It really has been a spectacular downwards spiral unlike anything I've ever seen. It's hard to believe that every single movie this man makes is consistently worse than the one that proceeded it. But as bad as every Shyamalan film that comes out is, what is really scary is that pattern will maintain itself, and the next one he makes will undoubtedly be worse, even if what you just saw happened to be one of the worst films you've ever seen in your life. It's terrifying while being sadly amusing.
But like all things good or bad, eventually everything must come to an end. With "After Earth," Shyamalan has broken that streak of his. For the first time since he become a household name, M. Night Shyamalan has made a film that is not worse than the one before it. He has managed to tread water as opposed to sinking further down into the abyss.
Of course that empty praise means even less when you take into consideration the fact that the bar for his improvement was "The Last Airbender."
"After Earth" is set 1000 years in the future, when humanity has taken to the stars to escape Earth after it becomes uninhabitable. They are in constant struggle against the Ursa, a dangerous alien race which while completely blind hunts by sensing pheromones, literally smelling people's fear. How the Ursa can operate space ships and whatnot when blind is a bit beyond me. It also makes me curious as to how the smell of adrenaline emanating from physical activity like running is evidently different from the smell of adrenaline emanating from fear, but if I start nitpicking the dumb stuff like that in a Shyamalan movie I'm going to be here all day.
That suit looks like one of those crappy "drawn on texture" pajamas you get so your kid can be Spiderman. I've seriously seen amateur cosplayers with FAR more convincing outfits at anime conventions. OFTEN.
A group of soldiers called Rangers, led by a legendary soldier named Cypher Raige (Will Smith) are able to combat the Ursa by having no fear, and thus being essentially invisible to them. His son Kitai (Jaden Smith) wants to join, but while he shows great potential in the academy he hasn't been selected yet, mostly because the movie needs him not to be. Cypher takes Kitai on a mission with him to get him some experience, but for reasons that are still confusing to me, the ship goes off course. They end up crashing on Earth, and Cypher and Kitai are the only two survivors. With Cypher badly injured, it's left to Kitai to go out into the absurdly dangerous wilderness to find the rest of the ship and retrieve a beacon to signal for their rescue.
Most of "After Earth" is following Kitai around as he walks through the ridiculous landscapes full of things that want to kill him. Cypher spends most of the movie sitting in a chair bleeding out, while coaching Kitai through the video feed integrated into his suit. Of course eventually Kitai looses contact with Cypher and must complete the journey on his own, but that's to be expected with this kind of story.
And that phrase, "This kind of story" is exactly what one of the biggest problems with "After Earth" is. This is such a standard, old-hat tale of a young person proving themselves to themselves, their father, and the world that it really doesn't have much of an identity beyond that. It's a very well-trodden path that "After Earth" takes, and while that doesn't make it a bad film, it's certainly not doing it any favors in the "Audience Giving a Crap" department because there isn't a single moment in this movie that you don't feel psychic due to knowing every single thing that's going to happen at every turn.
Although the trip to Mount Doom was admittedly a nice touch.
On top of that, "After Earth" also partakes in some truly hamfisted foreshadowing that is so clumsy and trite that it almost approaches levels of satire. So even though you know exactly what's going to happen anyway, due to the fact that the story is cliched, the movie obviously spells out what's going to happen with awkward prognostication, just in case you were too stupid to call it outright. That was nice of them.
You know, I wouldn't even be that upset about the whole thing if there were some decent performances to watch during the film. But as it is, due to either really bad acting on the two leads part (likely) or Shyamalan's really bad writing and direction (somewhat more likely), this is just an obnoxious film to have to sit through. Will Smith can be alright as an actor, but he'll never be better than "acceptable," and that's when he's playing to his strengths. But his strength is his charm and likability, which is completely neutered here as he is forced to play a humorless, emotionless hardass who may just as well be a frowny face sitting in a chair, bleeding from the leg. And that's not how you want to see Will Smith dealing with aliens.
"After Earth" needed way more things being punched in the face.
And that's the case for the better actor of the two Smiths in this film. As hard as Will may try to ram his son down the throats of the world to grace us with the presence of what he wants you to accept as the "Next Big Thing," Jaden Smith will never be anything more than a C- actor. At absolute best. I am convinced of that. And keep in mind, he has yet to reach that coveted peak of "slightly below average." In this film he's slumming at a solid D. And he only got that high of a grade because at one point he managed to shed a single tear, although for all I know that tear was CGI. It's very likely. Who knows? Maybe with some work he can be as good of an actor as Taylor Lautner. Keep reaching for the stars, kiddo.
This isn't like Tom Cruise, who had this undeniable charm and charisma even when he was a crap actor in the 80's. No, that's not the case at all. Jaden Smith is as wooden as the woodiest sections of the woods he runs through in "After Earth." And there's a lot of very woodsy woods in this film. True, he's spouting off laughably bad Shyamalan dialogue, but he does it with the passion, energy, and believability of a dumb high school jock giving a science presentation on a subject he slept through.
And he does it while sounding like mini-Morgan Freeman. It's weird.
But again, they are at the mercies of M. Night Shyamalan, whose grody fingerprints are all over this movie. His usual jarring, poorly written and confusing exposition is present, as is the bizarre inflection and pacing his actors are forced to convey while reciting his dialogue. Will Smith has a monologue at one point that was so loaded with absurd pauses that I actually started counting the seconds between bits of his fragmented sentences. He averaged about 3.5 seconds. And that's not just for periods. He paused that long where commas and quotation marks would have been. It took what might have been a decent little story, had it been told with energy and passion, and made it irritating beyond belief to have to listen to, particularly when it's being told with the zeal of someone reading an instruction manual from IKEA. And I don't blame Will Smith for that. That's on the director.
There's also the typical bizarro camera angles which I can only call "Shyamalanian," for lack of a better term. It's hard to describe, but whenever he frames an actor looking at another person in front of them, he does this strange thing where he'll get up in the actor's face, dead center in the middle of the frame, just a bit too close to be comfortable. Then he'll have them almost look straight at the camera, but just off to the side ever so slightly. It's really unsettling and it gives the impression that the actor is getting in your face and staring at your ear. It's weird, distracting, and he does it in all of his films.
And that's just the technical stuff, not including the usual Shyamalan pseudo-spiritual aspect of the story that doesn't even make any sense if you try to apply it to the world it inhabits, let alone to reality in general. That's something I could rant about, but it's not really worth it because like many of his films, "After Earth" is just a Shyamalan morality play. Only this time it's more boring than usual because it's not epically bad. I'm not sure which is worse. It's a bit sad to not be able to laugh uproariously at the stupidity that we're supposed to swallow. I kind of miss Wahlberg negotiating with a plastic plant.
At least the plastic plant looked real.
But then again, "The Happening" didn't have a giant bird sacrificing itself to save Jaden Smith for no good goddamn reason. That might be up there with the best of the "WTF Shyamalan?" moments.
To answer your question: Yes, he DOES yack this much in "After Earth." And it IS annoying!
THE BOTTOM LINE - "After Earth" comes across more like a straight-to-DVD movie with a hundred million dollars behind it. It's predictable, a bit slow, clunky in story, doesn't make much sense, and the acting is pretty abysmal. It is pretty on occasion, but whatever. A lot of stuff is pretty. It's a step up from the usual crap we're used to with Shyamalan, but that's not saying much. That's like being surprised that a terrible driver didn't hit EVERY cone on their driving test.
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