After Earth (Will and Jaden Smith)

don ramo

after a son and father crash land on a planet, the son must go find help for his father,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIt20emgLY

looks like it could be a good film, and it will be interesting seeing as Tom Cruises post apocalyptic Oblivion is gonna be out 2 or 3 months earlier,

looks like it will have some great visuals, and a few mice twists along the way,

though i suspect that it might get lost in the Star Trek 2, Hangover 3, Fast and Furious 6, Man of Steel and World War Z hype, but i suppose the same could be said for any of those films, 6 tent pole productions in 5 weeks, should be interesting,

johnny_ultimate

don ramo wrote: »

should be interesting,

Apologies for cruelly bursting your bubble but...

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

don ramo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Apologies for cruelly bursting your bubble but...

well i am kind of hoping hes not gonna go with his usual stupid twist that you can see coming a mile away, and just make a good film, not every film requires a stupid twist at the end,

dark crystal

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Apologies for cruelly bursting your bubble but...

Actually, Shyamalan has made some very good films, imo. True, his last few efforts were pretty risible, but that doesn't mean he can't return to form.

I was actually looking forward to this, having read a few excerpts here and there about the premise, but watching that trailer, it just comes off as a generic, big budget, sci-fi actioner similar to Avatar. I was actually hoping for a smaller scale, more character driven story than what appears on the trailer.

Still, I guess CGI action sells better.

johnny_ultimate

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Apologies for cruelly bursting your bubble but...

I'm quietly optimistic given that Stephen Gaghan wrote it and supposedly there was very little tinkering done by Shyamalan. Shyamalan like Guy Ritchie and the Anderson who isn't P.T. Is a decent director but can't write worth a damn and it will be interesting to see how he fares when adapting another's work.

The synopsis to me seems like a remake/update of the rather excellent Enemy Mine.

Skerries

don ramo wrote: »

looks like it will have some great visuals, and a few mice twists along the way,

looks like the op gave the twist away already

MitchKoobski

Twist will probably end up being that this took place millions of years ago, and that the planet adapting to kill humans is just the Prehistoric era or something along those lines.

don ramo

Skerries wrote: »

looks like the op gave the twist away already

:D:D

MitchKoobski wrote: »

Twist will probably end up being that this took place millions of years ago, and that the planet adapting to kill humans is just the Prehistoric era or something along those lines.

way to obvious, is Shyamalan still into his twists, i havent seen any of his films since the village, which i didnt really like, if they planned a twist surely they could come up with something better than that,

pixelburp

Well I suppose the similarities between this and Oblivion are obvious, even if they're only skin-deep. I must admit though I completely zoned out during Smith's rambling monologue during the trailer, I hope the script isn't that sanctimonious throughout.

As for the question of Shyamalan himself, well what's truly remarkable is that the man is still given a fairly big production to direct: The 6th Sense & Unbreakable (which btw, was his best work by far & arguably one of the best 'comic' movies made) were a long time ago and when you look at the sheer drekk in his recent catalogue, it's hard to see how Will Smith would jump on board. I presume the fact it's not Shyamalans own script might have helped, but even so...

Sarxos

New poster and trailer for the film. I've been burned many times by Shyamalan before so I'm still not overly convinced about this one.

don ramo

Sarxos wrote: »

New poster and trailer for the film. I've been burned many times by Shyamalan before so I'm still not overly convinced about this one.

at least with it saying "1000 year ago we left for a reason" we can rule out will smith starting the human race, so that's something, it looks pretty good though,

PerrinV2

I am Legend except the kid replaces the dog and the animals replace the zombies?

sbsquarepants

Is it just me or does that CGI look really fake?
I think with CGI in general it's often better to stick to fantasy land, when you're try to make something "real" ie something that's quite recognisable it just doesn't look quite right. I'll still give it a watch though. Despite his detractors, i actually find will smith very watchable in almost everything.

ScumLord

don ramo wrote: »

though i suspect that it might get lost in the Star Trek 2, Hangover 3, Fast and Furious 6, Man of Steel and World War Z hype,

I don't know what there is to get lost in, people aren't actually going to get fooled into watching another hangover movie are they? I can never understand how anyone could sit through a fast and furious and WWZ looks like it's going to be sacrilege.

It seems like it could be very Jaden Smith heavy, with Will playing a supporting role. Will is pretty much always guaranteed to be a decent actor, but not sure about Jaden just yet.

PirateShampoo

First impressions, it looks kinda ****.

Goldstein

Comedies aside Smith has an abysmal track record when it comes to science fiction. Looks little more than multi generational ego stroking in a beige-fi container.

Giruilla

They did a good job keeping the scientology aspect of it and who directed it quiet!

doubledown

I saw it today. It's pretty awful. Jayden hogs most of the screen time and has none of the charisma, charm or presence of his father. The story is dull and the CGI beasts are unconvincing.

