Friday, 12 May 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

I have seen the future and it is called Battlefield Earth.

Rarely does one get an opportunity to experience a movie like this one. One of the world's biggest movie stars, John Travolta. One of the real up-and-comers, Barry Pepper. A great veteran actor, Forest Whitaker. A director who already has an Academy Award, Roger Christian. All together for a movie based on an all-time best selling sci-fi book.

Paul Verhoeven doesn't even have an Academy Award! Elizabeth Berkeley hadn't even made a cameo appearance in an Oscar-worthy Steven Spielberg movie. And Gina Gershon was still the great-looking-chick version of Forest Whitaker. So, what was Showgirls missing that keeps it one step behind Battlefield Earth as the worst mainstream movie in recent memory? The major movie star! Had Tom Cruise played the Kyle MacLachlan character in Showgirls, that would have taken it into Battleship Earth territory. No doubt, Frank T.J. Mackey, without the deep self-reflection that he was forced into during Magnolia, would have fit right into Showgirls. And Ms. Berkeley's character would have surely respected "it" and then cut it off with her little knife.

But I digress...

It is hard to imagine a year 2000 future that will deliver a worse mainstream movie than Battlefield Earth. Last year, we knew at the beginning of summer that we had Eaters of the Dead/The 13th Warrior, The Astronaut's Wife and Chill Factor on their delayed ways at the end of the summer. This year's perpetual delay crop - All The Pretty Horses, Duets and Texas Rangers - just don't seem likely to be all that unwatchable. Heck, any of the three could even be good, victims of limited imaginations at studios rather than being hack work by quality directors.

There's no point in rehashing everything that is wrong with this movie. It should be enough to point out that every gag gets repeated at least twice, the motivations of the characters are muddy and sometimes absurd (If the Psychlos are so powerful and dominant, why would they be dumb enough to educate a human to the point where he could hurt them, for starters?) and with all the time and effort they spent on make-up, which is quite effective, why couldn't they get rubber hands that actually allowed the actors to move their fingers?

There is so much to try to forget here. Shooting a leg off of a cow to prove how dangerous Psychlos are...humans learning how to fly sophisticated jets in less than a day and then, not only flying them but flying them in perfect Air Force formations...the use of the word "leverage" at a frequency heretofore limited to the use of "the F-word" in Clerks...and the line that I will always remember and can never forget, "We're going to need more supplies," uttered when the decision is made that humans must stop fighting with rocks and sticks, fly to the Psychlos planet and blow it up within a few days. (Believe me, I'm underselling. Context is everything on that one, though I hope you will wait until cable to find out just how silly it really is.)

The scariest thing was that at the press day, held on Wednesday of this week, all but one of the people who talked to us talked about the sequel to Battlefield Earth. If there is such a sequel, the issue of who finances it will be a truly worthy pursuit. In the meanwhile, I, frankly, do not care that much about all this Scientology obsession that surrounds this movie. We Jews (and those Christians as well) have been making terrible movies for decades. Why should we have all the fun? And bankruptcies? I don't see any deep subliminal messages in this movie. There is a thing about there being no fate and a disdain for putting yourself in the hands of God, but nothing new there. And frankly, I could care less about where the money goes or comes from. I don't hold Scientology in the esteem I hold Judaism as a religion, however, I'd hate to think that people would avoid seeing some of the Spielberg sponsored Holocaust docs because the money is going back to "those Jews." And as the great documentary by Errol Morris, Mr. Death, showed, Jews angered by Holocaust deniers (who are all racist idiots, but that's another column) can be every bit as vindictive as some have charged the Scientologists of being. Don't even get me started on The Crusades. If there is something really wrong in Scientology Land, I will choose to let the court system, flawed as it is, sort it out.

I feel a little bad about all of this, because Warner Bros. gave out one of the nicest gifts I've ever received at a junket in my life. It's a beautiful crystal (or crystal-like) globe. Just wonderful. Were it only that Battlefield Earth had one moment of clarity as pure and beautiful as that globe.

Box Office Extra will be here by noon, e.s.t.

THE GOOD: Two marketing departments stand alone on top of the movie world right now for their cleverness in marketing, Fox and DreamWorks. Of course, much of that cleverness is wasted on journalists and will never see the light of day in the form we see it. So, I understand why other studios don't spend all the time or money on these things, but there is something ingratiating about this real-world-valueless graft when it arrives at the door. It's a bit like Christmas because you really don't know what it is going to be. DreamWorks has pulled out all the stops for Road Trip, drowning journalists in stuff from condoms to leopard-skin underwear to a sperm donation kit. Sick, but funny. They also sent out ceramic eggs for Chicken Run, though I apparently don't have enough juice to rate these higher end items. Still, very catchy.

"Pills, Mutants & Overplayed Trailers"