I saw the movie in high school, when it came out on VHS, and I loved it. I bought the book, and couldn’t put it down. It was perhaps my favorite piece of sci-fi for a while. I thought John Travolta was delightfully hammy, and that the movie was extremely quotable and fun.
A coworker of mine were just talking about musicals this morning, and my strong dislike of Hamilton. For some reason, it popped into my head that I would love a musical of Battlefield Earth, and John Travolta should sing in it. This sentiment was not shared by my coworker. So, yeah, that’s it.
I genuinely enjoyed the hell out it the book. It’s kind of over the top, but has a lot of neat ideas in it.
The movie? Well, I’m glad someone likes it.
A musical of the movie? My homie, if hell existed, I would cheerfully warm my toes on your burning soul because the entire place would have frozen over.
It could be fun!
I’m trying to downvote fewer posts on Lemmy, so thank you for this test.
That’s a noble task. Glad I could help.
I watched it as a kid and enjoyed it. Now I can rewatch with nostalgia, but it is a terrible movie haha.
I was very surprised to learn that it was written by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.
Oh, God, not sure if I’m supposed to upvote or downvote.
I read that whole damn book because I’m some kind of masochist.
Hot garbage is what that book was.
The book is what cemented my love for it! It filled in so many gaps from the movie. We won’t talk about the airworthiness of 1000 year old Harrier jets. Or how effective a nuclear warhead would be after centuries, given the half-life of their enriched fuel. Don’t care, still loved it. Just like Waterworld.
This is so unhinged I love it
I don’t remember this movie. But from other comments it sounds like I’m better off.
Do you like Waterworld? Do you like The Room? If so, you might find an appreciation for it. You need a soft spot for “bad” movies. Otherwise, you’re right.
The movie was a travesty of the book, and didn’t even finish the story. As a teen I enjoyed the book and so many of the ideas in it, and only as an adult reading others’ takes on it saw that it wasn’t the greatest writing. After reading it I dove into his Mission Earth, but barely finished the first one and did not want to continue for nine(!) more of the same. So there probably is some validity of the writing quality opinions.
I can’t say why Battlefield Earth worked for me - maybe because I took the concepts and my imagination filled in where the words failed. And yes, I get that the damsel in distress and women characters in general were terrible, but that could be reworked in a movie to be better characters while in the same scenarios.
I think I was most attracted to the hard science parts, like the hidden circuitry as a copyproof method of their tech, or the ships that flew by space displacement and keyboards (Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict used/borrowed this idea). And the second part of the book where Earth is the underdog trying to climb back from destruction to become a leader in the galaxy was a favorite of mine too, even if cliche.
So I don’t want a musical - I want if anything a proper movie that both tells the full story in the novel while fixing a lot of the problems of Hubbard’s writing style.
tbf, a play would be the ideal format for it. Can’t do screwey camera angles for no reason 24/7 with a proper stage and actors.
This is true!
