‘Battlefield Earth’ On Netflix: A Movie So Bad It Makes Scientology Network Look Good

The road of cinema history is paved with a wide array of achievements and memorable moments. Casablanca won Best Picture in 1943. Black Panther crossed the billion dollar mark at the worldwide box office in 2018. Battlefield Earth hit theaters in 2000. Sorry, is one of those not like the other? Is the critically-maligned big screen adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s best-selling sci-fi novel not in the same league as Academy Award-winning films? Well, you can finally see for yourself, as the infamously terrible flick is now streaming on Netflix. And it’s every bit as awful as you’ve been led to believe. So bad, in fact, that it makes Scientology Network look like prestige television.

How does one begin to describe Battlefield Earth? Shall we start with the setting? Welcome to the year 3000, where Psychlos run the Earth and things really aren’t going too hot for the humans. Terl (John Travolta) leads the Psychlos on their mission to enslave humanity and drain Earth of all its resources, and just when all hope seems lost, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) (I am not making that up) decides to fight back after being captured. Okay, now that’s out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.

Battlefield Earth had a budget of $73 million, but judging by how everything in this movie looks, that money probably went towards a new yacht for Tom Cruise. I’m only half kidding. The production value is jaw-droppingly low, full of terrible special effects, poorly-directed action scenes, and baffling camerawork. Even for 2000, I can’t imagine that Battlefield Earth looked good to anyone. There is nary a single scene that isn’t shot from a strange, off-kilter angle, so if you’re prone to motion sickness, we recommend staying away.

If all this isn’t enough to scare you away, the movie is two hours long. Yes, that’s two hours of John Travolta terrorizing human life as we know it in the most ridiculous getup possible, two hours of strangely-hued scenery, two hours of dialogue so cringeworthy you’ll wonder who allowed the film to ever be released. (Scientology. It was Scientology).

The Church of Scientology may have been a driving force behind Battlefield Earth, but when the world saw it (and did not love it), they put themselves about as far away from it as they could. So far, in fact, that poor Terl has no airtime on Scientology Network and instead has found a new home at Netflix. This may all not deter you at all. It may make you so intrigued that you go ahead and spend two hours of your life watching this movie. And if that’s the case, I can’t judge you. Because I did the same thing.

Stream Battlefield Earth on Netflix