n the year 3000, humanity has devolved into groups of hardscrabble cave dwellers eking out a living in the mountains. One such wretch, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Pepper), bids goodbye to his sweetheart Chrissie (Sabine Karsenti) and rides off from his mountain home in search of food. He stumbles across the ruins of a city overgrown with trees, and seeks refuge in an abandoned shopping mall that still bears Christmas decorations. But he is captured by an eight-foot-tall being and awakes in a cage onboard a flying machine. It carries him to an immense, domed city, the remains of Denver.
Inside, shackled and unable to breathe without nose tubes, Tyler discovers that the gigantic beings are Psychlos, aliens who rule the Earth. The Psychlo head of security, a duplicitous alien with a harsh laugh, is Terl (Travolta). Robbed of his chance to leave Earth, a planet he despises, Terl hatches a plan with his clerk, Ker (Whitaker), to steal gold from a nearby mountain. To do so without being discovered by the corporate "home office" on the Psychlo planet, Terl recruits a handful of "man-animals" to do the work for him. Tyler is among them.
Terl puts Tyler in a Psychlo "learning machine" to teach him the Psychlo language. Tyler also picks up a few other things, including mathematics and molecular biology. He then enlists his fellow prisoners in a bold plan: they will go along with Terl, but only as a way to win their freedom.
Terl teaches Tyler to pilot a Psychlo flying machine to the gold in the mountains. Terl can't come with them--the area is surrounded by uranium, and the radiation would detonate his breathing gas. So he leaves them for two weeks to extract the gold. Tyler takes advantage of the unsupervised time to arrange the humans' last stand against the alien invaders.
Conehead Klingons in platform shoes
Battlefield Earth, based on the 1,000-page novel of the same name by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, fulfills a longstanding dream of star and producer Travolta, who compares Hubbard's yarn to Frank Herbert's Dune or George Lucas' Star Wars.
As if.
Though it begins promisingly, Earth's meandering plot rapidly unravels, with sequences of mystifying illogic and howling implausibility. The entire film is juryrigged to enable the barely literate Tyler (who has never even seen glass before) to pull together a band of cave dwellers in seven days to overcome an army of technologically advanced and politically savvy aliens. The conclusion is foregone from the first minute.
The characters are paper-thin, the situations clichéd and the dialogue as blunt as a Psychlo club. When he's about to double-cross an acquaintance, Terl says, "as a friend, I could forget to file the report--but unfortunately, I'm not your friend!"
Travolta, who has shown audiences that he can play both subtly and over-the-top, pulls out all the stops with Terl, and it's not a pretty sight. It's only a pity he doesn't have a mustache to twirl. He stomps around in an alien getup that makes him and his fellow Psychlos look like Conehead Klingons in platform shoes. As the witless Ker, Whitaker tries his best to retain his dignity, but he is ultimately lost as well. Pepper's performance is as meandering as the story; his big freedom speech actually drew laughter from a preview audience.
Travolta and director Christian, who served as second unit director on last year's Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, have assembled a top-notch production team, including designer Patrick Tatopoulos (Godzilla). As a result, Earth's visuals are often striking, as are many of its special effects. But much of the technical wizardry is in service to silliness: cavemen flying Harrier jump jets, or Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, flicking a foot-long tongue.
As bad as Battlefield Earth is, at least one thing can be said for it: There's no way it will drive a sane person to join the Church of Scientology, especially if it means having to sit through more movies based on Hubbard's books.
-- Patrick
anyael (Buzzotta) is a young street preacher with a dark message: God is a "deadbeat dad" who's abandoned his creation. When he's suddenly gunned down in front of his own followers and a watchful derelict, it looks at first like one more random act in a universe without a divine plan.
That's until Danyael rises from the dead.
As he wanders out of the morgue he becomes the focus of several driven people and beings. The stunned coroner (Steve Hytner) pieces together the truth that Danyael himself is only just discovering: He's a nephalim, the child of an angel and a human woman, and thus impossible to kill unless his heart is removed.
