Review: After Earth

Set in the future, where humanity has left planet Earth due to a huge environmental disaster and relocated to another planet called Nova Prime. Will Smith stars as a decorated and fearless ‘Ranger’, who agrees to take his aspiring Ranger teenage son Jaden Smith on his next mission. Their spacecraft runs into trouble and crash lands on the nearest planet. The planet turns out to be Earth (but it looks rather alien and the atmosphere is toxic), and the only survivors of the crash are Jaden and his injured father. With his dad incapacitated and likely dying, Jaden must make the long and dangerous trek to locate and activate the emergency beacon. It looks like the son might just get his chance to prove his worth to his soldier father. Does he have what it takes to complete this mission, especially on an Earth that seems to have evolved/devolved into an evil, dangerous (yet aesthetically pleasing) planet? Sophie Okonedo plays the wife and mother of our respective protagonists.

 

Every new film M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable”) comes up with now gets a pillocking from critics and generally audiences stay away, too. However, I’ll always defend “Signs” (which showed he could definitely direct and had a visual style) and even “The Happening”, though I hated “The Village” (despite its visuals), and “Lady in the Water” really should’ve stayed in his kids’ bedroom. Well, now you can add this 2013 film from the director, who co-writes the screenplay with Gary Whitta (the awful post-apocalyptic dreariness “The Book of Eli”). The more important name here, however is probably star Will Smith, on whose story the script is actually based. He also produced the film, and apparently was in charge of much of the film’s directorial decisions, especially in helping his real-life son Jaden with his performance. I wouldn’t exactly call Shyamalan a director-for-hire here, merely that it appears to be somewhat of a team effort. Perhaps that’s why this film is one of Shyamalan’s better ones, as he finds himself sharing the creative process with others for a change (You can see why he was attracted to the project however, with its father-son bent). It’s a flawed film, but I think critics got it wrong on this one and I’m happy to be the lone dissenter here, if that be the case. More survivalist film with a father-son coming of age bent than a sci-fi film, it’s classic storytelling mostly well-told.

 

Particularly early on, the performances by The Smiths (see what I did there?) are a bit mannered, with slight but oddly affected accents distracting somewhat. I also think Jamie Foxx would’ve been a better choice for Will Smith’s part, but I’m sure Jaden had a great time working with his dad here again after “The Pursuit of Correct Spelling”. I actually think Jaden (who proved unbearably entitled in the wrongly titled “Karate Kid” remake) fares better than his dad here, who is a bit stiff and stoic, perhaps suppressing every other emotion along with his character’s fear. Like his underrated earlier work in the average remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, Jaden’s performance and character here will annoy some people. I believe this is somewhat intentional. He’s playing an impetuous teen on the verge of manhood. This story is his coming-of-age. He certainly conveys sheer terror perfectly. Like Dakota Fanning in the remake of “War of the Worlds”, he’s a kid and acts like a kid would in a situation like this (Not to mention some adults…myself probably included). The best performance probably comes from Academy Award nominee Sophie Okonedo, who doesn’t seem to have capitalised on her success in 2004’s “Hotel Rwanda”, and sadly isn’t in the film long enough to make her good performance mean a whole lot.

 

It’s certainly Shyamalan’s best-looking film since “Signs” and the CGI creatures are rather well-rendered too. The film’s cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (a veteran of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, and “Krull”) is to be truly commended here, you can almost feel the textures of the scenery here. It’s a gorgeous film. Meanwhile, I especially appreciated the nifty way Shyamalan (or whoever may have been responsible) allows Will to be able to look out for his son, despite being immobile.

 

Once we get to the meat of the story, I didn’t really see any problems here, it’s a good yarn. Give it a go if the Shyamalan name initially made you wary. This is pretty sturdy and traditional storytelling without the need for schlocky twists or quasi spiritual mumbo-jumbo (Some have accused the film of being pro-Scientology, which I saw no indication of whatsoever. I’d say it’s lightly Buddhist at best). This one really surprised me in the most pleasant way possible.

 

However, can the phrase ‘take a knee’ just fuck off and die already? You don’t need to take knees, most of you are born with two already. It’s a stupid, stupid wannabe-profound saying and I can’t stand it.

 

Rating: B-