Both of Cypher's legs are broken, and the main emergency rescue beacon damaged. Kitai's mother Faia convinces Cypher to take Kitai on his last voyage before retirement.ĭuring their flight, however, an asteroid shower forces their spaceship to crash-land on the now-quarantined Earth, near erstwhile CentralAmerica. Kitai trains to become a Ranger like Cypher, but his application is rejected due to his recklessness, and Cypher views him as a disappointment. Meanwhile, Cypher's son Kitai Raige blames himself for the death of his sister Senshi at the hands of an Ursa.
The Rangers struggle against the Ursas until Cypher learns how to completely suppress his fear, a technique called "ghosting." After teaching this technique to the other Rangers, he leads the Ranger Corps to victory. Their secret weapons are the Ursas, large predatory creatures that hunt by "sensing" fear. One thousand years later, the Ranger Corps, a peacekeeping organization commanded by General Cypher Raige, comes into conflict with the S'krell, alien creatures who intend to conquer Nova Prime. A pretty waste of time.In the 21st century, an environmental cataclysm forces the human race to abandon Earth and to settle on a new world, Nova Prime. Will and Jaden could have sorted this out more efficiently by uniting in a few verses of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle. Imagine a denouement that hangs around the changing of a light bulb in the downstairs lavatory and you’ll get some sense of how thrillingly After Earth ends.
Such problems would be easy to ignore if the dialogue was less leaden and the story less flaccid. Why on earth is the poor boy equipped with a spear, rather than, say, one of these nifty ray-gun things? Why does everybody enunciate like Frasier Crane in the next millennium? There are some jolting hiccups in the film’s futurology. Dad must shake off his proud fearlessness while son must gain a degree of confidence. While father sits wounded in the remains of the vessel, the boy is forced to venture forth and do something or other before something else happens. What you need to know is that Kitai and his dad (Smith Sr, of course) have crash-landed on a hostile version of our planet. In an outbreak of drab exposition that recalls the opening scenes of Oblivion, we kick off with the young man explaining various future truths about the death of the earth. Jaden Smith, the great man’s actual son, plays a cadet named Kitai. Unfortunately, After Earth is dragged down by, yes, Will Smith’s apparent desire to share his boring concerns about parenthood with a blameless audience.
The computer-generated creatures, though conspicuously computer-generated, swell and flow with impressive menace. Once again, he brings icy panache to this strange, intimate space opera. You have (not for the first time) to feel a bit sorry for director M Night Shyamalan. A recent poll I’ve just made up proves that some 40 per cent of mainstream American movies concern the renegotiation of bonds between gruff middle-aged men and their troubled offspring. H HLord save us from Hollywood’s obsession with fathers and their sons.