Review: ‘After Earth’

“After Earth” is currently being shit on by critics and audiences alike, and I have to wonder why everyone is choosing to not give this little sci-fi movie a chance. Because really there is absolutely nothing that is woeful or so terrible about this movie that it deserves any vitriol. Really, the worst response I can foresee for this movie would be that it is forgettable and will be barely a memory in ten years, but this has nothing to do with the craftsmanship displayed and more to do with the very small story that seems to be the opposite of the large-scaled adventure that was promised by all the marketing and commercials.

“After Earth” takes places 1,000 years after humans have left Earth for a more hospital home, and constant war with an alien race has forced them to establish troops of Rangers, trained soldiers who are supposed to do battle with these aliens. But none of this really, truly matters, because it only exists to set up the real story, which is that of a stranded father and son trying to get back home. While on a mission to a different planet, a spaceship crash lands on Earth, which is now full of incredibly hostile indigenous lifeforms, and the only survivors of this crashed ship are Commander Cypher (Will Smith) and his non-ranger son Kitai (Jaden Smith). Oh and some mean ole alien thing called an Ursa that the humans were transporting for training purposes, and which is now loose on the hostile planet along with Cypher and Kitai. As Cypher’s legs are both badly broken due to the crash, he has no choice but to send his cadet son on a dangerous 100-km trek to find an emergency beacon so they can signal for help. And really that’s the whole movie right there, Kitai leaves his injured father behind to find the beacon or else they are both going to die. And that’s it.

So this is a very small story, a minor story so to speak, and while there is plenty of action and running around and chasing, and while the stakes of the movie are still quite high, the overall scope is quite intimate, especially when placed against a backdrop of a 1,000-year post-Earth history and a war between different species. And then having Cypher sidelined for most of the movie means that we spend most of this film’s run time with just one character, and make no mistake, this story is really all about Kitai and how he has to remove himself from the illusion of fear and bring himself into the present moment, instead of living in the past or being afraid of the future. The only problem with this approach is that Cypher is already set up to be the more interesting character of the two, and I would have preferred to have seen a movie about this Cypher character and how he came to be such a bad ass, instead of just having his origins and bad ass tendencies told to us through a quick prologue and one little speech from him in the middle of the movie.

Instead of an action-packed, post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie, “After Earth” is more like old school science fiction in that it is being used as a vehicle to explore ideas and concepts. Specifically (and this has been discussed in detail in places like here and here), “After Earth” seems to be a way for Will Smith to promote several ideas that are closely associated with Scientology. the L. Ron Hubbard created religion to which Smith has been known to have close ties.  This movie is about Kitai evolving and learning to control his emotions to the point of suppressing them, namely the emotion of fear, which Cypher explains is not a real thing, as it is something our minds just make up in response to a dangerous situation for which our brains do not have an answer. Specifically, Kitai’s fears come from two places: his memories of a past alien attack that took the life of his older sister (and which he watched happen), and his thoughts on what the immediate and unknown future holds for him. Cypher consistently tells his son to be in the present moment, meaning he should get his head out of the past and also should not worry about the future, because really only this present moment holds any value or meaning because it is all we really have. There are actually some thematic parallels between “After Earth” and last year’s “The Master,” and this can’t be a coincidence because both movies are based (in one way or another) on Scientology, whether superficially or expressly.

Of course on a more surface level, “After Earth” isn’t so much about being a direct parallel to Scientology as it is a story about a father and son dynamic that is more than familiar to many people. With Cypher being a living legend among the rangers, Kitai not only wants to follow in his footsteps, but feels pressure to live up to the legacy that his father is creating. How many people out there, past and present, have felt this pressure, the scariness of staring at a pair of shoes that need filling and which seem a little too big? This is the emotional core of this movie, and it is very simple, and it really helps this movie actually matter on an emotional level – otherwise we just have a story about a kid fighting giant birds and man-eating baboons and psychotropic slugs without any emotional resonance whatsoever, and that could have really been a disaster.

A big problem people seem to have with the movie is the fact that it is mostly centered on Jaden, and I think people are just having a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the nepotism that has befallen the young man fortunate enough to be sired from the loins of one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. The kid wants to try his hand at acting, and his father is in a position to make it happen, and of course everyone is jealous as hell because their dads aren’t Will Smith. Get over it, people. Just let the kid try to do his thing. If you don’t like his acting, that’s one thing, but at least be honest with yourself and give him a chance.

Personally, I don’t think he’s that great of an actor, but this is third movie and he is literally still growing, physically, mentally, professionally, etc., and he’s doing all of this right in front of us. He’s not getting a chance to suck anonymously, and that’s a gift most people don’t even realize they have and which he will never have, because yes, while having Will Smith as your dad is pretty awesome, there are certainly also ways in which having him as a father is stressful and burdensome. All of that aside, I thought Jaden was fine enough in the movie. He’s certainly a physically capable actor, but his character of Kitai just isn’t developed much outside of “scared son with popular father” (hey, that sounds familiar), so it’s not like he is given that much to do outside of arguing with his father about wanting to be a ranger and running away from obviously CG animals.

There’s just nothing very memorable about this movie, which is it’s main problem. It has good moments here and there and although I’ve forgotten many of the action beats, I remember the emotional ones, and that’s a plus. This is definitely a rainy Saturday afternoon type of movie. It’s the type of flick you catch on HBO after everyone else has forgotten about it and you are pleasantly surprised by how mildly diverting it is and all in all quite inoffensive.

That is unless you are offended by subliminal Scientological indoctrination.