This first paragraph is only for people who have seen the L. Ron Hubbard movie Battlefield Earth.
But if you ever have, we want to ask you two questions:
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How many movies have you seen in your life? (Your best guess is good enough.)
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Numbering them No.1 for the best to the last of the total numbers you’ve ever seen for the worst, what number would you give Battlefield Earth?
We”ll tell you why we’re bothering you about this after the jump, but please make up your mind about the answers first.
Here’s the explanation of that first paragraph:
J.D. Shapiro, one of the writers who teamed up to give us that immortal film, Battlefield Earth, which swept the Golden Raspberry Awards when it came out, gave a story about it to the New York Post after the Razzies named it the worst movie of the decade earlier this year. Shapiro wanted everyone to know that he hates the movie just as much as you do.
“Comparing it to a train wreck,” he told the Post, “isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.” And added, “I can’t help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest.”
I think I know what the real problem is with almost all of the Scientologists’ releases of Hubbard’s works and of material derived from them — including Battlefield Earth. That is that the people in charge of those enterprises are far more concerned that they be scrupulously faithful to Hubbard’s original texts than that they be any good — I presume because Hubbard’s words, whatever subject he is writing on, have become something approaching Holy Writ for them.
That isn’t the way to get quality works. A novel and a movie have different needs in order to achieve excellence. Hubbard’s novel
Shapiro said John Travolta’s people wanted him to do some things in the script that he refused to do, and as a result he was fired. Probably they should have let him do what he thought best. I doubt that that would have turned it into a great film, but I think it wouldn’t have been likely to be turn out quite that awful.
Alter S. Reiss says:
I’m something of a bad movie enthusiast, so my data isn’t going to be representative.
Out of the three or four thousand movies I’ve seen in my life, Battlefield Earth isn’t the worst. I don’t remember all of them, but I can think of at least a dozen worse movies off the top of my head. Let’s say it’s the 27th worst movie I’ve ever seen, if you want an artificially precise number.
However, out of major studio films with theatrical releases from the last 20 years, it’s the worst I can recall.
And I’ve seen Daddy Day Camp.
September 2, 2010, 4:50 amA Grey says:
Well…. I’ve seen at least a movies, so we’ll say 1,000 to keep it simple.
As for Battlefield Earth’s placement, I have to stick it in there hovering around 500. It’s not a fair ranking based on the movie itself maybe, but there were so many actors that I liked, that it was decent for eye candy if nothing else. The one thing they got right was good casting, for the most part.
September 2, 2010, 5:38 amFlynn says:
The biggest problem I have with it was that the movie did not follow the text of the book. There were a great number of elements left out, and truth be told, it had a detrimental effect on the plot, as we can now see.
Still, this isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, although it does rank rather poorly. For anyone who doubts me, check out “Yor, Hunter From The Future”.
Hope This Helps,
September 2, 2010, 5:48 amFlynn
Jerry says:
I didn’t think BE was any worse than, say, the average SyFy channel original movie, but it’s definitely one to be watched with the RiffTrax commentary.
September 2, 2010, 7:06 amMichael Parker says:
I completely agree; a film is a film and a novel is a novel, and never the twain shall meet. They are different mediums. A good film adaptation, even a great adaptation can be made from a novel, but not if it slavishly adheres to the book.
I have probably watched thousands of films, I cannot be sure how many (I’ve rated over 1,800 on my Netflix account). Battlefield Earth is among the worst of the lot. Let’s just rank it at #3,000 or so. Some other SF films that didn’t make the cut (not all of which are adaptations or unwatchable) are as follows:
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Signs, The Happening, Lady in the Water, Howard the Duck, Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Johnny Mnemonic, Mission to Mars, Judd Dredd, Timeline, Waterworld, Alien: Resurrection, Jumper, etc. There’s a lot of them.
Some of the best Sf films were adaptations that differed from the source material and perhaps are even better than the original work (if you want to compare apples to oranges); 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner (Director’s Cut, not Theatrical Version), Dune, A Clockwork Orange, The Andromeda Strain, Fahrenheit 451, Solaris (original Russian version).
