I guess Travolta didn't get any of that. He doesn't seem to have gotten a whole lot, although he's obviously having a ton of fun playing a nine-foot tall alien. At least his character is, literally, bigger than life. But, in compressing an epic novel of international scope into under two hours, the rest of the piece seems much smaller than life, an exploding planet notwithstanding. A much wider and deeper canvas would have been necessary to capture everything.
Earth is awful.
The trouble is, it's not good enough to be worth even a matinee, but it's nowhere near bad enough to be worth seeing. But, it takes a certain talent to make a flick so gut-wrenchingly awful that it's an instant cult classic, and Travolta, Christian and company don't have that kind of talent. Jon Bastian, a native and resident of Los Angeles, is a playwright and screenwriter who works in the TV trade to keep his dog rolling in kibble.