MovieChat Forums > Battlefield Earth (2000) Discussion > Battlefield Center-Swipe?

Battlefield Center-Swipe?

posted 10 years ago by nrkist2424
2 replies | jump to latest

You know, I'm gonna take a little weird stance here. Hubbard's Battlefield Earth is a pretty good, if overly hefty novel for it's premise. It belabors a couple points, and portends the grossness thereafter...but it's a good book.

This film...could have actually been good. The budgeting is all over the place though.

And the center-swiping. Geezus. This is worse than Lucas, with the clunky Diagonal Swipes.

The farce of scientology aside, this was a pretty good tale, if simple and kinda forced metaphor when I was a child. It suffers from both over and under production. This is a real singular problem.

When I was trying to count just how many center-swipes were in this film (because I suspected it was probably double the overlong running time), I started looking at the sets alot. They don't get used that much.

Every single one of these terrible scenes that lasts for 30 incomprehensible seconds, had a full fledged action set designed for it. This has to be the most expensive film ever made.

You can also tell in the editing, that scenes are really sloppily condensed together. Actors warp around, budgeting issues suddenly interject panoramas of OBVIOUS matte paintings.

In a film this manic and unfocused, the ONE THING the camera wants to spend some time on...is an oil painting...

Hubbard was once a decent pulp writer, and Battlefield Earth has every right to be a good film. I dunno how these guys ruined such a simple concept, spent so much money on making a film LOOK TERRIBLE and squeezing the absolute, most hilariously embarassing, performances out of every actor involved. It's really mind-boggling.

Oh, and the editing again. This guy had a goddamn center-swipe fetish. It doesn't make sense when it happens! He smash-cuts a ton for no reason too! There should be a singular Razzy for the editing and effects works in this film.

Edit: There are also a ton of scenes that open with a mechanical door opening sideways...NO CENTER-SWIPE. There are ALOT of these scenes that open this way, yet, in a film with 500+ center-swipes, NONE are a 'door open' into another scene. Mind-boggling! Before everyone beats every scientologist involved in this film, this film editor needs to be taken to task.

[–] rrandcoyote 10 years ago

Interesting take on it.

Flash Gordon serials in the 1930s used the funky wipes...lightening bolts and such. So, Lucas used funky wipes...sooooo...... the cheesy wipes in this turkey.

I don't think I can read Blubbard's work. He was a psycho and wrote this stuff for a penny a page, they say.

He made this garbage up as he went along.

Xenu saves!

----------------- Church ||||||||||||| State .

[–] nrkist2424 10 years ago

Yeah, but despite the clunky editing in cheap serial tv shows, they are fun. And they exist to grease the run-time and some sloppy writing. It's endearing.

Battlefield Earth literally center-swipes into the same scene, multiple times in this film. There is so much NOTHING happening, that they are forced to use a swipe effect to make it appear that SOMETHING is happening.

I really love 'good/bad' films. And this has all the ingredients:

crazy scientologist production

crazy scientologist actors who's directoral note was : "Be as cardboard as possible, while lacking any shame, conviction, and just kinda brute-force ham it."

Disparity of production value in a film that, again, must have an immeasurable cost to it.

Wow, this is so much fun, it could only be the PERFECT film if you shoved a manic goofily bewigged Nic Cage into the mix.

And yet...despite all the absurd dreadlocks, this film is not fun to watch. Despite how much you want to kinda poke fun at it, it's murder on the eyes.

That's the editing staffs fault.

I was also thinking more about the sets, and I have a suspicion that there is infact thousands of hours of film. Like, these actors LARP'ed the tale during filming and that's why these extravagant and unused sets existed.