After Earth Reviews

After many tough gruelling auditions spanning many gruelling weeks, Jaden Smith was finally awarded the starring role in his fathers hopeful sci-fi epic...oh wait.

The plot is as old as the hills, ye olde coming of age drama between a father and his boy, this one happens to be set 1000 years in the future on a distant planet. Put simply Will Smith ('Cypher Raige'...really? is that space age name cool enough for you Mr Smith?) thinks his boy is a failure for not becoming a space ranger action figure type bloke, so there is much resentment between the two. On a final mission Smith Sr. brings Jr. along for the experience, but they hit a snag midflight with pesky asteroids and are forced to crash land on Earth. Now its up to Smith Jr. to save the day and gain his fathers respect by saving both their lives, can he manage it?! tune in next week folks, same channel, same tim...

Oh and there's that whole planet Earth being made uninhabitable from man made pollution issues and humans having to abandon it...part. Now Earth is some huge wild jungle free from mankind (not any trace at all? really? no ruins?) and has evolved into a ferocious predator filled world that time has forgotten. All that was missing was Doug McClure.

The main problem with this film which I think everyone has mentioned is the fact Jaden Smith is a seriously lacking actor, he clearly has no natural talent for it and comes across wooden, lifeless and amateurish...although he is still young for sure. Its quite clear Smith Sr. is creating a fast food/instant movie star situation with his boy by getting him in big movie roles and trying to force him to the top. Smith Sr. wants this to happen big time in my opinion, I'm sure Smith Jr. does too but I don't think he's actually got the flair or natural ability.

The other issue is Smith Sr. tries to act seriously here, or tries something, not sure what, but it doesn't work. His performance is terrible, verging on B-movie standards. He's suppose to be a by the books, hard lined, emotionless, fearless, stoic military leader who certainly doesn't mollycoddle his son in any way. This means Smith Sr. is basically an unlikable character, not good, but it also means that Smith Jr's goal is to be like his father, an emotionless robot with no soul. This pretty much means that both the lead characters are unlikable and emotion in the film is cold and forced, or so it feels.

At no point did I really care about either of the lead characters, even at the very end, I didn't give a hoot frankly. The human emotion was as plastic looking as the ships interior, and that's pretty darn plastic!. So Smith Sr. sits out all the action in this film and simply sits around looking stern, whilst Smith Jr. is our hero and has the same expression of a goldfish the entire time. Oh he also whines quite a bit too, he's actually a bit annoying.

Smith Sr. gives Jr. this all encompassing speech about what to do and what not to do before sending him on his way. Then literately within the first five minutes of setting off the kid ignores what his father says, gets himself chased by a posse of large killer baboons and finally stung by a poisonous leech, no wonder this kid failed his space cowboy test thing. Luckily they just happen to have the correct antidote for the leech bite so never mind. I did feel sorry for him towards the end though, he reaches the tail end of the ship and finds out he's now gotta climb a huge volcanic mountain on top of it because the flare/beacon thing has no signal! these space age service providers huh sheesh!.

The whole film looks good as do all films these days, the special effects are touch and go, CGI in abundance of course but not the best. The scenic views of Nova Prime are very nice at the start as are all the location shots throughout but props and sets are curiously average looking. As I already said the interior of the spaceship is very odd, its all beige and looks like its been made out of cardboard and plastic, visibly shakes too. What was that carwash brush section that Jaden walks through?? what the hell was that?!, plus all the equipment used and the 'Ursa' egg all looked very poor.

One thing that did spring to mind throughout, why doesn't anyone have any futuristic guns of some kind? surely these space ghosts would carry a gun for emergencies?. It just seems so forced that this accident happens and they are stranded on a prehistoric Earth with only a Predator spear to protect them, trying to make it a desperate primeval survival flick much??. Plus the suits both the Smith boys wear, they are futuristic gizmo's right, don't they at least have an internal temperature control? surely that is an obvious gadget to include when designing?. No oxygen supply, battery pack, extra weapons concealed anywhere etc...pretty useless suit really isn't it, all it did was change colour.

The overall message about us humans is pretty definitive if you ask me, we messed up our own planet to the point that we had to abandon it, we then find another planet and claim it as our own when it clearly belongs to another alien race (or is looked after by another alien race). All this says to me is the human race are in fact like a disease, we are infectious and bad for a planets ecosystem. In this film clearly we have upset another race by invading this planet, why don't we just find another planet?.

Its not all bad, I liked the mystery behind the alien race that unleashes the Ursa, nothing given away there which is fine, I quite liked the Ursa too. I think they captured a futuristic Earth without humans nicely...that's about it. Its a weak survival film really, you're never in any sort of fear about what's gonna happen, you know everyone will be OK, no suspense or real drama, its all very shallow and amazingly rudimentary.

