When terrible movies become B classics it is usually because they are so ill-conceived and wrongly presented they transcend their genre and become comedy classics. These movies are not supposed to make us laugh. Usually they hope to frighten and terrify us. The worst ones are those that try to make us think. A “deep” movie that fails miserably can be the funniest movie of the year. Battlefield Earth is best remembered as “the scientology movie” that is also terrible. The moviemakers hoped to take a best-selling science fiction novel and offer it up as insight into a little understood system of faith. What they created is instead a comic masterpiece. This movie is arguably the greatest comedy of the last decade not simply because it makes us laugh at its preposterousness. Battlefield Earth is a classic comedy and should be treated as such.
Comedy is often seen as the opposite of tragedy, but the two are much closer than that. Comedy is born out of tragedy. Man has taken delight in the misery of others for as long as writers and artists have been capturing the human condition and sharing it with the ages. Man quickly learned it was important to laugh at his problems. And as long as he was laughing at his problems, he may as well take some joy in the problems of others. The Germans have a word for this unique situation-schadenfruede. Comedies have always exploited this condition. Bumbling men pratfall into furniture for our amusement. Slapstick fights make a mockery of violent intentions. Outsized villains fall victim to their own hubris. The audience giggles in appreciation. This appreciation is not just for the show in front of them. It is also appreciation that the victim is someone else.
Battlefield Earth offers the audience plenty of opportunities to laugh uproariously from the perspective of schadenfreude. When the movie came out the nation was just beginning its fatigue with scientology. The internet was making some of the more wacky elements of the group public and the name was becoming synonymous with a joke. The general public was beginning to see the humor inherent in a faith system created by a science fiction writer. This movie was meant to be a PR opportunity for scientology. One of the nation’s biggest movie stars, a devout scientologist, put his name and reputation on the line to advance the cause of his faith. Unfortunately for them, they only gave an eager public more chances to mock them.
The first laughs in Battlefield Earth come from the quality issues. Although summer blockbusters are rarely famous for writing and acting, the wooden dialogue (“A man-animal gaining leverage over a Psychlo?!”) and clunky delivery are atrocious. John Travolta delivers every ridiculous line as though he were a Shakespearean actor auditioning for the role of Hamlet. This is scenery-chewing of the highest caliber. Usually the saving grace of large action movies is the effects. However, it is hard to see where the budget for this movie went. The effects are cheap, the sets are sad, and the CGI looks like it was made in iMovie. (Sorry Mac fans; that is not a compliment.) The biggest problem? This best-selling science fiction tale consists of just plain terrible science fiction. The science is weak and the technology is laughable. The tension cannot be cut with a knife. There are no stakes. The aliens are jokes, but the human protagonists are just as silly. Very quickly the audience realizes they don’t care who wins. They begin to find joy in every protracted death.
These are not the stakes on which to build an epic blockbuster that tells the tale of your belief system. However, it is the way to bring an audience to its knees with laughter. This is consistent with some great comedies. Nobody looks to comedic actors for Oscar-winning performances. Quality is generally an afterthought to the jokes. The performances in some of the most famous comedies of all time are hammy and over the top. Intentional or not, Battlefield Earth hits many of the marks of a great comedic movie.
The humor that stems from the shadenfreude in Battlefield Earth is not the only reason this movie should be critiqued as a comedy masterpiece. It hits several of the marks that many comedies are known by. It follows the standard “slobs vs. snobs” arc. It has an outsized villain and some ridiculous directorial choices. It also serves a high-price vehicle for its star. Dramas rarely do this, or at least not nearly as blatantly. Finally, there is an overabundance of bumbling slapstick. No summer science fiction blockbuster should ever engage in pratfalls. They are the hallmark of comedies. For all these reasons, Battlefield Earth should be considered one of the greatest comedies of the last decade.