September 2, 2010, 7:31 amCathy W says:
I’ve seen Battlefield Earth – and I’m part of a “film appreciation club” that’s watched an average of about a movie and a half a week for the better part of twelve years (of note: aiming for the “bad” end of the movie spectrum), plus 35 years of heading out to the movies every month or so. Let’s say, for a nice round number, that I’ve seen about 1000 movies in my lifetime.
Battlefield Earth, on that scale, definitely has a number higher than 950, and probably higher than 975 – with a lot of the stuff I consider worse being hard-to-get non-mainstream releases. Most movies that simply fail to be good just turn out to be kind of dull; the script is uninteresting, the acting uninspired, the production values mediocre. Battlefield Earth’s script went beyond “uninteresting” into “ridiculous and implausible and silly”, and the acting might have been improved by being uninspired. The production values reflected the big-budget sci-fi blockbuster they were hoping to make, but in a way that just made me feel sad that someone spent so much money on such a waste of film.
…and I would totally buy that it was because Travolta and his people insisted that the book be filmed word-for-word. I haven’t read the book, but I do know how easy it is to write dialogue that looks fine on the page but sounds absolutely awful when spoken aloud…
September 2, 2010, 8:11 amJohn Traylor says:
Actually Mr.Pohl, the book itself was dreadful enough without subjecting myself to the film. Not a fan of Scientology in the least. I at least enjoyed a few of Hubbard’s works in Unknown and Astounding. Not one of my all time favorite SF/Fantasy writers but ok as far as it goes. What truely puzzles me is how people can be duped the way the Scientologists appear to be.
September 2, 2010, 8:34 amJohn H says:
I can’t even begin to know how many movies I’ve seen in my lifetime, so let’s call it 1000. Out of 1000 I would probably rank Battlefield Earth 990th.
I attribute that as much to the lousy source material as to anything else. Fidelity in adaptations is usually something to be commended, but not when the original is such a mess to begin with.
September 2, 2010, 8:59 amRobert Nowall says:
The fifteen or twenty minutes in the middle that I saw while flipping through channels one night seemed more than enough to satisfy any curiosity I had. Or maybe it was five minutes, but it just seemed like fifteen or twenty.
Worse, they tell me Battlefield Earth was only half the book. I dread the thought of a sequel.
L. Ron Hubbard wrote some pretty good stuff, once upon a time. Some of them might have made a pretty good movie, too. Couldn’t they have made Final Blackout, or one of the Ole Doc Methuselah stories?
September 2, 2010, 11:10 amDaniel says:
To this date, the only movie that I have ever walked out of. (Actually, it was at a drive in, so I drove out . . . and had to wait in a line of cars also leaving in the middle of the movie.)
September 2, 2010, 12:17 pmRichard York says:
I’ve probably seen somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 (I’m 66).
Battlefield Earth would rank somewhere around 5,000. It’s in a category all its own, sui generis
September 2, 2010, 1:47 pmPat says:
I caught it on TV. I only saw 15 minutes or so of the film just after the beginning before I gave up. Or as Robert Nowall commented it might have only been 5 minutes but seemed much longer. It is the only non-horror film by which I have felt repelled. I didn’t know it was a Hubbard adaptation until I looked it up afterward. I have quite happily watched those low budget Syfy movies like “Merlin and the War of the Dragons” and “Princess of Mars”. Out of the thousands of films I have watched definitely in the bottom 10. Though I can’t be sure without watching the rest. I can live with that uncertainty.
September 2, 2010, 4:02 pmRobert Gruver says:
I have no idea how many movies I have seen. Multiple thousands, easily. While Battlefield Earth isn’t the worst, it is a horrible film. Here’s why I think so…
The first really epic SF book I ever read was Battlefield Earth. My dad gave me his copy after he finished it, and I loved it. It was thick, and had lots of plot, and interesting characters. I still read that battered, dog eared version he gave me 20 years ago at least once a year. I even bought a signed first edition a few years ago. With all that said, I was really excited about the movie. I knew that it was only going to be the first half, but there was a lot of good story in there.