Meanwhile an embittered angel named Zothael (Spano) is hunting Danyael in order to do just that. Zothael believes Danyael is the only creature who can prevent the coming of Pyriel, the Angel of Genocide. Pyriel has the power to make humanity--whom Zothael derisively calls "the monkeys"--destroy themselves, placing the angels first again in God's sight. Also constantly popping up is the derelict (Walken), who was once the archangel Gabriel and who protected Danyael as a child.
After an initial encounter with Zothael, Danyael flees into the desert on a motorcycle, following confusing visions of a strange being standing atop a tower of writhing human corpses. Zothael alternately charms and bullies Danyael's girlfriend, Maggie (Butler), into following in her car. Zothael nearly convinces her that Danyael is deluded and must be stopped--but she balks when "stopped" becomes "killed." Zothael crashes the car, forcing the young nephalim to confront his pursuer and defend Maggie. But Zothael proves as hard to kill as Danyael himself--and Danyael must survive to face and defeat the Angel of Genocide before the entire human race is wiped out.
Seraphim smackdown
The angels' resentment of humanity--the inferior Johnny-come-latelies who nonetheless command God's love and grace--is fertile dramatic territory, lending an edge even to a flat, direct-to-video sequel like Prophecy 3. The film alternates between atmospheric explorations of emotions, such as Zothael's contemptuous anger or Danyael's confusion, and neo-horror fight scenes updated with a late-'90s budget-Matrix feel. Each of these two components struggles to be the center of the film, echoing the film's conflict between believers and cynics. Is Prophecy 3 a creepy, metaphysical journey to the dark side of a possibly godless universe, or is it angry angels duking it out, a seraphim smackdown?
The hero, too, is "Matrix Light"--very light. Fortunately, Buzzotta, who gets a deadly "introducing" credit for his role as Danyael, is not called upon to carry the film. Like Edward Furlong (John Connor) in Terminator 2, he's the focus but not the soul, more symbol than substance. And, as in T2, the protector and nemesis are far more compelling. Spano's Zothael is freighted with eons of umbrage over the Almighty's inexplicable attention to these small-minded weaklings. He's not so much evil as disgusted. Meanwhile Walken, though he gets star billing, has an essentially advisory role; he does have some interesting scenes, though, including an epiphany in which he realizes what Danyael's purpose must be. Series veteran Hytner is also both good and fun in a crucial role.
The climax of the film involves the confrontation with Pyriel, which has been carefully foreshadowed with premonitions. But because the struggle with Zothael figures so prominently, it's anticlimactic to turn aside to a showdown with a new character alluded to only in cryptic visions. Still, Prophecy 3 is worth watching, and neatly ties up the tale of the earthy angel Gabriel and an ill-fated union between angel and woman.
This film also has a sense of humor about itself, displayed particularly in scenes with Hytner or Walken. I loved the scene where a cop is getting the angel's statement after Danyael's murder and tries to figure out Gabriel's age. The joke about Gabriel having learned to drive even figures in the plot--Zothael has to kidnap Maggie because angels don't drive.
-- Mark
n the year 3000, humanity has devolved into groups of hardscrabble cave dwellers eking out a living in the mountains. One such wretch, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Pepper), bids goodbye to his sweetheart Chrissie (Sabine Karsenti) and rides off from his mountain home in search of food. He stumbles across the ruins of a city overgrown with trees, and seeks refuge in an abandoned shopping mall that still bears Christmas decorations. But he is captured by an eight-foot-tall being and awakes in a cage onboard a flying machine. It carries him to an immense, domed city, the remains of Denver.
anyael (Buzzotta) is a young street preacher with a dark message: God is a "deadbeat dad" who's abandoned his creation. When he's suddenly gunned down in front of his own followers and a watchful derelict, it looks at first like one more random act in a universe without a divine plan.
