After Earth

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After Earth, the new sci-fi adventure film is as primal as they come. It’s a rites of passage story about a boy who has to turn into a man while facing the savage wilderness. If you can imagine an entire movie on just that section of 300 where young Leonidas confronts the wolf then you have some idea of what this movie is going for. Even though it can’t be considered his comeback film or redemption for some of his past few stinkers, M. Night Shyamalan has made his best film in years with After Earth.

1,000 years after people left un-livable earth and moved to Nova Prime which became their new home planet; this is when the tale happens. Nova Prime harbors its own dangers: monstrous aliens that hunt these human intruders. We watch a young aspiring Ranger named Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith), son to legendary general Cypher Raige (Will Smith – Jaden’s dad).

Kitai idolizes Cypher, but father and son simply don’t know each other that well due to Cypher’s long time away from home. This chance comes for Kitai through his invitation by his distant father so that he accompanies him on what should have been an easy off-world assignment only for them to crash land on an abandoned planet – Earth due to a meteor shower.

To do so, Kitai must travel several miles from where they crashed in order to get a distress beacon from part of their wrecked vessel if he wants him and his injured father to leave the Earth safely. In those one thousand years Earth’s animals have become larger and more dangerous than they are now in real life. But there are other dangers lurking within jungle out there against which Kitai will have had to struggle too hard enough just like a captured alien monster aboard ship Raiges crashed on Earth, who is now pursuing him down.

This very much feels like playing a video game where you have to go on a quest to find some hidden object and get it back, passing through different stages and fighting bosses. (DISCLOSURE: One of the movie’s writers Gary Whitta is an ex game journalist that worked with IGN.)

There are lots of cool little action set-pieces along the way, but things do get a tad repetitive and formulaic after a while because we know – solo show that this basically is – Kitai’s not in any real danger as he has to be around for the climax of the film. This is where having some cannon fodder supporting characters, a la Predator or Aliens, would have come in handy for generating suspense.

Although Zoe Kravitz and Sophie Okonedo have small roles as the female members of the Raige family, this is basically a two-person show, with After Earth largely designed as a vehicle for Jaden Smith. (Seriously, Will Smith pretty much sits down for the whole movie and leaves his adolescent son to do all the running, jumping and fighting.)

Will Smith is one of the most charismatic movie stars of our time, and yet the nature of his character here restrains his emotions to the point that his performance comes across as wooden (something Smith’s never been guilty of before). Faring a bit worse is Jaden who, although he acquits himself well enough in the action scenes, wears the same fearful, pained expression throughout most of the movie.

On a technical level, some visual effects are impressive while others are not well done; hence on one hand there are early spaceship sequences that double up as old Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes but on other side of it an appropriate finishing Ursa monster that looks grotesque and horrifying.

The additional materials accompanying After Earth suggest a rich history and mythology behind it but they don’t come through in this final film. It’s almost like there was quite a lot edited out from After Earth which would give more background information or insight into Nova Prime or where humanity stood when this story opened.

After Earth is what one might expect from a passable film within its genre; nevertheless something else apart from an announcement that Shyamalan has not made another flop could be used to recommend it.