After Earth Movie Review

After Earth
                                              

After Earth is a science fiction adventure action thriller movie released in 2013. This movie is written by Will Smith, Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The two main characters of After Earth are played by Will Smith and his son, Jaden Smith. The other artists of this movie are Sophie Okonedo, Zoë Kravitz, Sacha Dhawan and Chris Geere. This release date of this movie is close to Tom Cruise's Oblivion.

After earth tells the story of the future world, where a space ship crash lands on planet earth, living only two survivors. One survivor, the captain of the ship is severely injured, so its all up to the other one, his young son, to find a beacon in the hostile environment and send signal for help.

Will Smith and Jaden Smith in After Earth

Plot:

After Earth tells the story of future, when humans have abandoned the earth and have moved to another planet. But they are not alone on that planet. There are some aliens, who start to haunt and kill human. Technically, those aliens can’t see. But they can sense human’s fear, so they hunt by this. Humans are always on a fight with theses aliens. The Ranger Corps are leading the fight, and General Cypher Raige a renowned soldier of them. He is fearless about these aliens, so to them, he is invisible. This technique is called ghosting
.

Cypher has a young son named Kitai who is getting training to get in The Ranger Corps. In one examination, although he has very good result in theoretical part, he fails for his bad performance in the field.  That was the day when Cypher is returning from one of his journeys.

Kitai was feeling down, so his mother suggests Cypher to take him to journey with him. Cypher agrees and then he takes Kitai with him on his last mission before retirement. Their spaceship has several crews and soldiers and an alien which will be used for training. Suddenly their ship faces some asteroid shower. Cypher’s wisdom and experience saves the ship for the first time, but the environment damages the ship heavily.

They have no other option than to crash land on planet earth. The landing breaks the ship in two parts. All the crews, except Cypher and Kitai are dead. Cypher is badly injured and the beacon of the ship is broken. To send message for help, they need to find another beacon, which is at the tail part of the ship. But the accident has thrown the tail of the ship to far away from the head part, where Cypher and Kitai is currently located.

So, now its all up to Kitai to go and find the other beacon on the tail of the broken ship in this hostile environment. Cypher instructs him well about surviving in there. The planet becomes very cold during the night, so before night, Kitai must find the hotspots. Kitai also has communication system and different life support materials with him. The alien is free on the planet, which is another tension for Cypher.

Kitai starts his journey. He keeps constant communication with Cypher. Using the communication systems, from the ship, Cypher can see all around Kitai and he also has a map to guide Kitai. At first, Kitai gets scared and does something against the instructions of Cypher. He falls in danger for that but survives. Then he keeps on following Cypher’s instructions.

At one point, when Kitai was running out of his oxygen supplies, Cypher orders him to abort his mission and to come back to the ship. Kitai then reminds Cypher about their past family occurrences and finally jumps of a cliff to take a shortcut to his mission. He is saved, but at one point, his communication device breaks. From the ship, Cypher can only see Kitai, but can’t send in instructions.

So, now Kitai, a young boy, is all alone is a deadly environment. He does not have any further instruction or navigation. While his oxygen supply is running low, he must rely on his instincts to survive in this hostile environment and save his and his father’s life.

My review about the movie After Earth:

I found After Earth as a very average science fiction movie.

The plot is good, but its very predictable. There was not much surprise in the whole movie. Although the plot of After Earth is perfect for a science fiction movie, but the parts where Kitai was following the exactly what Cypher was saying to himself seemed too dramatic to be real. The family history and Kitai’s imaginations were good small touches.

The biggest problem of After Earth was its casting. The whole movie is centered on Jaden Smith. But his acting and maturity didn’t seem enough to carry him on this big task. He was not a good fit for the leading character of such a movie . I was missing typical Will Smith charm at the beginning of After Earth but it came on as the movie proceeded.  The acting of the other characters are good. The make ups and the dialogues were good too.

The special effects of After Earth were pretty decent and the alien looked scary. But I watched Oblivion just few days ago, so during the whole movie, the comparison between After Earth and Oblivion came in my mind. And I felt sorry that considering the set design, special effects and cinematography, After Earth is nothing compared to Oblivion. If you have watched Oblivion recently, I guess, you will also feel the difference, although both of them are different types of movies. This can be a common case, because both of the science fictions have been released in nearby time. You may miss the beautiful cinematography of Oblivion in After Earth.  

There is nothing is the movie After Earth, which may restrict a kid to see it.

So, the biggest flaw of this movie is the role of Jaden Smith. We have seen his beautiful acting in the movie Pursuit Of Happiness, when he was much smaller. I believe he will grow up as a great actor, considering who his father is, but in After Earth, it seemed like he is not ready yet.  It also felt like, the role given to him in this movie is too much for him at this age. The director could make the role of Will Smith stronger or could give him more screen time outside the spaceship to make this movie better.

Another thing is, as a movie of Will Smith, I felt a little disappointed by After Earth. Will Smith is one of my all-time favorite actors, and like other millions of his fans, I expect only beautiful movies from him. After all those beautiful movies, he has given us two consecutive just ‘good’ movies in recent times, Men in Black 3 and then After Earth. We all want to see those beautiful movies of him again.

So, overall, After Earth seemed just as a regular science fiction movie, nothing special. The presence of Will Smith in this movie is very limited and the main character seemed weak in acting. The score even goes lower, if you compare it with Tom Cruise’s Oblivion, which is also released in recent times. You can also see, After Earth holds a little lower than average IMDB rating of 4.9 while I’m writing this review. Finally, I’ll recommend watching After Earth to all movie lovers, although I’m, not sure how much it will be loved.

How did you feel about After Earth? Share with others in comments.

To know more:

IMDB Link: After Earth Movie IMDB

Wikipedia Link: After Earth Wiki

My review of the movie Oblivion: Oblivion Movie Review

To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, you can find the best deal on it here: After Earth Movie