Though far from the complete disaster that most of the critics claim it to be, this problematic star vehicle suffers from a terrible performance by Jaden Smith and a sloppy script plagued by badly conceived narrative elements, in a very predictable, unsatisfying story.

Rare is the movie that just seems to fail at every level of filmmaking, from writing to direction to pacing to casting to production design to logic to, well, you name it (perhaps the craft services were the exception to the rule). Director M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth is one of those exceptional, big-budget passion project failures that just mystify on every account, making you scratch your head and wonder who could possibly be passionate about something this utterly terrible? I'm reminded of John Travolta's 2000 sci-fi Scientology-ode, Battlefield Earth, for a comparison that comes close to approaching After Earth's star-powered ineptitude (this movie also has plenty of vague Scientology references as well). While I doubt this will kill anyone's careers associated, though it probably eliminates some good will for the Smith clan, it definitely piles more dirt on the grave that was Shyamalan's film career. Enough preface, let's get into the meat of why After Earth is one of the worst sci-fi films in years.

In a sloppy bit of exposition, we're told that humans left planet Earth after we made it too unsustainable. The human race then colonized an alien world except that the indigenous aliens weren't too happy about this. The aliens made a space monster, known as an Ursa, which would track and kill human beings by sniffing out their fear pheromones. Cypher Raige (Will Smith) rises in the ranks of the Ranger corps because he has the unique ability to "ghost." Because the man does not register fear he is able to sneak around the Ursa as if invisible. His relationship with his teenage son, Kitai (Jaden Smith), is strained at best. Dad has been gone a long time and has high standards for his boy; the kid has to refer to him as "sir" even at the dinner table. Father and son are traveling through space when their ship crash-lands on good old Earth. Cypher's legs are broken and he entrusts his son to make the trek to send out the distress call. The dangers of Earth, we're told, have only magnified since humans left, and the Ursa onboard their ship has escaped.

Oh boy, where to even start with this one?

I've got a great idea, let's take one of the world's most charismatic actors and then turn him into a stone-faced hardass, terse with words of encouragement, and mostly sidelined so that his son can go on his stupid hero's journey. I suppose Smith deserves some credit for stepping outside his comfort zone to play against type, but that praise only matters when the portrayal works. Smith is arguably miscast in his own passion project. That's because this was really a $130 million dollar birthday present to his son, trying to use dad's star power to establish Jaden as a star. It's less a movie and more like a product launch. On its face, I don't really have an issue with this. Nepotism has been alive and well in Hollywood for over 100 years and those in power have been producing vanity vehicles for their beloved for even longer. What I chafe at is that the finished product is so lacking and unconvincing. Jaden was cute in 2010's The Karate Kid remake, a movie that was far better than it ever should have been. Unfortunately, After Earth came at that special time in his life known as puberty, so he gets his lanky, squeaky-voiced, awkward growth stage forever captured on film. Thus when he gets into a huff, squeals at his dad, and then become the world's most improbable super warrior by film's end, it mostly brings about snickers. You don't buy a second of this character's ascent to hero.

Let's tackle the ultimate elephant in the room here, namely the involvement of Shyamalan. This is his first project he didn't conceive; Smith himself came up with the story and personally hired Shyamalan. Who deserves more of the blame? There's a reason why the marketing for After Earth has not breathed a word about Shyamalan's involvement. In my theater, when the end credits appeared and it opened with Shyamalan's director credit, the guy behind me remarked, "Well, that figures." His sense of dissatisfaction now had a tangible culprit. It's almost become a joke how much of a critical punching bag Shyamalan has become as a filmmaker. The man has genuine talent but it's five duds in a row (I am counting The Village) and not even the world's most bankable star could have saved this movie. As anyone who witnessed the atrocious Last Airbender can attest, Shyamalan is not a filmmaker who works well with a big special effects canvas. I'd suggest that Shyamalan, besides taking some time off, which may be a self-prescribed death sentence in Hollywood, find a smaller project to foster, perhaps something more personal and intimate. Nobody except the sadistic enjoys watching once-promising talents keep hitting a brick wall. Then again, people also dislike having to pay for terrible movies, especially when the director of said terrible movies keeps getting the opportunity to deliver more disappointment.

The plot, which Shyamalan is credited as a co-writer for, is so dull that I found myself almost falling asleep. You would think father and son surviving crash on a hostile alien world would be packed with survival thrills and excitement. You'd be wrong. It's as if Shyamalan takes a page from Smith's ranger character, and just goes about its business in the most thankless, ho-hum, undeterred manner. When we have characters that don't react to the danger they're in it has the misfortune of feeling less real, less urgent, and less dangerous. This was a problem with The Matrix films when Neo became a super being because then the stakes evaporated. It's hard to sympathize with characters that don't reflect the reality of their setting. With that said, so much of this script is just Kitai running off and running into different animals. He meets monkeys. He meets a tiger. He meets an eagle. He meets a slug. Scintillating stuff. Such ambition. If this is what the execution was going to be like, why didn't Smith and Shyamalan just make the planet an actual alien world? It would certainly open up the storytelling options. Or they could have gone in the opposite direction, setting this survival tale on a modern Earth. That would probably have made it much more relatable and resonant and also far cheaper.

