Review of After Earth (2013) by Carlos D — 21 Mar 2014

Mankind left Earth 1000 years ago. It is now a class one quarantined planet, but after a deep space flight hits a debris field, Commander Cypher Raige and his son Kitai crash land on the planet and the only way off it is salvaging a beacon that will alert rescue back home.

There's an overload of patriotic lines and survival ethics that are more eye rolling than intense, and every single character is sucked dry of emotion leaving all the dialogue robotically programmed, but After Earth isn't the total flop it's been hailed as, it's a visually rich and regularly intense sci-fi that looks absolutely gorgeous in the 4K format.

The new world that we humans live on looks spectacular and Earth is a hostile and ever changing planet now and the special effects are truly powerful, aside from the rock throwing monkeys which look fake.

The Ursa is a gruesome creature although it's never given enough screen time, more chase scenes and fights between the humans and these aliens would've been great and would certainly boost the stalling pace.

M.Night Shyamalan's direction is odd but he keeps a tense atmosphere consistent, although Will Smith seems like he directed himself completely as his acting and character seems completely out of sync with the rest of the movie's tone and situations.

Jaden Smith however was surprisingly good, people have been criticising him heavily but he's good during the action scenes, great at loud speeches but his narration at the start was poor. The biggest flaw is the lack of action and involving thrills, and the few that are on show are extremely short lived but for some reason the exploration of the landscape was tolerable and wasn't boring at all.

Would I watch this again? Probably, this is a decent movie, it's the most forgettable sci-fi of the year when you think of what's been out this year but it's not the turkey everyone is saying it is.