It's pretty hard to summarize a movie with no real plot to speak of. It's the year 3000, and I guess a bunch of aliens have taken over the planet. These are no ordinary aliens, though. These guys are evil. In fact, that's really all they are. They just do things for the sake of being evil. They have no real plan. They're led (sort of) by Terl (John Travolta). Terl is in charge of the Earth garrison (although that's not what they call it), and it's his job to get the gold mining done. There's no good reason for the alians to have gold, so of course, it's the natural thing to do. Terl is the main villain. He looks like a cross between John Travolta, Rob Zombie, and a Klingon, and he has six fingers on his right hand. Then there's the hero, played by the sniper from Saving Private Ryan. He's human, and in the year 3000, like all humans of that era, he's pretty uneducated. Humans have reverted to cavemen. Well, he decided it's time to go out to seek his fortune or something, and he runs into some other cavemen in a miniature golf course (with about 10 years' worth of plant life around it), and he's pretty freaked out. Actually, he's pretty freaked out by everything. Anyway, they start to have lunch in an abandoned building with abandoned mannaquins (which the cavemen think are real people punished by gods), and the Psychlos show up. Yeah, the name of the alien race is Psychlo. Anyway, the hero and his new friends are taken prisoner for, well for no real reason other than the Psychlos are evil.
Well, wouldn't you know, there's a bit of a scuffle, and the hero shoots an alien with his own gun. Terl has a big prolem with this because a man animal (as they're called) is too stupid to know how to operate something as sophisticated as a gun. Anyway, the hero and the other humans are incarcerated, and Terl is sentenced to stay on Earth for the next 50 year. Something to do with his boss's daughter, I guess. Hero gains the trust of the other humans, and, for some reason, is single out by Terl as the guy to go to when he needs a guinea pig. You see, Terl wants to have humans mine the gold. I can't say I blame him, either, what with him being a complete idiot and all. Now, what's the best way to keep a person under control? Anyone? Anyone at all? No? Well, according to this movie, the most important thing to do if you want mindless slaves following orders is to give them as much knowledge as possible with their Matrix-esque knowledge machine, and then teach them about freedom.
So, the hero has some ideas, and he teaches the other humans about such new and amazing things as triangles, chemical compounds, and, er, squares. He says they're gonna need this information to beat the Psychlos. He was lying, of course, but that's not important. What's important is that um, uh, er, ooh boy, hmmm.... Ok, well, I guess some stuff happens and the hero makes a deal with the number 2 guy, and the humans decide to go towar with the Psychlos. So, in a span of, like, 6 days, the hero builds an atomic bomb (to blow up the planet Psychlo), and teaches about a dozen other how to fly a Harrier jump jet, which, as we all know, is the easiest kind of plane to fly (except for the whole vertical take off/landing, the flying, and, well, everything else). So, there's a big battle with lots of explosions, and the aliens are defeated. And remember the A-bomb? Well that gets detonated on the alien planet and destroys the whole thing.
Remember the trailer to Titan AE? If you saw TPM in the theater, it should ring a bell. Anyway, if you recall, the trailer consisted of crappy CGI of the earth getting destroyed. Fortunately, the final product was much much more convincing, and it was even a cartoon. Well, anyway, the scene of the alien planet blowing up was almost identical to the Earth's destruction in the Titan AE trailer. This was, in fact, about the most impressive visual aspect of the movie. Now, keep in mind it wasn't due to technological limitations. We all know that CGI can be pretty impressive, but the people who made this movie didn't seem to know how to use it. They didn't seem to know much of anything about SFX, since they shot around anything that would have been interesting. Not only tat, but the directing sucked. First of all, there was maybe one or two shots that lasted more than three seconds. Second, almost everything was filmed with the camera drastically tilted. Third, they used the exact same wipe at least 25 times.