The character back-story is also woefully familiar and just as ineffective. Before it even happened, I knew that there would have to be some tragic personal history so that Kitai could overcome his past. We're given some cringe-worthy moments of flashbacks to the family's happier times, when Kitai's older sister Senshi (Zoe Kravitz) was still alive. It's a plodding and contrived plot device for the father to preposterously blame his son for, who was like seven years old at the time. I kid you not, during one of these oh-so-necessary flashbacks, Senshi tells dad she got a copy of Moby Dick and a boy let her hold it. Dad doesn't get it, though I don't know if this is meant to be some lame sex joke. This back-story is ladled in with no real logical connection to events. All of a sudden, Cypher will be thinking about his broken leg and then, whoosh, we're thinking about Moby Dick.

There's also the issue of its tenuous grasp on reality. I know this quality is a give-and-take depending upon the tone of the sci-fi film, but After Earth is so drearily self-serious that it becomes even more unbearable when it so clearly conflicts with credulity. This movie's big message that it pounds into your head repeatedly is that fear is a choice, fear is not real, and that fear is a hindrance for mankind's progress. This is nonsense. Fear is what kept our ancestors alive rather than trying to play with larger predators. Fearlessness is a great way for your species to end. You know an animal without fear? Lemmings. The fact that the movie has to literalize this conflict in the form of a fear-smelling alien monster is just beyond absurd. Let's keep this literalizing-of-theme going; maybe next the aliens will fashion a monster that smells intolerance or illiteracy. Why are these aliens even genetically creating a monster to do their dirty work? If they have the superior scientific prowess to create a gnarly beast, I'm pretty sure they can take care of mankind. On top of this assertion, why would you make a beast that is effectively blind and only reliant upon one sense and then you limit that one sense to "fear"? Why not just have the alien monster smell human beings? That seems to make a lot more sense.

What also buggers my mind is the fact that, according to After Earth, everything on the planet has evolved to kill humans. First, I don't think substantial leaps in evolution work in meager thousand-year spans; secondly, these evolved creatures are really just slightly larger versions of familiar animals, which doesn't really make much sense either; and lastly, if humans have been off planet for a thousand years, how did these animals evolve to kill something they no longer have any interaction with? Then there's the fact that the Earth drops rapidly into freezing temperatures overnight, for no good reason. How do all those plants survive? As an extension, Kitai's super suit is just a prime example of a poorly developed idea that just as easily could have been abandoned. He has a special leotard that changes to his environment. We'll watch it change colors though we're never given any worthwhile reason why this is happening. However, Kitai's suit will not shield him from Earth's sudden temperature drops. So he's wearing this super suit that adjusts to his environment... except temperature? If you're going to present something all super scientific and then give it such obvious limitations, then you never should have introduced it in the first place. This is an ongoing theme with the film.

Then there are just nit-picky things like my total distaste for the production design of this movie. The spaceships look so chintzy. They have plastic flaps separating sections, like what you'd see in an office building when there's construction. The spaceship interiors, as well as home interiors, also look like some bizarre mix of honeycomb and bamboo. I'm all for thinking outside the box when it comes to futuristic design, but this is just stupid. One of the great possibilities of sci-fi is to capture our imagination with out-of-this-world visuals, the unfamiliar, the spectacle of the alien. If your spectacle is good enough, it can even save a so-so movie, like last year's Prometheus. Being stuck on Earth, only slightly different, emphasis on slightly, fails to deliver anything visually that will captivate an audience too often settling into boredom. Apparently After Earth looks pretty much like Earth except for Mount Doom popping up. The special effects are also lackluster and the score by James Newton Howard will try and trick you at every turn into thinking what's happening onscreen is a lot more interesting than it is.

If you value your entertainment, please ignore After Earth. It doesn't even work from a derisive enjoyment angle. The movie is lethargic and unimaginative to its core. It's predictable at every turn and underwhelming throughout. The plot consists of the most boring father-son team in recent memory and a hero's journey that feels false at every step. This big-budget star vehicle doesn't work when its star doesn't have the intangibles to be a star, nor does it help when the story is so poorly developed. The science feels boneheaded, the characters are dreary, the pacing sluggish, the spectacle clipped, and the world building to be bland. The shame is that this premise, even this exact same premise on a future Earth, could have easily worked as a suspense thriller. Smith seemed more interested in building an After Earth enterprise, since companion books were commissioned, and extending the reach of the Smith family empire. Making a good movie, it seems, was secondary. Being fearless also has its disadvantages.

