The Screengrab : dune

Unwatchable #85: "Battlefield Earth"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Welcome to a very special edition of Unwatchable! What’s so special about yet another crappy movie, you ask? Well, for the first time since I started this project, the movie in question is one that I have already seen! This may not make it special for you, but Hubbard knows it couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It’s also special because, unlike all of these unworthy Mystery Science Theater subjects, Battlefield Earth has truly earned its position on the Bottom 100 list. Here are the top three reasons why:

Monstrous Ego Trip/Vanity Project. Hollywood’s second-most famous Scientologist had long dreamed of bringing L. Ron Hubbard’s epic sci-fi vision to the screen. With his career reduced to a series of talking baby movies, he didn’t exactly have the clout to pull it off, but then Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction came along, and soon Travolta was back on the A-list. For a while, we were all so happy for Travolta and his big screen comeback. By the time Battlefield Earth rolled out, there probably wasn’t a person left on the planet who was still happy for him besides his agent. It had taken so long to bring the so-called “Saga of the Year 3000” to fruition, Travolta was too old for the lead role of Johnnie ‘Goodboy’ Tyler (played here by Barry Pepper), so instead he appears as a 10-foot-tall dreadlocked Psychlo named Terl. It’s a terrible performance – Travolta’s girlish giggle and reedy, sing-song reading of lines like “You are out of your skullbone!” are far from fearsome – but at least Travolta is better off than co-star Forest Whitaker, now an Academy Award winner, then a cross between George Clinton and the Cowardly Lion.

Misbegotten Sci-Fi Extravaganza. Sure, it’s possible that Battlefield Earth was intended as a piece of Scientology propaganda, but I have no idea how anyone could tell from the finished product. So muddled and mindless it makes David Lynch’s Dune look like a model of crisp, coherent storytelling, the movie is a chaotic blur of poorly edited action and bottom-of-the-barrel special effects. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where the alien Psychos (who sound like they’re gargling with their own vomit every time they speak) have enslaved the remaining “man-animals,” the story concerns the inevitable rebellion led by Pepper. It’s the kind of movie where our heroes, who have been living a barbarian-level existence, teach themselves to fly Harrier jets in a matter of days. The thrift-store look of this dark dystopic future is epitomized by the cruddy CGI backgrounds that make one yearn for the artistry of the matte paintings from Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Massive Box Office Failure. Taking in a mere $21 million in the U.S., less than a third of its budget, the movie laid a big egg at the box office. Obviously, not every bomb is necessarily a bad movie, but the people have definitely spoken in the case of Battlefield Earth. Of all the Bottom 100 entries we’ve covered so far, none have received more than 4000 votes on the IMDb (a minimum of 650 is required for inclusion on the list of infamy). Battlefield Earth has received more than 29,000 votes – truly a dud for the ages.

Previously on Unwatchable:
86. Hobgoblins
87. The Sidehackers
88. College Road Trip (pending)
89. Bloodlust!
90. The Bat People

New "Terminator" Trilogy on Tap: Christian Bale to Play John Connor, Times 3

Phil Nugent — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Christian Bale is turning out to be quite the franchise monkey. (We say it with love.) Having already done well following in the footsteps of Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney, he'll be seen next year playing John Connor, savior of mankind in its battle against our mechanized tyrants, a job that calls for him to go where Edward Furlong, Nick Stahl, and (on TV) Thomas Dekker have gone before. Bale and director McG are currently shooting Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which is due to arrive in theaters on May 22, 2009. Now the BBC has reported that the producers of the current production, Halcyon, intend to make three Terminator movies, and Bale has agreed to come back for all of them. "He read the script and he loved it," said Derek Anderson, "so he's signed on for all three." His partner, Victor Kubicek, who calls Bale "really an actor's actor," adds that Bale "was our first choice and he's a big fan of The Terminator, so we're very lucky."

The Terminator series sure has come a long way since James Cameron cobbled together a surprise sleeper hit that, sneaking into theaters in the fall of 1984, blew more expensive, long-awaited sci-fi movies such as Dune and 2010 out of the water and, to the industry's slack-jawed amazement, made a bona fide movie star out of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was already fairly famous but regarded as a steroid freak with a funny accent, a useful guy to have around if you had a leading role that needed to be played in a loincloth. O. J. Simpson, famously was rejected for the role by producers who didn't think audiences would accept him as a villain, and by the time the first Terminator sequels rolled around, it was felt that Schwarzenegger wouldn't be accepted as a bad guy anymore either--or, at any rate, that he didn't want to play one--which meant that the scripts and special-effects people on those movies had to perform terrific feats of contortion to make it seem that the reformed Arnold-model robot might be plausibly vulnerable when pitted against the products of superior but skinnier technology. (Terminator 2 and the twelve-minute theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time are the only Terminator spin-offs that Cameron has had a hand in besides picking up a check for the use of his characters.) The last Terminator movie, Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, had made it look as if the franchise was pretty well played out--ready for a TV series, in fact.