Sadly, it didn’t work. All the heroic Scotsmen in the first book were replaced by weak slaves, not to mention the fact that the movie version Johnny Goodboy Tyler was significantly different than written version. On top of that, John Travolta’s awful acting made the movie a real stinker.
Thankfully, over the last 20 years, I have been able to enjoy lots and lots of good SF books (including yours, Fred) and movies. While I am a fan of the book Battlefield Earth, I will never be a fan of the movie.
September 2, 2010, 5:11 pmTechSlave says:
I’ve seen probably, best guess, 2000 movies?
September 2, 2010, 6:23 pmBattlefield Earth ranks around the 1900th. Because I’ve watched some seriously, seriously BAD movies in my time just to see how long I could go before my eyes bled. In fact, that’s the only reason I watched Battlefield Earth. L. Ron Hubbard’s book never really caught my fancy either, even long before I learned about Scientology and assumed there to be a link between this book always turning up in libraries (more often in their ‘donated book sales’ room than not, but always at least one copy on the shelf) and by the ton in used bookstores.
jsallison says:
Methinks BE would’ve been just right as a SyFy original with whathisname from Army of Darkness in Travolta’s role. I don’t have a problem with B movies as such, they can’t all be fantabulous and ya gotta eat, don’tcha know.
September 2, 2010, 7:16 pmJason says:
I’ve read some shorts he did in the forties that I liked, before the scientology mumbo jumbo. He had some neat ideas in there. I remember panning on the Mission Earth stuff when it was on the shelves, they were pretty wretched.
September 2, 2010, 7:21 pmEric says:
I’m also a connoisseur of bad movies, which skews my results. Also, I think that one has to distinguish between kinds of bad movies: there’s certainly a difference, for instance, between a bad movie like Battlefield Earth, made with a decent budget by people who should’ve known what they were doing, and a bad movie like The Room, made by a writer/director with zero idea what he was doing on no budget and with a rotating cast and crew that included people who were as inexperienced as the writer/director and people who knew what they were doing but became so frustrated with the production they apparently started sabotaging it as a sort of practical joke. And then there are movies that are bad in some other sense–e.g. while I agree that Gladiator was exceptionally well made by everybody involved, I personally thought it was one of the most repellent movies ever made, essentially pornographic in its violence (I also realize my opinion is pretty firmly in the minority).
Anyway, Battlefield Earth is a terrible film, but it’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen by a long shot. Contrary to its reputation, I’m not even sure it would crack the top ten or twenty. It’s certainly not as mind-numbingly awful as Southland Tales or anything made by Uwe Boll, for instance (if you want a specific film, we might as well go with the listless Bloodrayne, why not). And Battlefield Earth definitely isn’t even in the same weight class as bad no-budget movies like the sort of “alternative classics” you’d see on MST3k, e.g. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats or Robot Monster. And unlike some of the pretty awful torture porn movies that dominate horror films these days (e.g. the entire Saw series), Battlefield Earth at least has the virtue of being a terrible movie that you can get a good laugh out of.
September 2, 2010, 9:27 pmBill Goodwin says:
The ranking I’d give Battlefield Earth would have to be some sort of imaginary number. An integer (high or low) would simply be too inclusive; a thing like this marks an actual hiccup in the unfolding of rational, linear time. All I can do is feel indignant that those who green-lighted the project sleep soundly while, elsewhere, millions of mosquitoes go hungry.
September 2, 2010, 11:44 pmDouglasG says:
I’ve have seen at least 5000 movies, and like many, BE would be in the lower 25% range. Not the worst, but definitely bad. One of the big problems is that the humans are dreadful. The makers must have assumed that we would root for the humans, because we’re human too. However, I wanted to see them all dead. Didn’t care. Thus, there really was good rooting interest. We are forced to hang our hat on the hero by default. It is a hallmark of horrible film making. Personally, the film could have been improved by about 5% simply by removing that awful blue filter. It made everything hard to see, and I had to work at simply watching the film. It was annoying, and most people might not even catch it. Bruce Campbell couldn’t save this film…
September 3, 2010, 9:47 amBill Goodwin says:
It’s quite possible however that a little editing could turn the picture into a first-rate art film. Darken the filter-effect, replace the soundtrack with an arythmic percussion piece, and throw in random scenes from Travolta’s earlier film, “Look Who’s Talking Too.” Result to be shown at a 45-degree tilt, and titled “Bottle-Fed Earth.”
