Last summer, the film After Earth was labelled as rubbish by
the vast majority of critics. They were all wrong, it’s much worse than that. After Earth came from a story idea by
Will Smith which was fleshed out into a feature length screenplay by M. Night
Shyamalan and Gary Whitta. The movie was directed by Shyamalan and was produced
by and starred Will Smith and his son Jaden. The film gives its audience so
little to enjoy that it’s almost offensive and provides none of the action or
comedy that we have come to expect from a Will Smith fronted movie.
Set in the distant future,
humanity now resides on the planet Nova Prime with the Earth abandoned. A
thousand years after their arrival on their new home, the planet is invaded by
aliens (irony alert) who wish to destroy our species and conquer the planet.
Their primary weapon is the Ursa; a large, blind predator that is able to smell
human fear. One man, General Cypher Raige (Will Smith) has the ability to
‘ghost’ – be free of fear and as such invisible to the Ursa. His son Kitai
(Jaden Smith) is a Ranger Cadet who has hopes of replicating his father’s
talents. The two are somewhat estranged but Cypher takes his son on a training
mission which inadvertently crash lands on Earth, home to numerous deadly
creatures as well as an Ursa on the loose.