Who knows how hard the makers of the still-ongoing TV show The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the upcoming film trilogy will work to make sure their plotlines match up, but the really daunting task for the filmmakers may be proving that there's a big-screen audience for this material without Schwarzenegger. (Terminator 3 proved that there's considerably less of an audience for it with the Schwarzenegger of 2003 than there was for it with the Schwarzenegger of 1984.) The casting of Bale signals that the John Connor character is now the de facto headliner; whereas on the TV show, where his mom gets top billing, the humans are regularly upstaged by the quizzical mechanical hottie played by Summer Glau. The producers of the new franchise are purposefully vague about whether Schwarzenegger, who does have a state to run, will have any participation in the new movies. (His only film appearances since Terminator 3 have been cameos in the Jackie Chan-Steve Coogan bomb Around the World in 80 Days and in The Rundown, where he good-naturedly passed the action-movie sceptre to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.) Theoretically, there's no reason that the Terminator series can't go on forever and a day, because its time-travel gimmick is built around the idea that the characters who are on the verge of being vanquished can always return to the past and change things. The down side is that there must be a point where even the most stubbonly devoted fans have to get fed up and want to see something stick.

Attack of the ’80s Sci-Fi Remakes: “Dune” & “Heavy Metal” Reborn

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Recent weeks have seen rumors circulating that a sequel to The Last Starfighter is in the works, and a fourth installment of the Mad Max series (entitled Fury Road) has been an on-again-off-again proposition for years. Now, in two separate reports, Variety brings the latest news confirming that – for whatever inexplicable reason – the sci-fi of the ’80s is Hollywood’s new favorite vintage.

Sure, if you want to get technical about it, neither of the two features in the works is a remake so much as another whack at source material that first became fodder for the movies in the 1980s. David Fincher, a busy fellow of late (he recently wrapped The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett), is leading the charge to bring another animated adaptation of Heavy Metal to the screen. The new version “will be stamped by the erotic and violent storylines and images that remain the trademark of a magazine that debuted in the U.S. in 1977.” In other words, boobies and blood, which is what made the 1981 version of Heavy Metal a must-see back when the notion of R-rated cartoons was more of a novelty. The new version will consist of eight or nine segments, with Fincher helming one, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman tackling another, and many of the others up for grabs. Here’s hoping it at least boasts an edgier soundtrack than the original, which featured such futuristic artists as Sammy Hagar, Journey and Grand Funk Railroad.

Meanwhile, Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) has signed on to direct the latest adaptation of Dune. This is at least the third attempt at launching a franchise from Frank Herbert’s turgid but enduring series (the fourth if you count the aborted Jodorowsky version). The Sci Fi channel tried to get it going earlier this decade, but it’s the 1984 David Lynch messterpiece that sets the gold standard for ill-conceived efforts at launching a blockbuster series. As for the new version, the filmmakers “consider its theme of finite ecological resources particularly timely,” while “Paramount envisions the project as a tentpole film.” Good luck, guys, but that’s been envisioned before.

Fan Flicks In Jeopardy

Peter Smith — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:00:00 GMT

The BBC reports on how a group of German filmmakers operating under the name Damnatus recently had their fan feature based on the popular wargame Warhammer 40,000 nixed by the game's creators, Games Workshop. Even though the 110-minute feature was on Damnatus's website for free, Games Workshop felt that the filmmakers infringed on their intellectual copyright and denied them permission to show the feature anywhere.

This isn't the first time this has occurred. A Spanish fan adaptation of Dune by Mediteatro Productions was halted by lawyers from the Frank Herbert estate; the trailer was even pulled from YouTube. The filmmakers now have a petition going, though the last time I checked, it had only got six-hundred signatures. Given the rumours of a Peter-Berg-helmed adaptation, you can't blame the estate for being vigilant in safeguarding its intellectual property.

Fan filmmakers, though, point to two successful film franchises whose creators and copyright holders have been more flexible. George Lucas is more than happy for fans to make Star Wars spinoffs, and the best ones are usually to be found on Atom Films. Paramount seems to have no problem with the existence of Star Trek: New Voyages, a high-budget affair by Star Trek fans that has involved cast members from the original show. And the TV show Battlestar Galactica encouraged fan films to tie in with their series, even providing visual FX footage and sound effects from the show.

For the studios, Star Wars and Star Trek fan flicks are useful for keeping a fan base alive when there's nothing for them to throw on screen. But neither Games Workshop nor the Herbert estate have had the luxury of a long-running successful TV or film franchise, so perhaps it's understandable that they'd like to develop their own look and feel for their properties before fans beat them to it. — Faisal A. Qureshi