Sitchin's 12TH Planet is at the heart of the premise of BATTLEFIELD EARTH, the second $100 million sci-fi movie to bomb in two months.
6/2/2000
Flying Saucers over Hollywood! by filmmaker Paul Davids offers a rare glimpse into the great Hollywood UFO films.
Last week, on a particularly idyllic spring day, I drove up the California coast north of Malibu to Paradise Cove, just south of Zuma Beach, hoping to hide out where spectacular cliffs tower above surfer's heaven. Expecting to find it nearly deserted, as it often is on weekdays, I found that Twentieth Century Fox had taken over the hideaway to film X-MEN. There were over a dozen huge movie trucks in a small parking lot, and about a hundred crewmembers enjoyed lunch beneath a huge tent. Though they were pretty tight-lipped about what they were up to, and in spite of the fact that a production manager warned me that no one would talk to "the press" (the category this Internet site falls under), I did learn that the movie was basically finished and that this vast army descended upon paradise to do "a couple of pickup shots." They employed a couple dozen extras on the beach as they filmed an intimate shot involving a mutant.
Here it is the year 2000, and I could still remember my conversations with X-MEN creator, Stan Lee, back in 1986, when he was hoping that X-MEN would FINALLY get off the ground that year. Now it is fourteen years later, and the big lesson of those conversations with Stan Lee have sunk in. Big movies take lots of years before cameras roll. I first met Stan Lee when I worked for Marvel Productions as production coordinator of THE TRANSFORMERS television series - I was aboard for about 90 episodes, some of which I also wrote! ("Autobots, Transform!" commanded Optimus Prime.)
X-MEN isn't the only contemporary movie that took forever to make. I remember another conversation in early 1980s with a friend who had been a fellow student at the American Film Institute. He just optioned the rights to what he said would be a fabulous family fantasy story called Stuart Little. He then estimated that the picture would be out by 1983 or 1984. Those of you who may have seen STUART LITTLE last year know that his estimate was wrong -- and he lost the option way before it ever got made.
And then we come to the film BATTLEFIELD EARTH, the $80 million dream-child of John Travolta that took 15 years to be made. When he began his quest to make the science-fiction film, he was going to play the fair-haired hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, who almost single-handedly liberates Earth from the vile alien Psychlos. By the time the film was made, he no longer was the lithe disco dancer of youth, and he ended up playing the stocky head of the Psychlo security force, Terl, who supervises the human slaves that the aliens enlisted for their gold mine operation on Earth.
For those astute AlienZoo fans who have read the brilliant, scholarly works of the great expert in ancient Sumerian history, Zecharia Sitchin, the connections between Sitchin's theories of human origin and the premise of BATTLEFIELD EARTH may be obvious. Unfortunately, though the movie is dead and buried for a week now, and hundreds of reviews have been written that damn the movie from the first frame to the last, I believe I'm the first commentator to make this essential point. Scratch beneath the surface and you'll discover that there are more theories of Zecharia Sitchin in BATTLEFIELD EARTH than any hint of the Scientology religion founded by its author, L. Ron Hubbard. As John Travolta always claimed, it was a science-fiction yarn, not promotion for the Church of Scientology. But perhaps, like with so much science fiction, there is a whole lot of fact intermingled with the fiction. I predict that Sitchin would be the first to agree.
Sitchen first published The Twelfth Planet in 1978, two years before the 1980 copyright date on Battlefield Earth. For those who are rusty on Sitchen's theories and his magnificent books (which include Stairway to Heaven, The War of Gods and Men, The Lost Realms, When Time Began and several others), Sitchen is first and foremost a scholar on the ancient Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonians. Gifted in being able to translate the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian texts, Sitchen made quite a number of profound discoveries about ancient Sumerian beliefs about humankind's origin. The first of his scholarly findings, that the Sumerians believed there is an undiscovered planet in our solar system with an orbit far beyond Pluto, has found serious scientific support in the last year.
The Sumerians believed that planet, called Nibiru, to be populated by the human-like beings called the Nefilim (the ancient "gods," if you will). They believed the Nefilim created humankind for a specific purpose. Sumerians, who understood that the planets of the solar system revolve around the sun, thought that Nibiru makes an approach from beyond Pluto into the inner regions near the sun approximately once every 20,000 years. As I recall, Nibiru was considered the twelfth planet because, beyond the nine planets that we know, our moon was once a planet, and there was once a planet in what is now the asteroid belt that exploded. That would make Nibiru number twelve. How beings could survive on a planet that spends most of its time beyond Pluto is a mystery. The planet would require some intense source of heat, perhaps from within the planet's core, as well as an atmosphere and a source of light other than the sun, which would be too distant. The theory raises many unanswered questions.
