It's clear that Terl wants the gold to send back home to Psychlo. Travolta, a Scientologist, is the film's only hope for an audience, for whatever purposes, so he pops up anywhere the action shifts. Travolta and sidekick Forest Whitaker as Ker lumber on platform boots through cheaply constructed sets and bad matte shots, looking a bit too much like Klingons for copyright comfort. Some of this sounds better than it plays out. Science fiction is obliged to serve as an allegory for contemporary life, and Battlefield Earth makes a few half-hearted stabs at it.
Freedom is an easy soapbox to climb aboard.
But this isn't Planet of the Apes or even Stargate when it comes to stimulating thought. There is no noticeable sermonizing in Battlefield Earth, certainly not to the extent that Billy Graham's old movies, The Spitfire Grill or The Apostle conveyed for Christian faiths. Brains aren't washed, but they could be numbed. Director Roger Christian has only one trick up his sleeve. Nearly every frame is shot with the camera sharply angled one way or another, like villain lairs in the old Batman TV series.