In another room filled with blue or purple haze ("…all in my brain" indeed, Jimi), Terl hides his gold bars inside caskets, for transport back to Psychlo. I guess things don't get weighed, or examined, or… stupid movie. While this is happening, the freed humans arm themselves with all those curiously durable assault rifles and other weapons from Texas. Those men and women sure are revolting… I bet they stink on ice! Ha ha ha! Sorry and thanks, Mel Brooks.
Next, Terl walks into the purplish, bluish security office and finds Ker sipping Kerba… a drink while watching videos of Terl explaining his illegal plans. Ker laughs then demands eighty percent of the gold profits. Terl is annoyed but feigns humor as he says, "Congratulations… you've finally learned how to get proper ******** over someone!" I blanked out THE WORD that time as the ringing bells at this point have worn down into nubs. Ker says that copies of the incriminating discs are in safe keeping with some unknown person. Terl apparently figured out who it was though, as he holds up the bartender's severed head. He then shoots off Ker's hand and orders the discs returned… so much for that plan, Ker.
Atop the city's dome, Carlo lands his ship and gets to work planting explosives. Inside the city, Johnny and everyone else run around beating up guards and breaking shit, it looks like the Pistons won the NBA title again! While helping a fallen comrade, Johnny drops his walkie-talkie. We zoom in on the fallen walkie-talkie, from which we hear Carlo's voice asking for a reply in vain. I don't know why they bothered with this dramatic plot point, as Johnny simply runs back and retrieves the thing… stupid movie. Johnny returns to his slow-motion running as random stuff blows up all around him and the guards, immobile in their '70's glam-rocker boots, predictably can't shoot worth a shit. Maybe its because they're using real guns now instead of the previous green-blip shooting ones, but its more likely because of their big floppy hands with unbendable fingers… they defeated Earth in nine minutes, eh?
Carlo tells Johnny he's ready to blow up the dome but is told to wait, as Mickey still needs to get near the transporter first so he can destroy the "home office". If Carlo were to blow the dome now, the Psychlos would immediately call in thousands of reinforcements through the transporter, they figure. Why reinforcements wouldn't already be showing up to quell the revolt I'm not sure. Lots of people get in on the slo-mo act now, continuing to run around and blow up shit. I'll admit watching this chaos felt entertaining, but having sat through the film to this point I'd feel entertained even if fucking Barney the dinosaur showed up and sang his usual pap.
Fretting Carlo winds up back in his ship and has to defend himself from a Psychlo ship; he is able to destroy it, but more enemies show up. Luckily, the hunter guys show up in their thousand-year old yet pristine harrier jets and battle with the Psychlo ships. The harriers, apparently more than a match for the alien ships, chase down and destroy most of the Psychlos, which makes it even harder to believe the Psychlos could've conquered Earth, much less do it in nine minutes.
Now near the transporter, which is completely unguarded, of course, Mickey is handed the nuclear device. Johnny begins operating it and is now able to tell Carlo to blow up the dome. Carlo complies and detonates the bomb, which goes off and, oddly, winds up cracking each of the thousands of small panes of glass that make up the dome. They don't completely break, however, so the bomb was unsuccessful, much like the bomb I am watching. To make matters worse, Terl shows up just in time to pull the plug on the transporter. He smacks Johnny around and radios out a general order to "exterminate all man-animals at will!" He doesn't specify what to do with just a lone man or lone animal, though.
Amid gunfire and more shit blowing up in the streets, Crissy asks Carlo what the dilly is with the dome. Determined Carlo says he's still going to take it out, He gets in his ship and crashes into the dome, but winds up hanging there stuck in it, so still no dice. However, he notices some conveniently places fuel tanks next to him and shoots it with a conveniently placed rocket launcher, sacrificing himself as the dome finally shatters in a chain reaction, even though each pane of glass is surrounded by metal frames. Anyway, debris and chunks of buildings come crashing down. Conveniently again, the falling crap only seems to hit Psychlos and not humans. To be fair, the humans aren't burdened by having to run in ridiculous pimp shoes.
