Remarkable things about Battlefield Earth (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Remarkable things about Battlefield Earth (2012)

denofgeek.com

33 pointswalterbell62 comments

I've never seen the movie, but as a child, Battlefield Earth was one of my favorite novels. I read it maybe ten times before age 20. I think it's a fairly childish and simplistic novel, but it is VERY long, and that is what I was looking for as a 13 year old voracious reader in the 90s.

I moved on to LRH's 'Mission Earth' decalogy. It's substantially weirder, with some sexual themes that seemed to my teenage self to be pretty far out of left field. But, again - it was very long. It gave me months of reading about a sci-fi world, which was basically the only thing I was looking for.

Also as a teen, I made it to around the 6th book of 'Mission Earth' before I just couldn't anymore. It was weirdly sexual, fairly bad, but the sense of scale was fun, and there were occasionally interesting sci fi thingies thrown in. 4/10.

I saw the movie early during Covid. I think the aliens are (accidentally) the only realistic part of the film. If human corporations ever make it to a planet with sentient life, I am certain that event would be plagued by sloppiness, self-interest, in-fighting, and exploitation.

It seems odd to specify corporations when the same would likely happen with any humans.

Corporations tend to amplify the worst aspects of human nature.

Any form of organization that relies on extortion, brings out the worst of humanity.

Governments perpetrate more wars and genocides than corporations do. In the 20th century they murdered tens of millions of people.

I don't think that's actually true, honestly, but it depends on how you count. For one thing, it's very hard to see where "corporations" end and "government" begins.

I mean, yes, wars have killed tens of millions of people. But an awful lot of those wars were on behalf of corporations, involved corporations, or were made much worse by corporations. Just in American history, corporations have directly engaged in straight-up genocides.

All wars, in the final analysis, are about economics.

I grant IBM their fair share of the blame for the Holocaust, but their involvement does not somehow wash the hands of the Nazi Party. The Nazi government of Germany was responsible for tens of millions of murders.

Trying to divide the blame such that all of it falls on the premise of corporations and leaves the premise of government pure is absurd. Both of these are dangerous social structures which need to be regulated and checked to keep them within reasonable moral bounds. Unchecked, both are capable of immeasurable evil.

> Trying to divide the blame such that all of it falls on the premise of corporations and leaves the premise of government pure is absurd.

I agree. And I was doing no such thing.

Don't forget Uncle Joe, Mao, and Pol Pot who were hardly corporate. They tortured and starved millions to death without war.

(And please don't say it was evil capitalism that drove them to do so.)

Not just starvation, they also outright murdered people. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, were murdered during the 'Cultural Revolution' in Mao's PRC.

> Don't forget Uncle Joe, Mao, and Pol Pot who were hardly corporate.

Good point, and I never said all horribles were because of corporations. But let me roll back a little to my original statement: corporations tend to amplify the worst aspects of human nature.

I think I'm on very solid ground with that. That some governments also tend to amplify the worst of human nature does not contradict my statement in any way.

> please don't say it was evil capitalism

I never mentioned capitalism, evil or otherwise. I was talking about corporations.

Large groups of people amplify the worst parts of human nature. Mobs, corps, governments, religions.

As George Carlin said:

"I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals."

> it's very hard to see where "corporations" end and "government" begins.

One thing I like to remember is that corporations literally are governments. A corporation is a license by the government to operate in manners restricted to governments.

Usually these manners are stuff like issuing stock, voting on officers etc. Sometimes it is an public government. When a town wants to form it's own government it incorporates. most often it is a for profit endeavor that wants to run with legally enforceable rules.

To add to that, the Dutch VOC was a corporation with a private army and navy that set up colonies and sold stock in their profits. They helped precipitate the first stock exchange as we know it, if I recall my history correctly.

You’re really just saying that when humans get together in organized groups it tends to amplify the worst aspects of human nature. “Corporations” is pointlessly specific and smacks of simplistic rhetoric.

