{"id":2335,"date":"2013-06-05T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T04:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=2335"},"modified":"2013-12-30T21:09:53","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T02:09:53","slug":"after-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/after-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"After Earth: Blame Smith, Not Shyamalan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"after2\"
\n

\nAfter Earth<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
\nScreenplay by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan
\nStory by Will Smith
\n100 min.<\/p>\n

Tommy Lee Jones once said that the secret to being funny is standing next to Will Smith.\u00a0 Like any leading man, Smith is classically handsome, cut from steel, infinitely charming, and possesses an inexplicable charisma that glues your eyes to him.\u00a0 His son does not.\u00a0 Jaden Smith\u2019s eyes are like Vin Diesel\u2019s\u2014boring and lifeless.\u00a0 And his acting is about ten billion times worse.
\n
\nYou all know how I feel about\u00a0Signs<\/a>\u00a0by now, but I\u2019m into reiteration\u2014Signs is the best movie ever made. \u00a0So\u00a0I feel bad for Shyamalan.\u00a0\u00a0The guy really can\u2019t catch a break.\u00a0 He gets hired by one of the biggest movie stars of all time to direct him in a high concept action sci-fi movie.\u00a0 What a compliment!\u00a0 The only caveat is it has to star his son.\u00a0 Will Smith loves his kids so much that he encourages them to be entertainers despite their lack of chops.\u00a0 And for some reason he\u2019s determined that his son Jaden follow in his footsteps.\u00a0 Good luck.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t need to be a very long review, because After Earth<\/a> is such a fucking train wreck that talking about it for too long would be a waste of time and energy.<\/p>\n

I love voiceover.\u00a0 Everything your stupid ass writing teacher in film school told you was wrong\u2014voiceover is effective and beautiful.\u00a0 Look no further than the opening sequences of Raising Arizona<\/a>\u00a0and Field of Dreams<\/a>.\u00a0 However, after After Earth, I\u2019m starting to agree.<\/p>\n

There are two major problems with the voiceover in this movie. One, it\u2019s wholly unnecessary.\u00a0 The movie could\u2019ve just started with the crash. \u00a0We didn\u2019t need to know anything at all in the opening voiceover or the clunky expository scenes that followed.\u00a0 Learning all of that stuff along the way\u2014you know, the way Shyamalan does it in his own scripts, aka, the right way\u2014would be a lot more fun and interesting. \u00a0Two, Jaden\u2019s voice and enunciation sound like a caricature of a South Park character.\u00a0 Worst voiceover of all time.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how the movie begins.<\/p>\n

From the word go, it\u2019s inept city.\u00a0 Everything from the wardrobe to the editing to the score is uninspired and generic.\u00a0 Coming from a craftsman such as Shyamalan, it\u2019s very bizarre to hear the same fucking music cues we\u2019ve heard in every movie for the last ten years.\u00a0 What\u2019s more puzzling is they seem to be placed randomly, without feeling or any sense of rhythmic storytelling, as if the assembly line making the movie was broken.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s the dialogue.\u00a0 Fuck, man.\u00a0 I suspect that Will Smith wanted to cast himself against type.\u00a0 Big mistake, dude.\u00a0 A humorless Will Smith is a worthless one.\u00a0 I also think the characters are using some kind of weird accent, but it\u2019s hard to tell\u2014it could just be clunky enunciations as the actors try desperately to make sense of how to deliver the stilted dialogue.<\/p>\n

The premise is fine. It\u2019s a rite of passage quest and a father-son story.\u00a0 It\u2019s like Star Wars<\/a> meets Field of Dreams\u2014<\/b>except it plays out like The Room<\/a> meets Troll 2<\/a>.\u00a0 It really is that bad.\u00a0 Sometimes the green screen keying is as bad as the roof scene in The Room, and the logic and performances are Troll 2 all the way.<\/p>\n

According to the IMDb trivia, the original script was a grounded story about a car accident in the woods, with the same premise.\u00a0 For whatever reason, it was refashioned into a spaceship crashing on future earth. The simple \u2018car in the woods\u2019 version would\u2019ve been better and more grounded. \u00a0In any event, the story, as is, is nauseatingly predictable.\u00a0 I normally don\u2019t mind predictability, because all good stories should\u00a0follow a logical path from point A to B to C, but in this case, the story was such trite, formulaic garbage that it makes me understand why people hate on that shit.<\/p>\n

There probably is a good movie in here somewhere, but extracting it would require a complete overhaul.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not that Shyamalan dropped the ball\u2014he just was never passed one in the first place. \u00a0Any chance at him being able to exhibit his visual prowess was neutered by a bland, dead-on-arrival script. \u00a0It\u2019s ironic that a movie with so much supposed scope is so claustrophobic (with, for instance, all of Will\u2019s scenes happening in a dreary control room). \u00a0Designing interesting shots must’ve been an uphill battle.<\/p>\n

