Psychlo Babble; or, Get Behind Me, Thetan!

Battlefield Earth displays that unique fusion of simplicity and convolution found in the kind of open-ended saga, often with a faintly Oedipal tinge, that a 5-year-old might tell himself when he is supposed to be taking a nap. The resemblance is strengthened by the name Hubbard gives the hero: Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper). Jonnie is a member of the remaining tribes of cave-dwelling Caucasians who are what is left of humanity in the year 3000, following Earth's colonization by evil invaders called the Psychlos: a mildew-covered race of beings who are nine feet tall, dreadlocked, have six fingers and wear codpieces. They are terribly greedy, and busy themselves raping Mother Earth through technological operations of some not-very-well-defined nature.

Chief of security is a disgruntled Psychlo named Terl, played by John Travolta, who is obviously having a very good time. Terl's responsibilities include blackmailing fellow Psychlo Forest Whitaker and laughing at his own jokes. Once Jonnie leaves the caves to make his way in the world, he and a couple of other "man-animals" are captured by the Psychlos and imprisoned in subterranean holding pens. These scenes are murky and have the feel of a documentary about hippies filmed in a closet.

Impressed by the intelligence of rebellious Jonnie, Terl decides to experiment using man-animals for skilled labor. He straps Jonnie into an unused dentist's chair (the aliens having long since abandoned oral hygiene) and blasts him with a concentrated ray of Pure Knowledge. In short order, Jonnie speaks fluent Psychlonese and begins offering his cave-man peers introductory lectures in trigonometry and molecular biology. They gaze at him in wonder, and he becomes their unquestioned leader, which only seems fair.

Terl then takes Jonnie to one of the larger branches of the Denver Public Library - and leaves him there, in the ruins, to contemplate the futility of resisting the Psychlo empire. This scene is what Aristotle called perepetia: a moment of reversal in the plot. For by the time Terl returns, Jonnie is examining a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence.

At this point, about an hour into Battlefield Earth, the slenderest threads of coherence and plausibility are finally brushed away. We suddenly learn what the Psychlos are doing on Earth: mining gold! Fortunately they never noticed Fort Knox. So Johnny and his friends have no trouble meeting their work quota. Meanwhile, they concentrate on learning to fly thousand-year-old fighter jets, and soon master the post-Einsteinian technology necessary to transport a bomb across the intergalactic void to destroy Planet Psychlo on the first try.

The cavepeople greet each new challenge by declaring it a "piece of cake": a haunting idiom, since they have spent the last few centuries as hunter-gatherers. The closing scene shows Terl caged by the earthlings - in a vault at Fort Knox. Which is kind of ironic, see, because he's so greedy. A sequel looms.

We never got it, alas. We are not worthy. (Full text of review from In These Times here.)

UPDATE: Check out a still from the film showing Travolta and Whitaker at Big Head DC. (Given how bad my cold is, and how hard that makes any serious effort just now, I may actually watch Battlefield Earth again for laughs.)