Nate's Grade: D

some of the most fun ive ever had watching a film that amounts to little more than a train wreck. the list of problems here is extensive, the plot was misused and underdeveloped. i couldnt hate it, but i cant say there is much about it i like either. a strong disappointment.

This is a odd movie. Not odd like "man that was so different!" But odd in like "what the heck were they thinking?" Will Smith is one of the most charismatic actors alive, but here he is so boring. He is dull, lifeless, and looks like he would rather be asleep the entire movie. The plot is very basic, and could have been good, but I just think they went about it the wrong way. Anyway, this is about a future where all of humanity has left Earth after some cataclysmic events. Kitai(Jaden Smith) wants to be a ranger like his father(Will Smith), but isn't cutting it like he hoped he would. They then go on a ship together that is transporting a dangerous alien that feeds off of peoples fear. The ship crashes and lands on Earth. Cypher is badly hurt and must guide his son from the ship wreckage to a way to signal for help, while avoiding that alien and all the life form on Earth that wants to kill humans. It's a father/son survival movie, but the problem is it's so slow and boring. There isn't a lot of action, and the acting of both Smith's just isn't very good. I dunno what it is, but I think if this were directed by someone other than M. Night Shyamalan, this could have been better. M. Night used to be one of my favorite directors("Unbreakable" is amazing!), but has last 3-4 movies have all been pretty bad, and this continues that trend. This feels like a big opportunity missed. Just skip it til it's available at redbox or netflix.

Sadly, there isn't even any entertainent value to be had with Shyamalan's latest failure, he's just lost all the belief in himself he once had.

While "After Earth" contains a compelling enough plot to keep ones interest throughout, it was a compilation of minor underwhelming factors which worked to overshadow and make this a below average movie going experience.
The Script: The dialogue here is pretty bad. Filled with cringe inducing back and forth's, which only serve to continuously bludgeon the audience over the head with paternal life lessons, writers Gary Whitta and the director who shall not be named, have done "After Earth" (and it's actors) no real favors. To the point where most (if not all) of the watchable moments during this film (and there are more than a few) occur when nobody is speaking.
The Direction: As for the direction, he who shall not be named actually does a fairly decent job, for about half the movie. But at the point when "After Earth" exits the forest (you'll know it when you see it) the cinematography goes from striking, to overrun by cheap looking CGI, rivaling the likes of "Green Lantern".
The Story: As I alluded to before, I was rather impressed with how the plot here wasn't as bad as everyone was proclaiming it to be. And aside from the fact that the main "bad guy" in all of this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, much of this storyline is entertaining enough to be deemed the foundation of a watchable sci-fi venture. But then comes the insertion of melodrama. Over and over again said melodramatic scenes come about, slowing the film to a screeching halt just when things are starting to pick up. I'll put it like this: "After Earth" was no "The Pursuit of Happyness", no matter how much it tried to be.
The Acting: While this aspect is the least of the factors which worked against "After Earth", much will be made of Jaden Smith's bouts of goofy overacting. Some may go so far as to make claim that the younger Smith is a bad actor. To this I would argue that if not for those immensely awkward Cajun-like accents that each character was forced to use throughout "After Earth", Jaden's underrated acting abilities would have been given a proper chance to carry this story, with diction that wasn't so distracting.
Final Thought: The people wanted another "The Sixth Sense", but got "Devil" instead. The root of the problem with "After Earth" really comes down to the fact that after train-wrecks like "The Village" and "Lady in the Water", and the negative backlash from anime dweebs everywhere after "The Last Airbender", he who shall not be named needed to redeem himself with something the caliber of "The Sixth Sense". So, while "After Earth" is a step in the right direction (I'm still not recommending it) the bias that comes with this director will undoubtedly have many audiences taking an all or nothing attitude. In other words, this director who shall not be named needed to come out with something that was damn near Oscar worthy in order to avoid getting his film ripped to shreds right out of the gate. So, in his defense, the strong negative overreactions to "After Earth" may not be all his fault. Furthermore, this story was credited as a Will Smith idea, so if there is any real blame to be passed around, one could make an argument that "After Earth" is more Will Smith's fault than he who shall not be named.

