Oh
dear God, where do I begin with this thing?
M.
Night Shayamalan has for the last few years been the butt of a great
many jokes, not many of them undeserved. His last few movies have
been so bad that the idea that he would be hired to make any more of
them seems to defy logic itself. And yet, his slow decline since his
second and last truly great film Unbreakable has not been without its
silver linings. Before the completely terrible Happening and Avatar, but even after his twist shtick got old, his movies were still
technically well made, often visually interesting, and even in some
cases underrated. The question of what the hell happened to this once
promising director has been a subject of heated discussion for some
time, and after watching his latest movie After Earth, I think the
question should now shift to the more practical one of simply how we
might go about stopping this maniac from ever doing it again.
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| This scene is five seconds long and not as awesome as it looks |
After
Earth is the harrowing story of Satan himself raping me in every
orifice of my face simultaneously with a spiky multi-pronged dick for
an hour and a half. Wait, no, sorry, that's just how it felt, I got
confused there for a second. Actually, After Earth is the story of a
father and son trapped on a long abandoned Earth in the far flung
future forced to find a way to survive in an ecosystem that has since
become hostile to the human species. You'll have to forgive me, as
I'm still coming off of a somewhat traumatic experience here, so in
the coming days my opinion might soften a bit, but as it stands now,
this might just be the worst wide release science fiction film in the
last twenty years, if not considerably longer.
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| This image encapsulates this movie better than any other. |
The
1950's had Plan 9 From Outer Space, the 2000's had Battlefield Earth,
and now the 2010's have this piece of unmitigated shit, which is by
far the worst of this illustrious trilogy. And the thing is, there is
absolutely nothing wrong with the premise or the story concept or
even most of the incidental plot-specific elements. This was entirely
a failure of execution. There is a good, or even potentially great
movie in here somewhere, but no one, and I mean no one even tried to
find it. Its not even that its lazy or obviously phoned in, as every
indication seems to be that for its director and the two main leads,
this was something close to a passion project. I haven't witnessed
something on this scale that was such a beloved endeavor by its
creators, and that was this unfortunately misguided, since The Nutcracker 3D. Granted, I only saw that movie like a few weeks ago,
but that shouldn't detract from the monumental failure of this movie.
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| I know this looks cool, but seriously, trust me, it isn't. |
The
missed potential is just staggering. You establish that the planet
Earth has been left to its own devices for years, free of any
interference by man, and that as a result it has for all intents and
purposes become an alien world to us. So what kind of creatures have
evolved in the time since we've been gone, and how different is the
place? The answers are none, and not even a little bit, respectively.
Yeah, there are no buildings, but other than that, these guys might
as well be lost in the woods during a camping trip gone wrong. And
supposedly everything's evolved specifically to kill humans, despite
there being no humans present to provide the environmental impetus
for said evolution. And how did all the animals evolve? They got
slightly bigger. What a twist!
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| "Oh no, this tiger is slightly bigger than other tigers, Damn you evolution!" |
And
speaking of evolution, I don't think I've ever seen a main character
in a movie before that was this perfectly eligible for the freaking
Darwin Awards (save of course for the fact that he doesn't die like
he clearly should). I know he's just a kid, but I've met real life
three year olds that are smarter and have more balls than this
teenage space cadet. Of course, a large part of this goes beyond the
character itself and into the vast utter void of talent that is Jaden
Smith. I've not seen The Karate Kid remake, because why the fuck would I
bother, but now I kind of wish that I had, if only to prepare me for
this incredibly painful performance. I try to be light on child
actors, but this kid has no fucking business anywhere near a movie
set, and I wouldn't be that blunt if I thought even for a moment that
he had any potential to ever get any better no matter how old he
gets.
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| Acting! |
And
Will Smith himself fares no better either. I'm not saying I've ever
really considered Smith a particularly strong powerhouse of an actor
before this, but what he lacks in acting chops he has always more
than made up for with charisma, so much so that until now, I could
honestly say that I had never disliked a Will Smith performance.
Granted, something like this demands more than his typical snarky
cool guy persona, but did he have to maintain the same stone faced
grimace throughout the entire movie? I'd say he was as lifeless as
his mechanical sidekick from I Robot, but even that stiff hunk of
metal had more personality than Smith ever bothers to display in this
thing.
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| "Son, you have to get to the...zzzzzzz" |
The
one element that I might have liked, a giant alien bug that smells
fear, is only used to set up a theme that pissed me off even more. A
big part of the movie is centered around not just facing one's fear
and overcoming it, but completely eliminating it (an idea used to
much better effect in the film Citidel, where it wasn't so heavy
handed). You would think a movie so pre-occupied with evolution might
have understood that fear isn't a bad thing, but actually an
evolutionary advantage, especially in an environment where EVERYTHING
WANTS TO KILL YOU! Here, this lesson is only used to pre-stage the
most predictable of climaxes as the wimpiest kid in film history
becomes the most incredible of bad asses. And when I say incredible, I
don't mean great, but rather completely lacking in credibility
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| This bubble is a metaphor for...oh go fuck yourself movie. |
And
yet, with all of that being said, the greatest sin of After Earth is
that it is just So. Fucking. Boring. I mean, dear Lord, I thought the
Hobbit dragged, but at least that was fun to look at most of the
time. This movie is uninteresting in literally every possible way in
which a movie might attempt to be interesting. The entire film is
centered around the main character running a few miles in one
direction, fighting shitty CGI for a bit, and then running back the
way he came. That's it. Oh wait, no, he also bitches a lot about his
daddy issues. Oscar please. By the end, I found myself actually
begging for one of those implausible thrown in at the last minute
twist endings Shayamalan used to be so famous for. At least it would
have been something.
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| Pictured: The wreckage of M. Night's career |
After
Earth is by a wide margin the worst film I have seen in 2013, and is
up there with the worst of last year as well, and that's not just in
terms of science fiction, but just in general. I'd rather watch The Paperboy than watch this again. I'd rather watch The Hangover Part III non-stop on a loop with my eyes taped open like Malcolm McDowell
from A Clockwork Orange than watch this movie again. I'd rather watch
The Master in super slow motion. I don't even recommend seeing this
to witness just how bad it is. It isn't worth it, even for the story
of having survived it. As if we needed another reason to never see
another M. Night Shayamalan movie, this is it folks. Anybody who does
it now only has themselves to blame for the mental and emotional
scars.
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