However, in the last year, SCIENCE magazine reported that the mass and physics of Pluto's path around the sun couldn't account for calculations of aberrations in the revolutions of our known outer planets (Neptune, Uranus). Many are starting to agree that there is an undiscovered outer planet. Interestingly, its projected orbit closely matches what the ancient Sumerians predicted, as Sitchin explains the Sumerian beliefs. How could the Sumerians have known? Sitchin believes the Nefilim from Nibiru instructed them on astronomy and many other fields of knowledge.
In 1978, in THE 12TH PLANET, Sitchen mapped out his theory of the Sumerians's belief that the Nefilim are the "giants of renown," referred to in the Bible, who inhabited the earth in ancient days, and were the "sons of the gods who cohabited with the daughters of Adam and they bore children unto them. They were the mighty ones of eternity - the people of the Shem." Sitchen concluded that humankind is a race created through genetic manipulation - that the Nefilim introduced their genetic material into the primitive hominids, who were the precursors of modern humanity. The Sumerians apparently believed that humankind was created as a slave race that could be dominated, instructed, and used to mine gold. Sitchen thus explains humankind's infatuation with gold through the centuries. He theorizes that Sumerian legends (when taken account in relation to Biblical text) lead us to the conclusion that aliens from our own solar system (from the yet undiscovered 12th planet, Nibiru) created humankind "in their own image" to subjugate us as slaves for the purpose of mining gold for our alien masters, the Nibiru.
Though this brief synopsis hardly does justice to the depth and detail of Sitchen's vast research, it nevertheless lays out the bare framework. Two years after publication of The Twelfth Planet, L. Ron Hubbard came out with a 1,000-page science-fiction book called Battlefield Earth. The plot is, in a nutshell, that aliens subjugate the human race to the status of slaves for the purpose of mining gold for their alien masters. Albeit Hubbard's novel is set in the future and does not claim that the fictional aliens in his story (the evil Psychlos) actually created mankind. Nevertheless, the novel is, in part, a sociological study of humankind's slavery and attempts at survival when controlled by technologically superior alien beings who use our species to satisfy their requirements for gold. The many possible uses of gold for an advanced species are topics that Sitchin addresses.
So much for literature - now, enter Hollywood. MISSION TO MARS, about a month before the release of the film of BATTLEFIELD EARTH, inoculated the public with ideas that are Hoaglandesque (please count that as a phrase I've coined!) about the demise of an ancient civilization on Mars. Now the public has had its second "shot" of new paradigm theories this spring, with BATTLEFIELD EARTH planting the seeds of Sitchinism (another coined phrase!) Unfortunately, though both films had high expectations from their creators, neither found favor with the critics or the broad mass of the cinema-going public.
A little eulogy for BATTLEFIELD EARTH is both necessary and required here, particularly for a website called AlienZoo, which has a thematic obligation to pry into all contemporary films with alien themes. As you probably know, BATTLEFIELD EARTH qualified as one of the biggest commercial disasters in motion picture history. Attendance levels at theaters dropped nearly 70% from the first week to the second! And from the second week to the third -- another 70% drop! The word "disaster" is not nearly strong enough to cover that kind of catastrophe. Total box office has been about 20 million to date. The studio (Warner Brothers) will recoup about half of that (the rest being retained by the theater chains). This represents about a $10 million return thus far on an investment of about 160 million (when you add the cost of prints and ads to the cost of production). You have to do a lot of foreign business and sell a lot of videos/DVD's to recover from that kind of a financial debacle.
Both the critics and public rejected BATTLEFIELD EARTH on nearly every ground imaginable. It began when the Washington Post and other respected organs of national news began to tie the film to the "cult" despised by the Establishment, SCIENTOLOGY. They pried into John Travolta's affiliation with Scientology (which he credits with "clearing" him to enable his success in life). They snickered over the fact that Scientologists believe that humankind is a pawn of technologically superior alien species (though we know that no self-respecting Fortean would disagree - and many ufologists would agree, too). They made fun of Travolta's appearance in the movie, and the nasal appliances the Psychlos wear. Some critics called them "nose-plugs" and Entertainment Weekly stated that the actors had to wear because they knew "the movie stinks."
