The movie based on- er loosely based on- er very loosely based on- the epic novel by L. Ron Hubbard. John Travolta plays Terl the evil Psychlo, Forest Whittaker his abitious Psychlo underling, followed by a bunch of other people fresh out of acting school. If it sounds like I have some misgivings about this film, I do.

Where to start. well, how's about the plot. The movie covers the first half of Hubbard's book, the first half of the film going through enough detail of plot elements from the book that you actually have hope for a faithful representation. But then it's like for the last fourty-five minutes they found out they were running out of film and compressed the next three hundred of book into about fifty pages of script.

The list of what they left out would cover a few pages, even after giving some room for the fact that Battlefield earth would make a far nbetter 10-hour miniseries. Yes, the Psychlos are still nine feet tall with eleven fingers and high-gravity strength, but they aren't fur covered, and such details are left out like why they're so cruel (no mention of those implants), anything of the whole Psychlo history, or even the correct elements of how their whole technology works (or such facts as the original Probe that had invaded earth could take a Nuke full on and not get it's pains scratched). Basically they look like nine-foot Klingons.

Correction: six-foot Klingons on rather obvious platform shoes.

If you've read the book you'll be wondering where most of the plot went. If you haven't read the book you'll be wondering why the plot starts out slow and ends up so rushed, then ooh and ahh at the special effects and rather lack-luster final confrontations at the end.

Good Points: Travolta makes for a rather evil Psychlo (and I'm not even a Travolta fan), and I liked whitaker as well. If the rest of the Psychlos were as evil as Travolta maybe we'd get a better sense of the evil of this race. It's just a shame that he got stuck in a movie missing most of the plot and 90 percent of the main characters (I don't exaggerate; break out your copy of the book and start counting) and 50 percent of the action.

On the other hand, the sound track's not bad (though Gladiator's is still better).