With both of Cypher’s legs broken during impact, the inexperienced Kitai must voyage 100 kilometers across deadly terrain to recover a transmitter, send a rescue beacon, and save his father. In addition to fear, Cypher also doesn’t show much emotion, much to the dismay of his all-too-understanding wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo) and their son Kitai (Jaden Smith), who wants his vacant father’s respect so much he begs his commanding officer at the Ranger Academy to promote him.Įncouraged by Faia to take the cadet Kitai along on a routine mission, Cypher and his son end up being the sole survivors of a crash landing on where else but Earth. Supreme space general-or whatever-Cypher Kaige (Smith) has learned to evade Ursa by “ghosting,” a fancy way of saying he shows no fear and has led humanity to thrive in the alien war. Slimy, giant-sized insectoid things with a nasty temper, Ursa see humans by almost literally smelling our fear through our fear-based pheromones. Once we resettled on a planet called Nova Prime, war broke out with an alien species who genetically engineered deadly creatures called “Ursa” to destroy us. In a silly prologue that feels stripped from Starship Troopers (except without the flippant humor), we learn humans abandoned Earth a millennia ago after exhausting its resources. Night Shyamalan and Gary Whitta.īased on a story by star Will Smith, After Earth is set more than 1,000 years in the future. But where Tom Cruise battled aliens on an irradiated Earth’s surface to protect precious water, Will Smith and his son Jaden find themselves back on an Earth long after humanity abandoned it, only to find it’s now thriving with dangerous wildlife that “has evolved to kill humans.” Regardless of the potential here, a neutral, lifeless tone prevails over every aspect, from the direction to the acting to the special FX, but especially the dull script by M. And what does it say about us that these mega-budget films aren’t drawing the types of crowds the filmmakers hoped for? Perhaps that we’re tired of seeing superstar actors attempt to carry a special FX extravaganza all by their lonesome? Just like Oblivion earlier this year, After Earth is another tale about an abandoned planet Earth and a few isolated characters trying to survive on its surface. What does it say about our society that every few months, a major blockbuster about a dystopian future hits theaters? Certainly not that we’re optimistic about the fate of our planet.
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