Terl resumes operation of the transporter, but only to call in thousands of reinforcements from planet Psychlo, as he orders an "extermination sequence", which I kind of thought he already ordered before. Johnny gets up and fights with Terl while Mickey runs over to the transporting spot, I guess. Before getting thrown down to the floor, Johnny attaches the explosive collar Crissy had worn to Terl's arm. Oddly, Terl doesn't notice this as he threatens to detonate the collar, thinking that Crissy is still wearing it. After some hammy, urbane babble, Terl indeed blows off his own arm. Johnny is able to grab the controls and successfully transports Mickey away. Mickey materializes on Psychlo and sheds a tear as he sets off the nuke, which makes quick work of the entire planet. I'd have thought possibly there'd be some safeguards built into this superior race's transporting systems; hell, you can't even bring an orange to the U.S. from a lot of other places; but I guess as part of a primitive species, I have no hope of understanding Psychlo protocols.
All in all, the operation turns out to be a success, as the next day we see the hunter guys fly over in their harrier jets, as I now wonder where they gassed up the jets. To hell with it, I smell the finish line now. Head hunter guy (the fighter for cow's rights) lands and shakes Johnny's hand, telling him that "Carlo came through… ", but forgetting to add "… the dome!" Crissy now embraces Johnny as we suffer another middle-wipe to Fort Knox, where Johnny visits Terl in a cage, surrounded by gold bars, hardy har har! Of course by keeping him here, time will have to be wasted either by continually flying out to Kentucky to check up on him or by keeping guards here, but it's a small price to pay for an ironic setting.
Terl asks Johnny, "Why don't you vaporize me?" Annoyingly, Johnny answers with that 'L' word, and I don't mean an over-hyped cable TV show about lesbians. He explains that if there are other Psychlo colonies out there he will inform them that it was actually Terl's greed that destroyed their home planet. Suddenly, Terl spots Ker walk in with a gun and retorts, "… but there is one thing you rat-brains forgot to realize… (to Ker) Kill them!"
Instead of killing Johnny and the other 'man-animals' present, Ker hands the gun to Johnny, telling him he fixed it and that it'll work now. Ker brags that the 'man-animals' have made him the 'head Psychlo' in exchange for his teaching them about all their technology. Then he laughs at Terl before quipping, "… at least you finally got your gold!" It was pretty dense of Terl to have thought Ker would've wanted to help him out in any way. Then again, Terl was pretty dense for most of the story; I now understand why so many movie villains are super-geniuses, considering what the alternative here looks like. Anyway, FINALLY, the end of this epic turkey is reached, closing appropriately enough with one last dumb middle wipe.
Would you believe that a sequel had been planned to this film? Its frighteningly true. Travolta (of course), Whitaker and Pepper were all automatically signed up for the possible second film when they signed up for this one. I can only imagine how Whitaker and Pepper prayed for that first week of box office returns to bomb.
For those of us that saw this film filled with cheap, amateurish visual effects and couldn't understand how Franchise Pictures reportedly spent $75 million to make this turd, the simple answer to that puzzle is that Franchise Pictures was flat-out lying. By 2004, it had been revealed that German production company Intertainment AG had gotten fleeced. Since they had agreed to finance a large percentage of the production as part of a larger business deal, Franchise artificially inflated their budget from the actual figure of $44 million to an imaginary $75 million. As a result of this revelation, a huge judgment award was ordered to be paid, thus bankrupting Franchise. So, one positive note regarding the debacle called Battlefield Earth: at least one terrible film production company fell by the wayside.
- reviewed by Richie 12/18/08
THE CRITICS RAVE:
"Battlefield Earth"is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-TImes
And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't seem like such a bad idea. - Elvis Mitchell, New York Times
He (Travolta) tries to ham it up, but the result only leaves us giggling and shaking our heads, wondering why someone didn't get Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, Snidely Whiplash, or Dick Dastardly for the part.
- James Bernardelli, ReelViews
