This just in from the "What were they thinking?" department: imagine someone ripping off the plots of Planet of the Apes and Independence Day and padding them with virtually every cliché that science fiction has ever committed to film, then consider the chances of conquering aliens in control of the planet Earth in the year 3000 hanging out in bars after work and talking exactly like humans did 1000 years earlier. Our only question is, who gets stuck with the $100 million bill for this turkey?

Barry Pepper plays Jonnie "Goodboy" Tyler, one of the few man-animals on Earth that exist in the year 3000. Humans live like cavemen but still talk like 20th century man, although they have obviously lost the ability to write because they have cave paintings of the apocalypse, just like in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Inexplicably, Tyler leaves a beautiful cavewoman and a life of peaceful gathering behind to see the demons for himself, leading to his capture by the Psychlos, the aliens that have taken over the planet and that are mining it for its natural resources (as if there were another 1000 years worth.) It is shortly thereafter that two Psychlos named Terl (John Travolta) and Ker (Forest Whitaker) are introduced, aliens with a plan to mine and smuggle newfound gold so they can escape to their home world and live as kings. Unfortunately, they need "stupid" man-animals such as Tyler to mine it for them because Psychlos breathe a gas that combusts spontaneously when exposed to radiation (unlike simple sunlight.) In order to accomplish this feat, Tyler is placed into a Psychlo learning device that properly educates him, apparently with information the Psychlos don't have. Armed with his newfound knowledge, Tyler makes the only choice that could result in a summer-blockbuster chock full of meaningless special effects: he must save the world and the entire human race.

Battlefield Earth is guilty of a lot of plagiarism, but defenders of the novel upon which it is based seem to be convinced the film followed the book. If that's true, at least we can blame the following Death Star-sized plot holes on author L. Ron Hubbard: humans that have never learned to read English can learn everything you ever wanted to know about American history and geography by looking around an ancient library for a few hours, aliens mining for precious metals never thought to check the buildings of the planet they conquered for a thousand years, any human can become a Harrier fighter pilot in less than five days using a military simulator, humans can also learn to fly alien spacecraft simply by having a gun pointed at their heads, and anyone can escape from an unbreathable alien atmosphere by crawling through a man-sized pipe while the aliens themselves must use airlocks. And the list goes on and on.

So what's good about it? Since $100 million didn't get into any of the rewrites of the script, it must have been in the special effects, right? Actually, Battlefield Earth doesn't fair too badly in the CGI and model effects, including incredibly-rendered alien spacecraft that move realistically and believably. Establishing shots of planetscapes, fallen cities and alien foundries are no worse than Star Wars: Episode I. Plus, Battlefield borrows from the classics: scene transitions from Star Wars (the same transition effect is used EVERY time throughout the film), skewed "villain's layer" camera angles from the 1960s Batman series, motivation for the villains identical to The Mask of Zorro, and the alien voice effect previously used for Stargate.

Oddly, some of this could've been corrected with a few simple fixes, but in the interest of not really caring a whole lot about plot or suspension of disbelief, the makers of Battlefield Earth decided that slick special effects and the mandatory "explosion at the end of the blockbuster film" would be enough to delight film audiences. Then again, director Roger Christian's last film, Masterminds, was done the exact same way; didn't anyone see this coming? Unfortunately, the best thing you can say about this film as a whole is that it was better than Wing Commander.

John Travolta's film career is an endangered species.

(1.5 out of 4)