Battlefield Earth Gasp I Liked It

Ah yes… Battlefield Earth.  Long the bane and whipping boy of bloggers, moviephiles, people with taste and so on and so forth.  Yes, yes, I’ve heard your arguments and your oh-so-clever verbal/written ass beatings on this poor flick; but I’m here to tell you… This movie was NOT that damn bad!

First off, it’s got some great camp to it, you know?   I mean, John Travolta as an elitist alien with dreads longing to rule the galaxy?  Come on!  It’s cheese heaven!  Oh, and he didn’t say “oh my gahd!” nary a single time–so put that in your snarfblat and smoke it!

Next, it’s got a decent enough storyline–okay, it’s decent enough if you don’t expect much; but come on!  Who watches something called “Battlefield Earth” and expects ‘Schindler’s List?”  Give it a break!

It’s about how humanity conquers the inhumane and the machine.  What’s wrong with that?  It’s a good idea.  The machine CAN be evil, can it not?  When people/aliens/life are just grist for the mill, wouldn’t you prefer for humanity to triumph?

And I have to say, I really dig the way they had humanity “revert” to a more primitive stance and behavior.  That was clever.  I also like how knowledge was diluted into snippets of truth wrapped around homespun mythology.  They had no books for centuries.  They hung out in caves scratching out an existence.  It’s probably a fairly adept idea of what could happen to the “general intelligence” of the species with no book larning.

That aside, I can totally understand why you guys hate it, I truly can.

It is silly.

The science is non-existent.

It was written by L. Ron Hubbard.

The acting is so over the top, it’s like watching your high school drama club doing Shakespeare after drinking too many red bulls while trying to impress their high school sweetheart who happens to be hard of hearing.  Yes… I’m not exaggerating.

But come on dudes and dudettes… Barry Pepper is a badass.  You can’t not like this dude.  He’s like a redneck Dirty Harry with a can-do attitude and a heart of gold.  You gotta love this guy!  His performance in Saving Private Ryan MORE than makes up for his tarnished image from this flick–which, I have to say, wasn’t that damn bad!

Just like the rest of the movie… It really wasn’t that bad.

I wouldn’t say it was awesome.

Hell, I wouldn’t even say it was good.

But it wasn’t that bad.

I liked it.  It made me laugh.  It had its moments of being downright entertaining. I can’t say it has too much repeat viewing power–though I’ve seen it a few times.  Some of the movies you people give a pass and THIS is the worst flick of all time?

Man I’m not buying that.

Here are some links to people who disagree with me:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/16754-battlefield-earth (this is especially good–The Nostalgia Critic is phenomenal)

http://www.dvdjournal.com/reviews/b/battlefieldearth.shtml