Written by Markus Robinson, Edited by Nicole I. Ashland

Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus

M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth is one of the most disappointing films of the year. Judging by the trailers, this film looked like it had the potential of a terrific Sci Fi movie. Will Smith is a good actor, and he has made many good films, but this simply doesn't deliver what it could have. Shyamalan was once a great filmmaker, but now he seems to focus more on directing movies that are underdeveloped and needed more work in terms of a great script. In the case of After Earth, it's a dull, mediocre to affair, that you will find yourself not enjoying because nothing really grabs your attention. This was a case where the ideas were good, but the filmmakers, in this case Will Smith, because it's his idea should have rewritten the script a few times before turning it in. Shyamalan makes another dud, however at least the film looks good, if only there could have been more substance to the material that the actors are working with. Everything here seems lazy and unimpressive. The idea is good, but they could have added more depth to the material. I think it's a great shame because After Earth is a good looking movie with great effects and a good lead actor. However the plot suffers from underdeveloped ideas, and dull performances and excessive slow scenes where nothing happens. The Grey had that, but the script was solid, and the acting was top notch, but we get a film here that fails to deliver any real feel of threat to the characters because I found them to be poorly thought out. At least with The Grey, what kept you interested from start to finish was that the characters were great, each had a good enough back-story and had enough thrills. After Earth just ends up using a good, interesting idea and peppering the script with a few clichés to create the film. I did not absolutely hate the film, but it's one that could have been much better and needed a few rewrites. I was more disappointed with this one, but I guess that's what we've come to expect from M. Night Shyamalan.

Though the film is somewhat a step higher than director M. Night Shyamalan's recent slumps, it still results in blockbuster blunder and failure. After Earth is a watered-down sad attempt at a sci-fi epic. The film's inconsistency and open-ended plot/story leaves the audiences hanging and confused. No doubt Will Smith & Jaden Smith's chemistry as father & son is there, but the acting could somewhat improved as it appeared flustered. Visually a remarkable film, but that's all it can give as the film disappoints. 2.5/5

Besides a few pleasing elements, from the acting to a few pieces of visual effects, "After Earth" is a bland and forgettable post-Earth? film that strives far too much to be like many sci-fi films of the past. As their shuttle crash lands on a quarantined Earth, Kitai must leave his father who has broken both of his legs, while he ventures off to seek the tail end of the ship which has a beacon to rescue them. That being the entire plot does really nothing for me and is very very boring. There is nothing to this film. With terrible dialogue, a horrendous execution and laughable visual effects, "After Earth" is easily one of the worst films of 2013 by far. The idea has so much potential, but by the time the movie ends you are too pissed off to enjoy any of it. The movie starts and ends and things happen, that is all. This movie is pretty damn bad!

There is an interesting story in here somewhere but unfortunately the filmmakers have decided to focus on a bland one. I liked the world that the movie is set in with the human race having to flee Earth and settle on a far away planet and their troubles with an alien race that has caused them to form a brand of military specially equipped to handle them but the movie doesn't focus on this aspect of the story. Instead we get to watch Will Smith be gruff and bleed out while his emotionally damaged son runs around on a very hostile Earth.
The effects and design of the future technology are hit and miss through the whole film with the crashed spaceship looking more like a busted up kite than something that could fly through the cosmos. The crazy amount of green screen work is obvious and took me out of the film a few times and some of the music cues were misplaced.
I think M. Night played it safe with this one to avoid the slings and arrows of all who judge him for not hitting it out of the park with each film he releases. It's unfortunate because none of his identity comes out in this film and I think it would have helped it a little in the end.
Overall I didn't think this was a terrible movie. It's just not a good one.

The only praise I can muster up is for the Art Department. The futuristic buildings and interior of the spaceship have some originality. I thought it was noteworthy that none of the trailers mentioned that Shyamalan was the director. Will Smith and Shyamalan are both credited as producers and writers (amongst others) and there is evidence that Smith shares responsibility as director as well. I liked Will's and Jaden's previous co-starring effort in The Pursuit of Happyness. Here the father, playing a hero named Cypher, has lost that spark of charm that made him a star, and the son, playing a ranger trainee named Kitai who is thrust into a wilderness survival race against time, seems to be one-dimensional. The plot is formulaic and boring. It doesn't make sense how Kitai seems to read his authoritative father's mind. Whether they are in communication and keeping secrets from each other, or their communication system is being interrupted, there are too many instances of the plot being dishonest and overly complicated. The multiple references to Moby Dick and the tagline, "Danger is real. Fear is a choice.," which sums up the moral of the story, attempt and fail to give the movie some deep meaning that it simply doesn't possess. This gives me no confidence in Smith's plan to make this world a multiplatform franchise.

There is one thing you can say for M. Night Shyamalan....he's consistent. If you are stopping to say to yourself "HEY! I didn't know M. Night directed this movie". That's because the people at Sony pictures thought it best to not bring that up. As most of you know M. Night started his career off strongly with "The Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable", and to a lesser degree "Signs". After that it all went downhill fast. Yes, The Last Airbender made a good crash grab, but outside of that? Bupkiss.......