September 4, 2010, 4:35 pmcodejust says:
Movies seen: 2,500 +/- 300
Battlefield Earth: 2,499 +/- 5
It remains better than Raising Arizona.
September 5, 2010, 8:54 pmGregory Tidwell says:
For a major release, with a big budget and some big name stars, it was just about the worst of the worst. It was the Ishtar of the SF scene. It was every Chevy Chase film after the second Vacation movie rolled into one. I have seen lots of films that were more pitiful, but considering that these guys were not only trying to make a serious film, but also to honor their “religious mentor,” it was a laughable mistake that should never have made it past the direct-to-video market. Where would I put it in the continuum? I estimate that I’ve at least one film per week for every week of my life past age 10, so say 1,800 so far. I’d say it’s around the bottom, at 1,600 or so. That puts all the Syfy hallow earth, shark madness films below it, and maybe Plan 9 From Outer Space, but not much else.
September 6, 2010, 9:53 pmBill Goodwin says:
Why’s everyone giving Ishtar such a hard time? Ishtar is great!
September 7, 2010, 2:17 pmRich Rostrom says:
I recently watched “The Mask” on DVD, and then watched the included “making of” documentary. I knew it was based on a comic book, but I didn’t know the comic was rather grim, and the original script was basically a horror movie.
The creators noodled around, and converted it to a comedy centered around Jim Carrey – which worked brilliantly, but was nothing like the “book”.
September 11, 2010, 2:28 amSam M-B says:
I’ve never walked out of a movie. Battlefield Earth came so very, very, very, very close. But after a half hour, I was already so stupefied by what I’d witnessed I couldn’t even ignore that half hour in a proper sunk cost analysis, and so stuck through to the end. I still regret that last hour of my life which I will never get back.
It’s hard to have even a guess as to how many films I’ve seen. I’ve sat through some truly awful romantic comedies in my time which might give BE a run for the bottom. Science Fiction films only, it’s certainly very competitive for that spot. When you factor in the budget and the potential, it is easily a runaway “winner”.
September 12, 2010, 8:24 pmNeil in Chicago says:
A while before Battlefield Earth, Roger Reynolds (I think it was) assembled a Science Fiction Book of Lists. Barry B. Longyear did The Worst Science Fiction Movies — Enemy Mine was numbers 1 through 9.
September 19, 2010, 11:08 pmBart says:
I have watched at least 5,000 movies and read twice as many books. So I would say that B.E. was in the wurst 1,000. But this was not do to adherence to the book it was do to the screenwriter and producers complete incomprehension of Hubbard,s work. Next time they should hire Peter Jackson to make it he is the only person in the film industry that has the intellect to do it wright. As for the book I found the concepts and premise fascinating.
September 22, 2010, 8:09 pmBrendan Podger says:
Definately in the bottom 10%. Abysmal waste of time, whose only redeeming feature is it was better than the book. I pity the person who has to suffer through either version.
September 23, 2010, 10:51 pmDenis Dube says:
I actually loved this movie. I read the book first and was glad that only the first half of the book was included in the movie. The script was fine, the casting great, (lead role better done by a small young man rather than a ‘Chuck Norris’ type. Travolta and Forest were perfect. I liked the monochromatic sequences, the angled shots (scene changes were cheesy, true, but to me it was suppose to be pulp SF, so I forgive). My favorite review of a movie is of this one. “…even when shown on a plane, people still walked out.” but i would have stayed, the movie is actually almost flawless if you really think about it.
October 30, 2010, 6:26 pm