After Earth (2013)

After Earth (2013)

Ugh, where do I even start with this abortion of a movie?  If you like over hyped, disappointing pieces of shit, then this movie is for you.  The sad part is I was actually excited to see this when the trailers started coming out.  “This,” I said in my most anticipatory voice, “is a film I will be seeing opening night!”  Flash forward a couple months and I’m searching on the internet, trying to find out when After Earth is coming to a theater near me, only to find out that I fucking missed it.  Apparently, as soon as this movie hit theaters, all of the hype and positive reviews ceased and I never heard another thing about it.  That, ladies and gentlemen is not a good sign.  I, being a touch masochistic when it comes to films, decided to give it a go anyway.  Mistakes were made, this film was one of them.

The Plot

We are shown a very brief intro to the world that people now live in.  Earth has apparently rejected people, forcing them to vacate in favour of a new planet creatively named Nova Prime.  Unfortunately, Nova Prime is already inhabited by a life form that the colonists refer to as Ursa.  Ursa is basically a big spider creature that smells pheromones released through fear and uses its supreme sense of smell to zero in on humans and kill them.

This is what they came up with...

 You know that an Ursa is in your area if you find your friends hanging dead from trees as this is the creatures ‘signature’.

Jaden Smith tries to star as Kitai, a young person (far too young) training to become a ranger like his father Cypher (Will Smith).  Kitai, as utterly unbelievable as it sounds, is the head of his class, and hopes to be promoted to a full-fledged ranger by the time his father returns from duty.  His commander, smartly and with just cause, refuses to promote him to ranger.  He believes that Kitai won’t be able to translate his in classroom knowledge to a real ranging.  Basically all we’ve been shown of Kitai’s talents to this point is his ability to run with zero athletic coordination or drive (apparently this is his strong suit, Lord help us).  Kitai also shows off his knowledge by referring to the Ursas as aliens when in this case the humans (as the invasive species) are the aliens, and the Ursas are the natives.  No wonder he failed ranger school.  The kid is also like 12, you’d think there would be some kind of law against sending a pre-pubescent sperm burp like Jaden Smith out to save people’s lives.

Kitai’s father Cypher returns from his mission and is upset that his son is such a failure.  Cypther is a famous warrior who developed the main method for killing Ursas.  It’s called ghosting, where he shows no fear, thus releasing no pheromones he is invisible to the Ursa and can kill it with his “Cutlass.”

Apparently guns are too mainstream

Yeah it’s fucking stupid.  Because Cypher doesn’t experience fear, it also means he doesn’t have access to other emotions and always speaks in a steady monotone.  Kitai’s mom wants him and his father to bond so she tells Cypher to bring his loser son on his next mission with him.

The mission is simple, escort a captured Ursa someplace then who knows, study it?  Doesn't really matter because suddenly, their ship is hit by asteroids.  This is where the film loses me.  Cypher explains what is happening using 90% made up words, then the ship crash lands on Earth.  All of the crew is killed except Cypher and Kitai.  Cypher is wounded in the crash so it’s up to Kitai to venture 100 km across earth to find the other half of the ship where their only hope of rescue, a transmitting beacon, lies somewhere among the wreckage.  Cypher explains that Earth has been labeled as unfit for human habitation and that every living thing has evolved to kill people (pretty awesome sounding right).  Cypher warns his son that the Ursa may also have survived the crash and could be out there somewhere (and we all know that fucking thing escaped). 

My Take

There are only two redeeming qualities in this film; the beautiful scenery and every scene where someone yells at Jaden or makes him cry. 

I wanted to be in Avatar

Now onto the negatives, and there are lots of them.  The acting is very, very bad.  Jaden plays a whiny little bitch and Will plays a wooden, emotionless dick.  The Smith family produced this film so that explains how Jaden was cast as the lead.  In my opinion, Kitai’s part needed to be given to someone a little older, someone who you could actually believe would be in Ranger school.  Jaden is a little kid, no matter how they dress him up or the constantly quizzical looks he uses, it’s not going to change the fact we can’t take this babby seriously.

Get used to this face, because unless he's crying, this is his whole range

Not only is Jaden’s acting atrocious but his character is horrible too.  He wants to be a ranger, but he has no skills, knowledge or physical expertise in the area of survival, like at all.  As soon as they crash on Earth, he immediately freaks out and sits motionless by his dad until he wakes up.  Then, the moment he leaves the safety of the space craft he freezes up in terror and has to be talked down by his daddy.  When he encounters an animal for the first time he loses his shit and almost gets gang raped by baboons.  The first slug he runs into almost kills him.  Basically, whenever Kitai faces a life threatening situation he either flukes his way through it or is saved at the last minute by something (usually his dad, who is watching his progress through cameras somehow).  Kitai’s dad basically guides him all the way to his destination step by step while the kid bitches and whines about everything.  Without his father, Kitai is nothing (kind of like how in real life without Will, Jaden is nothingl).  What did Kitai learn in ranger school anyway?  What did he excel at that made him top of his class?  We never find out because Kitai never uses anything involving skill to survive any situation.  He can’t even swim good.

As if they needed to make it worse, Kitai speaks with a strange accent throughout the whole film.  I’m guessing the director told him to use a space accent, but it ends up sounding more like a speech impediment. 

The film itself, as I said before, has beautiful scenery.  Unfortunately Will’s one liner “everything on Earth has evolved to hill humans,” helped ruined this movie for me, because it was such an awesome idea but it ultimately falls flat.  They could have done so much if they would have focused on Kitai utilizing the skills he learned in ranger school to survive in the harsh habitat.  EVERYTHING should have included plants and trees that kill, animals that are more vicious than modern day animals.  Most of the animals seen in this film are basically ordinary except for a giant eagle that ultimately ends up saving Jaden at one point in the film.  Jaden is attacked by lions that are approximately Jaden sized, meaning little bitch lions. 

How does this in anyway optimize their human killing potential?

There are some average sized baboons, a hyena and a snake, all look relatively unevolved and don’t exactly go out of their way to try to kill Jaden

The only way to save this film would have been to cut out all of the GHEY shit between Cypher and Kitai.  It would have been as easy as killing Cypher off in the crash, and leaving Kitai to find a way to survive alone.  The only purpose Cypher serves in this film anyway is to deliver wooden lines, explain key plot points to the audience and dictate Kitai’s every move (which if he really was head of his class in Ranger School, would have been unnecessary). 

The Verdict

I’ve had enough, this movie fucking sucks.  Just don’t watch it.  I’m happy I missed it in theaters because I would have straight thrown my popcorn on the floor in protest, then I would have had to sit through this entire shitty movie hungry (I’m too poor to walk out of movies, so my protests are very weak).

3.6/10