After Earth (2013)

Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real but fear is a choice."- General Cypher Raige

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, After Earth takes place in the future when Earth is no long habitable and the human race had to colonize another planet to survive. They settled on new planet is known as Nova Prime, but just when their survival is secured, monsters from the planet start to pose a threat. These monsters, known as Ursa, although blind, can only detect the humans through smelling "fear". General Cypher Raige (Will Smith) became the first human who has ever put aside his fear to the extend that the Ursa are blinded to him, a process known as "Ghosting". General Cypher Raige, although well respected in his military ranks and skills, has never been a father to his son, Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith). Realizing this and at the encouragement of his wife, he decides to invite his son on to his last voyage before retirement. When their ship crashed landed on a now evolved Earth, Kitai had to not only survive the harsh environment and dangerous jungle predators in order to save himself and his dying father, but to face an Ursa that has now broken free from the ship.

 From Independence Day Hero to Zero Charisma.

I guess fighting aliens in his career just sucked the life out of him

SPOILERS AHEAD
I actually had very little interest in this film. The trailers failed to impress me and you've got director Shyamalan attached to it. He's a good writer... not the best, but he is simply bad in his directing. The concept and the story of this film is actually quite interesting, it may have the potential to be a good or above average film but what failed the movie in the end is the directing and the acting, and the CG effects. The entire movie played out like a flat note. Put it simply, it's a resounding "meh". The film suffers from being too philosophical. Before we get to the actual story, we had to be expose to its exposition of how people had to leave Earth, face monsters in Nova Prime and the key to fight these monsters is to ghost...which is a process that...blah blah blah blah. I find that this whole background and beginning long winded exposition of the story is just to set up the character development and arc for Kitai (and for us, audience to relate) that he had to overcome his fear in order to achieve victory. From the start, we know Kitai had a major weakness in his fears and had a bad relationship with his dad, from this you pretty much can guess that he's going to ultimately overcome his fears and patch up his relationship with his dad. After all, you even got a final boss who only smell fear. You can tell Jaden is going to successfully overcome his fear and defeat the beast. The whole story can be predicted from the start of the film. Is the journey from start to finish any interesting? Well...

What's the matter with you, son?

There were tense moments here and there. The scene that got my attention where Jaden gets poisoned by some form of mutated leech and develop signs of dangerous looking allergies which he had to then inject a very user-unfriendly antidote. The scene when he lacked the technical readouts of the warm spots for him to take refuge and was close to being frozen to death before being rescued under the wings of an eagle, came off as a surprise to me. The rest failed to get my curiosity or my attention. I would also probably choose the scene when Kitai's father gets sucked out through the gaping hole at the back of the ship during the whole crash landing sequence, but that only felt like a tense moment when I first watch the movie's trailer on big screen. After seeing the trailer several times, when the movie actually plays out the scene, the whole sequence felt diluted and uninteresting. Even the scene with him facing the CGI monkeys felt like they pose no real threats. When Kitai finally comes face to face with the Ursa, I already expected him to Ghost and just beat the crap out of the blind monsters, which he did...to no surprise. The Ursa sadly, doesn't even look or feel remotely frightening. I don't know what happened to the Hollywood's design team, but they are more successful at creating iconic and memorable monsters from puppets and costumes than they do with CGI. A matter of fact, a lot of CGI monsters and aliens nowadays begin to look like a generic grey/ black mess.

CG is so bad, this looks a lot like Diego from Ice Age

Will Smith, along with his son, Jaden Smith are actually good actors. Will Smith has his signature charisma and charm, and Jaden Smith is slowly molded after his dad. What I don't understand here is that, this film completely suck out all their charisma. Will Smith constantly looked stone cold and a real joy killer. Jaden played well of his character who had to deal with fear and guilt from his past, as well as a boy who had a broken relationship with his father. However, I still don't get the whole fearlessness expression that they both acted out or the director directed out. What's with the stone cold and joy killer look? I would think when you got no fear, you would show 100% confidence, smirk, taunt the monster Ursa, say with Schwarzenegger's accent, "You are one ugly mother-" you know. You would go all Samuel L Jackson or Will Smith in Independence Day. But no, apparently having no fear means you just go expressionless like Kristen Stewart. I think the only good scene where acting is actually involved would be the scene when Kitai confronts his dad on the communication link, pouring out his heart, his anger and his tears to his father, just before he leaped over the falls and activated his flight suit.

Apparently, the key to maintain self-control is to do an imaginary marriage proposal, a good advice from Alex "Hitch" Hitchens

I got a friend who commented that his chameleon suit is kinda cool. Well, honestly, all the tech in the film is just uninteresting. There's nothing desirable about them at all. It's nowhere close to other fictional tech, such as Batman's suit, gadgets and batmobile or the Iron Man suit or a even the Mandalorian armor (Star Wars reference). The futuristic Swiss army knife..sword as well, I think a lightsaber is a lot more convenient and a lot cooler. Design wise, this movie had nothing to offer. After all, it's not the real showcase. But it should be, because if you ever make a film that takes place so far into the future and space travel is involved, you can't escape from the artist's drawing board. I think a little more design creativity should have been put in.

Don't you think they ought to design a rubber handgrip for this thing?

Honestly, it's a bad film. The story is too philosophical and predictable, there's zero charisma and charm from Jaden and Will Smith characters which is wasted acting potential from these two fine actors, the CG is uninteresting and some parts were even terrible and the whole movie played out like a flat note from start to finish. The only thing I can appreciate from this movie is the concept that could have potentially work in the hands of another director. I would give this movie a 3 out of 10 Oxygen Capsules.

Use your clicking Kung Fu to fight with Jackie Chan-trained Jaden below to view the trailer on YouTube