Avoid.

Josey Wales

Goldstein wrote: »

Comedies aside Smith has an abysmal track record when it comes to science fiction. Looks little more than multi generational ego stroking in a beige-fi container.

Really? Are you talking box office or critical reception?

Independence Day - $817
MiB - $589
MiB 2 - $441M
MiB 3 - $624M
I, Robot - $347M
I Am Legend - $585M
Hancock - $624M

Those are pretty impressive figures and some of the are very entertaining movies too. I'd call that an impressive track record.

Corholio

Josey Wales wrote: »

Really? Are you talking box office or critical reception?

Independence Day - $817
MiB - $589
MiB 2 - $441M
MiB 3 - $624M
I, Robot - $347M
I Am Legend - $585M
Hancock - $624M

Those are pretty impressive figures and some of the are very entertaining movies too. I'd call that an impressive track record.

Out of those, I only really enjoyed Men in Black. Independence Day was good for what it was, but it's tough watching the second time around. Hancock had a cool premise, but completely failed to pull it off. The 'I' films were pretty poor, especially I Am Legend and it's truly, truly awful CGI.

doubledown

INT. THE SMITH FAMILY’S PALATIAL HOLLYWOOD MANSION.


WILL SMITH sits alone at the breakfast table. He is eating a healthy, balanced meal and reading Variety. His son, JADEN SMITH, enters.

JADEN
Hey, dad.

WILL
Hey, son.

JADEN
Dad, I want to make a movie with you.

WILL
But we already made one, son. Why do want to be making another movie with your old man?

WILL laughs, heartily.

JADEN
Yeah, I know. But this time, I want to make a fun, adventure movie! Something really, really cool that all my friends in school will be jealous of!

WILL
Hmmm. Well, how about a science fiction movie? My friend Tom gave me some great books recently and I think I might have an idea...

JADEN
That sounds so COOL, dad.

WILL
Okay. How about a story where the earth has been evacuated due to man’s environmental recklessness? We could illustrate this by showing the montage from the end of On Deadly Ground at the very start of the movie. All of humanity has since relocated to a new planet, where life is perfect, except for the odd attack by unconvincing CGI beasts. And I could play a humorless, po-faced Space Ranger who doesn’t feel fear and kills these CGI beasts with a double-ended blade.

JADEN
Wow! Yeah, dad! And I could play his humorless, po-faced son, who is desperately seeking his father’s approval and wants to be an emotionless Space Ranger too!

WILL
And what if my character realizes that he hasn’t spent enough time with his family and decides to retire? But before doing so, he agrees to go on ONE FINAL MISSION, and for no reason whatsoever takes his son along with him.

JADEN
And then our ship could be damaged in, like, an asteroid storm or something, and could then conveniently crash-land on planet earth, which is now only inhabited by an assortment of unconvincing CGI beasts!

WILL
Great idea son! And maybe we could have been carrying a highly dangerous CGI beast on board our ship too and we don’t know if it has escaped or not!

JADEN
And we could amazingly be the sole survivors of the crash! But you have broken both your legs in the impact so I have to set off alone on a dangerous quest to retrieve the distress beacon which has been deposited about 100 kilometers away and is our only hope of being rescued!

WILL
Great idea, son. And I could use the technology available to track and guide you on your journey and warn you of any incoming unconvincing CGI beasts.

JADEN
Yeah! And I could wear a really cool suit and fight off the unconvincing CGI beasts with a double-ended blade in an effort to become just like my dad! And I’d take up most of the screen time even though I have none of the charm, presence or charisma of my father.

WILL
That sounds great, son. Maybe I could get that guy, M. Night Shamalamadingdong to direct. He made the hit movies The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs and he has a great track record when it comes to working with child actors.

JADEN
But didn’t he also make Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender?

WILL
Let’s focus on the positives, son.

JADEN
Okay, dad.

WILL
And once the film is made, we can do the talk show circuit together and show everyone how cool we are and what a great father-son team we make. So then when we tell people how great our movie is and they should see it - they’ll believe us!

JADEN
But...dad...what if the movie is no good and it bombs at the box office?

WILL
That’s doesn’t matter son...we get paid anyway!


They high five each other.


JADEN
I love you, dad.

WILL
I love you too, son.


THE END

Technocentral

Hollywood really needs to reset and start from scratch and start making films that connect with people again, how much more of this 100,000,000+ budget crap can they pump out?

Technocentral

Goldstein wrote: »

Comedies aside Smith has an abysmal track record when it comes to science fiction. Looks little more than multi generational ego stroking in a beige-fi container.

If there is anything worse than Smith in a film (very little is) its Smith n' Son.

