Pointless Backstory: One thing that a lot of amateur filmmakers, and it really sucks to throw that label on the director of The Sixth Sense, get wrong is over thinking aspects of their movie. Take for example the Ursa. In After Earth the Ursa essentially acts as the final boss, its a big monster that hunts by sensing fear. So what is the films explanation for them? They are the foot soldiers of an alien race designed to kill us. Setting aside the fact that these things meant to kill us only showcase any kind of intelligence when the plot calls for it, and other times are as dumb as a rock, (even if it can no longer sense him, it should be pawing around his last known location, not rocks several feet away!) Why can they only sense fear? The movie states that they were bred to kill us, so why are these the final product? Why can they only smell this one pheromone? When Kitai meets up with the Ursa he hasn't bathed in several days, shouldn't that be enough?
But this all ties back to the biggest question, why the weapon of an alien race? The aliens don't show up for the entire movie, and they really don't seem to be a threat, just the Ursas. So why couldn't the Ursa just be a native species to Nova Prime, that the humans only ran into once they had settled and colonized a section of the planet already and it would be too inconvenient to move. You can still use the same reasoning for why its on the ship, you can still use the stupid "ghosting" stuff, but you don't mention things in the first act that aren't important to the rest of the story.
Lackluster Aesthetic: At first I was going to put the awful direction down for this slot, but then I really thought about how generic the sets and creature design was. The sets are just generic greenery, generic chasm, generic waterfall location, Scotland, and volcano. There really isn't anything new or interesting in the way that Earth has evolved without us that makes it stand out. Or should I say that none of the new evolutions make any sense. Why, if the planet goes glacial every night, is there any plant life? How did plants evolve to survive this sudden temperature drop, the first two or so times it happened they should have all died. Why are birds and animals just bigger now? Evolution doesn't just add shit for no reason, it adapts creatures to a certain environment. If it did work that way then the Ass-Blasters from Tremors 3 wouldn't be stupid now would they?
Laughable Dialogue: One of the difficult aspects of a story like this, that focuses around the relationship between characters, is believable dialogue. You have to make it seem natural when the characters interact, or you suck the audience out of the experience. This is a problem that has constantly plagued late-period M. Night. The Happening became a cult-classic for its horrendous dialogue, and the expository nature of 99% of the cast of The Last Airbender was even more distracting than the dodgy effects. So I completely understand if people don't believe me when I say that After Earth has worse dialogue than either of them. Characters explain everything that they do, and all of the restrictions and effects of the incredibly convenient technology. But after that then all bets are off. One part in particular where Cypher Raige, yes that is Will Smith's character's name, asks his son to come back, is atrociously written. I swear its one of those moments where the actors seemed to skip a page in the script. The problem is that the dialogue isn't as funny-bad as it was in The Happening, largely because of...
Atrocious Acting: Again this is a problem that late-period M. Night has in every one of his movies. But this is part of what led The Happening to be so funny, the terribly over-the-top acting of Marky Mark just exacerbated the bad writing. On the other hand the terrible acting in Airbender was more stiff and unnatural, causing the films bad dialogue to just be terrible. This is one of those cases, where the absolute worst aspects of Shyamalan's screenplays come to the forefront. His late-period work is almost like the earlier work of Tarsem, where the style overruns the substance and the filmmaker seems to think that the audience is a stupid child who needs to be woken up with a loud noise every once and a while, and won't understand the "deepness" of your script.
Will Smith is playing things flat, completely the opposite of his normal persona. This seems like a stylistic choice to allow his kid a chance to shine, but it actually makes things more distracting. It actually makes him kind of miscast, Will Smith isn't a growling, raspy, military captain, he just isn't. Jaden was good in the remake Karate Kid, I say that to karmatically justify me calling him an untalented whelp in this movie. He seems to think that serious people pout constantly, which is pretty much his facial expression for the entire movie. He's unable to convey the wonder that the director seems to take in the changed Earth, instead he seems confused and half-asleep. And while this couldn't all be forgiven, some of it could be except for...
It's Boring: One of the worst things that you can say about a Fantasy movie or a Science Fiction movie is that it is boring. But that is the worst thing about this film, it is boring. This is partly because the film's sets are dull and uninspired as mentioned above, meaning that you don't have anything cool to look at. The two leads, who are the only actors in the movie for the entire second act, are being overly-serious and boring as tar. And it is exacerbated by the complete lack of transition shots of any kind. Instead when one scene ends the other just starts. This leads to several jarring shifts in location and several jarring shifts in time. In one moment Kitai could have just begun his journey, in the next scene, without any shots in-between, it is now nightfall and he has to find a checkpoint. Coupled with a lame final action scene, and boring half-resolution, and the fact that the movie just kind of stops, makes this the most boring movie I have seen all year.
Conclusion: I didn't think that I would see a film worse than Star Trek Into Darkness so soon. Barely two weeks have passed, and already its seat as one of the worst movies of the year has been overtaken. I wish that I could say that this was the nadir of filmmaking this year, or even this summer, but with Hangover III behind us and Despicable Me 2 ahead, I don't think that statement is completely true... yet.
0/5
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