barbarian Realm as a way of bringing converts to Judaism.
Obviously John Travolta doesn't feel the same way. For him, producing and starring in one of the great masterworks of L. Ron Hubbard (a book that reportedly sold over a bazillion copies, including several to non-Scientologists) was as much an act of faith as a business move. I love John Travolta but I love laughing at him just as much. For Travolta has an unparalleled genius for throwing himself wholeheartedly into some of the most ill-conceived projects imaginable.
Battlefield Earth opens in a future dystopia where mankind has been defeated by a race of nine-foot-tall aliens from the planet Psychlo whose gnarled appearance suggests what Klingons might look like if they took their fashion cues from the leather daddies in Cruising. Humanity has finally shaken off the high-falutin' plague of book-learning and stuff-knowing and lingers in a caveman-like state of superstition and ignorance. Rather than invoke the wrath of demons and monsters, men hide in caves and eschew all but the faintest traces of civilization. They're like gullible souls waiting for a second-rate sci-fi writer to reveal all the mysteries of the universe to them in pseudo-religion form and charge them dearly for the privilege.