Roger Christian
Director
Two-time Academy Award winner Roger Christian earned an Oscar for his innovative work as Art Director on the original Star Wars film, A New Hope. Christian was responsible for giving the Star Wars sets a kind of convincing detail and ‘used realism’ never before seen in science fiction films. Immediately in demand for top-line science fiction films, Christian went on to apply his new approach as Art Director and Production Designer to the original Alien film, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His film, The Dollar Bottom, meanwhile had won an Academy Award for Best Dramatic Short. Broadening his experience, Christian wrote and then directed the medieval fantasy Black Angel. From that initial outing as a feature film director, Christian has now helmed a total of nine motion pictures including the critically acclaimed Nostradamus which stars Julia Ormond, F. Murray Abraham and Rutger Hauer.
Having come full circle, Christian recently again worked alongside his old colleague George Lucas, this time as Lucas’ second unit director on the Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace. After 20 years, Christian returned not only to the world of Star Wars but to location shooting in the North African deserts of Tunisia, where he had helped bring the first Star Wars film to life. From studios to wilderness locations, the experience has stood Christian in good stead, and he is now bringing it all to bear on the creation of a new screen epic.
Christian’s latest project is the film adaptation of the science fiction adventure Battlefield Earth, starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper and Forest Whitaker. Bringing a strong sense of vision of Battlefield Earth, Christian is crafting a film version that remains true to the spirit of the book while creating an innovative look and a new approach not seen before in science fiction cinema.
 It was George Lucas who suggested Christian as the right person to bring Battlefield Earth to the screen, as years ago it was Lucas who encouraged Christian’s first directorial effort.
Christian got his start as a director, he says, after his distinctive work on Star Wars: A New Hope and Aliens. Following art direction on those two films he went back to film school to broaden his skills. He then wrote the medieval fantasy, Black Angel, which was too expensive to produce at the time. Chance and opportunity merged, however, when Christian met a 20th Century Fox film executive and told him about the script. George Lucas got hold of and read the screenplay and gave Fox his endorsement, at which point Fox financed the production and Christian directed his first feature film. Black Angel was shown in England as an advance feature with The Empire Strikes Back.
Roger Christian Interview
Battlefield Earth: A Different Story To Tell
For Director Roger Christian, Battlefield Earth is an opportunity to do something vitally, distinctive with science fiction film. At its heart, Battlefield Earth is a vast compelling story, and it is his personal vision for capturing this story’s essential humanity and its broad metaphoric resonances, as well as its wild action and grand spectacle that drives Roger Christian in the production of this film.
During a break between scenes, while filming in the dark grottoes of a converted and de-commissioned prison near Montreal, Roger shared some of his thoughts about Battlefield Earth.
Battlefieldearth.com: What attracted you to this film?
Roger Christian: From the beginning I’ve been looking for different stories to tell. I enjoy science fiction and the script for this one came into my hands just before Christmas, 1998. Although, I was doing something else at the time, I read the script by Corey Mandel and liked it enormously.
It follows the classic theme of the hero’s journey — the underdog, fighting to survive, saving the world. And it all takes place within the intensely provocative premise of a primitive world of Earth’s future, fallen back to barbarism.
When I had seen this great script, I thought, ‘well, I’d better read the book,’ and when I did — that was emphatically it. I’ve read a lot of works of science fiction but categorically Battlefield Earth is one of the very best science fiction novels that I have read. The vision of the film, the magnitude of its concept, comes fully and directly from the book. Hubbard’s voice is strong; he is a great science fiction writer.
I embrace the idea that there can be multiple levels to a good film. I think the better films have an underscore underneath the ‘ride,’ which is what the action story is. The underscore of Battlefield Earth is the story of human beings who find that if you don’t accept the limitations of your world, and you are able [to] look beyond them, you can take another step up. It’s like going from three dimensions to four dimensions, a quantum leap in hope and aspiration.
In the film, as in the novel, this is very well portrayed by primitive men who’ve forgotten who they are and lost the rudiments of their history — something, which could happen quite easily in a post-holocaust situation. The hero encounters the device of a learning machine, and through this he is exposed to knowledge — the higher knowledge of the day of that far millennium. This comes to a primitive who has forgotten his past, the legacy of a plundered greatness, and he takes that leap up, remembering and realizing his potential and the potential of his society and his people.
That’s what empowers them, in fact, to defeat the alien race that dominates them. That’s what gives them their strength and their hope. It’s literally expanding the mind that leads them to success.
Battlefieldearth.com: From what you’re saying, it sounds like the film is a sci-fi adventure but it is also very much a human story, a metaphor really.
Roger Christian: I think the film is a metaphor, in its largest context, for the human race. A keenly sharpened metaphor for the millennium, as well, for our coming into the new age and a new time, and a new stage for conflict on a cosmic scale — and for urgent strivings for higher level, larger goals that come always from inside, not outside the human experience.
This is certainly an underpinning of the film. And it’s there for the taking.
But Battlefield Earth is also a straight-ahead, full throttle, ultimate action ride. I mean you won’t believe the pace and tempo. We’ve loaded it with more action than was in the original script, raised velocity of events, the swift interplay of characters toward a climax that keeps building and building, and just doesn’t quit. I can’t wait to see it myself.
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