Evil_Herbivore Being a huge fan of science fiction movies I am used to seeing productions which are not the best quality. It is hard to make a good sci-fi movie, especially when it involves aliens and requires special effects and heavy make-up. Usually one aspect or another of such a movie isn't so great, especially if the move doesn't have a huge budget. I am used to all of this, but I still wasn't prepared for the terribleness that is Battlefield Earth. It's a movie in which everything form acting to plot to editing is really, really bad.Let's take the acting. Seeing the names of John Travolta and Forest Whitaker one would expect to see performances which are at least decent. Here both the actors are terribly overacting their parts and making what was supposed to be big bad aliens look like parodies of the Klingons. I'm not sure whether it was entirely the actors' fault or if the screenplay just didn't give them enough to work with, but seeing such good actors do such poor job is really sad.The plot is similarly bad. The protagonist has no character besides being good. We don't know anything about him and I found it impossible to care about him. The antagonists on the other hand are just evil and driven by greed and cruelty. The plot is not only really generic, but it takes big leaps without stopping to show how the characters feel about the changing circumstances. Even the design of the alien race is lazy and seems to be a rip-off of the Klingons.Special effects in the movie made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. They look like something out of a low-budget television movie and not a production which was released in movie theaters. Or they look like they were made in the 1980s and not in 2000. Either way, they are truly pitiful and make the movie look even more like a parody.Even the editing of the movie is poor. I suppose the cuts between the scenes were meant to be interesting, but they are annoying, especially considering the fact that the same effect is used over and over again until it becomes unbearable. In addition to this, the movie often goes into an inexplicable slow motion, which doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all.To sum up, watching this movie was an ordeal for me, even though I've seen a considerable number of not-so-good science fiction productions and I'm willing to forgive a lot if a movie has anything interesting to offer. I can honestly say it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Cross my heart and hope to die.

willman85 This is not nearly as bad as it's been made out to be.The production values are decent. The premise is intriguiging. The execution fine. There's great acting chemistry from Travolta and from Whittaker. The costumes are fantastic - especially the way the alien species are made to look so much bigger than "man-animals" while retaining humanoid form. The sets and special effects may not be awe-inspiring, but they're reasonable nonetheless; in other words, it may not look "cool" but it does the job.My main gripe is that it drags on quite a bit near the end. Also, visually, it's all a bit monotonous and claustrophobic. The payoff is unrewarding too, because the plot as a whole is pretty pedestrian. Good humans defeat the bad aliens, blah blah blah. The movie has little going for it, in fact. It's pretty bog-standard ... but it's by no means awful. It's watchable for the most part.

dmcarriger Never, I repeat, NEVER trust IMDB ratings OR reviews made by either professional critics or the average person, as well.Sadly, we have grown into a world of I want bigger-better-more-realistic-but-an-unrealistic/impossible-Fx/CGI-epic movie that leaves most movies lacking at the box office. Based on this premise, 90% of all action/adventure/fantasy/sci-fi movies are going to fall incredibly short.Okay...so I can't possibly deal with the short-sightedness of the idiots that claim that BE should have a 1-star rating. My recommendation is simply to look for films that have your fave actors in it. And if they've put our some pretty nice movies, trust that all future ones will be, at minimum, fairly enjoyable. As was this one...Hell, Travolta's sarcastic alien laugh, alone, is worth the watch. And his right-hand man Ker - Forest Whitaker - was played quite well.Was this an awesome film like Terminator (2), Gladiator, X-Men, etc.? No! But seriously, people...stop being so overly-critical and just enjoy the movie and what went into it. And seriously?!?...razzing on L. Ron Hubbard?!? Get real! I'd like to see you put out ANYTHING at a minimum at a 0.5-star rating for a film or book that even 1-5 of your closest friends could appreciate and then try critiquing a film like this.Okay, so what I'm saying...as critics, 99.9% of you suck at this, so NEVER quit your day job. And you professionals should never have started...your career is nearly over. :-)

sim-pl I'm quite astonished that this film is considered the worst one in the history of humanity by many. Certainly it wasn't a masterpiece, however it was quite entertaining and the background of a plot (picture of Earth conquered by an aggressive superior race) seemed quite interesting for me. I was not bored while watching it. There are many other films, that were praised and that deserve more such fierce criticism than this one.