Ghor An-earth

Film: After Earth

Director: M Night Shyamalan

The fixation with a post-apocalyptic world has been bread and butter for filmmakers from Hollywood for quite some time now. But M Night Shyamalan's After Earth is a slow, uninventive, sentimental film which is just another opportunity to doubt the director's prowess.

Just like hopeless romantics consume any and every rom-com thrown at them, there are science fiction junkies who are waiting to lap up the next big sci-fi film. Unfortunately, After Earth makes these devotees of the genre question their taste.

With a plot that could make a great base for a video game, the film opens on a colony on a distant planet where the humans moved after the earth was rendered inhabitable. Thousand years later, a team of rangers from the colony crash land onto the planet their species had abandoned. Their leader, Cypher (Will Smith) is badly injured and the rest of the crew is dead. The task to send a signal for help falls onto the young shoulders of Cypher's son Kitai (Jaden Smith).

It is sad enough that the video game analogy fits the story of the film; but the fact that the graphics and the animated creatures in the film look video-game-like only makes it worse. The screenplay makes the supposedly adventurous journey of the boy very unappealing with its monotony. Save for a scene where Kitai's gadgets stop working, he loses contact with his father, and has to find his own route. He finds an ancient cave with cave paintings and manually draws a map to figure his way out. A lot of subtext in the scene and a sad commentary on today's times, but that is all there is worth remembering.

As far as the dialogues between the father and son who have an estranged relationship are concerned, they end up sounding just like someone who has had one too many glasses of whiskey. Turning subtext into text on multiple occasions, the father keeps handing the son lessons on danger, fear and courage.

On some level, After Earth is like watching The Pursuit Of Happyness with a sci-fi kaleidoscope. The two films will be looked at in perspective in the future; one where Will and Jaden share a personal bond while the other where a father is trying to turn his boy into a superstar just like him. After all, the entire film revolves around an injured Will Smith sitting in one place, guiding his son through an exciting adventure which he once undertook. If there is a message to be taken from this film, there it is.

M Night Shyamalan has created a world in After Earth that is based on deja vu imagery. For viewers who have seen Avatar (for the overwhelming value present in nature) or Superman (for the weird pointy island Lex Luthor creates), the film appears to have a clear lack of ambition. It is impossible to take the movie as seriously as it makes itself appear. 

Rating: 1 out of 5

Published in DNA (Pune) on June 8, 2013