“Slobs vs. snobs” is a classic comic arc. Although it is most often associated with the comedies of the 1980s, it has been around much longer than that. It is characterized by a rag-tag team of misfits banding together and defeating the villains. These villains always have the advantage, whether it is because of money, means or experience. The audience finds humor in the downfall of those with obvious advantage. The audience identifies with the underdog so the defeat of the “slobs” has personal significance for them. Battlefield Earth perfectly portrays this classic arc. Mankind has culturally de-evolved. Johnny and his allies live in caves and fear retribution from the gods: human relics from the time of the Psyclonian invasion. They have no technology and no education. They are horribly outmatched by a completely superior invading force. Their eventual victory comes due to their surmounting ridiculous odds. Not only are they able to fight off the small force holding the Earth hostage, they are also able to completely destroy the Psychlo home planet. This destruction comes as a result of a sacrifice from an otherwise bumbling character. He redeems himself, and his martyred brother, and saves the day. The slobs are thus victorious.
This “slobs vs. snobs” dynamic is only possible with an outsized villain and an improbably perfect hero. This villain is almost always brought down due to his hubris. This is usually a result of underestimating the enemy. Terl, John Travolta’s character, is a perfect example of this type of character. I have already discussed the hammy overacting. He becomes a ridiculous villain from his first frame. Contrast Terl with Johnny Goodboy. His name alone tells the audience that he is who we are rooting for. He is motivated by a sense of protection for his people, their way of life, and Chrissy-the obligatory love interest. (In the traditional “slobs vs. snobs” arc Johnny should be stealing Chrissy from Terl. The interspecies aspect holds us from that, much as these types of comedies rarely show interracial relationships. Johnny’s drive and innate intelligence, despite his lack of opportunities and education, are what save him and humankind. Terl assumes that since his race is currently winning, Johnny and his kind are incapable of ever winning. Johnny is educated by Terl in a misguided attempt to make his life easier. His assumptions should have prevented him from ever assuming Johnny could even learn, but Terl is so consumed by his efforts to move up the chain of Psyclonian middle-management he is blinded to everything but his own pursuits. Greed is the root of his villainy, and his eventual downfall. The ending, with Terl imprisoned in Fort Knox after spending the entire movie seeking gold, is irony for those who don’t the meaning of the word.
The arc of Battlefield Earth is obviously that of a comedy. But the details mimic the details of some of the funniest movies. The director made some curious choices that add nothing to the movie except for laughs. The bulk of the film appears to have been filmed on a 45° angle. It is very difficult to take a director with vertigo seriously. This is also a man who relies heavily on slow motion. Whenever the action begins to pick up, the movement on screen begins to slow down. All of the impact is then lost. Finally, the scene changes are accented by wipes, a form of scene change looked down upon by even film students. These manage to dissolve any tension the few times the movie manages to create some. When the director of a summer blockbuster, financed by the juggernaut that is Scientology, resorts to wipes, all credibility goes out the window. These are all embellishments which do nothing for the story, characters, or drama. All they do is raise the humor level. Whether these laughs are intentional or not, they are legitimate laughs at the buffoonery displayed on the screen.
Slapstick is a very old form of comedy; some argue it originated in the middle ages. It is considered a “lower” form due to its reliance on physical gags as opposed to verbal wit. Battlefield Earth is hardly a classic slapstick comedy; however, it incorporates some slapstick elements into its fight scenes. The outmatched humans always mange to gain the upper hand when fighting the Psychlos. This is usually the result of the aliens fumbling their weapons or bumbling an assault. The audience laughs at the misfortunes of the alien overlords and cheers for the otherwise outmatched human heroes.
Battlefield Earth, whether intentionally or not, displays all the hallmarks of a legitimate comedy. It has the classic slobs vs. snobs arc-complete with an outsized villain and a hero who transcends all the odds to come out on top. The ending reeks of the type of “irony” found in high school short stories. It has bad quality, bad direction, a bad story, and a terribly misguided purpose. For all of these reasons, and many more than can be squeezed into this piece, Battlefield Earth is the greatest comedy of the decade.
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