FILM: After Earth

Popular actors have a shelf life far shorter than lesser known ones, in my view. When a massively famous actor like Will Smith stars in as many films as he does, it becomes difficult to look past the face to see the film character, and all one sees is the actor. At that point, it is probably beneficial to the film industry for that actor to retire (which he could most likely afford) to make way for newer faces. Unfortunately, the right name and face can make millions at the box office if marketed correctly, so the famous actors are unlikely to retire any time soon. And despite popular belief, Will Smith is not really a good actor. He’s adequate - not terrible - but that’s about the extent of his talent.

The problem of famous faces is especially problematic when the actors names are more memorable than the character names, as in After Earth. In fact, I only remember hearing Jaden Smith’s character’s name a few times in the entire film, and - being one of those strange, futuristic names - I forgot it almost instantly. The father’s name was never mentioned, or at least not memorable, so I never knew his name either. In short, I only know the two protagonists by the actors - Will and Jaden Smith. 

After Earth is an M. Night Shayamalan film based on an original story idea from Will Smith. It is set one thousand years into the future, where humanity has evacuated Earth after nearly destroying the planet and colonised other worlds. However, a hostile alien species which can only sense humans by smelling their fear poses a threat to the human race; as such, part of the central theme of this film is overcoming fear. En route to another planet of unspecified importance, Will Smith and his son crash land on Earth, and Jaden must fight his way to a MacGuffin so they can leave.

This film had the potential for being incredibly profound with a strong message, if it hadn’t abandoned the pretense of humanity’s destruction of Earth ten minutes in. Instead, After Earth focusses more on the relationship between father and son. It appears to be more about the actors than actual storytelling, as the story feels like little thought or consideration was put into it. For some reason, after one thousand years, all life on Earth has “evolved to kill humans” a plot point which shows a complete misunderstanding of the theory of evolution, and reeks of a half-baked plot which the writers couldn’t care less about. Almost every line of dialogue feels like obligatory exposition, and the film completely disregards the importance of characterisation or effective weight to the story. Both protagonists are bland and one-dimensional - Will Smith’s character in particular, who delivers every line as though they are all military orders from an emotionless robot - and both are little more than drones designed to drive the uninteresting plot.

A ridiculous amount of effort has gone into making everything in this film “look futuristic” in the standard modern science-fiction fashion of incorporating unintuitive architecture and engineering and superfluous technology in everything man-made. While it looks nice, it makes no logical sense and only serves a superficial purpose to “look cool”. Which brings me to the visuals, which are genuinely very well done - obviously, with little thought put in to anything else, this film relied on the visuals to carry it. But the bottom line is this: a film cannot be carried by fancy CGI and expensive visuals alone - it is superficial and insubstantial. Avatar tried the same thing a few years ago, and was little more than mediocre. “Style over substance” is not a formula for quality film, which is something the producers of After Earth fail to understand.

Upon reflection, After Earth seems like a film which desperately wants to be a video game - and perhaps should have been one. In fact, it would have made quite a good one. The first person camera shots, for example, are used to great effect, and would have worked well in a video game. An After Earth game could have action-based gameplay, focussing on the son traversing the Earth, and could have gone on for a decent length and remained interesting. Unfortunately, this film knows it can’t focus on action without getting repetitive and boring (indeed, how can anyone make a film about one person traveling alone across a foreign landscape?) so it has to alternate between the son and the father to try and stay fresh - it falls down, however, because neither character is doing anything interesting. Additionally, at every opportunity one can feel After Earth padding out the length as much as it can by having it’s characters take their time with everything they’re doing - and even that is unsuccessful, because it’s still only a mere hundred minutes long. These are problems which could have been solved by making it a video game rather than a film.

All this leads me to the biggest criticism of After Earth: it is simply boring. The characters are dull and the acting is questionable, the plot is poorly thought out and predictable, the dialogue is uninteresting, and the film overall is insubstantial, superficial and just boring. I remember thinking it would have made a great statement if it had Jaden Smith trekking through the ruins of a familiar landscape, like perhaps  a ruined USA or Europe. And even that would have been enough to be even remotely interesting.

The film does have its occasional redeeming quality, but they aren’t given enough weight to be significant. There’s a couple of nightmarish and psychological themes which are dropped as quickly as they are introduced. The “fear is an illusion” theme is a neat piece of genuine wisdom, which I like, but as I said, it’s not given enough weight in the story. Jaden’s transition from fearfulness to fearlessness is near instantaneous - far too quick to be credible. There was great potential for a truly thrilling survivalist element, but the audience can’t feel it because it’s too clean and polished.

So all in all, After Earth is just a bland overproduced action film, which attempts to use fancy visual effects to compensate for a lack of substance. There is absolutely nothing about this film which justifies it’s existence. Avoid.