The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

So, I spent most of this morning and afternoon in Sturgeon Bay to get a new car since the transmission is shot. I didn't even have time to do my daily session, let alone do a takedown of all the plot holes in Battlefield Earth. And by the time I did get home, the guest wi-fi turned off and I had to get by on my phone's wifi (and that takes a shitton of power, so I don't want to use it any more than I have to. Since I couldn't type down the crazy shit that happened in real time like I usually do, I decided to take notes on some of the more salient points:

• Not since Homestar Runner stopped doing regular cartoons have I seen such a reliance on the word "crap." The fact that they don't bother with some of the harder swears just hammers in the "mid-90s basic cable fantasy series" vibe. Yes, I know it's a PG-13 film, but they can still use "shit." Maybe even "fuck" once or twice (as long as it's used in a non-sexual manner)
  
• I legitimately did not remember the Clinkos. It's a shame they didn't get mentioned much in the movie, but given that, in the book, they're basically "Me So Velly Solly" stereotypes, having them be neon-coloured aliens with nerdy voices is a step up.
  
• "Never Store Loaded Firearms." Actually a piece of legitimately sound advice from a film as craptastic as this.
  
• Can they please learn other forms of scene transitions other than curtain wipes? It looks grand at first, but after about a dozen times, it just gets old.
  
• Is there any reason the Psychlos haven't bothered to figure out ANYTHING about the man-animals in the millennium since they found them? Seriously, you'd think that they'd figure out how to properly exploit them. Christ, in one scene that was in the original theatrical cut (but removed from later versions), they have apparently only just now figured out that man-animals couldn't even fucking FLY. You know, perhaps using them as a source of expendable labour would have come to them earlier than about a third of the way through the film.
  
• Our Protagonist says that they have better things to do than killing each other for FOOD. Just after almost killing some dude over food.
  
• How does knowing the Psychlos' language make for an effective fighting skill? 
  
• Kelly Preston's scene is shockingly pointless (even if it does include some really ridiculous imagery, like that enormously long tongue.) It's like the only point is to make sure John Travolta can say "See, I'm still straight!" While I don't normally care about what stars are still in the closet or not, it's worth noting that Travolta has been involved in a couple sex scandals, almost all with men. And given that he's been trapped for over 40 years in a cult that's been known to cover up their stars' misdeeds (see Danny Masterson for more detail) and uses information gleaned from auditing as leverage against leaving it, I'm honestly surprised he hasn't been taken down. Even after future Deep Hurting Project inductee Gotti.
  
• What the fuck even is a Planetship?
  
• The governments of Earth fell after a nine-minute fight with the Psychlos. And then, Our Protagonist uses those same millennium-old weapons that were destroyed in nine minutes to defeat the Psychlos. Even the jet fuel, which apparently only lasts two years.
  
• And, honestly, as many times as I was tempted to use the Richie Cusack clip, I held off on it; after all, the Co$ had a tight leash on the creative crew (such as they were), so it was clear how, exactly they fucked that up. But then, 77 minutes in the movie, I finally found a convenient place to use it. You see, in all their searches for gold, somehow, they completely failed to look at Fort Knox.
  
  
  And I used that clip because, apparently, in the source material, IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST PLACES THEY RAIDED. Yes, even LRH, as thoroughly divorced from reality as he no doubt was at that point (he had documented mental problems even before starting the Co$, including an apparent schizophrenia diagnosis [not confirmed, but alarmingly plausible] and that could not have melded well with the fact that, in the last decade of his life, he was a bigger recluse than J.D. Salinger), knew that it would be fucking stupid for an alien race looking for gold to completely overlook one of the biggest hoards of gold on Earth (apparently, it's not the biggest; the Federal Reserve building in New York contains even more with as much as 1/4 of the gold ever mined lying in its vaults.)
• And for that matter, why are the Psychlos so obsessed with gold anyway? Gold is actually fairly useless, and the only reason it's acquired the value it has is because it's useless (and thus can't be used for other reasons), fairly scarce (so there's some potential for value), and looks pretty (for aesthetics).
  
• Somehow, even dumber than that is the way the Psychlos are defeated; it's not explained clearly in the film, but apparently, the air they breathe has explosive reactions to radiation (of any kind, really). And so they have to wear this thing that looks like a breathe-rite strip and a nose plug to pump in air for them. As someone with some knowledge of radiation, I'm actually well aware that there's always a non-negligible amount of radiation in the air on Earth as is. That Psychlo takeover should have ended like War of the Worlds, where the Martians are destroyed by the common fucking cold, except that should have taken (to use the number Terl used) nine minutes from the first time a Psychlo got first-hand contact with the Earth's atmosphere. "This weird race of aliens just came to Earth and started shooting everything.Then one of them came out of their spaceships and before we could laugh at their Klingons with dreadlocks look, he just spontaneously combusted like he was in Bleak House (the book, not the miniseries). Then they all just started doing it, and the remaining ones that left just figured out it wasn't worth it to take over." There, LRH, I saved you 1000 fucking pages. And if the planet Psychlo doesn't actually have radiatioactive decay, that means it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
  

Okay, one thing I should point out: there was apparently meant to be a sequel. You see, the original book is 1000 pages, but the book only covered about the first 300 of them. It was originally planned to cover the whole book, but the disastrous reception (and the collapse of Franchise Pictures, which was built around bankrolling stars' dream projects in a very Springtime For Hitler sort of way) ensured that that the sequel would never get off the ground. Just thank the Lord Xenu they didn't decide to do the Mission Earth decalogy. I should also point out that there is another film series based around a doorstopper novel that, unfortunately, did get enough funding for enough sequels to cover the whole book. And it's going to be part of the Deep Hurting Project eventually. But not now. No wine before its time. And I highly doubt that I'm going to get a copy of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy in Door County anyway. Speaking of serving wine before its time, next week's wine will be the Bratz movie. It will be glorious. But not now. At this point, I'm watching a movie that's intentionally campy, and not campy like...





At least Serial Mom wasn't bankrolled by a cult, and merely made by a cult director.