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I'll try not to give the plot away but my overall opinion is that this is a mediocre rental at best. I had high hopes for this movie as I'm a fan of post apocalyptic movies and futuristic movies. Adding Will Smith's good acting to the mix had me thinking this was a sure hit. Unfortunately-the movie follows his son Jaden Smith, whose acting skills are less than stellar. Will Smith does start out in the movie with a majority of the scenes but 15 minutes into the film and his exposure is cut to a him communicating with his son through basically a wrist walkie talkie. He is not involved in any of the action sequences in the movie and Jaden Smith's acting skills are not developed enough to carry a movie in my opinion. I can only assume he was cast in this movie as a favor to his father. Will's performance as a strict futuristic military type father is just ok as his character is supposed to come across as a very strict-almost unfeeling father and yet it's just stiff acting at best. And again-Jaden Smith's acting is just not all that good in my opinion. He just lacks believability to me but he's young and I have hopes he'll master the trade as his father did.
While there are a few "creatures" in the movie-so much more could have been done with the premise of this movie yet the focus was generally on Jaden Smith's character rather than diving into the evolving of creatures on this planet. If you are looking for a movie with a lot of action and sci-fi special effects-there are a few but this film falls short of what they could have done with this storyline. If you're looking for a film with a deep meaning intertwined with the plot-this is not it. If you're expecting another great film showcasing Will Smith's impressive range for acting-this is not it.
What you'll get is a movie starring Jaden Smith and a few shots of Will Smith as he speaks to his son through the radio communication device (so you hear his voice a lot). It's not an awful movie but not the best and definitely not worthy of box office prices. At best this is a rental-but keep in mind that you will watch this and realize there were better rentals available.
Just for reference-I'm not a picky reviewer and like a lot of films that seem to get bad reviews. I also still enjoy films with stellar special effects even if the acting isn't the best. This movie just doesn't have that for me. I think watching 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Battleship, or John Carter is time better spent.
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I don't know why they still give M.Night Somethingsomething yet another chance to make a movie. One horrible piece of garbage after another.So you have M. Night's talent for producing utter trash 10 out of 10 times, then this pathetic idea of promoting Will Smith's son just because he is Will Smith's son even though he can't act better than a paper bag, plus you have a script that must have been written by someone completely stoned out of his mind and the result is predictable disaster.
To give you an example for how bad the script is the entire movie rests on the concept that in order to fight the evil aliens you have to be able to control your fear, because that controls your body odors. Because the aliens are blind and can only kill you when they smell you. Are you still with me?!?
So this is supposed to be a hard sci-fi movie, with a human civilization that has mastered interstellar travel, large-scale terraforming and faster than light communications but they have to fight some aliens with swords!
And therefore they have to walk up to them and they have never considered just wearing a suit with helmet that would just contain their odor. Or, you know, use weapons that.. are not SWORDS! They do have odor-containing plastic bubbles to protect their children when the aliens attack, so they are aware that this is a concept that would work but no, they put their children under the bubble and then the parents go and fight with SWORDS!
Not a laser gun, or even just a rifle or heck even a crossbow would do, since the aliens are actually quite vulnerable (to swords...).
No, it has to be a sword so that there can be an entire movie about Will Smith's son carrying his father's blade and then finding his own and learning to control his body odor in ways other than just taking a shower or wearing a suit and helmet.
This is how incredibly dumb a piece of nonsense this is. Now imagine adding M.Night Shalala's directing and Jaden Smith's "acting" and you understand why this will go down as one of the 3 or 4 worst movies of this decade.
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You know, there are many reasons people rate movies poorly other than the movie sucking itself. I think unfortunately because of M. Night Shyamalan as a director and Jaden Smith as the main character, whom most people feel has his career in acting due to his fathers clout, this movie has been received with a bit of negative Bias. Now, I have seen some pretty sorry movies over the years. If you ignore the bias and look at the movie objectively without consideration of cast and crew, this wasn't a sorry movie. The very first part of the story is a bit weak. Not enough character introduction was shown to get you involved in the characters lives. I am thinking the scenes that lead up to the son's dismissal were cut leaving a gap that isn't properly explained. It gives no visual representation of why Kitai (Jaden Smith) was cut from the ranks of the graduating rangers. Probably due to the finished product of those scenes not meeting the quality requirements. they were probably not filmed again due to costs. Other than this, the acting was watchable and the story (A survival story) was good and reasonably believable based on the level of technology shown during the movie and the amount of time in the future (Enough time to develop faster than light interstellar travel, find a new world to live in, run from a hostile planet that had evolved in many ways to kill humans and live 1000 years after that time). In other words a distant future. The special affects were good and believable enough to keep you involved but not spectacular.The theme of the story is the understanding that fear is not real except in ones mind but danger is. That you can overcome the danger if you overcome your fear and learn to think clearly instead of letting fear cause you to panic and ultimately cause you to make a very fatal mistake. Not a bad survivalist way to think and live. I think the story gets this point across nicely. General Raige's son Kitai learns this as he goes to retrieve the second emergency beacon in the tail end of the crashed ship averting many dangers and barely surviving some. The ship is approximately 2 days away. Kitai's father is struggling to stay alive with 2 badly broken legs, one with arterial damage. The large bird part of the story is a bit hard to believe but, I guess it could be possible if these animals have had the time to evolve and become more intelligent. The final fight with the Ursa was done well. It brings a climax and nice ending showing the theme to the movie in action. That's what I saw. Judge for yourself, renting here in HD is only $5.99 with tax. Hope this review helps people decide.
