The Editing Room: Battlefield Earth

BATTLEFIELD EARTH: THE ABRIDGED SCRIPT

By Rod Hilton

INT. CAVE

BARRY PEPPER and various DIRTY HUMANS sit around a fire,
being dirty and primitive. The camera man falls asleep
and the picture is tilted. This continues throughout the
movie.

BARRY PEPPER
I am dirty and primitive, but I am
also very smart. I'm going to venture
into the putt-putt course outside!

WISE OLD MAN
No! Don't! You'll be killed! The gods
would be displeased!

BARRY PEPPER
Ha! I don't believe in your foolish,
fear-based religion which is clearly
representing Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam! Besides, Scientology is
much more logical and sensical!

HOT GIRL
I will be waiting here for you to come
back. If you don't return, I shall
track you down. Naked.

BARRY PEPPER
Ooh baby, can I pick the lice out of
your hair?

HOT GIRL
Rowr.

BARRY PEPPER
And if it all goes well, I'll take a
stab at your crabs too.
(winks)
Whaddaya say, baby?

HOT GIRL
I'm getting so horny! Ack! My sweat
and vaginal secretions are mixing with
my many layers of dirt and creating
some kind of paste! Aiee!

BARRY PEPPER
Mmmm, baby. Well, I'm off to find
food and putters.

EXT. PUTT PUTT COURSE

BARRY is frightened by a WINDMILL.

BARRY PEPPER
Yikes! A windmill!

RANDOM CAVEMAN
Give me all your money! You have
ventured into dangerous land and now
you will suffer.

BARRY PEPPER
Perhaps we can work together to find
some rats and bugs.

INT. ABANDONED WAREHOUSE

They are chowing down on some DIRT. Suddenly, a
PSYCHOLOGIST shows up!

PSYCHOLOGIST
Ha ha! I will use my psychobabble and
reverse psychology on you! As well as
my green gun which is so powerful that
it creates a beam of light created by
a crayon on the actual frame of the
movie!

BARRY and the two people run away.

PSYCHOLOGIST (cont’d)
It is useless to run! You're only in
denial about your own inadequacies!
*ZAP*

A human is hit and is scribbled over with GREEN CRAYON.

PSYCHOLOGIST (cont’d)
Come back! You have deep emotional
issues with your lack of a father! You
must accept yourself before you can
accept others! *ZAP* *KRAKOOM*

Eventually he captures the humans and takes them back to
the PSYCHOLOGIST CONVENTION.

INT. PSYCHOLOGIST CONVENTION

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Ah, splendid. Man-animals to torture
and enslave.

HIGHER UP
I am here to watch how you perform on
the job, head-of-security John
Travolta.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Well watch as I take out this puny man-
animal.

JOHN kicks BARRY in the face and BARRY takes his gun and
shoots some PSYCHOLOGISTS.

JOHN TRAVOLTA (cont’d)
How did a pathetic man-animal do that?
We've studied them so closely, yet
we've never found that they could
operate simple machinery despite the
fact that their planet was clearly
full of machines like guns before we
eradicated most of the Earth! This
man-animal must be smarter than the
rest, despite how stupid he must be as
a man-animal. We have leverage.

HIGHER UP
You are totally incompetent. Mr.
Gates will not be pleased. I am
sentencing you to spend forever and a
day here on this crappy planet. I
have leverage.

He BEAMS himself away.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Fuck! Well, I guess my only choice now
is to..uh...er...

FORREST WHITAKER
Perhaps you should use the man-animals
to your own advantage.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Hey! I'm smarter than you! I have
leverage! Don't tell me what to do! I
was just thinking that I should
enslave them and make them get gold
for me, because gold, which achieved a
high value on Earth, is apparently
just as rare on my home planet and
must have a similar high value. That
makes sense.

BARRY PEPPER
I'll help. I'm smart. All you need
to do is give me complete knowledge of
your history, your weaknesses, and the
technical knowledge needed to, I
dunno, wage a small war on your people
and destroy you entirely. Then I will
have leverage.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Okay. I think that'll work out well
because despite your clear signs that
you're not as stupid as we once
thought, we still think you're too
stupid to accomplish anything useful,
even having amassed the highest
education level possible. Here, look
into this Viewmaster. This will give
you some leverage, but not as much
leverage as I have.

BARRY PEPPER
Whoa, knowledge!

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Now get me some gold!

BARRY PEPPER
No.

JOHN grabs the HOT GIRL and threatens to blow her head
off.

HOT GIRL
Help! Save me! I'm hot!

BARRY PEPPER
Fine. I'll do it.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
You did that because of my leverage.
Now watch as I kill this random guy
to make sure you know how evil I am.
This will give me more leverage.

INT. CAVE

BARRY talks to a bunch of humans.

BARRY PEPPER
I have a shitload of knowledge now.
It gives me leverage. We need to learn
how to pilot fighter jets and get some
gold for Travolta.

BARRY goes to an army base which somehow still has
electricity a thousand years in the future of the
destroyed Earth. He puts his human army on a flight
simulator for ten minutes and they become experts in
flight, missile arming, and aiming.

Then they fly to a place with a lot of GOLD without a MAP
of any kind and steal some GOLD BARS, which are still
there for some reason.

He returns to the cave just in time for TRAVOLTA to check
on things.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
How's the gold coming along?

BARRY PEPPER
Here! We melted it into bars for you,
using..er..our teeth.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Excellent. I'm a complete moron!

He leaves. The humans get into jets and prepare to take
out the PSYCHOLOGIST CONVENTION HEADQUARTERS.

EXT. OUTSIDE THE HQ

BARRY PEPPER
Ok men. I'll send this ship with a
bomb in it to the home planet. You
all, meanwhile, should destroy the
roof so that they can't breathe. Our
knowledge of their weakness gives us
leverage.

A DOGFIGHT happens, eventually destroying the roof so
that the psychologists can't breathe. Many of them DIE,
except the ones with NOSEPLUGS.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
You son of a bitch. I'm going to kill
you.

FORREST WHITAKER
No you won't!
(shoots Travolta)
I have leverage now!

BARRY PEPPER
Thanks, Forrest. You certainly
exercised some righteous leverage
there.

HOT GIRL
Good job, Barry! Wanna go down on me?
I haven't shaved in three years.

BARRY PEPPER
Woo hoo!

JOHN TRAVOLTA
I'll be back in the sequels! There are
already four of them planned! I'm
that confident the movie would do
well! You see, I really am a complete
moron!

AUDIENCE
Fuck that, I'm not going to sit
through another one of these. My neck
is sore from tilting my head.
(opens wallet)
You see this 7.50? THIS is leverage,
you egomaniacal twit.

END