You can tell this was created to give Scientologists a hard-on, with their fantasies & beliefs that they can have the powers portrayed here. Travolta starring, released on Tom Cruise's birthday... it's just hilariously blatant.
Regardless, it's not a bad flick.
It's a nice Flick and scientology is also a cancer
shareScientologists use only 10% of their brain, didn't you know?
shareBut it's a wholesome Scientology film, one which can be shared with friends and family and an easy way to introduce Scientology to them reducing many barriers to entry.
I recommend.
Yeah, it goes along with both Scientologists' fantasies about unlocking some previously unaccessed capabilities of the human mind, but also with their hatred of the field psychiatry. You'll notice the villain in this movie is, while a brain surgeon and not a psychiatrist, is still a medical professional dealing specializing in the treatment of the brain. I think Scientologists find it easy to make such a doctor a stand in for their specific bugbear.
L. Ron Hubbard, while he had earlier in his life received and praised psychiatric treatment, came to hate psychiatrists and psychiatry after the early fifties, when his wife (whom he swiftly divorced) consulted with psychiatrists who diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, and recommended that he be institutionalized. Then, of course, after Hubbard wrote Dianetics, which he intended as a serious psychiatric book, that doctors might use in treating patients, and the American Psychological Association resoundingly rejected it as pseudoscientific nonsense, Hubbard's detestation of psychiatry and psychiatrists became complete. It's no coincidence that he named the villains of his book Battlefield Earth "Psychlos." Nor is it a coincidence that the world's most famous Scientologist, Tom Cruise, is an outspoken critic of the field of psychiatry; he was taught by his cult that it's a bad thing.
So, you get a film where the hero develops a special insight to the possibilities of the unlocked human mind, and not only are his insights and ideas dismissed by the medical establishment, the establishment is out to get him as well. That absolutely embodies Hubbard's, and Scientology's claims regarding the human mind.
That said... the movie is entertaining enough for me to overlook all of this. It has a message, but it doesn't beat you over the head with it so it's easy enough to ignore and just watch the movie for enjoyment.
It probably helps though that back when the movie came out, and I first saw it, I knew almost nothing about Scientology. So I honestly didn't see it as a message movie at the time. Now, of course, I am well aware of what a creepy cult Scientology is.