Review of After Earth (2013) by Adam F — 09 Jun 2014

Will and Jaden Smith star in "After Earth" or as I like to call it "Daddy issues on Planet Death"! The film is set roughly a thousand years in the future, something around 3071. Mankind has long since abandoned its home world of Earth and moved on to colonize a new planet named Nova Prime. But, we're not alone in the universe. Plaguing our new society is an alien species that sent specialized weapons to wipe us out: the Ursa. Essentially blind, these monstrous creatures find people by sensing the pheromones we generate when afraid. Enter Will Smith as Cypher Rage. He's so awesome, he doesn't even feel any fear at all, making him invisible to the Ursa (a phenomenon called Ghosting). His career as a general has made him an absent father and his son Kitai (Jayden Smith) has grown to both admire and resent him. When a catastrophic crash maroons the father and son on Earth, Cypher is badly injured and their equipment damaged. To escape what has become a world that is severely hostile to humans, Kitai will have to work with his father (who is supervising him from inside the ruins of their ship) to find a beacon to contact Nova Prime and survive the evolved forms of Earth's wildlife. There's more though, an Ursa that was being transported for training has managed to survive the crash, and it's only a matter of time before it finds Kitai.

Aside from the fact that this is just a vanity project for the Smith family (only the introduction, the conclusion and a few flashbacks feature any other characters, and few of them feature neither of the actors) and the fact that the special effects are pretty spotty at times, the big problem I had with the film is that it really isn't that imaginative. This new futuristic Earth isn't really impressive at all. When they arrive on the planet, we're told that "everything" has evolved to kill humans. I'm thinking we're going to see carnivorous plants, killer bugs, voracious reptiles, humming birds that drink your blood and all sorts of crazy creatures but what do we get? A single condor, a couple of ligers, a poisonous leach, a flying snake and some baboons. If you're going to go with a story where it's far into the future and the world has become hostile, go all the way! Make it like a million years into the future and give us land octopi, elephants with spikes on their trunks, beetles the size of minivans, something interesting! There isn't a single computer generated creature presented in the film that couldn't have been easily replaced with either modern day animals (if the two had just crashed in some jungle miles away from civilization) or even cooler, dinosaurs (if they had fallen in a portal through time). What I'm getting at is that selling point of this film, that this is Earth... but future, and deadly! is a big letdown.

What about the story? Well, it's nothing special. Early on it is established that Kitai really wants to impress his father because Daddy's the most awesome guy ever. But his father was always gone because he was you know, saving humanity and there's been some abandonment issues growing. To make things worse, Kitai had an older sister who died at the hands of an Ursa because "daddy wasn't there". Once again, he was off saving the world, give the guy a break. From those setups, you can tell where the movie is going to go. Kitai is going to rebel against his father. Dad isn't going to trust his son at all. Kitai will get in some serious trouble and get reprimanded, some harsh words will probably be exchanged. Kitai will prove himself to be worthy by surviving against all odds and on, and on. A big disappointment with that set up is that you would hope to at least see the two actors playing off each other. They're actually father and son in real life, so there would be some real chemistry going on right? Maybe even a bit of real-life drama, since Will Smith is a big-shot Hollywood actor that gets to boss seasoned directors around and get them to direct his stories now (more on that in a bit) and his son is just getting into the business himself. If that's what you're hoping to see you would be disappointed because the characters share very little screen time together. Cypher gets both of his legs broken as soon as they arrive on Earth and all of their conversations from then on consist of phone calls and them berating each other over their lack of trust.

Poor M. Night Shyamalan. I know some people are going to say you blew it once again, but I know that you didn't have much say in this one. If there's any praise to give, I guess the sets look good and if any of them were computer generated, they were just as convincing as the ones shot on location, that's good. I also thought the costumes and score were well done. Otherwise, this is pretty unremarkable. I know you're out to prove yourself after what has been a career that started off with some really strong films but ended up devolving into bad, needlessly zany films. I'm not blaming him though, I'm blaming Will and Jayden Smith for this one. After I saw the film, I felt reluctant to be harsh in my criticism because I assumed this movie had a pretty low budget, despite the stars. As I said, the special effects, when it comes to the animals are pretty rough. They're not terrible, but never really convincing so I assumed they were done by an up and coming company and that the idea here would have been: low budget + big star + rising star = huge profits. That's far from the case. Doing a bit of research, I found that the budget for this was $130 million. This is what we get for that kind of money?!

The bottom line is this: it's not unwatchable. Yes, there are some over sentimental moments that will make you roll your eyes, a so-so performance from Jayden Smith (I'm sad to say I think the charisma in that family is skipping a generation), some uninventive special affects, a one-dimensional villain and a general lack of originality, but... I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. Come to think of it, I really struggle to think of any reason to encourage people to watch the film. Maybe my expectations were really low and just because I found myself not hating it I wanted to give it a 2,5 / 5; an average rating that says it's nothing special, you'll watch it and forget it but you won't hate it. Thinking harder about it though, I can't even give it that. It earns itself a 2 / 5. Lower than average but still not so bad as to warrant itself a place in the annals of bad filmmaking. (On Blu-ray, October 2013).