“Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future.”
After Earth is the rare M. Night Shyamalan film that doesn’t have a twist ending. That’s because the bare bones story was developed by perennial movie star Will Smith, while Shyamalan and Gary Whitta fleshed it out with some equally thin dialogue and backstory. Taking inspiration from an episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive, Smith conceived of a sci-fi story in which humans abandon Earth for greener pastures only to crash land back there a thousand years later, the planet now teeming with lethally evolved predators. Smith secured the direction of Shyamalan for the production side of things, but took it upon himself to steer the story direction and coach his son Jaden, who stars as Kitai Raige. While the premise has plenty of promise, some of the pervasive CGI is good, and a few key moments touch on something resembling dramatic tension, After Earth is a boring, lifeless affair that lacks imagination. It’s not entirely flaccid, but the cancelled sequels speak to its failure and Razzie awards for both father and son were well deserved.
Humanity—climate change deniers that we are—eventually have to abandon the old home planet due to an environmental cataclysm. Quarantining the green-and-blue, the pilgrims settle on a planet they call Nova Prime, where fear-smelling aliens regularly visit their new neighbors to slaughter and maim. Kitai lives in the shadow of his famous father, Cypher Raige (Will Smith), a man who feels no fear and is therefore practically invisible to the dreadful Ursa. At the prompting of his wife, Cypher takes his son on what is supposed to be a routine mission (though its aims are never made clear to us). It goes awry, and the father and son duo are the only two survivors when the ship crash lands on the forbidden planet. Now inhabited by creatures evolved to kill humans, Earth is not easily navigable for the young Kitai as he treks 100km to the detached tail of the ship where he hopes to find a homing beacon to call for help.
Cypher, whose legs (yes, both of them) were broken in the crash, cannot accompany his son on the journey. He spends his agonizing waking hours monitoring his son’s progress via a chest-mounted camera and a formation of drones. This disconnect between the two leads does the younger Smith no favors, as he is the only relatable on screen presence for large portions of the film but lacks the charm to carry so much on his own. Kitai discovers quickly that the planet has turned hostile to human inhabitants. He must ingest capsules to enhance his oxygen intake, the terrain deep freezes overnight, and predators such as angry baboons, venomous leeches, feral cats, and birds of prey stand between him and the beacon. These obstacles provide Kitai with the opportunity to showcase his grit and chutzpah as he proves himself worthy in the eyes of his father. There’s no explanation given as to why, when Kitai collapses with fatigue as the sun goes down, the large bird that previously tried to kill him decides to sacrifice itself to provide the warmth of its body to Kitai. If the preceding plot beats didn’t feel contrived and formulaic enough, once Kitai reaches the tail of the ship and finds the homing beacon, he realizes that he needs to climb a volcano while being stalked by an Ursa to complete his mission, culminating in the son overcoming his fear and “ghosting” just like his father.
The most tragic failing here is the casting of Jaden Smith as the lead. But it seems the whole purpose of After Earth was to make a film for Jaden Smith to star in, so it’s kind of a self-inflicted wound. I’m not going to say that it was wrong for Will Smith to produce a film specifically for his son to star in, though that’s a very nepotistic move. I’m not even upset that they are in the movie together—I think that’s actually pretty cool and worked out just fine in The Pursuit of Happyness. But his inclusion in that film was a cute, take-your-kids-to-work-day kind of role. He’s simply not equipped to handle the heavy lifting required of a nearly solo film. Will Smith also feels odd as Cypher, though that’s mostly because the character and his arc are super flimsy. He spends virtually the entire film with his jaw set against the pain, never cracking a smile and barely keeping his eyes open while shouting commands at his son with whom he strangely has zero rapport.
Leaving the Smith family alone for the moment, After Earth also fails in the scripting and directing departments. None of the action set pieces have any heft to them (the closest is the parkour escape from the CGI baboons) and Kitai is such a frustrating character to identify with because he’s just willfully dumb for so much of the story. Any sense of the Raiges being caught in a survival situation is dashed by Kitai’s persistent and outright disregard of his father’s instructions—a father, I remind you, whose skills and reputation he envies and whose respect he desperately craves.
I could go on. There’s the frequent flashbacks to the same sequence of Kitai as a young boy, the lack of any man made ruins on earth, the overly simplistic plot that wastes its cool premise—but lots of other people saw this film and ripped it to shreds, so I don’t need to flog a dead horse. I didn’t like it (my wife did, for what it’s worth), but I don’t think it’s problems are as deep-seated as most. A few meatier subplots, some livelier scripting, a different lead (removing the bad taste of Will Smith christening his son without him having earned it)—this could have been pretty decent. But it’s not. What we have is a joyless slog that seems to have gotten a poor effort from many of the prominent names involved. At the very least, it was a low point for Shyamalan, whose subsequent films have received much more acclaim than this dud.