XENU TV Takes a Look at the First Draft Movie Script for "Battlefield Earth"

Well, here's my detailed look at the script for John Travolta's Swan Song, "Battlefield Earth."  The Church of Scientology calls this movie "The Film to Beat in the Year 2000."  I say we beat it with a stick.

As the first movie reviewer to make it back through the Wall of Fire, I
should warn you that what you are about to read is filled with spoilers.  After all, if I'm willing to tell you that the super-secret, upper levels of Scientology tell the story of the Evil Overlord Xenu who stuffed us all into volcanos 75 million years ago and blew us up with hydrogen bombs far more powerful than those we have today...well, then I'm willing to spill the beans on just about anything!

And be warned!  Reading spoilers on this film could be hazardous to your health.   If you are not properly prepared for reading this review, your pneumonia implant could kick in and you may die!  However, I can help.  Let me sign you up for a few courses...hold onto these soup cans...now give me every cent you have.   There...you're protected!

The screenplay for "Battlefield Earth" was written by first timer Corey Mandell and, from what I understand, it stays very close to Hubbard's novel.

This is the first draft, dated October 1998, so it may have been revised quite a bit since then but I have a feeling that there was very little changed.  It is a high crime in Scientology to rewrite anything of Hubbard's.  Since Travolta and the church have a very large say in this property, I have a feeling they are staying close to the original dreck...er...text.

The film opens in a barren, mountainous region where a small group of native people, clad in animal skins, gather around a fire near their cave as the religious leader recounts the story of how the skies opened up and the monsters came down and killed all men but a few.   Now they must pray to the gods so the monsters don't come back and kill them, too.

Our hero, Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler, is tired of hearing about the monsters.   He grabs his kill-clubs, hops upon his snow-white horse, Windsplitter, and rides off to find a more bountiful land.  As he rides over the mountain, we are supposed to be shocked by the site of...a city!  It's the remains of Denver!  In a hoary device used so often in the past, these primative people are us...only stupid.

It's the future.  Johnny and Windsplitter mosey through town and, after surviving a grizzly bear attack (Attention Jon Peters: how did this script get past you?) Johnny takes a trip through the remains of a mall.  Here Johnny is startled by what promises to be an annoying shock cut of a department store mannequin.  Then as soon as he recovers (with an amused grin) he is attacked by the real threat...it's a ten foot tall monster with claws,  called a Psychlo!!!  The Psychlo knocks out Johnny and puts him on a transport.

When Johnny comes to, he is in a warehouse complex.  He is about to be processed by the "human wrangler" when Johnny seizes a chance, grabs a Psychlo gun and shoots one of the monsters dead.  Johnny is subdued just in time for the entrance of Terl, John Travolta's character.  Terl is in charge of security on this planet and is shocked and outraged by this incident.

"You're out of your skull if you think I'm going to write 'shot by
man-animal' as the cause of death in my report", an angry Terl shouts.  He doesn't believe a man-animal has the ability to work a complex machine like a gun so he demands an underling give Johnny his blaster.  Johnny takes the gun and shoots the underling dead.  Terl knocks Johnny out with a swipe of his claw and says "...Well, I'll be damned."

Later that day, Johnny is branded and put in a cell which turns out to be a cage at the Denver Zoo.  This is where all the man-animals are kept.  He will be slave labor for the evil Psychlos.

While Johnny is making friends with his man-animal fellow prisoners, Terl is meeting with his visiting superior.  In scenes that could come right from a "Hogan's Heroes" episode, Terl's Colonel Klink is kissing the ass of the General Burkhalter of this film, the District Manager.  The District Manager (or DM) is a pissy, petty, dictator who takes delight in informing Terl that he can not go back to the home world as planned.  Terl has to stay on Earth and increase his production...or else.

Now we come to the real core of the story.  Here's the plot, folks. Terl discovers there is gold in a near-by mine.  He doesn't want DM to know.  Terl wants to keep the wealth for himself.  But there's a problem.  The mine is located outside in an area which is deadly to the Psychlos.  That's why they need the man-animals.  Terl thinks he can train them to operate heavy machinery and do his dirty work in secret.  Terl's assistant is aghast.  "It's hard enough to keep them from peeing on the carpet...but mining!?!?!" he asks.

