Terl (John Travolta) is a Psychlo, one of a race of giant, evil, greedy, beings that have taken over the Earth in the year 3000.
He is also something of an outcast among his own race, which is why he has been stuck in the backwaters, ruling over the dump that is the Earth. But he has a plan to make things worthwhile, for he has determined that the planet contains plenty of gold, and he believes that the man-animals can be trained to help him get it, without any other Psychlos knowing about it. With his fabulous new wealth, he can regain a place of prominence on Psychlo and get off of this rock. But this greed will also be his undoing.
Based on the book of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, it probably goes without saying that the book is a lot better. And the book probably isn't that great. But in the book you can actually pick up on a lot of the nuances that the movie has to leave behind in a quest for a reasonable running time (this despite the fact that it still comes in at two hours, and seems a lot longer).
The humans do have one hope - Jonnie "Goodboy" Tyler (Barry Pepper) - who may or may not be a particularly smart man-animal, but he has the advantage of being a favorite of Terl, and this provides him with opportunity. Terl teaches him to fly the Psychlo equipment, and speak the language, and this makes him valuable to the rest of the humans as well. When Terl sends Jonnie out to mine gold, he instead finds gold in the remains of Fort Knox and then spends the rest of the time planning a revolt, which doesn't just reclaim Earth, it wipes out the Psychlo home planet as well, as any good revolt should.
Unfortunately, the movie is woefully short on a lot of other details, like how all of this could happen, and how the humans also take a new position in the Psycho-less universe that they have helped create, because they now possess their technology. The book actually isn't bad (if a bit long-winded itself). The movie, well, it's pretty bad, though John Travolta plays a nice, psycho Psychlo.
Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action.
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