Mission Earth is fascinating in how terrible it is. Parts of it might reach "so bad it's good", but there's just so much boring, repetitive padding that reading it feels like a chore. The sexual stuff also gets worse as the series goes on...

Definitely do not buy, but if you have a few days to waste you might want to read this blog:

https://missionspork.blogspot.com/p/table-of-contents.html

I loved both - Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth. Still do. Sure it is not Fahrenheit 451 but I do not care. It provides lots of interesting reading.

As for blogs - I've never liked reading about books. I lover reading books instead. I am a bookoholic

I liked the novel as well. Been awhile, but if I recall the movie was only about half the book, and the second half was really interesting because it confronted the idea that "okay you threw off your oppressors, but we still Live In A (Galactic) Society", and it was neat to see the humans wrestle with that.

>> but if I recall the movie was only about half the book,

This was my recollection as well, and I remember he had a sequel planned for the second half of the book but had to shelf it after the first movie bombed so badly along with his reputation. There was a point in one of the articles that mentioned it took Travolta 15 years to get a studio to greenlight the project.

"One of the longest novels I've ever read."

High praise!

I just re-read the novel recently after having read it many years ago. It’s pretty good. Keeping in mind that he claims, “this time I decided not to cut everything out and to just roll her as she rolled” [1], I’d say quite good.

I never got around to seeing the movie and I am so glad I didn’t after reading all the comments in this thread.

[1] https://battlefieldearth.com/introduction/

As a kid I really enjoyed it, but as an adult I felt that the story wasn't that well constructed.

The book was a sort of first in many areas of sci-fi.

Mission earth was phenomenal. It’s too bad I can’t get anyone to read Hubbard. They are missing out.

Fun fact: It won the Razzi as "Worst 'Drama' of Our First 25 Years" and the 50th is just seven years away.

Quoting Rita Kempley of The Washington Post commented: "A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a million years to create anything as cretinous as Battlefield Earth. This film version of L. Ron Hubbard's futuristic novel is so breathtakingly awful in concept and execution, it wouldn't tax the smarts of a troglodyte."

made me thinking, those working in the Sea Org sign a Billion Year contract[0] (even some eight-year-olds are signing those, after all the cult doesn't believe in the concept of children[1]), then it should easily be possible for the cult to come up with a Oscars-worthy remake within the next billion years...

Here's a few Youtube channels by former cult members, some of them grew up in it

    * https://www.youtube.com/@GrowingUpInScientology
    * https://www.youtube.com/@blownforgood
    * https://www.youtube.com/@KelliCopter
    * not a Scientologist but also discusses other cults https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwU7HOfuSL5LKf6ixFYuH6be8Bw_nX8C1

If you can't have enough of that rabbit hole, read about cults like NXIVM, Thirteen Tribes and FLDS. So much of it is luring in even the most intelligent people when they are vulnerable and it evolves into a play for power and control.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329600246_The_Etern... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJdXkR8e_a8&list=PL83GIJOYK-...

Clickable https://www.youtube.com/@GrowingUpInScientology https://www.youtube.com/@blownforgood https://www.youtube.com/@KelliCopter Not a Scientologist but also discusses other cults https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwU7HOfuSL5LKf6ixFYuH...

err, not Thirteen Tribes but Twelve Tribes.

I grew up reading science fiction. I don't think my dad ever really understood what I liked about it.

A while back, I bought a copy of Battlefield Earth and read it, just to see how bad it was (it was pretty bad).

Anyway, my dad visits for a couple of weeks; while I'm out one day, he peruses my bookshelf and makes a (nice) honest effort to "get into" the type of fiction I've been reading since I was 8 or 9.

Of course, he picks Battlefield Earth. His only comment, "It wasn't that good." I don't think he bought my explanation that I only had to just to see how terrible it was.

