Review of After Earth
Transcript of Review of After Earth
8/11/2019 Review of After Earth
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Review of After Earth
Poor Earth. You’d think it’s already bedevilled by an expanding population, melting icecaps,
a shrinking ozone layer, and a few questionable nuclear programmes — and now Hollywood just won’t let it be. Two apocalyptic thrillers this summer — After Earth (note that damning
preposition; not before, not during, but after) and World War Z — inflict unimaginable
horrors on the planet. And yet, the biggest lesson that these films offer isn’t ecological or
existential but sidereal: cast a big star and you won’t go broke.
After Earth was hit by dreadful reviews that just stopped short of leaping off the page, rollingthemselves up and smacking potential viewers on the head. ( The Wall Street Journal ’s Joe
Morgenstern began with this question: “Is After Earth the worst movie ever made?”) But the
film’s worldwide grosses, while not exactly spectacular, prove that Will Smith is far way
from being written off. Anyone can deliver a hit with a well-acclaimed, well-made movie.But to steer a bomb away from total career-annihilation? That takes a real star.
The bigger revelation, though, is how the tide has turned against the film’s director. After I
watched the movie, I was baffled. Why were the reviews so toxic? Has M Night Shyamalan
Bashing become an accepted sport? The film I saw was nowhere close to great, but it was
nowhere as terrible as the reviews suggested either — and the one thing that stands out is the
direction.
Look at the storyline. A man and his son (Will Smith and Jaden Smith, whom The Guardian ’s Peter Bradshaw lovingly described as playing the role with a face like a smacked bum)
crash-land on a dangerous planet named... Earth. Father is hurt. He cannot move. Son has totrek to the tail of the craft and retrieve the signalling beacon, using his survival skills while
avoiding dangers along the way (giant creatures, breathing trouble, extreme cold, and so
forth). Nothing extraordinary here. A linear story. No surprises. Essentially a glorified video
game. As plots go, all this one needs is a PlayStation.
But Shyamalan makes it a movie. In a sense, he is very much a director-for-hire here, but
After Earth is not as shockingly impersonal as, say, the recent films of Tim Burton have been.(After Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows , hasn’t
the once-great Burton come to resemble a director-for-hire, replacing a genuinely personal
vision with a generic blockbuster template?) This is still the work of the Shyamalan who
became known to us through The Sixth Sense , and went on to make his greatest film,
Unbreakable , before setting out on a path of diminishing returns.
But even his worst films — I haven’t seen The Last Airbender , so I cannot talk about that —
have been characterised by a very distinct (and yes, personal) style, whose signature elements
are a slow, spooky pace, a father figure crippled by stasis, and careful employment of
background music.
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And we are slowly sucked into this ridiculous premise. Anyone can make a movie from a
well-written script. But to steer a potential bomb away from implosion? That takes a real
filmmaker.
How can critics not see that the problem lies not with Shyamalan’s filmmaking skills but with
the material (which he either writes himself, with increasingly painful “twist endings,” or ishanded over)?
And what would he do with something like World War Z , which could use all his signature
tricks? This isn’t a video-game premise, though it certainly sounds like one with its one-line
summary of zombies attacking the good people of... Earth.
And in the Brad Pitt character, we have another father figure in stasis, someone with a certain
power but unwilling (or unable) to use it at present. Had Shyamalan made the film (instead of
Marc Forster), would it have gotten worse reviews? I realise I am harping on the same point,
but I simply cannot get over the reviews for After Earth , which suggest something larger at
work than just the response to a somewhat underwhelming film. Haven’t these critics seenworse films? Haven’t they seen Battlefield Earth ?
Now that I’ve let off steam that’s been building for a while, World War Z is another filmwhose box-office prospects were brightened by its star, who now has a terrific track record of
opening unusual mainstream films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Moneyball and
Inglourious Basterds .
World War Z isn’t a headache-inducing special effects extravaganza, but a thoughtful little
action movie with a mother who instructs her husband to not indulge in shop talk in front of
the kids, and a father torn between saving the world and saving his family.
Yes, there are crowds of zombies who, provoked by noise, churn with the force and the liquidease of tidal waves — but nothing about the way the film has been made screams blockbuster.
Nothing except Pitt. Even when he’s playing a hero on a human scale, he’s able to make a
more impressive statement than the star of a superhero movie.
Anyone can make a hit by saving... Earth. But to attract hordes of ticket-buyers by playing a
version of themselves?
That takes a real star.