AFTER EARTH is the worst birthday gift possibly ever given to a 14-year-old son of a major celebrity, a catastrophic attempt to sell the American public of the "talents" of Jaden Smith. I'm surprised a cable channel wasn't on the set to capture the misery for a special television event, and also for our own viewing benefit. It would be enthralling to see the sheer egotism of the Smith family, the limp direction of Hollywood flameout M. Night Shyamalan, the creative process of the bizarre sci-fi art direction, James Newton Howard trying to have fun making another score for his buddy, and the tumultuous sessions in the editing bay; all captured in front of reality show cameras because the end product is a sleepy, straightforward affair that kills any sense of cinematic exhilaration.
Kitai (Jaden Smith) is a young kid wishing and wanting to be a "ranger", humanity's updated show of force on their new home planet Nova Prime. The disturbing fact that they court children into the military is never addressed further. Once they become part of the elite, the kids get educated in the art of "ghosting", where they remove the so-called choice of fear from their emotions in order to easily kill an engineered alien race called the Ursas, which is an odd name since they have no distinctive features or signatures of a bear. I don't remember hearing the recent news-story of a bear impaling a human with one of their six legs and then staking him on a tree branch to send a message to others. "Ghosting" also gives the person super-human abilites, somehow. Have our future self's changed our genetic code to achieve this tradeoff from fear or does Will Smith really, really want to make his kid a badass?
Anyway, because he is a loose cannon brat who doesn't play by the rules, Kitai is not advanced further in his soldier studies, much to the dismay and harsh opinions of his famous soldier father, Cypher Rage (Will Smith). Let that name sink in now for you: Cypher Rage. No questions, no notes from the studio to stop this name from constantly being spoken out loud. Mama Rage (Sophie Okonedo) thinks that Cypher and Kitai should spend some quality time, so they both head out to a military base. Their transport ship collides with an asteroid storm, suffers a failed warp and crashes on an environmental-changed Earth. Surprise, surprise, the duo are the only survivors, with Kitai being the only one capable of walking and retrieving a homing beacon in the tail section of the ship. So, as Kitai learns to be a man and a proper soldier on a harsh world, Cypher just strings out from all of the pain killers and wooden acting.
Though I singled out the war for children element, there are so many other sci-fi things that are never explained within the glorious script by Gary Whitta and Shyamalan. The highlights include: Why would you transport an imprisoned Ursa on a human-packed ship? How can Cypher "tonto" the asteroid barrage by touching the ship's side? What's the purpose of Kitai's color-changing suit beyond visual aesthetics? How come the cutlass, a ranger's weapon of choice, has multiple transformations and configurations yet all result with a sharp knife-like edge? How do they know every animal on Earth has evolved to the point of being a threat to a human being if the planet is quarantined and no one lives on it? However, the crowning disaster-piece is the main antagonism of the film, that Cypher and Kitai have a bitter relationship due to the death of Senshi (Zoe Kravitz), their daughter and sister respectively. Flash-backed throughout, an Ursa got into their house (invasion? open door?) one day, so Senshi put a 9-year-old Kitai into a smell-proof box (which is actually a clear plastic bubble) and, despite being a full-blown ranger and able to "ghost", is ripped apart by the creature, but not before her perfectly still CGI dummy is flung into a wall like a ragdoll. That's right, daddy is pissed off that his weakling son didn't protect his soldier sister.
Any naive eye can spot that the editing of this film is a shambling calamity. Whether it was Shyamalan, editor Steven Rosenblum, or the suits at Sony, nothing is crafted to make sense. Everything is told to us in the prologue like a cheat sheet, then re-told to us throughout to no surprise. Time moves incredibly fast, weather changes literally crash through the edits, and there are some heinous jump cuts that ruin any sense of tension. But my favorite low-light is during a sequence where Cypher enters a room filled with rangers saluting him and the very next shot shows him appearing to be standing on a table, rigid as a stiff board. Shyamalan is clearly working mercenary duty here, largely unable to show any drive to make the picture work. He does get to craft a couple of moments that are purely from his usual sandbox: slow-paced anxiety before a lame jump scare, obtuse dialogue, beats that stretch for a mile, and acting drained of any conviction.
Both of the Smiths are god awful, with Jaden Smith getting a mighty head-start as he delivers the opening summary in his stupidly stilted wacky voice. A 5th-rate martial artist who funds his or her own direct-to-video is better suited as an action lead than Jaden. He whines more than Anakin Skywalker, every reaction to something dangerous is dull surprise, and he can't even get a tear to be shed when the time obviously calls for it. Will Smith also has a goofy speech pattern but spends most of time sitting in bland silence, waiting for the camera to stop rolling. He displays none of his innate charisma and, despite help fund this dream project of his, he never seems to be trying to help his deer-in-the-headlights son. The only character I gave any care for was a giant black condor I dubbed Metaphor because the creature is only in the picture to make sure you get the ultimate message.
AFTER EARTH is a terrible experience, a movie so dry that it will somehow affect the flavors of your theater treats. I can say this though; it's bad but not as bad as THE LAST AIRBENDER. That's the only compliment you can give to Shyamalan from here forward.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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