Josey Wales

Technocentral wrote: »

Hollywood really needs to reset and start from scratch and start making films that connect with people again, how much more of this 100,000,000+ budget crap can they pump out?

It's not the budget that's the problem it's the scripts that get the green light. Is happily watch another $100m plus movie if it had a good script. Someone like Christopher Nolan is making interesting movies on massive budgets.

Technocentral

Josey Wales wrote: »

It's not the budget that's the problem it's the scripts that get the green light. Is happily watch another $100m plus movie if it had a good script. Someone like Christopher Nolan is making interesting movies on massive budgets.

Its part of it though, the decision to spend obscene amounts of money on one film means it generally has to be the lowest common denominator (which even Hollywood can't get successfully right anymore it seems!) and take no perceived creative risks because of such giant investments, this strategy though as we see recently is thankfully falling on its face, there is only so much noisy, computer generated crap that flys along at a rate of 1000 miles an hour that people can take, I hated "Inception" but the last Batman one was very enjoyable because he took a bit of time with the characters and there was actually pauses and fairly quite passages with dialogue in it! To sum up, as the great Public Enemy once said: "Burn Hollywood Burn".

Goldstein

Josey Wales wrote: »

Really? Are you talking box office or critical reception?

Independence Day - $817
MiB - $589
MiB 2 - $441M
MiB 3 - $624M
I, Robot - $347M
I Am Legend - $585M
Hancock - $624M

Those are pretty impressive figures and some of the are very entertaining movies too. I'd call that an impressive track record.

I think there's a Jeff Goldblum quote to do with a poorly triceratops that seems custom made to sum up Will Smith's contribution to science fiction.

I, Robot and I Am Legend were abysmal and frankly moronic adaptations of great works. Both of these in particular failed to grasp even the most basic and fundamental ideas of Asimov and Matheson's stories, failing to understand even the title of Matheson's novel and thus the entire point of it.

And yet I, Robot 2 and I Am Legend 2 are on the horizon no doubt destined to pull in the same crowds again. There's a very clear dividing line particularly in sci-fi lately between lowest common denominator dumb spectacle movies and science fiction. Smith has planted himself firmly on the who needs writing?/ca-ching side of that line.

Crooked Jack

Holy Hell this was a huge disappointment.
It reminded me of The Purge a lot, in that it was a great concept hopelessly executed.
It was boring and plodding and this terrific concept of an earth without humans was barely explored.
The Ursas only being able to smell fear was a bit stupid, why would a supposedly intelligent alien race engineer them like that. There was also little or nothing about this alien race.
Will Smith was fine but he has got to stop pushing his kid into big films. Little Jaden is not a good actor and was a major part of what was wrong with the film.
Just a huge let down over all.

Zubeneschamali

Crooked Jack wrote: »

Holy Hell this was a huge disappointment.

Really? Everything I've seen about it said it was crap - it'd be a John Carter sized surprise if it was any use at all.

Crooked Jack

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Really? Everything I've seen about it said it was crap - it'd be a John Carter sized surprise if it was any use at all.

I try to avoid reviews and movie news before I see a film, ever since Empire almost ruined The Dark Knight for me. I'll watch the trailer (although even that's risky these days as trailers now have a worrying habit of basically giving you a condensed version of the whole film) and maybe look up the basic premise.

Galvasean

Tanked at the US box office. First time a Will Smith blockbuster has done so in 20 years. Serves him right for turning down Django Unchained to do a Scientology love letter.

overshoot

anyone noticed these lines in the trailer? noticed it the last time i was in the cinema
(went roughly like this)

"we must get to the beacon or die!"

about 30 seconds later (may be a line inbetween)

"we must abort this mission"

safe to say i wont be going

constitutionus

went to see this yesterday.

shyte.

to be more specific, its fecking boring.

theres really no story to speak of beyond what youve seen in the trailers. ship crashes, kid has to step up when the da is trapped and injured to find the beacon in the tail section thats fell off and is near 100km of hostile teritory away.

nothing actually wrong with having a simple story, but if your going to do that then what your treking through better be damn good looking or at the very least interesting and while theres some nice touches in the main you could be fooled into thinking youve walked into a film called "you can belive a boy can row"

jayden aint a particularly good lead either.

maybe im being too hard on it but ive never been to such a non event in years. people used to moan about stuff like "skyline" and "suckerpunch" but theyre like high art compared to this snoozefest.

its a shame too as the design aesthetic is really quite nice and the potential for what couldve been shown having evolved on earth is clearly there.

but what went up on screen feels like an arthouse film more than a blockbuster. oblivion was its clear rival on the concept stakes and its pisses all over after earth in actually having alot going for it if youve managed to miss every film it ripped off .

smyth did manage to do a good job as an authoritarian father. he doenst really play roles where he's not a naturally nice guy so its good to see him try something new and ya get that he does want to bond with his kid.

but it doesnt save the film from the fact its just dull

strictly DVD fare with a few beers, and even then ya might feel like ya got jipped.