After Earth is a bad movie. Will Smith developed the story and M. Night co wrote the screenplay. Personally I don't think this is as bad as Airbender or even nearly as bad as Lady in the Water, but make no mistake......this movie is no good.

Will Smith came up with the idea for this movie after watching an episode of "I Shouldn't Be Alive" (true story) and thought of a father/son story about being trapped in the mountains somewhere and the son must go find help, then he decided to place 1,000 years in the future thus exploding the budget.

So this is the story in After Earth: An emotionally dysfunctional father and his overemotional nincompoop of a son crash-land on Earth, which has been quarantined for 1,000 years after we humans messed it up and left. Dad breaks both his legs, so son has to walk 100 km to the other half of the spaceship's wreckage to find a beacon. This is bad because, as Will Smith's dad says, everything on Earth has evolved to kill humans.

I always found Will Smith likable, and the same went for his characters, until this movie. Cypher Raige is THE most unrelatable parental figure I have ever seen in a movie. And Jaden Smith (while cute in The Pursuit Of Happyness) just doesn't have the acting chops to do this role justice. Maybe he will develop that over time, but for the time being it very much feel like "Daddy just bought me my own 100 million dollar movie"!

Plot holes are common in stories, there is no perfect movie but in After Earth I found myself asking questions every scene about why the characters were doing things that just seemed idiotic and not even in retrospect. Furthermore some of the dialog was laughably bad and I am almost certain that was not the intent of the writers when they were putting fingers to keyboard or pen to paper.

There are some nice visual effect shots. And if you exclude every scene with a poorly done CGI animal in them then this movie has 100% excellent visuals. I guess the other plus is that for a big SciFi movie it runs under 100 minutes. But even there is a lot of padding, scenes of Will and Jaden trying to communicate with each other and failing, and we get to hear them repeat themselves A LOT.

Seriously, there is not a lot in the way of redemption for this movie. In fact I was originally going to give After Earth 1 1/2 stars but just for making me remember this whole debacle of a movie it is going to lose the 1/2.

In the future, Earth is abandoned by humans, thus becoming inhospitable. Mankind establishes a new home on a world called Nova Prime but an alien race also has designs on conquering the planet. These aliens, known as the S'krell, use a species of aggressive beast, the Ursa, which senses the pheromones released when a human feels fear. General Cypher Raige (Will Smith) is a "ghost", a soldier who has trained himself never to experience fear, thus making him an invaluable asset in the war against these beasts. Raige is disappointed in his son, Kitai (Jaden Smith), whose application to join his father's Rangers is turned down. Raige takes Kitai along on his final mission before retirement but an asteroid storm causes their ship to crash land, killing all on board except for the father and son. With Raige's leg broken, Kitai must journey 100km to employ a distress beacon in the tail of the ship, which separated during the crash. Along the way, he must evade an Ursa, set free by the crash.
Followers of European soccer will be familiar with the plight of Fernando Torres. Once considered the continent's most exciting striker, a big money move to Chelsea reduced him to football's biggest joke. Despite the best efforts of several coaches, the player has been unable to replicate his early form, and the more he tries, the less likely it seems we'll ever see his best again. M Night Shyamalan is the film-making world's Fernando Torres. I've been somewhat of an apologist for the director but enough is enough. We can now safely say, 14 years on, 'The Sixth Sense' was very much a once off. He's still a decent director but his writing is embarrassingly bad. 'After Earth's dialogue makes James Cameron seem like a master wordsmith, packed with cod-philosophy nuggets like "Danger is real, fear is a choice". (Shyamalan also quotes 'Moby Dick', because no sci-fi movie has ever used that analogy before, right?) It's baffling how he keeps finding work, though the Scientology backers of 'After Earth' may have been impressed by his alien invasion movie 'Signs', which they possibly mistook for a documentary.
Much has been made of the film's Scientology proselytizing, though in fairness it's no worse than the spiritual message crammed down our throats by Ang Lee in his 'Life of Pi', a film which, if crossed with 'Battlefield Earth', would probably end up pretty close to what we get here. 'After Earth' could be a sci-fi masterpiece and likely wouldn't be acknowledged as such due to the bizarre level of hatred that exists towards Scientology, a religion no more nonsensical than any other. I can tell you, without bias, this is a movie even Cruise and Travolta would struggle to make it through.
Will Smith's relationship to the religion is unclear as he denies being a member yet donates millions to the organization. What is clear is that he needs to stop forcing his son to follow in his footsteps. Young Jaden simply can't act and possesses neither his father's movie-star charisma nor his everyman affability. Watching him plod his way through the film makes you wonder who is having less fun, the audience or the actor? If ever there was an argument against nepotism, this is it.

