After Earth

Set in the not too distant future, Earth's atmosphere has become too dangerous for humanity to remain on the planet. In a desperate attempt to save the population from extinction, they settle on a distant planet whose atmosphere is similar to Earth's, enabling them to live safely on the planet and hopefully thrive. Unfortunately they are soon face with another threat: a race of violent beasts called Ursa that attacked their settlements. Humanity lived in fear of the Ursa until one man named Cypher Raige was able to rid himself of any and all fear and single handedly kill any Ursa that threatened his people. A few years later, Cypher's son named Kitai tries to follow in his father's footsteps by enrolling in a military academy and becoming a general like his father. Kitai fails in his pursuit of a military career, so to help his son get over the pain of failure Cypher allows Kitai to accompany him on a mission to another planet. En route to their destination the ship gets caught in an asteroid field and is severely damaged as a result, forcing them to take refuge on a quarantined planet. The ship breaks apart during their landing, and all but Cypher and his son die in the crash. Cypher's leg is broken during the crash, so Cypher sends his son on a rescue mission to retrieve a distress beacon in the tail end of the ship over 100 kilometers away.

After Earth has an interesting concept, and I was looking forward to seeing it when I first heard about it. Part of what made me interested is Will Smith is one of my all time favorite actors. Unfortunately, I was ultimately bored with the whole movie. Not even Will Smith could help that fact for me. After Earth has been advertised as a science fiction/action flick, but there wasn't enough action sequences to keep me interested. As far as the acting goes, Will Smith's son Jaden is honestly not that great of an actor. I did like him in his first movie role in The Pursuit of Happyness, but ever since his acting has declined dramatically. Even Will Smith was bad in this one. I've never seen such robotic, almost emotionless acting from him. His character was supposed to be a tough, ready to fight type of character but he came off as just bland and not entertaining. This was one of those movies I had high hopes for but was extremely disappointed in. For me it wasn't even worth waiting to see it at the dollar theater.