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2000 Eyes, by Sean Axmaker, Film Reviews, Science Fiction

2000 Eyes: Battlefield Earth

Written by Sean Axmaker November 6, 2020November 4, 2020 Leave a Comment

[Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

“Man is an endangered species,” alerts the introductory card to this adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s Star Wars inspired epic sci-fi novel. It should have warned us that logic was also hitting hard times.

The year is 3000 and the place is Earth. After a millennium of brutal subjugation by the Psychlos (seemingly an unholy mating of Star Trek’s Klingon and Ferengi races), humans live like cavemen in the irradiated wilds, foraging through a dying Earth. Rebellious young Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper, in flowing locks and an unchanging expression of determined sincerity) searches for a better land and discovers a race of intergalactic corporate pirates, eight foot alien slavers sucking the planet dry of resources in the name of profit.

2000 Eyes: Battlefield Earth

Written by Robert Horton July 3, 2020June 28, 2020 Leave a Comment

[Written for Film.com]

A thousand years from now, things haven’t changed all that much. Oh, the Earth is rubble, and mankind is reduced to a small band of ragged tribesmen. The planet is ruled by the Psychlos, a tall race of alien meanies who breathe acidic air in their huge biodome enclosing what used to be Denver.

For all the apparent differences, however, life is still a series of bureaucratic frustrations and thwarted ambitions. This is what we learn from Battlefield Earth, a dismal sci-fi epic that recalls the tired-blood landscapes of Saturn 3 and Solarbabies.

also-true ‘Grit’

Written by Richard T. Jameson December 23, 2010

Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn (photo by Lorey Sebastian)

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, December 22, 2010]

Adaptations are always difficult – for the filmmakers, of course, but also for viewers who know the original and face a challenge in trying to meet the new movie on its own terms. With True Grit, the latest offering from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, there are not one but two previous versions: Charles Portis’ excellent 1968 novel and the famous 1969 film. I nearly wrote “well-known 1969 film,” but given some of the asinine things written or said about it lately, it’s clear many people do not, in fact, know the film; they just draw on a reservoir of cliché assumptions that pass for received wisdom.

The Coens’ True Grit is an extremely faithful adaptation of Portis’ book but not a remake of the earlier picture. Virtually all the dialogue – glorious, crusty, 19th-century ornate – comes from Portis and can be heard in both movies. Both tell the same story Portis did, with some not-ruinous softening in the 1969 version and none at all in the new one. Certain shot setups in the new picture closely resemble shots Henry Hathaway and his cameraman Lucien Ballard made 41 years ago, but the Coens aren’t imitating or paying homage. It’s simply that there’s only one vantage from which to frame certain moments in the story.