Movie Review: After Earth

M. Night Shyamalan, a director who is capable of making great movies like The Sixth Sense and Signs, but also capable of making historically bad movies, such as The Lady in The Water and The Last Airbender. With M. Night Shyamalan, you really don’t know what to expect. As soon as I saw the preview for After Earth, I knew I had to see it because I wanted to see how Jaden and Will Smith worked together. The whole father-son actor duo really intrigued me, so I thought I’d go see it. Seeing M. Night Shyamalan’s name at the end of the preview did worry me a little, but I haven’t seen any of his recent box office failures, mostly because I’m pretty good at picking out whether a movie will be any good or not based on the trailer. I really liked Signs and while I’ve only seen The Sixth Sense once, I did like it. Given his inconsistency, I was hoping he didn’t destroy Will and Jaden Smith’s career.

Before watching this movie, I had heard about a lot of negative reviews. I didn’t read the details because I didn’t want the movie spoiled, but I knew critics didn’t like it. Coming out of it though, I didn’t think it was that awful. No, it definitely wasn’t extraordinary or a blockbuster film, but it definitely wasn’t worthy of a “WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE” label.

Will Smith plays a character who has no fear, so Will Smith shows little emotional output and is left playing a human robot. He did a very good job, but so could a robot. However, I’m not going to hate on Will Smith. He’s a great actor who was given a boring part and made it come alive. Props to him.

The last time I saw Jaden Smith was in the Karate Kid remake, which I thought was just as good as the original, so I was excited to see what Jaden did with this one. Jaden’s character can be stupid at points and do stupid things, but it’s understandable to a point that he acts like this when you learn all the backstory. Sometimes though, all you wanted to do looking at Jaden’s character was a facepalm.

The acting wasn’t bad in this movie, but the material that Will and Jaden Smith were given was lacking sometimes. Aside from Will and Jaden’s characters, there are truly no other characters in this film. There are no supporting actors in this film, unless Will would be considered one. In that case, there would be one. This is bothersome for me because that means if you can’t relate to either of these two characters you’re left relating to nobody. As I mentioned above, Will Smith is practically a robot in this movie, so basically, it’s relate to Jaden’s character or relate to nobody. Perhaps this isn’t as big a deal as I’m making it out to be, but tell me how many movies look like this in the credits:

Cast:

Cypher Raige| Will Smith

Kitai Raige| Jaden Smith

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

The End

If you know anything about movies, the answer is not many. Seriously, Google search “after earth cast” and see what comes up. There’s seriously nobody in this movie with more than five minutes of screen time, aside from Cypher, Kitai, and maybe Kitai’s sister, but she’s dead, so no character development there. There aren’t as many action scenes in this movie as I would have liked and the ones that were there were disappointing.

Once again, if you’re new to my blog,  I’ve always ranked movies on a scale of 0-100 (I don’t know why, I just always have). Here’s the grading scale.

 90-100  It’s a great movie and definitely one worth buying. (Iron Man 3)

80-89   It was a pretty good movie and definitely one worth seeing, but it doesn’t quite scratch my top ten percentile. (Star Trek Into Darkness, Now You See Me)

70-79   It’s okay but I’ve seen better. It has its moments, but it has its flaws, too. (Oblivion)

60-69   It’s got plenty wrong with it but I still got enjoyment out of this one.

50-59   This movie isn’t intolerable but it’s not blowing my mind either. I’m trying really hard to get some sort of enjoyment out of this. (The Hobbit)

40-49   This movie is just mediocre. It’s not doing anything other than the bare minimal, so morbidly boring that sometimes I’m actually angry I watched this.

30-39   Definitely worse than mediocre, the 30’s ironically define the 1930’s, full of depression, lack of accomplishments, poverty and just so dumb.

20-29   What did I just watch? Cliches, stupidity, nothingness, did I mention stupidity? Just…wow.

0-19      Watching this movie resulted in one or more of the following: seizure, loss of brain cells, falling asleep/unconsciousness, feel you wasted your time/day, accomplished nothing for you, left the movie knowing less about it then you did going into it, constantly asking yourself why you came to see this movie, or near-death experience. In short, staring at a wall was just as entertaining as watching this movie. This movie deserved a sticker or a label that said, “WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE.”

My score for After Earth: 53.

There’s probably more scenes of Kitai running in this movie then there are action scenes. There were some plot holes, but most did not cause a huge gap. Will and Jaden Smith’s performances kept me interested but I wasn’t on the edge of my seat waiting for something to happen. If you’re looking for something to do, I’d go see it. Besides, if you do, you can get involved in the “Why I hate M. Night Shyamalan” discussion.

*SPOILER ALERT* IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE SPOILED, STOP READING!!!!!

*SPOILER’S EDITION*

As I said above, there were some plot holes and while they didn’t cause a huge gap, they were still ones where you were like, “Ok?!” You were forced to go with it even if the probability was low. For example, early in the movie, they’re on a ship in an asteroid field and about to crash. For some reason, Kitai is the only one who’s smart enough to buckle up and “put on his seat belt”. Even though there are space seats on the ship which are specifically designed to protect you from sustaining major injuries in the event of a crash landing, everyone unbuckles and runs around. Even Cypher (Will Smith’s character) is standing looking at Kitai, trying to get him to slow his breathing and wasting ten seconds doing this instead of buckling up. Because he fails to buckle up, he breaks both his legs. Nice going there, bud. Just thought that was dumb.

Later on, Cypher says that all life on earth had adapted to kill humans. When Kitai jumps off a cliff to skyfall to the bottom, an eagle chases him, captures him, and puts him in a nest with a bunch of baby eagles, which is then attacked by tigers or some other type of wildcat. Kitai, with the help of the eagle, is able to get all the wildcats out of the nest, but not before all the baby eagles are killed. Kitai runs away while the eagle mourns its babies. Later in the movie, Kitai fails to get to one of the hot spots, meaning he is left in an area that freezes over at nighttime. Kitai is about to freeze to death but is then dragged through the grass by something as he falls unconscious. He wakes up under the eagle’s wings, but the eagle is dead. I’m guessing it probably froze to death, but I don’t know. While this scene is heartwarming for animal lovers such as myself, this goes against what Cypher said. Cypher said that life on earth adapted to kill humans. That means that eagle should have been tearing him apart limb from limb, not acting as a blanket. Why did the eagle act out of the norm? Was it just because Kitai was fighting against the tiger things? Did it think he was trying to protect the baby chicks, because let’s be honest, Kitai was saving himself. The audience is never given answers to these questions.

Finally, Jaden Smith magically becomes fearless at the end of the movie and of course this transformation occurs right before the Ursa is able to get out of the rock crevice. (Also, Ursa means bear, like Ursa Minor the constellation. I thought that was interesting.) This is highly improbable if not an impossible transformation. Jaden has been scared of literally everything in this movie and I mean everything. There hasn’t been a scene in the entire movie that he didn’t look afraid, but now he’s suddenly fearless? Yeah, it seemed like the ending was just pulled out of a hat or something and was very disappointing. I would have rather seen Kitai defeat that thing without “ghosting”. That would have been sick.