The only actor brave enough to defend ‘Battlefield Earth’: “It wasn’t as bad as people said”
In 2000, a movie was released that was such a laughing stock that it almost entirely derailed the career of its A-list star. The fact that it didn’t was a minor miracle, although it did significantly alter his image in the eyes of the public and clung to him like a bad smell for the next 25 years. That film was, of course, Battlefield Earth, and the star was John Travolta, one of Hollywood’s most preeminent Scientologists.
It was a sci-fi “epic” based on a book by Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard and was widely received as one of the worst motion pictures ever committed to celluloid. Interestingly, though, during an exclusive interview with Far Out Magazine, one of the film’s stars recently defended it, arguing that it’s nowhere near as atrocious as everyone makes out.
Battlefield Earth is set in the year 3000AD and is the story of a rebellion against an alien race -preposterously named the “Psychlos” – who have ruled over Earth for 1,000 years. The cave-dwelling protagonist Jonnie Goodboy Tyler – an equally absurd moniker – is taken on a journey across a desolate planet by a pair of hunters named Carlo and Rock.
Carlo is played by stalwart character actor Kim Coates, who recently spoke to Far Out about everything from playing Mormon religious leader Brigham Young in Netflix’s American Primeval to his tenure on FX’s uber-popular Sons of Anarchy. However, he also found time to push back against some of the criticism levelled at Battlefield Earth – a movie he (admittedly) doesn’t think about too much if he can help it.
“That’s what the press does. They find something, and they freaking stick a knife in it right away.”
kim coates
“You know, that book was on the number one bestselling list in the early ’80s,” Coates revealed. “It wasn’t about Scientology. It was really a great science-fiction book, even though we know who wrote it.” While Coates’ claim that the book rose to the top of the bestsellers chart is accurate, he may have to be forgiven for being unaware of the controversy that surrounded it.
You see, not long after it sold 150,000 copies, a rumour emerged that the Church of Scientology had organised a book-buying campaign designed to vault it to the top of the charts. In fact, the scuttlebutt was that certain Church members bought as many as 800 copies of the novel, and two organisations bought 30,000 directly from the publisher at a wholesale discount.
Whatever the case, Coates can’t be expected to know the ins and outs of book sales from four decades ago. What he does know, though, is that while Battlefield Earth “wasn’t the greatest film,” it also “wasn’t as bad as people say it was.” He felt Travolta and director Roger Christian – “an incredible human being” who “directed that thing beautifully” – got a raw deal from all corners.
“The press was all over it early,” he claimed. “They wanted to crush it. John Travolta was on a high; they didn’t want to get too high. That’s what the press does. They find something, and they freaking stick a knife in it right away.”
So, there you have it. Battlefield Earth, according to one of its stars, is not as bad as you’ve heard. In truth, whether or not you agree with Coates in this assessment is kind of irrelevant. If you can disregard your feelings about Hubbard, his strange church, and Travolta’s perplexing involvement in it for a moment, there’s simply something nice about a professional sticking up for the hard-working folks he made a silly sci-fi movie with a long time ago.