4 out of 10

pretty much only for the effort that went into the look of the tech etc. i think the smartest thing they ever did was release this ahead of man of steel as it wouldve been annhilated opening against it.

Dar93ragh

Atleast we can I have the relief of knowing 'Will Smith' will be alive after the earth. Ah time for a pint.

Banjaxed82

constitutionus wrote: »

strictly DVD fare with a few beers, and even then ya might feel like ya got jipped.

4 out of 10

pretty much only for the effort that went into the look of the tech etc. i think the smartest thing they ever did was release this ahead of man of steel as it wouldve been annhilated opening against it.

Disagree strongly. You wouldn't last 10 minutes watching this film at home. If there were remote controls in cinemas, a democratic vote amongst the audience surely would have agreed to switch over to something else. Boring as piss.

Nervous Wreck

The decision to have all humans have pretty much the same accent would have been less awkward if even one of said actors could actually do said accent.

Psychedelic

I've been following the thread and all the reviews and negative press online, and I am delighted to see this film spectacularly bomb at the box office.

Will Smith is a crap, overrated actor. He can act the cocky twat in all his films, that's it. He wasn't even good in Fresh Prince, nearly all the other characters were more likeable. Have to laugh that he was even considered to play Django. Look at his filmography, all rubbish except for Independence Day which is decent for what it is.

This cynical, vain attempt to put his son in the lead role of a blockbuster with a crap story his bloated ego cooked up deserves to flop massively and I hope the production company (i.e. Will Smith) loses a fúcking fortune on it.

Nervous Wreck

Well that's just mean.

Jason Todd

Psychedelic wrote: »

I've been following the thread and all the reviews and negative press online, and I am delighted to see this film spectacularly bomb at the box office.

Will Smith is a crap, overrated actor. He can act the cocky twat in all his films, that's it. He wasn't even good in Fresh Prince, nearly all the other characters were more likeable. Have to laugh that he was even considered to play Django. Look at his filmography, all rubbish except for Independence Day which is decent for what it is.

This cynical, vain attempt to put his son in the lead role of a blockbuster with a crap story his bloated ego cooked up deserves to flop massively and I hope the production company (i.e. Will Smith) loses a fúcking fortune on it.

Wow. Quit harshin' my buzz man! :)

krudler

Psychedelic wrote: »

I've been following the thread and all the reviews and negative press online, and I am delighted to see this film spectacularly bomb at the box office.

Will Smith is a crap, overrated actor. He can act the cocky twat in all his films, that's it. He wasn't even good in Fresh Prince, nearly all the other characters were more likeable. Have to laugh that he was even considered to play Django. Look at his filmography, all rubbish except for Independence Day which is decent for what it is.

This cynical, vain attempt to put his son in the lead role of a blockbuster with a crap story his bloated ego cooked up deserves to flop massively and I hope the production company (i.e. Will Smith) loses a fúcking fortune on it.

What about Ali? The Pursuit Of Happyness? was excellent in both of those, alright he was playing cocky in Ali but that was the point. He does pick "safe" roles for the most part though.

Zubeneschamali

Psychedelic wrote: »

Look at his filmography, all rubbish except for Independence Day which is decent for what it is.

Ha ha!

Good one.

KTRIC

I watched this in Cineworld last weekend and noticed a sizable amount of people leaving within the first half hour. Don't know why I stuck around after that, the whole movie was a serious let down with a lot of plot holes.

Crooked Jack

I like Will Smith. I just dont like this film. Or his son.

FlashD

I wouldn't go see a Will Smith film, I didn't even like Independance Day.

Attaching M. Night Shyamalan to this makes it twice as bad..... he's on one hell of a losing streak. I can't understand, did he just wake up one day and his talent had disappeared into thin air? Very strange!

Sad! There was a time when I was always looking forward to one of his flicks.

Lucena

krudler wrote: »

What about Ali? The Pursuit Of Happyness? was excellent in both of those, alright he was playing cocky in Ali but that was the point. He does pick "safe" roles for the most part though.

Yeah, maybe he should try and play a non-black character for a change.

Decided to throw this on last week and honestly, it's not quite the disaster I recall. Sure Smith jr is a charisma vacuum, there's not enough story for a 5 minute short, and the entire thing feels like a not so subtle ad for the church of Scientology but at least it's only 87 minutes long. It's refreshing to have a summer Blockbuster that isn't pushing 3 hours and while After Earth does feel like it goes on forever there's a few interesting ideas in play and for once M. Night Shyamalan can't be blamed for many of the films failings, considering that his job on set is reported to have been little more than blocking the scenes and watching as Smith couched his son.