After Earth (12A)

It’s hard to see what the point of this movie is and why it was really made unless it was to give a vehicle to 14 years old Jaden Smith. 

The young fellow is the real life son of his co-star, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett, who acts as producer of ‘After Earth’.  The main attraction of the science fiction movie is that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who also worked on the screenplay.  Shyamalan wrote ‘Sixth Sense’ back in the 1990s.

The story of ‘After Earth’ began promisingly by detailing how one thousand years previously, people escaped from the planet earth following a serious upheaval of sorts, to live on Nova Prime.

A moody looking Will Smith plays Cypher Raige, who returns to Nova Prime from a military tour of duty, to his son, Kitai (Jaden) and his wife, played by Sophie Okonedo, who almost a decade ago was nominated for an Oscar for her work on ‘Hotel Rwanda’.

Father and son decide to go on another tour of duty, and manage to be the remaining survivors when an asteroid storm damages their craft.  They land on a dangerous and hostile Planet Earth.  Cypher is seriously injured and the young Kitai must head across the landscape to retrieve the craft’s rescue beacon.    While the boy has some military training, he didn’t manage to make the grade at his academy.

While there are special digital effects etc., the story does take a nosedive, throughout Kitai’s search.

There was little evidence of M. Night Shyamalan’s influence or work in the movie, considering he has worked on the unexpected and the surprise in his own movies.  There are no surprises here, and a sub-plot about Kitai’s dead sister doesn’t really fit into the movie.

The movie lacked a lot, mostly an engrossing plot.  A better script could have seen justice done by Will Smith, but it’s too early to see if Jaden has any screen presence.  Although the young fellow made a few movies before ‘After Earth’, this movie wasn’t a good one for him.