Psychlo killer: Battlefield Earth 25 years on

TTSB, or Things That Shouldn’t Be, is Scientology’s term for when you tell a higher-up ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’. It’s not quite an “ethics chit” (a written reprimand) but it refers to something incorrect. This might be used to report on an “SP” (suppressive person) or a member with the potential to “blow” (an unauthorised departure from Scientology).

If you were to ask David Miscavige, the current leader of the new-age religion, what he thinks is Something That Shouldn’t Be, he’d likely say Battlefield Earth.

In fact, according to both Scientology’s most vocal defector and the co-writer of the 2000 sci-fi film’s script, the Thetan powers that be could’ve put a stop to it. They were involved with its creation – the co-writer claims they were too busy giving notes while the defector alleges they were overseeing the whole thing. But even with the power of Xenu on their side, 25 years on movie-goers aren’t eating out of a novelty e-meter popcorn bucket or going to see the latest spin-off which gives some backstory to villainous alien Terl. What happened?

It started with a signed copy of L Ron Hubbard’s 1982 novel ‘Battlefield Earth’ landing in John Travolta’s mailbox: a pulp science fiction story about the last of humanity’s struggle against an alien race, and a thinly-veiled jab at psychiatrists, Hubbard’s arch-nemeses.

The Grease actor was no stranger to Hubbard. He’d become a Scientologist years before after being gifted the movement’s precursor text Dianetics while on the set of Robert Fuest’s 1971 film The Devil’s Rain. The star’s relationship with the church became rocky – the book ‘Going Clear’ maintains that Hubbard himself ordered a full review of Travolta’s “audits” from over the years – but, at the turn of the millennium, he was their star boy.

‘Battlefield Earth’ had loomed over Hollywood since it was written. A huge inflatable Terl – the alien Travolta would go on to portray – stalked the boulevard in 1984 like a dour tube man, and a low-budget attempt at a film with Hubbard’s direct involvement was folded up in the same decade.

But the leader’s wish for a Star Wars meets Close Encounters film would begin to take shape in the mid-90s, after his death. Travolta’s manager Jonathan Krane signed on with Fox to make Battlefield Earth, having brought it over from MGM. The first two things he said to Variety at the time? “It’s Travolta’s passion project,” and “It has nothing to do with Scientology.”

So began a pattern. The archived film’s website has no mention of Scientology – even in its gushing page on Hubbard’s life and achievements. Travolta’s answer when asked echoed Krane’s: “Nothing to do with Scientology.” When asked about the religion itself, Travolta would shrug it off as a “philosophy” that he liked. The first thing the team behind the film told Kim Coates while courting him for the role of Carlo? You guessed it: “You know this has nothing to do with Scientology, right?”

There’s an alternate reality where Quentin Tarantino gave in to his Pulp Fiction star’s request and directed Battlefield Earth. Terl would be gunning down humans to the tune of Nancy Sinatra and we’d probably seen what Psychlo feet look like too. But he turned it down – Travolta and the Church had to settle for Roger Christian, best known as the second unit director of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

But from the beginning the production was shrouded in a black cloud of negative press. The growth of internet forums allowed information and rumours to spread quickly. Anti-cult websites spread stories about “subliminal messages” and secret financing for the film coming from the church. The Church’s rebuttal? “The only thing I’ve read is what’s in the media.” They had nothing to do with it, at least according to the Scientology spokesperson at the time, Marty Rathbun.

The fervour around the film was hotting up in all the wrong ways. But James Richardson, a Nevada University professor who studied new religions, played down the likelihood of secret messages. He laid the film’s fate on “how good of a yarn it is”.

Word of mouth before its release definitely hindered the film, but the reviews truly eviscerated it. Battlefield Earth made half of its gross in the first three days and thereafter went cold, earning around $30m at the worldwide box office – way under its budget of $73m, this figure was retroactively corrected, though. The budget was revealed to be $44m after a fraud lawsuit found the production team had inflated the number.

Roger Ebert announced the film was “unpleasant in a hostile way” and referenced, as many critics did, Christian’s pervasive use of Dutch angles. Almost every scene in the film is skewed slightly to achieve what the director said was a “comic book” style, but really just comes off like the camera operator fell asleep. The film’s austere story of humanity’s struggle is mixed with a buddy comedy between Travolta and Whitaker as 8ft tall dreadlock-sporting aliens. It is, in no uncertain terms, a mess.

Five years ago, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph J.D Shapiro, the film’s co-writer alongside Corey Mandell, would go on to blame its poor quality on extensive notes he received from MGM, which he was then told came directly from the Church of Scientology. Shapiro also said he had met with Scientology’s higher-ups before he had signed on.

And years after its release, one very loud and prominent Scientologist defector – that same former spokesperson, Marty Rathbun – would go on to say David Miscavige had personally been “micromanaging” the film. He’d received dailies and was beside himself with joy after preview screenings, telling Travolta that “the old man [Hubbard] would be proud of you.”

If the Scientologists and Travolta are telling the truth, and the film was not a ploy to launder a shady movement’s reputation via the magic of Hollywood, they’d have been foolish not to seize the opportunity.

One only has to look at The Matrix, a sci-fi movie released a year before, to see the power film wielded at the time – the Wachowskis’ film is foundational in people’s feelings about our post-tech world. That movie gave a far-fetched theory real Hollywood purchase, and a flashy film might have done the same for Hubbard.

It’s also arguable that, by today’s standards, they needn’t have been so coy. White Christian Nationalism, violent border controls and QAnon conspiracies were a large part of the rollout for Sound of Freedom, a thriller based on the anti-trafficking work of Tim Ballard. The film made $251m (which would have been around $135m in 2000) and was screened by President Trump himself. Its real-life hero even considered a run for senate, before a federal lawsuit for alleged human trafficking and allegations of sexual misconduct somewhat took the wind out of his sails. The success of such films, though, show Scientologists might not have to skew their ideologies with Dutch angles if they ever decided to take another crack at it.

In press for the film, Travolta claimed he had grown too old – or as he put it, “fat” – to play the protagonist, Johnny Goodboy Tyler, and instead played the villainous alien Terl. Rathbun claimed Miscavige hated the star after it tanked, but Battlefield Earth also helped put an end to Travolta’s post-Pulp Fiction resurgence. Not that the Church of Scientology cared; they were already busy with a new, younger hero: Tom Cruise.

Published 29 Apr 2025

Tags: Battlefield Earth Scientology