I wish he'd picked Dune, or The Mote in God's Eye, or Ringworld, or The Left Hand of Darkness. Just about anything else, in fact :)

I probably still have a copy on a bookshelf... I'm more than a little stunned how bad it was. I was about half-way through, reading it on a weekend, all alone in the house, and my brain just kinda rebelled at the act at one point. I dropped the book, yelled out "seriously?!" to no-one, and went to get some food and take a walk before I picked it back up. I finished it out of spite and perverse curiosity.

Oh boy it does not improve. Definitely agreed with your list of better books though!

That movie. I got physically ill watching it from the Dutch angles and the lurid colour grading. That said, the script was pulpy, but once you got away from the authorship taint and the motion sickness it was probably no worse than any other second-tier SF potboiler. I have the DVD (special edition!) as a means to threaten houseguests.

"BATTLEFIELD EARTH is that amazing turd in your toilet bowl. That log of shit that has colors that you can't understand the reason for being there. It also has a weird shape... it somehow resembles something familiar. You almost want to take a picture of it to show friends late at night, when the blinds are drawn and have a dirty filthy thing you want to disgust someone with, but... you have this inate curiousity... 'Have you ever seen anything quite like this?'"

-Harry Knowles http://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/5937

Sadly, in the 11 years since the article was published, the Battlefield Earth official movie website has gone dark. This little section of the book's website seems to be all that's left:

https://battlefieldearth.com/battlefield-earth/#movie

https://web.archive.org/web/20010516014056/http://www.battle...

But it uses flash

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0185183 describes the success of the movie: budget $73M, worldwide box-office < $30M

That budget number was dramatically overstated. Like, "the company was sued into bankruptcy for fraud because the budget numbers quoted to investors was 2x what they spent" overstated.

Okay, it's closer to 175% of what the budget was. It was around 42M. And it was the North American box-office that was just under 30M. I don't know if they released elsewhere.

From the link

All Releases DOMESTIC (72.2%) $21,471,685 INTERNATIONAL (27.8%) $8,253,978 WORLDWIDE $29,725,663

Okay, they didn't release elsewhere. The 8.253MM was from Canada.

I'm not sure where you're getting your info, and I don't think this really matters, but boxofficemojo says:

   "Domestic" refers to gross box-office revenue from North America (U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico), unless otherwise noted. "International" covers the rest of the world.

https://help.imdb.com/article/imdbpro/industry-research/box-...

It doesn't matter at all.

I saw a different source that quoted the numbers differently. Either way, it was a movie that did poorly commercially. Although it probably made back its production costs. See the other part about the lawsuits claiming it really cost a lot less to make. Probably because Travolta "invested" millions to pay his own salary.

That this movie ever got the funding it did really shows you how much leverage Travolta had back then in Hollywood.

s/Travolta/the Church of Scientology/

happy to help

via Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology#Controversies

The controversies involving the Church of Scientology, some of them ongoing, include:

* Criminal behavior by members of the organization, including the infiltration of the US Government.[526]

* Organized harassment of people perceived as enemies of the Church of Scientology.[526]

* Scientology's disconnection policy, in which some members are required to shun friends or family members who are "antagonistic" to the organization.[531][532]

* The death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson while in the care of the organization. (Robert Minton sponsored the multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Scientology for the death of McPherson. In May 2004, McPherson's estate and the Church of Scientology reached a confidential settlement.)[533]

* Attempts to legally force search engines to censor information critical of the Scientology organization.[534]

* Allegations the organization's leader David Miscavige beats and demoralizes staff, and that physical violence by superiors towards staff working for them is a common occurrence in the organization.[535][536] Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis denied these claims and provided witnesses to rebut them.[535]

Scientology social programs such as drug and criminal rehabilitation have likewise drawn both support and criticism.[537][538][539]

After micro-managing the movie for months, once the movie premiered, DM threw Travolta right under the bus... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHDk8YvgNlw&t=101s

Around 1985, I bought a used paperback copy of Battlefield Earth, and it had a tear-out form to "Order the soundtrack of a book!" as it was "Soon to be a major motion picture!"