Terl tells him the man-animals actually possess certain technical abilities... they even managed to fire a crude probe into space!  So a few pages earlier Terl didn't believe a man-animal could use a gun...BUT THEY CAN FIRE OFF SPACE PROBES!?!??!

And this probe actually was the reason the Psychlos came to Earth as (can anyone say V'ger?) this probe had a plaque with the man-animals' pictures on it.  Not only that but as Terl states, "This plaque was made from a rare metal that's worth a clanking fortune!" 

Yes, you read right...clanking.

This is why Terl is aware there is gold to be found.

Now Terl needs to communicate with the man-animals but they don't speak the same language so one has to be selected to be hooked up to an e-meter...(oops sorry)...Learning Machine.   Who does Terl pick?  Why, Johnny, of course.  The one man-animal who has shown defiance and violence toward the Psychlos.  Makes sense, don't it?

Terl hooks Johnny to the machine, then Terl and his assistant decide this will take a while so they go out to lunch.  Instantly, another man-animal comes through the unlocked door and knocks Johnny out of the Learning Machine.  Johnny is impressed by how much he has learned so they look through Terl's drawers and find more Learning Disks and Johnny hooks himself up again.  When Johnny is finished, he speaks fluent Psychlo, knows advanced math and can spot a con game disguised as a religion the instant he sees one.

In fact, Johnny is so damned smart that when Terl comes back, he discovers that Johnny has accessed Terl's pin code for his vault (Terl's employee number...backwards) and found nasty secrets hidden inside Terl's safe.  Johnny blackmails Terl.   Instead of Terl just shooting Johnny, he decides to work with him.  Terl explains, he doesn't have enough time to train another man-animal.  BUT THE LEARNING MACHINE WORKED IN MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!

We're now outside the domed city of Denver.  Terl is breathing through a device.   When ouside the dome, Psychlos need breath-gas.  Terl has brought Johnny here to press a point.  The man-animals are like the cows grazing in that field.   Displease Terl and this is what will happen.  In one of the most disgusting scenes I've ever read, Terl points his blaster at a cow and blasts off it's legs.   The beast falls to the ground roaring in pain.  Terl shoots another and another till all the cows are lying legless in the field.  Johnny eventually grabs the blaster and puts the cows out of their misery.  Will that scene make it into the film?  I hope not.

It's back to the complex as Terl puts Johnny on a flight simulator and trains Johnny in how to fly a jet.  You really need to know this when doing some mining.

When Johnny returns to his cage at the zoo that night, he tells the other man-animals that they are going to take back Earth.  As the word spreads from cage to cage, the sound of  the captives' delight becomes a deafening roar.

The next morning, the plot turns stupider than anything Ed Wood could every imagine.   Terl and Johnny fly the jet with the man-animal workers out to the mining location.   There is a smaller jet following them.  When they arrive at the mine, Terl tells them they have 14 days to bring him half the gold.  Then Terl gets into the smaller jet and flies away...LEAVING THE BIG JET WITH THE MAN-ANIMALS!!!  WHO KNOW HOW TO FLY!!!! 

HELLOOOOO!!!!!!  CAN ANY OF YOU FOLKS SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS PLAN?!?!?!?!

As the miners gripe about the fact that there's no time to dig up all that gold AND plan a big revolution, Johnny gets an idea...and what a whopper.  He hops into the jet, FLIES TO THE MALL and picks up supplies, including the mannequins he saw at the opening of the film.

With these supplies, the clever man-animals devise a crude audio-animatronic line of moving mannequins dressed like miners who move their shovels up and down as though working.  They need to do this because Terl has little flying camera droids that can fly up to you and watch you work.  Not that the cameras are very good because they can't seem to tell a dummy from a human...OR SEE THE JET FLYING AWAY TO THE MALL!!!!   HELLLOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

As soon as the dummies are ready, Johnny and the gang hop back into the Jet and fly away once again.  This time they head for New York City!!!  There's the Statue of Liberty embarrased to be in such a lame ass movie.  And there's the Library of Congress which is Johnny's destination, for somehow he knows that this is a good place to quickly find exposition to keep this crappy movie going.

They look at a radiation map because somehow Johnny knows this is something they should look at.  They see the mountain where they are mining and it has a symbol on it.   Johnny explains that it means uranium.  He points to where his tribe is from (somehow knowing where that would be on a map) and sees it too has that symbol.  The others are asked where their tribes are located.  "A village called Los Alamos" says one.  An island in Pennsylvania offers another.  "Which island?" Johnny asks.  "Three Mile Island" of course.

