December 11, 2012 by Paul Curtin
Sci-fi movies with Will Smith are usually a hit, so naturally the chance to have double the Smiths seems like a win-win situation for Hollywood. In the upcoming post-doomsday flick, Will Smith gets to welcome yet another character to Earth, but this time Smith and son are the ones who have crash-landed, and it’s the current inhabitants of Earth who will be defending their home against the father-and-son duo.
After watching the trailer and reading the premise, it seems like After Earth has all the makings of a hit. There’s just one problem… Shyamalan. The struggling director seems to find a way to keep landing directing roles despite not having a real hit since 2000’s Unbreakable, which After Earth‘s posters comically point out, hoping that everyone will just forget the past ten years of terrible movies from the director who loves his twists yet hasn’t had a good one in over a decade.
Although sounding familiar to the lame twist in 2008’s The Happening, there’s still hope for After Earth considering Shyamalan didn’t write the screenplay, and the trailer actually looks pretty good. After Earth is set for release on June 7, 2013, unless the world as we know it actually does end this December as the Mayans predicted… WHAT A TWIST!
In After Earth, one thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape from Earth, Nova Prime has become mankind’s new home. Legendary General Cypher Raige (played by Will Smith) returns from an extended tour of duty to his estranged family, ready to be a father to his 13-year-old son, Kitai (played by Jaden Smith). When an asteroid storm damages Cypher and Kitai’s craft, they crash-land on a now unfamiliar and dangerous Earth. As his father lies dying in the cockpit, Kitai must trek across the hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon. His whole life, Kitai has wanted nothing more than to be a soldier like his father. Today, he gets his chance.
