After Earth - Will Smith

What happened here?

Author: keiichi73 from United States

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*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Generally, Sci-Fi is supposed to fill us with awe with its visions of other worlds and of the future. All After Earth managed to fill me with is an overall sense of boredom. This is a lifeless adventure story about a gruff military father and his son bonding when they are both stranded on an abandoned planet Earth. The father and son dynamic, which is supposed to be the main dramatic force which drives the story, fails because we don't believe in the relationship, and the actors have zero chemistry. This is odd, considering said actors are the real life father and son, Will and Jaden Smith.

After Earth is the latest movie from director M. Night Shyamalan. Not that the studio would like you to know this. You might remember how just a few years ago, the studios heavily hyped each release from the director, plastering his name all over the poster and ad campaign. However, after a series of expensive flops, Shyamalan's name is no longer a selling point. And so, they literally have hidden his involvement with this stillborn movie that contains some of the shoddiest CG effects I've seen in a big budget summer movie. Just look at the CG baboons, lions and eagles that threaten our heroes during the course of the film. Compare it to the work done with the CG animals in Life of Pi, and the end result is almost comical.

The plot - We learn through endless, droning exposition that humans have been forced to flee Earth for another home planet. Considering the recent Tom Cruise Sci-Fi film, Oblivion, opened in a similar manner, it only made me wish I was watching that film instead. The humans have generally been living peacefully on their new world, except for some pesky encounters with some big, ugly aliens called Ursa who are blind, and can detect people only by smelling their fear. They're yet another hostile alien race who have mastered the art of the jump scare, but not intelligent conversation, since all they can do is roar, growl, and generally look and act like generic CG.

One of the main war heroes in the battle against the Ursa is General Cypher Kaige (Will Smith). Cypher is a tough, battle-hardened military man who seems to have a hard time differentiating his work life from his home life. His son is Kitai (Jaden Smith), a young boy who desperately wants his father's approval, and is trying for a position in the military, but fears he will never live up to dad's lofty expectations for him. Kitai is also haunted by the memory of seeing his older sister, Senshi (Zoe Kravitz), being killed by an Ursa right before his eyes. Cypher's wife suggests a father-son space voyage, so that they can bond. This doesn't go very well, as the ship is severely damaged in an asteroid belt, killing everyone on board except Cypher and Kitai, and sending the ship crashing on the abandoned planet Earth.

So, now they're trapped on Earth, and must rely on each other for survival. Cypher has broken both of his legs in the crash, so it is up to Kitai to get them home. The journey Kitai undertakes is supposed to make him into a man, while allowing his father to win respect for him. This could be effective, if it weren't portrayed in such a crashingly obvious way. Each adventure he undertakes is small in scope - He runs away from a pack of baboons, he fights off some lions, he is briefly poisoned by a parasitic creature...All of these encounters seem like annoyances, rather than grand adventures. There is no sense of scope here, no sense of awe or wonder.

But the real question here is, how could the performances by both Will and Jaden Smith be so wooden, unemotional, and unconvincing? I'm not exactly sure, but my best guess is that they took their character descriptions completely to heart. In the case of Will Smith, I imagine his character bio read something like this - "Cypher is an emotionally distant, gruff military man who has a hard time showing emotion, or being open with his son". And so, Will Smith interprets his character as if he is completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever. He reads all of his lines in a passive, monotone voice. It got to the point where I found myself wondering if I wasn't watching the wax statue figure of Will Smith from Madame Tussaud's museum instead.

The performance by young Jaden Smith is not much better. He often comes across as shrill and grating, his voice pitched at this high and whiny tone. It just made me want to peel him right off the screen and replace him with another actor every time he opened his mouth. Who is to blame for these awful turns by these actors who have been likable in the past? Was the director's heart just not in this project? That sounds reasonable. Say what you will about Shyamalan's recent body of work, but I've often found something to admire in the look of a lot of his films. Here, we get no interesting visuals. Even the fleeting glimpses we get of humanity's new planet home are disappointing, and look like they were shot on a studio soundstage.

After Earth is the kind of movie experience you want to forget as soon as possible. In a year that has already brought us Sci-Fi films like Oblivion and the flawed-but-enjoyable Star Trek Into Darkness, this movie feels all the more insignificant and lame.