It seems that this science fiction action adventure directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which he co-wrote with Gary Whitta, based on an original story idea by Will Smith, is hated by most critics for various reasons... scientology allegations, nepotism allegations, poor acting, lack of originality... name it!

Story wasn't too bad - of course that there is little new: A military father and his teenage son crash land on Earth one thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity to abandon Earth for a new home planet. Father is injured and the son must save him and himself, by trekking alone across the hostile terrain, encountering highly evolved creatures and a ruthless alien beast along the way. His goal is to recover and activate a rescue-beacon and also prove that he can live up to his father's reputation as a legendary soldier - but he is only a recruit in the academy!

The film doesn't move too fast, actually builds the story very carefully, but I noticed, like million others, that the acting could be improved! Scenery is amazing, and After Earth became the first film from Sony to be both shot and presented in the emerging 4K digital format. Don't believe everything you read about this movie - it is not nearly as bad as its box-office thud and scathing reviews would suggest, Shyamalan does a decent job in the director's chair.

I can't help but look at this film's title and think of that animated film back in 2000, "Titan A.E.", because it was a sci-fi film about Earth turning on humans, "A.E." stands for - you guessed it - "After Earth", and because the movies that M. Night Shyamalan makes nowadays may as well be cartoons, and in some cases were actually cartoons (Sorry about reminding you of "The Last Airbender", folks). Well, people, make no mistake, this film has nothing to do with "Titan A.E.", because after looking at the level of "success" of "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Will Smith won't be working with Matt Damon again any time soon... yet still finds M. Night Shyamalan to be a lucky charm. Smith is probably in here because he had to do something for his annual sci-fi film, and because even the producers of the film knew that they weren't going to be able to sell this project with the guy who did "The Sixth Sense", way back when Bruce Willis still had hair, so much so that they didn't even try to promote Shyamalan's recognizable name. Looking at how much they build up the big reveal that these poor suckers might die after crash landing on... Earth (Dun-dun-dun!) in the trailers, I was thinking that they spoiled the big M. Night Shyamalan twist in the marketing campaigns, but as it turns out, the real big twist in this M. Night Shyamalan film is that it's a M. Night Shyamalan film. Well, to be fair, as quickly as plenty of people are running out this film once it's done, they probably don't have time to see Shyamalan's cover blown in the closing credits. Man, they are hammering this film, and it's not even that bad, so it must be because of Shyamalan's name, which is a weird, because this is more of a Smith family project, so much that they even got Will's wife, long-time business partner and [u]"brother-in-law"[/u] to produce this, and I am not even kidding. Some families get together and have a picnic, and some families get together and blow-I mean, spend millions on a movie that people aren't even liking, so I guess this film doesn't exactly help fight the theories that Smith is secretly white, nor does it help fight the theories that Smith is a Scientologist, seeing as how this film is coming out way too soon after "Oblivion", with Xenu-I mean, Tom Cruise, which isn't to say that this film is nearly as good as "Oblivion", being better than they say and all, but still with problems that extend beyond Shyamalan's doing... to some small extent.

I joke about how this film about finding dangers on a ruined Earth on which the leads are stranded, far away from some space colony called home, is coming out way too soon after "Oblivion", but this film really is too familiar for its own good, being not necessarily generic, but more-or-less run-of-the-mill as a post-apocalyptic blockbuster, featuring a conventional mythology and plot whose recognizability makes the natural shortcomings of this film easier to recognize. There's not really a whole lot to this relatively minimalist adventure opus, yet there is potential, and it's generally centered around the depths of the characters who conceptually prove to be very key in this survival drama, and who aren't as fleshed out as they seriously should be. Now, it's not like this film should be all that thoroughly developed, nor is it like this film's expository depth is close to totally inadequate, yet we're still going to need quite a bit of flesh-out, something that this film has only so much of, providing only so much information to strengthen your investment in this distinguished story and mythology, but still taking more than enough time to drag its feet. For every good deal of tight areas within this so-so-sized, adventurous character drama, there is a moment in which draggy material kicks in and drives storytelling into repetition, and such uneven pacing is glaring enough on paper, without limp atmospheric momentum. A good sign that the critics are hammering this film mostly just because it's directed by Mr. Night Shyamalamading-dong is the fact that they're saying that what really destroys the film is dullness, and that one of Shyamalan's few big mistakes as a director is a touch too much atmospheric dryness, which, in my unbiased opinion, rarely truly dulls things down, but certainly does a number on the compellingness of this film, certainly not to where I was completely distanced, like plenty of other critics, but decidedly to where I found that when Shyamalan's atmospheric storytelling didn't have any kind of intense to soak up as much as it could, it simply quieted things down and blanded things up with a certain coldness that makes other shortcomings all the harder to ignore. Now, if there are very strong beats on paper, then Shyamalan's thoughtful approach to things really does work, as surprising as that might seem when you look at Shyamalan's "consistency" in competence in recent years, but on the whole, this material isn't that strong, and Shyamalan's questionable moves hold a magnifying glass over the weak spots, which ultimately prevail in driving the final product back as just another sci-fi blockbuster of its type. That being said, the film is far from the disaster that many are claiming it to be, being flawed, to be sure, but decent, with commendable highlights, some of which are consistent, or at least that's the case with the score work.

