Since the advent of his acting career in 1990, Philadelphia native and acclaimed Hollywood star Will Smith has delivered a myriad of perfect performances on both television and the silver screen. From his early days as the laid-back lady’s man Will “The Fresh Prince” Smith to his most recent works like the final chapter of the Men in Black trilogy, the 44 year old has been hailed as one of America’s most versatile and talented actors of all time. In recent years, Smith—while renown for a unique sidesplitting humor that often lands him lead roles in comedies— has gravitated toward films infused with drama and suspense, and the result has been—surprisingly—not half bad. Stellar performances as stoic and humorless characters, such as Robert Neville in 2007’s I am Legend and struggling salesman Chris Gardner in the 2006 drama Pursuit of Happyness, have made Smith’s gradual transition from hilarious to serious a little easier to bear for “Fresh Prince” fans. However, like countless other TV titans before him, Will Smith’s stardom is starting to sizzle out, and the actor is making desperate attempts to prevent his name from fading into utter obscurity. Unfortunately, the star’s most recent attempt to rejuvenate his career—2013’s sci-fi disaster After Earth— has undoubtedly hindered the process.
Set 1,000 years into the future, After Earth tells the trite story of a boy determined to please his overbearing father. The only discrepancy between the movie’s underlying plot and that of every other sappy family film in existence is the setting, for the characters live in a space civilization created after Earth randomly became uninhabitable for humans. Will Smith Plays Cypher Raige, a well-respected space commander and war hero who expects an equal amount of success from his inexperienced son, Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith). Kitai is a hopeless wannabe whose fruitless attempts to fill his father’s shoes and cope with the onerous stresses of being the son of such a high ranking officer yield little to no results. Kitai possesses zero talent and lacks athleticism; as a result, he must find a way to cope with the embarrassing task of telling his father about his failure to change ranks from cadet to ranger.
As if the overdone family drama was not bad enough, the film’s creators decided to throw a space father-space son bonding adventure into the mix. Kitai’s mother (Sophie Okonedo) convinces Cypher to take Kitai on a training mission in order to strengthen the broken bond between the two. On the way to the location, the spacecraft crosses paths with an asteroid belt; not surprisingly, a large piece of space matter strikes the ship, sending it into a tailspin and hurdling toward the nearest planet: Earth. Cypher finds his way into the cockpit and makes the executive decision to land rather than leave the fate of every passenger to the whim of the galaxy. The spaceship crashes into Earth, conveniently leaving everyone but Cypher and Kitai dead.
The remaining 90 minutes is wasted solely on Kitai’s pathetic, video game-esque journey to retrieve the last remaining beacon from the spacecraft’s tail section located several hundreds of miles away, as the beacon is the only way the two will have even the slightest chance of survival. Oddly enough, Will Smith’s character must remain motionless for the movie’s entirety, as he has suffered two broken legs from the crash. Though he somehow manages to survive the three days it takes for his son to reach his destination (despite the significant amount of blood lost from his multiple injuries), his health deteriorates with each passing day and he finds it increasingly difficult to mentor his son during the death-defying voyage. If filmmakers wanted to include at least one redeeming quality in the movie, they would never have made Will Smith—an actor so well versed in physical comedy and a man who often uses body language rather than words to convey feelings—virtually paralyzed for the duration of an almost two hour movie.
Obstacles—wild animals, perilous temperatures, poisonous insects— are scattered along Kitai’s tortuous path to the beacon. Terrible acting as well as sporadic, misplaced flashbacks makes watching the film an arduous task, and it becomes a chore to have to figure out exactly what is happening in the disorganized film. Apparently, every species on Earth has managed to evolve so that it is capable of killing humans, which serves not only as a stupid detail but also as a friendly reminder that the creators of After Earth know nothing of the time it takes for a species to evolve even slightly, not to mention so that it is lethal. On several occasions just before Kitai evades death, viewers find themselves wishing the mutant bird or the terribly computer-generated wolves would simply finish him off and alleviate even a fraction of the moviegoers’ suffering.
The film ends with a battle between Kitai and the ursa—a spider-like monster that had been released form captivity on the ship after the asteroid accident. A few years prior to the accident, Kitai’s sister was killed by the ursa, as its capability to smell fear lead to her untimely death. Kitia struggles with the memory of having been too afraid to escape the safe confines of a fear-shielding contraption in order to help fend off the demon. Now, he feels it is his duty to defeat the ursa to compensate for his paralyzing fear on the day of his sister’s death.
The film is a slapdash effort to promote Will Smith’s name and introduce his son to the industry. After an impressive father-son collaboration in “Pursuit of Happyness,” viewers expected the Smith family to bring an equally powerful performance in After Earth. Instead, moviegoers were force-fed a mess of a movie complete with sloppy special effects, lackluster acting, dull dialogue, and not a trace of Will Smith’s infamous charm or lighthearted humor. The movie itself lacked originality, as the space-warrior-meets-post-apocalyptic-planet plot line raises the question of whether producers combined two Will Smith movies—namely I am Legend and Men in Black—into one. The failure of “After Earth is as foreboding as it is disappointing, for it seems to be an indication of Will Smith’s imminent descent into Hollywood oblivion.