Johnny then spins the majestic tale (he couldn't possibly know but tells it anyway) of how, many years before, the monsters attacked the planet with deadly gas.  The survivors hid in caves and eventually came out of hiding. These proud boys are the descendants of those survivors.  The Psychlos are not able to go near the radiation.   Yet, Johnny says, this radiation is killing the survivors so they have to defeat the monsters to have a chance at living.  How generations have passed while living in this radiation is never addressed.

Johnny and the boys hop back in the jet and fly to Fort Knox!!!!  How Johnny knows about Fort Knox is never addressed!!!!  They use a Psychlo blaster to cut through the vault and load the gold onto the plane then scoot back to the mine!!!!

The next day, Terl comes to collect the gold and wonders why it is in bars.  "We figured a man of your stature wouldn't want something as course as raw ore" Johnny explains.  Terl accepts this then tells them since they have so much time to smelt gold, that he wants the second half of the ore in half the time.   Terl hops into his plane and heads back with the gold leaving Hogan...er...Johnny behind to plan some more treachery.

Johnny and the boys fly to Texas, to Fort Hood and stop at the Strategic Arms Weapons Vault and come out with boxes of explosives...AND A CRUISE-MISSILE NUCLEAR WARHEAD!!!!!!   They load it onto the plane and head back.

Now timing is important because they have to blow up the dome over Denver to kill the locals monsters but as soon as they do that, the alarms will ring on the home world and massive troops will be teleported here and destroy them all.  But since everything comes easy to our heroes they have no problem smashing the dome (though it takes a couple explosions to do it).  Not only that but the second the teleportation portal opens to send the troops down to Earth, Johnny sends the bomb to the Psychlo world where it goes off and successfully blows up the station on the mother planet.

No...wait...there's more.  It not only blows up the Psychlo station but this single nuclear bomb SETS OFF A CHAIN REACTION THAT BLOWS UP THE WHOLE PSYCHLO WORLD!!!!!!!!!   This one bomb!!!

Back on Earth, Johnny and the boys are victorious.  They go back to Psychlo headquarters.  It is obvious a little time has passed and they are in command.   They stop in a little room and find Terl with his breath-gas device.  Terl is under "house arrest" and the boys have come to pay him a visit.

Terl begs to be put into slave labor or vaporized.  It is inhumane to just keep him locked up.  But Johnny assures him he has a use.  In case more Psychlos come in the future, they want to have Terl around to...well...I guess ask questions...or something.  It's not very clear.  But then the movie ends.  Or as the script puts it...

"On Terl's look of complete and utter defeat...we fade to black."

Now, I ask you, is this not pathetic?  Before writing this I was comparing the movie to a lousy B western in which the nasty Train Barons try to run the cattle ranchers out of town but I think the Hogan's Heroes analogy is a much better one.   Terl is nothing more than an unlovable Klink with his own bumbling Schultz to abuse.  Johnny and the boys run rings around Terl as they try to escape.

I can't see how this could be rewritten without completely discarding all of Hubbard's work and as I said before I don't think this is going to happen.  I was expecting a two star, bland, "Last Starfighter" type of space opera that would be dull but somewhat respectable.  I was shocked to find this mess.

Do you want to see people digging for gold in your Sci-Fi?  Do you want to see people hopping in jets and flying to exotic locales they shouldn't even know exist?  Do you want to see 10 foot tall Aliens walking around with lunchboxes and briefcases?  Or pinching the asses of Alien waitresses with their claws?

What the hell is Travolta thinking?  I know he loves Hubbard but he must know this script doesn't work.  On almost every level, this is complete and utter dreck.   It's a clanking piece of man-animal droppings.  I didn't even tell you about the SECOND grizzly bear attack.  Terl gets his arm ripped off by a grizzly while he's busy shooting cows.

I also left out the endless scenes of Terl blackmailing everyone on his
staff.

Look, I love "Masterminds" as much as the next guy, but this director has his work cut out for him.  If Roger Christian can make a good film out of this mess then I say this man is the greatest director alive!

I'm not panning this film because Hubbard created a fraudulent religion to bilk people out of their money, or because Hubbard's wife went to prison for ordering the break in of the FBI and IRS or even because Scientologists have picketed my home...this script just stinks.

So what are they gonna do...sue me?