Well, I say that the great James Newton Howard's score is consistently commendable, but, as with most scores by Howard, there is a good bit of familiarity to this film's soundtrack, which isn't too unique, but still quite good, being anchored by subtly intricate compositions and stylishly modern orchestrations that go into making a score whose highlights are pretty impressive on a musical level, and which helps in selling the film's tone, while the world upon which this film centers goes sold by inspired art direction. Now, for a sci-fi film that takes place in a pretty distinguished future world, art directors Robert Joseph, Naaman Marshall and Dean Wolcott don't really have a whole lot to work with, seeing as how the film mostly takes place in the doggone forest, but when production value is really played up, it's all but immersive in its intricacy, and when it comes to the visual effects, while there are some spotty occasions that you'd figure they would know better to make on a $130 million budget in this day and age of blockbuster filmmaking, more often than not, the special effects are pretty decent, offering a good deal of eye candy to help in selling this world. Again, on a stylistic and technical level, the film is improvable, but the film is still technically respectable, even if it is faulty when it comes to substance, which, even then, isn't too shabby, or is at least backed by compliments that aren't too shabby, particularly when it comes to, of all places, the acting department. While this is a character drama of sorts, it's superficial enough to be marketable, so don't be expected revelatory performances from talents who are used to holding themselves back in films like this, but, if you're willing to run with things more than others, you can expect some decent acting, at least from the leads, with Will Smith convincing as a brave leader who begins to tap back into his emotional depths as a human in a life-or-death situation, while his son Jaden Smith goes in and out of some kind of a new, post-Earth colony accent, but kept me invested more than he kept others invested with a reasonably effective portrayal of an ambitious young warrior who must learn to face and filter his emotions in the midst of danger that thrives on terror. There's not a whole lot of talk about the performances, with Jaden Smith actually receiving a mixed reception that I can't entirely see, but in this writer's humble opinion, the performances are better than the film itself, and do, in fact, play a relatively prominent part in getting the final product by as reasonably compelling, yet wouldn't if the film's story was as distancing as they say. Sure, this film's story concept is too familiar and minimalist, and its execution gets to be questionable in quite a few ways, but it's still intriguing, at least on paper, juggling some surprisingly human dramatic depth with adventurous intensity in a dangerous future, and being sold by some highlights in writing, as well as highlights in, well, - if you'll please forgive me - the direction by M. Night Shyamalan, who all too often gets to be too meditative for his own good, to the point of emphasizing, if not inspiring questionable elements in flawed storytelling, but has effective moments in atmospheric storytelling that soak up tension, maybe even some dramatic compellingness. On the whole, Shyamalan's efforts miss enough for the film to fall far from what it perhaps could have been, but what the biased critics won't tell you is that Shyamalan isn't completely rusty, doing enough things right, or at least being backed by enough strengths in other storytelling departments, to save the final product as decent, if somewhat forgettable.

After it's all said and done, you're left faced with enough familiarity and minimalism to the story concept, as well as enough repetitious dragging to storytelling, - made all that limper by more than a few bland atmospheric cold spells - for the final product to slip into underwhelmingness, but not so deeply that strong score work, decent art direction and visual effects, a pair of inspired lead performances by Will and Jaden Smith, and a reasonably intriguing story concept - sometimes brought to life by undeniable effective highlights in M. Night Shyamalan's direction - don't prove to be enough to make "After Earth" a decent, if held back, dramatic sci-fi blockbuster.

2.5/5 - Fair

Three words to describe this movie. Bad. Sad. Rotten. Deserves to be binned. It's terrible.

The film wasn't as bad as every one is saying. I was expecting it to be much worse. I give M. Night Shyamalan credit. I thought he did a good job here. This was better than his last couple of films that he directed. The pacing was off. At times it was a little slow. They needed a rewrite. I think they should have had more backstory to Will's character and more about this future.

Will is actually good in the film. However, his character is a supporting role. It is his son which is the lead character of the film. I thought Jaden was ok for the scenes that he did on Earth. However, I thought he wasn't good as the character in the beginning of the film. I honestly think that it would have been better had they cast some one else in Jaden's role. Will and Jaden were great together on screen in The Pursuit of Happyness. Zoe Kravitz is great in her supporting role. I would have loved to see more scenes with her in it.

Overall, I will say check it out. The special effects are also good.