Loved the book, but never ordered the soundtrack, and the wait for the eventual movie was about as long as the wait for more Star Wars after Return of the Jedi.

And maybe even more disappointing.

*Looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Jazz and there are a couple of songs on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/7jbIrqG028aV3uxNy56ZZg?si=CD7... Oh, wow. Umm. I'm so glad my teenage-self didn't spend money on that. :-D

I have a similar vintage book, bought from a charity shop in the UK for £1 or so. Green cover and the pull-out section for the sound-track.

At the time I read it I enjoyed the idea the book wasn't over when the humans defeated the occupiers, instead that was the start of the fight with the _other_ races, the shark/bankers especially.

It was a bit heavy-handed, but otherwise a fun read. That said when I heard there was a film coming out I was old enough to have heard of Scientology and had no interest in supporting it, or them.

Battlefield Earth is the worst novel I've ever finished. I do regret it.

Oh, come on...is that really true or have you stopped reading all the worse ones before finishing...in which case you have to admit that BE was at least entertaining enough to finish, which is a quality that many many of the "great" novels I had to read did not have.

Frankly the whole book reads like a 1000 page pulp. If you like pulp, it's not so bad.

I could name 10 sf books that are worse, even a lot of his other work. I'd take 10 battlefield earths over 1 three body problem. At least the characters have personalities

We have a story of bureaucrats being stupid,unable to maintain what others had conquered, and more interested in personal wealth and internal infighting then external threats.

It amazes me, even though it should not, that the point of the social commentary was too on the nose for some.

I liked the book, and even like some of the follow-up books. It introduced me to the idea of currency exchange arbitrage--something that has been a fair opportunities this last 6 months.

I liked this movie. It was funny that years later they have functional harrier jets.

Another movie with poor science but more fun is The Core.

There could be a pretty fun drinking game with The Core where every time you notice a fictional plot point you touch your nose, and the last one to touch their nose has to take a shot.

If you just took shots every time someone would end up in the morgue.

Number 7, the Harrier jets.

My brother actually mentioned that to me when he saw the film. He was an electrician on fighter jets in the navy. Apparently a harrier jet is unlikely to function properly if you let it sitting unused for about a week.

The only movie I've ever seen that's worse than Battlefield Earth is Wandering Earth. Evidence, of course, than any movie whose title ends with "Earth" is bound to be hot garbage.

“Another Earth” was a pretty good quiet sci-fi movie. (Not trying to be pedantic, but your phrasing just immediately put my brain to work on trying to think of counterexamples)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_Earth_(film) is not bad, as I recall from watching it a long time ago.

The novel was terrible, at least as art. But it was great fun. I used to think Hubbard was trying to emulate those stories we read in the pulp scifi mags of the 50s and 60s. Now I think that was just his usual style. It _was_ big. And long. The radio advert campaign for it at the time emphasized that. In the end, it really was the summer long scifi marathon in a single book they promised.

Travolta's treatment is very faithful to the book, and the FX isn't that bad for the time. The most memorable parts of the story are the humor at the expense of the aliens, and their self-destructive decadence. Kind of a mirror of our own place and time. The movie got those elements exactly right.

I went to see Battlefield Earth in the theater with a friend. Yes, it was awful.

Battlefield Earth was responsible for teaching me to check reviews before seeing a movie.

I kinda liked that movie. The scene early one where he gets hit by a ray gun is great and makes it look really painful. It could be a reference to Hubbard’s ideas about people receiving “implants” via ray guns that he talks about in A History of Man and the early OT materials.

The book was so much better than the movie. Hubbard had enough imagination.

> Hubbard had enough imagination.

Hear, hear. To even contemplate, much less design and implement a racket on the scale of the church of scientology, you indeed need quite a lot of imagination.

> "[...] Tarantino came to the premiere, sat with me, and he hugged me afterwards and said, ‘This is what I want to write. This is amazing stuff.’”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com