by EdContradictory

You know the deal. You're hanging out with friends, maybe you're all over at someone's house. Maybe you're at Friendly's splitting some quesadillas. But, inevitably, after the talk about jobs and politics and the weather runs out... you're left staring at each other, unwilling to discuss the issue hanging over everyone's head. Like the Sword of Damocles.

Namely: Was Pulp Fiction such a great and importantly fantastic movie that merely being in it gives John Travolta a free pass for all the dreck he's been in since?

In other words, is Pulp Fiction more gooder than Battlefield Earth is more bad?

So let's get the simple part of this equation over with first. Battlefield Earth is an awful movie. How bad is it? It was so bad that I re-watched it for this article and as I watched it, my brain erased the very memory of watching it in order to protect my fragile psyche. All I know is that Travolta is in platform shoes, some dudes learn how to pilot planes, and Forest Whittaker is in it.

But there are many other Travolta films that are also bad. There's Phenomenon, wherein Travolta gains the powers of a Thetan Level 7, but then we find out it was just a brain tumor. There's Michael, where he played an angel with Andie MacDowell, who, it is important to mention, cannot act. And White Man's Burden, the one with Harry Belafonte where Travolta's a minority. And there's... that other movie where he played that guy... who did that stuff.

So, there's a lot of bad. But, on the other side of the equation, there's Pulp Fiction. And Pulp Fiction is so fucking amazing, none of those shitty films matter.

I remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction. I remember sitting in the theater stunned at the end. My friends and I just staring at the screen and slowly acknowledging the outside world again. And when we finally had the wherewithal to notice each other again, we just smiled. We knew, we knew, we had just seen something amazing. So amazing that in years past I wish I could remove the memory of the film from my mind so I could watch it new, all over again. How cool would that be?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to say it was derivative. That the narrative structure was gimmicky. That the characters were over the top. You know what I say to that? Fuck you. Fuck you, you Forrest Gump loving son of a bitch. Sam Jackson was robbed and you fucking know it!

Glowing briefcase? Cool. Marvin shot in the face? Cool. Adrenaline shot to the heart? Cool. The Wolf? Cool. The scene with Butch in the cab? Not completely awful. "Bring out the gimp"? Cool. Jules' wallet? Cool.

The feeling and mood of Pulp Fiction might have been copied to the point of being tiresome since then, but in 1994 it was still new and unfamiliar and unique. In fact, without Pulp Fiction, the 90s would have sucked. It would have been all John Hughes baby movies. The nineties were Pulp Fiction and Pulp Fiction was the nineties. It doesn't matter that a bunch of crappy directors came after that and copied Pulp Fiction and married Madonna. Pulp Fiction is a diamond, brilliantly gleaming, and their shit can't stick to it.

Look at it this way: Pulp Fiction is so amazingly amazing that without it, Battlefield Earth wouldn't even exist. Travolta used the clout he had from being in the most important film of the nineties and used it to make the worst.

Years from now, decades from now, which will be remembered? Will we even remember Travolta was in a film called Battlefield Earth? Does anyone remember that Jimmy Stewart was in The Magic of Lassie? Hell, no. People don't even rememebr that he was in Fievel Goes West. You remember Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life.

So, in closing, even if you don't currently believe that Pulp Fiction's awesomeness outweighs Battlefield Earth's badness, know this: Ultimately you're wrong and twenty years from now when you try to spread your dirty lies, people will laugh at you. Just as I laugh at you now.

Read the same author rant about Wolverine, Spider-Man, and bone claws.



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