After Earth is the newest science fiction film co-written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The 6th Sense, Signs). It stars real-life father and son Will and Jaden Smith as Cypher and Kitai Raige. Based on an original idea by Will Smith leaving him to also to co-write and co–produced. After a crash landing leaving Kitai and his father are stranded on Earth, 1000 years after events forced humanity to leave.
With Cypher injured, Kitai must embark on a dangerous journey to signal for help.
It’s a rather simple story about a father and son learning about each other under extremely dangerous circumstances, fighting for their lives on Earth a thousand years in the future. On paper this idea works, but when it comes to the film, not so much. There are many, many ideas in the movie that never really pan out. Its kind of a mess from the start and never cleans up.
We learn early on that humanity had to “escape” Earth because of numerous cataclysmic events, colonizing a planet in another system named Nova Prime. Shortly thereafter, an evil alien species attacks with some sort of super monster? (It not really explained well in the movie so it’s hard to explain here. You never get any real idea of the how or whys of this alien. Other than it wants nothing more than to kill humans.)
Enter Will Smith’s character, Cypher Raige (yeah, you read it right, Cypher Raige), he can control his fear leaving the alien virtually blind and allowing him and his “Ghost” rangers to be the ultimate badasses of the military. His son, Kitai, wants nothing more than to be like his father and earn his fathers love.
This is where I’d assume in the story we learn about the two as a father and son. But all we see is Cypher has little to no interest in his son. There are several attempts in the film they try to convey this but each falls flat and never really goes anywhere. From that ste Cypher is more hardened military machine than man; he never smiles, never shows any kind of love, etc… This is a thing that can happen to soldiers, but with out any information or really a motivation behind this trait it just seems useless and clichéd. Cypher never changes, never has an arc where he overcomes his hardened military self. He stays mean and uncaring the whole time. You see in scenes where he should care (and he might), but the performance doesn’t match the mood or suspense the scene is calling for.
I can’t tell if Jaden Smith is good or not. He’s young, so he could grow up to be a talented actor, but if this film is any indication of what’s to come, maybe take a step back. I never once felt like the character knew what he was doing. He’s so hell-bent on doing what he wants and ignoring his fathers orders that he just keeps making mistakes that end up being life threatening. His I-know-better-attitude is played so over the top that at times you just find yourself not caring if he lives or dies.
There’s also an odd actors choice for the whole cast, each has some sort of strange New Zealand type accent. It’s never explained, it just happens. It’s odd. Certain words and phrases are hard to understand. Which does present an issue, because lots of exposition is said at key moments and information is lost due to not being to understand what their saying.
They’re on Earth, where now all plants and animals have evolved for “one purpose, to kill humans”. Which is such a stupid comment from Cypher. Humans haven’t been on the planet for a thousand years and the animals don’t know what a human is; they’re just doing what animals do normally.
That said, the CGI animals look good. Time was spent to make them work, which I have to assume is because they have to interact with the talent. However, the alien design is just terrible. You never get a really good look at it and when you do you are underwhelmed. It is like they took many, many elements of other better aliens and mixed them together as one. Not in a good way though, but rather like a child was designing a monster and didn’t know when to stop. It has arms on top of arms, and powers that are never talked about but only become a thing when it’s needed for the scene.
The effects are done well in certain scenes but then fall really flat in others. You can tell it’s a lot of blue/green screen, due to that characteristic halo around the actors. The digital map painting of landscapes and background never really work. Some are so bad that they become jarring to the eye, leaving you to not knowing where you’re to look.
The same is true with the spaceships. They all look like flying stingrays in space, which could have been cool. But here they look like they’re about to fall apart, with things being held together by plastic, sheets and wood. These really strange designs are never once believable as a ship that could pilot the stars. I just feel for humans to be able to leave Earth, start life on another planet, etc. All their technology looks cheap, with a fantastic sense of knowing when precisely breaking would be most dramatically suitable. At some point, you just throw your hands in the air and admit: “Of course, that’s broken too”.
Did you know that this was an M. Night Shaymalan movie? Many didn’t. And that’s the studio purposely leaving his name off many ads, or minimizing the size to make it hard to notice. His long string of flops and expected “twist” endings have made him a laughing in theaters, and I’ve seen it happen personally. Sure, there’s no twist – a positive! It didn’t look or feel like a M. Night film, so that’s good! But I feel that’s in part due to Will Smith’s creative control over the film, and that’s not that great either.
After Earth isn’t the worst movie ever made – it’s just boring, plain and simple. You spend an hour and half watching just two people -but really, just one person, because the leads hardly have any screen time together. There are long moments of silence and no music. It’s intended to make you feel alone and isolated, much like the characters, but you’d have to wake up long enough to get that emotion.
After Earth has lots of big ideas and is a strong first draft, but it never seems to have grown in development. The filmmakers stuck with all their first ideas. It feels like lots of cooks in one tiny kitchen that’s never expanded in time to its staff. And the final product suffers for it.