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I'm sorry to say I paid full price to see this movie in the theater. I felt robbed. I love science fiction and I am a Will Smith fan so what could go wrong? Everything. This movie was slow and the characters were not likable. The acting was horrendous and the plot....was there a plot, I can't remember I was so bored. I'm sorry to say I will never get that hour and a half of my life back. I'm giving it two stars because the special effects were decent.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for After Earth (Two Disc Combo: Blu-ray / DVD + UltraViolet Digital
I watched the movie first and did not read any reviews for it. I did hear this movie wasn't that good, but I gave it a shot anyways. Not surprised that there are mostly negative reviews than positive reviews on here. Anyways, let's get on with my review.I thought this movie does have the story going for it, but you really have to "pay attention" to what is being said in the beginning of the movie. If you miss anything from what they told you, than most likely, you're going to get a little lost into it. The story is very interesting. Earth is slowly becoming an inhabitable planet, and so, the military made a department division called, The Rangers core. The Rangers go out and try to locate a new planet for Earth's people to live on. Eventually, they did find a new planet, Nova Prime, and the people of Earth move relocate there. They do find out that they were not alone on the planet. The Aliens of that world try to kill the humans by creating these new huge monsters that can locate humans and kill them off. The monsters cannot see and are blind, but they can smell fear and that's the only way they can locate the humans.
I'm thinking that it's strange that the humans don't use guns on the monsters as they don't even try to shoot it. I can only assume that guns have no affect on the monsters? Then, again, humans at that point should have powerful laser guns, but they don't even try that. They don't even try bombs or anything. Instead, what they have is Will Smith with a two-sided blade weapon going in and hack and stash his way to victory for the humans. Will Smith has an ability to have no fear against these monsters. The ability is called Ghosting. If you can forget that they don't have guns or any advance weapons in this movie and just use their concept of ghosting than maybe you're like this movie. I can't really.
Jadan Smith character is very strong physically, but mentally he's unstable and falls apart in front of danger. This is because the alien's monster killed his big sister when he was a child. He wants to be like his father, a genreal in the military and original ranger that invented ghosting. Jadan doesn't see his father much and so he doesn't know him very well, but he looks up to him a lot. That part I did like Jadan funny side, and does that well. But, I don't like when his scared acting or his fierce/strong acting. He just doesn't pull it off well.
Now basically, the story of this movie is very simple and easy to make. There are no characters besides Will and Jadan after the beginning of the movie. Every character would be a flash back after that, so pretty much 90% of the whole movie is just those two guys on the screen. I don't really like that and wanted to see more them just those two guys.
The rest of the story is Will taking Jadan on his last mission as General before retirement. They need to take a ship and just go to a planet and Will trains the new rangers about ghosting there. Simple, right. A twist is when we see that they bring the human killing monster with them on the ship. That because they want to use it for training there. Somehow the ship gets damage and they need to make emergency landing before it's too late. Closes planet is Earth, which we know that it is inhabitable, but they have no choice. The ship blows up just before the landing and it crashes onto Earth. Jadan is unhurt in the crash, but Will can't move. His legs are broken and everyone else is dead. Now, Jadan has to go get help by traveling to retrieve a bacon at the tail part of the ship, and that's 100 kilometers away from them. The bacon will send out a search and recuse signal to the Rangers for help.
Jadan journey is a simple task, but NOT supposed to be easy. Jadan isn't use to Earth's gravity, there are dangers animals and insects everywhere, the air isn't breathable, and finally, the alien's human killing monster is lose and ready and waiting to kill! Jadan has the help of his father by him carry a backpack that has cameras that lets him see and hear what Jadan may or may not see at first. He has breather devices that let's him breath on air for a short period of time. Finally, he has Will's two-sided blade weapon that can change to many different forms.
Now, some people may think this is an action movie, but there isn't that much action in this one. This movie shouldn't be in that action category at all, and it should only put in the Sci-Fi section. The action is down to the bare minimum. It is mostly about Jadan talking about himself to his father, and how scared he is doing this task. But through this, they also learn much about each other and how they both react in the same situation different. Remember, the father has NO FEAR, but his son is totally afraid. In a way, it's like a father trying to teach his son how to do his job. Of course, the son doesn't get it at first and takes time for him to learn the job. I see what they did in the movie and great writing.
Everything is done in CGI. All the monsters and locations are supposed to be sci-fi, so it's understandable that it would be like that. It's not the best CGI I seen, but it would do for this movie.
After watching this movie, I thought it's not that good. I wouldn't even say it's average. It started out great by the story they built up (forgetting about guns part), but they couldn't keep on going and deliver with the rest of the movie. It needed to be longer. They needed more background story. The plot needed to be bigger and better. They needed more characters! This movie could had been 4 or 5 stars, but it was the bare minimum to a even better movie that it could had been.
I do NOT recommend this movie.
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