Location
Wide Release
Dates
Opens May 31Not all is lost in the semi-dystopian future of M. Night Shyamalan?s After Earth. Sure, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable long ago, and humanity has been forced to flee via spacecraft to a new planet in a distant solar system. And yet that new planet was inhabited by nasty, drooling wretches, Star Wars-inspired over-sized, teeth and claw-wielding beasties ? cockroach-y dinosaurs ? that are instinctively disposed to hunting down humans. Significant to the story, the beasts can only ?see? people by smelling their fear (or at least the secretions we let off when we are afraid). But what?s not lost is the technology or a movieland futuristic sense of product design.
Perhaps After Earth?s two most compelling characters are the digital screens that seem to appear from almost everywhere (they can diagnosis illness, monitor space debris, and watch reality like a virtual, omnipresent YouTube channel); and the buildings ? crisp, clean and Calatrava-like structures that provide?After Earth with that most universal sci-fi motif: the future is as neat and tidy as an Apple store.
There are, of course, human characters too, primarily a father and son duo played by real life father and son Will and Jaden Smith. Shyamalan indulges his Spielbergian pretensions here to full effect. The entire dramatic thrust, in fact, is a riff on a familiar Spielberg trope: hardened (or vacant) fathers and their scorned and affection-seeking sons. Will Smith is plays Cypher Raige, a general in the Rangers corps, an elite military division that hunts down those nasty beasties (called Ursas ? or should it be Ursi? Not clear). Jaden Smith plays Kitai Raige, a young cadet, speedy and skilled, but na?ve and enthusiastic to a fault. We first meet him amidst the trauma of some hard-breathing catastrophe which leaves Kitai passed out in some leafy ground cover (we know its Earth, it?s got to be Earth).
We flash back to the real beginning a few days earlier when Kitai finishes cadet school with top marks, and yet his commanding officer still doesn?t believe the boy is ready for full Ranger status. The news is extra disappointing in light of his father?s pending return that night. Kitai fears disappointing (or is disappointed for not living up the expectations of) his Great Santini. When Cypher returns home, there?s the standard paternal riding of the son at the dinner table before Kitai?s stepmother intervenes and states the obvious: ?Kitai doesn?t need a commanding officer, he needs a father.? So Cypher capitulates by inviting his son on what should be a routine flight to another planet to deliver a pacified Ursa to a Ranger training camp. Suddenly we?re back in the film?s opening moments: the heavy breathing into a facemask, the tearing open of the spacecraft?s hull, father and son marooned on strange planet, which we find out is, as we suspected, Earth.
The best way to get to what Shymalan is up to here is to break After Earth up into its constituent parts. The element that ties the narrative together is this father-son melodrama. After the duo land on Earth, the film travels to the likely dramatic terrain: a coming-of-age journey on behalf of son who grows in strength and confidence and wins pride in the eyes of FATHER FIGURE. Slightly more interesting, though, is picking through After Hour?s allegoric and metaphoric implications. The central theme here is fear. Since the Ursas literally smell fear, humans have learned to cloak themselves ? ?ghosting,? it?s called in the film ? by learning to completely control their sense of fear and the resulting microscopic biological functions that attract the beasts. It?s a metaphor with a capital ?M,? a thematic core that might be distilled down to the simple phrase, ?chill out already.?
The fear element is also a less-than-dissolved mixture of Karate Kid-deep Asian philosophy and pop-Darwinism. There?s a gloss on evolutionary potentiality threaded throughout Shyamalan?s world. Earth has evolved to be nearly uninhabitable to humans. The air is hard to breath (ostensibly because we?ve let it spoil like milk), and the animals have apparently all evolved into ?natural? human predators. It?s not hard to detect the righteous, judicial strain: we have ruined nature, and Earth is now a manifestation of nature?s vicious payback. Yet considering the amount of unnamed fuel the space ships and digital gadgetry must burn in After Earth, we?re left wondering just what the consequences of letting Earth?s light burn out really are (it?s the Ursas that are the real threat, and in Shyamalan?s fanciful future world history, we just got unlucky and stumbled on them). And curiously, while humanity has maintained its technological wit the weapon of choice for the Rangers is a shape morphing update of a samurai sword. It?s more than a little distracting that Cypher can watch Kitai?s every move, and yet the boy would be better off with a simple Colt 45. Shamalan expects us to ignore this for the payoff of cultivating pseudo-Zen, warrior shtick. It?s one of a string of plot holes and logical inconsistencies we can?t quite shake.
There are also some hackneyed literary allusions. Kitai is reading Moby Dick because his father just read the book, and halfway through his journey young Kitai strings together a Huck Finn raft and drifts down a river. These little riffs, like most of this visually and narratively unimaginative story, are clumsy and muddled. Like Shalayman?s Spielberg riffs, his adroit and endlessly quoting camera work, his trumped-up Darwinian speculations, and his half-hearted, threading-through of the fear element, the literary references are just evidence that Shalayman is a filmmaker devolving, who proves he has style, but little depth. It?s not a good thing that during the movie?s supposed climax, as Kitai scurries up a rock face while a growling Ursa is fast pursuit, so that the boy can waive a rescue beacon in the air like cell phone that can?t find a signal (?Do you hear me now? Do you hear me now??), all I could think of was Franklin Delano Roosevelt?s voice pounding on over and over: ?The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.? Well fear, and sitting through After Hours.
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