Without getting into matters of religion, politics, cults, beliefs, or what have you, as a filmmaker, I would have to say that, judged only on the grounds of art direction and special effects, BATTLEFIELD EARTH was a masterpiece. If you forget the story, screenplay, ignore L. Ron Hubbard, and dismiss the fact that perhaps Travolta's appearance is out of the pages of some overblown comic book, you are still left with stunning production values and effects. Hangar 12 in Montreal, where much of the picture was filmed under conditions of absolute secrecy, was the setting for some cinematic miracles. Consider the fact that the city of Denver (in the film) was beneath an "archology" like those that Richard Hoagland (www.enterprisemission.com) theorizes exist on the lunar surface. The girder and glass structure that encompassed the city, so its atmosphere could be controlled, was magnificent. The scene of its destruction with shattered glass flying in every direction was truly mind-boggling. It was one of the great special effects scenes of all time, and it showed us precisely what Hoagland claims has happened to the ancient "lunar" archologies that lunar astronauts discovered (he claims) but have been prevented from disclosing. Add to the archology scenes the incredible flying vehicles of the Psychlos, the visual conception of the prisons where the human slaves were kept, the ruination of other earth cities including Washington, D.C., and you get marvelous production values. All of that was so extraordinary - I ask you, what science-fiction fan in his right mind would not want to see this movie, in spite of all the litany of other failings?
And yet I have read blistering, scathing, nearly unprintable reviews that blast the special effects. One critic called the effects "horrible." He doesn't live in the same universe I inhabit, that is for sure. But even if the special effects were extraordinary, L. Ron Hubbard and his philosophy received no boost whatsoever from John Travolta's efforts. I was in a major supermarket last night that had a display rack consisting entirely of L. Ron Hubbard's book, Battlefield Earth. The rack held 27 books. The film came out about three weeks ago, and not one single book had been sold.
So where does this leave us? In the short span of about two months, we have seen the catastrophic failure of TWO mega-budget science-fiction films with important themes. MISSION TO MARS, which started out with an impressive 23 million box-office gross the first weekend, was down 50% the second week. It slowly clawed its way up to a 50 million domestic gross -- not enough on a $100 million feature. And BATTLEFIELD EARTH died on opening night. What is going on here? Believe me, it took a lot less than this to BURY the genre of Western movies. You all remember the last gasp of HEAVEN'S GATE (not the Applewhite cult that committed suicide, I'm talking about the United Artists western film directed by Michael Cimino, which buried United Artists for over a decade and took all westerns to the grave with it). HEAVEN'S GATE was the most expensive movie in history when it was made (about 30 million?) and audiences rejected it as slow and boring. With the inflated production costs of today's world, 30 million is almost a modestly budgeted picture now. We live in the era of 200 million dollar budgets for films such as WATERWORLD and TITANIC. Nevertheless, MISSION TO MARS and BATTLEFIELD EARTH taken as a pair, spell a certain kind of doom for a certain kind of film.
There's one film left on the horizon, to be released in a couple of weeks, which could turn around this trend or set the trend in stone. TITAN A.E. will be the next test. Granted, it's an animated feature, not live-action. But "A.E." stands for "After Earth" and it will serve to remind us that our planet is exposed, vulnerable and impermanent. It's a story filled with "human versus alien" themes. The trailers of this Don Bluth feature look exciting. If it does not do well commercially, here's what I foresee -
If the current downward spiral continues, I predict that only the franchised big-budget sci-fi space/alien movies will continue intact. No harm from this will rub off onto STAR WARS, for example. But I also predict that it's going to be more and more difficult to get the non-franchise science fiction/space films approved for production. As with the stock market ups and downs, there are cycles to the genres of Hollywood films, and the public votes on what they want with their box-office dollars. SPHERE was another recent failure of a serious film with a somewhat downbeat alien theme from a major writer (Michael Crichton) and the mega-budget STARSHIP TROOPERS also failed to perform up to expectations.
Humor may be the only way out of this predicament for the sci-fi space/alien genre. We may be collectively tired of taking the "alien threat" so seriously. Hollywood will still be opening its arms to those who want to emulate funny space films such as GALAXY QUEST and MEN IN BLACK. However, to keep space aliens on our movie screens in the near future, folks, we may have to be able to laugh at them - and us! I hope I'm wrong, because I love many of the films that grapple seriously with the big questions the New Paradigm presents - for they examine the real challenges of what may be mankind's cosmic future.
That's it for this week from FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD! Log on again next Friday for another installment, as we fly over Hollywood Boulevard in search of our share of THE TRUTH!