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Review: After Earth

By Christine Petralia

Image courtesy of Christine Petralia

June 2, 2013


I was not expecting a lot when I used my free pass to see M. Night Shymalan’s latest bomb….er…film.  But, I thought I’d give it a shot, since Will Smith usually doesn’t make bad films. And not only was I severely disappointed, but was upset when the credits rolled to find out that the story was by Smith himself.


In the simplest way possible, I’ll try to explain this horribly written sci-fi ‘thriller.’ It is 1,000 years in the future. Humans left earth years earlier for the planet Nova Prime after it was devastated by global warming (not too far off if you ask me). The problem is the planet they inhabit is run by alien creatures, out to kill humans. The secret weapon of the alien race is a monster calls Ursa, which senses humans’ fear in order to track them down and kill them.

Gen. Cypher Raige (Will Smith), leader of an army of peacekeeping rangers, has found a way to ‘ghost’ himself, and essentially saves the human race. “Ghosting” is basically hiding your fear so you are invisible to the Ursa.



Living in the shadow of his hero father, Kitai (Jaden Smith) blames himself for his sister’s death by the hands of the Ursa and tries to join the rangers. As a way to bond with his son, Cypher brings Kitai along on one last mission before he retires. On their way to another planet, their ship is caught in an asteroid shower and they crash land on earth, now a Class 1 quarantined planet. They are the only survivors, though Cypher is critically injured, with two broken legs. He informs Kitai that he must go out into the world and find the second beacon to alert Nova Prime of their location. With little supplies, Kitai heads out determined to succeed and make his father proud. After many failed attempts, Cypher tells Kitai to just come back to the ship, but Kitai, tired of being called a failure, disobeys and attempts to finish the ‘mission.’

 

With some flashbacks, we learn exactly how Kitai’s sister died and why Cypher is such a dick to his son. And in an unlike M. Night Shymalan twist, there was no twist in the end, which I was sort of hoping for.



I was very disappointed in Will Smith. First of all, he didn’t even look like himself. Second, his son is a horrible actor, or at least he was in this film. I don’t know what sort of accent he had, but it was atrocious.

 

What’s a shame is the concept of earth getting destroyed by global warming is a great concept! How they went about trying to piece together this sort of father-son bonding experience in the future with an alien creature is a horrible concept. And though they say earth is uninhabitable, it seems there were plenty of animals living there, such as the tigers, baboons and condor. Plus it was lush with greenery. Seemed livable to me. And why did the temperatures drop to freezing every night? The earth in this film really could have been any other planet out there.

 

I think Will Smith should just forget about this film and try to redeem himself. It was nice to work with his son, I’m sure, but this was not the film.

Skip this one. Go see Fast & Furious or Iron Man again instead. And just to drive home just how horrible this film was, the theater was empty on opening weekend, and half way through, some guy was snoring pretty loudly.

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All works created by Christine McGrath; Centereach, New York  All Rights Reserved 2024

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