Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000

Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: May 12, 2000

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

9	METASCORE Overwhelming dislike based on 33 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Watch Now

Stream On

Buy on

Stream On

Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Mr. ShowbizCody Clark

It's a lock to pile up the honors during Hollywood's annual awards season next spring (at the Golden Raspberries and the MTV Movie Awards).

Rita Kempley

A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a million years to create anything as cretinous as Battlefield Earth. Read full review

Film.comSean Means

In the pantheon of cinematic train wrecks, from "Ishtar" to "Waterworld," set a place at the table for Battlefield Earth. Read full review

Shawn Levy

A ghastly, unappealing mess that lacks a single absorbing character, engaging story line or entertaining snippet of dialogue.

Andrew O'Hehir

Shot after shot photographed at wobbly, off-center angles for no particular reason, weigh every action sequence down with super-slo-mo in lame imitation of "The Matrix" or end every single scene with a vertical wipe. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

Scientology or not, the movie is a battlefield bummer that makes you want to revolt.

Film.comRobert Horton

The film is Travolta's baby, but indifference and boredom is everywhere. Read full review

Peter Travers

With this kind of epic ineptitude -- hell, the flick is set in the year 3000 -- you go for "worst of the millennium."

Dennis Harvey

Yet the overall look, though derivative ("The Matrix," "Blade Runner," "Waterworld," etc.), rates as Battlefield's one non-guilty pleasure. Read full review

Ted Gideonse

The dialogue is inane, the acting wooden, and Roger Christian's directing choices are a lesson in sci-fi film cliché. Read full review

TNT RoughCutJ. Rentilly

The only danger in seeing this film is in busting a gut at its unintentional hilarity.

Jay Carr

So heavy and lifeless that you keep waiting for those three little front-row kibitzers from "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" to appear at the bottom of the screen to start goofing on it.

Lou Lumenick

Goes from being tediously terrible to downright gigglesome.

J. Hoberman

The movie's mode is brutal and excremental. Read full review

Chris Kaltenbach

An underlit, overlong, underwritten and overloud albatross of a movie.

Robin Rauzi

Compounded by a dated visual style, patched-together special effects and ludicrous dialogue, Battlefield Earth is a wholly miserable experience. Read full review

Ron Stringer

A stinker. Read full review

Marc Savlov

Simply put, Battlefield Earth is the worst film I've seen in over 10 years, and believe me, that's saying a lot. Read full review

Jack Mathews

One of the darkest, ugliest, most uninvolving and incomprehensible major-studio fantasies I've ever seen. Read full review

Sean Axmaker

It should have warned us that logic was also hitting hard times. Read full review

Lawrence Toppman

It's bombastic, chaotic, plodding, visually dreary and patchily written. Read full review

Rene Rodriguez

A sluggish, soporific dud, the dreariest big-budget science-fiction adventure since "Dune."

Roger Ebert

Awful in so many different ways. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh

The story's broad strokes are painfully clichéd and its details make no sense at all. Read full review

A.O. Scott

It may be a bit early to make such judgments, but Battlefield Earth may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century. Read full review

Richard Schickel

The worst movie in living memory.

Wesley Morris

If filmmaking has ever been less thrilling and more disengaging, I'd like to see it. Read full review

Desson Thomson

Let's cut to the chase: We're talking "Ishtar of the Apes." Read full review

Lisa Alspector

Seems like a miscalculation on multiple levels. Read full review

Bob Graham

Is it worth seeing once? Sure. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Just a lumbering, poorly photographed piece of derivative sci-fi drivel, full of grunting extras scampering around in animal pelts and more dank, trash-strewn sets than I ever care to see again. Read full review

David Edelstein

A picture that will be hailed without controversy as the worst of its kind ever made. Read full review

Andy Seiler

The script, based on a novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is deeply dumb, depressingly derivative (ripping off "Planet of the Apes" the most) and just plain nonsense.