I normally don\u2019t like to focus on the rules purported by sci-fi movies.\u00a0 Movies require suspension of disbelief, and if it\u2019s a good movie, I\u2019ll buy into some dumb space rules.\u00a0 But in this case, the logic was so dreadful that I couldn\u2019t help but question every decision.\u00a0 Like, if it\u2019s the future, and they have a little handheld device that shows you a hologram graphic of the inside of your leg projected over your own leg, why don\u2019t they have breathing masks, and hell, projectile weapons?\u00a0 If we learned anything from Indiana Jones, it\u2019s that a gun works better in a pinch than a sword.<\/p>\n

Everything about After Earth is wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s so lazily constructed that the sound design, an area that Shyamalan usually thrives, seemed to be missing elements.\u00a0 It\u2019s the future and we\u2019re on a spaceship\u2014gimme some fuckin\u2019 room tone, man.\u00a0 And why didn\u2019t Will need to use those breathing capsule things?\u00a0 He was on earth too.\u00a0 I guess because he was in the spaceship.\u00a0 Whatever, fuck it.<\/p>\n

Whether you like Shyamalan or not, you can\u2019t deny his ability to create tension and big scares.\u00a0 After Earth\u2019s attempts at this are laughable at best. \u00a0An\u00a0early scene has Jaden slowly approaching some kind of alien monster-y thing in a cocoon or something. \u00a0The scare is so obvious that when it comes it plays like a joke beat rather than a terrifying moment. \u00a0Compare this to the sequence in Signs when the aliens are outside the house and the camera simply pans the walls, using the soundtrack to send chills down your spine. \u00a0Less is more, and in Signs, Shyamalan milks every shot for its tension potential. \u00a0In After Earth, he was asleep at the switch.<\/p>\n

The real bummer here is that Shyamalan works hard and he\u2019s a passionate guy.\u00a0 Go read The Man Who Heard Voices<\/a>\u00a0and you\u2019ll see what I mean.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure he put his heart into this thing and wanted to make Will happy.\u00a0 And I\u2019m sure all you assholes will blame \u2018Shamalamadingdong\u2019 for this and not the Smiths, even though it\u2019s his story, he produced it, put the team together, and hired Night.\u00a0 There\u2019s only so much film in existence\u2014and there ain\u2019t enough to get a good line reading out of Jaden.<\/p>\n

Oh, and one more thing\u2014there\u2019s a scene where a giant future eagle saves Jaden\u2019s life by dragging him into a cubby hole it dug in the ground for him.\u00a0 The eagle saved his life because it somehow knew Jaden tried to save its babies lives, even though it couldn\u2019t have possibly seen him doing that, because it was happening through a nest wall. \u00a0Plus, it\u2019s a bird, and probably wouldn\u2019t get what was happening, or remember.\u00a0 Oh, also, the bird saves Jaden\u2019s life from some weird thing where the ground and foliage just start freezing for no reason.\u00a0 Like really fast.\u00a0 It\u2019s like that scene in The Day After Tomorrow<\/a> when they\u2019re literally running away from the global warming and close the door behind them to evade it.\u00a0 I know its probably some like future earth thing, like in the future it gets colder faster at night or something, but dude, fuck you.\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

0 out of 1 stars.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"after2\"
\n

\nAfter Earth<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
\nScreenplay by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan
\nStory by Will Smith
\n100 min.<\/p>\n

Tommy Lee Jones once said that the secret to being funny is standing next to Will Smith.\u00a0 Like any leading man, Smith is classically handsome, cut from steel, infinitely charming, and possesses an inexplicable charisma that glues your eyes to him.\u00a0 His son does not.\u00a0 Jaden Smith\u2019s eyes are like Vin Diesel\u2019s\u2014boring and lifeless.\u00a0 And his acting is about ten billion times worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15],"tags":[1722,1733,1732,1728,1723,1724,688,1725,37,1727,716,332,104,185,588,1731,1730,462,722,463,1729,1726],"class_list":["post-2335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsreviews","tag-after-earth","tag-after-earth-bad","tag-after-earth-bad-review","tag-after-earth-movie","tag-after-earth-movie-review","tag-after-earth-review","tag-field-of-dreams","tag-gary-whitta","tag-greg-deliso","tag-jaden-smith","tag-raising-arizona","tag-signs","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-star-wars","tag-the-day-after-tomorrow","tag-the-man-who-heard-voices","tag-the-room","tag-tommy-lee-jones","tag-troll-2","tag-vin-diesel","tag-will-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2335"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4078,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}