{"id":305798,"date":"2026-02-23T10:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T10:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/305798\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T10:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T10:12:12","slug":"time-is-running-out-to-watch-the-worst-sci-fi-movie-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/305798\/","title":{"rendered":"Time Is Running Out To Watch the Worst Sci-Fi Movie of All Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinema history is full of masterpieces \u2014 and then there\u2019s Battlefield Earth. Often cited as one of the worst movies ever made<\/a>, the infamous 2000 sci-fi epic is leaving Netflix<\/a> at the end of February. So if you\u2019ve ever been morbidly curious about what a $73 million disaster looks like in slow motion (and at a permanent Dutch angle<\/a>), your time is running out.<\/p>\n

Based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard (yes, that L. Ron Hubbard<\/a>), the film is set in the year 3000, where Earth has been conquered by an alien race<\/a> known as the Psychlos. Humanity has been reduced to scattered survivors, including Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper<\/a>), who is enslaved by the gleefully villainous Terl, played by John Travolta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Terl forces humans to mine gold \u2014 apparently the Psychlos\u2019 most prized resource \u2014 before Jonnie launches a rebellion using the aliens\u2019 own technology against them. On paper, it sounds like a fairly standard sci-fi premise<\/a>. In execution? It\u2019s cinematic chaos. It’s so gleefully bad, you simply must watch it.<\/a> Battlefield Earth was a long-gestating passion project for Travolta, who spent years trying to bring Hubbard\u2019s novel to the screen, and it has nothing to do with Scientology, honest.<\/p>\n

How Bad Is ‘Battlefield Earth’?<\/p>\n

Oh boy, it’s a stinker. It’s so bad. When Battlefield Earth premiered in May 2000, critics didn\u2019t just dislike it \u2014 they annihilated it<\/a>, and they had fun while doing it too. Roger Ebert<\/a> famously wrote, \u201cI watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies.\u201d Variety dubbed it \u201cthe Showgirls of sci-fi shoot-\u2019em-ups.\u201d And Jon Stewart went even further, calling it \u201ca cross between Star Wars and the smell of ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Collider retrospective<\/a> by Collier Jennings<\/a> added this nugget:<\/p>\n

“None of it compares to Travolta’s acting, which is the pinnacle of hamming it up. Travolta delivers lines like, “While you were still learning how to SPELL YOUR NAME, I was being trained…to CONQUER GALAXIES!” in an over-the-top register, to the point where you can see the teeth marks he’s left from chewing the scenery. Battlefield Earth should be the film every future filmmaker watches when learning what not to do on set. It was bad when it premiered in 2000, and it’s still bad all these years later.”<\/p>\n

Battlefield Earth will leave Netflix at the end of the month.<\/p>\n

\"battlefield-earth-poster.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Release Date<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMay 12, 2000<\/p>\n

Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRoger Christian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cinema history is full of masterpieces \u2014 and then there\u2019s Battlefield Earth. Often cited as one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-305798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}