Tag: Jaden Smith

A lot of work went into the PR for After Earth. The first trailer was pretty epic on its own right, but quickly got old the third time seeing it in theaters. But one thing you will notice is that outside of the trailers, the director information has been kept a bit secret. M. Night Shyamalan, famous director that people love to hate, has his name in small font on the posters. It is like they don’t even trust the director.

I think the film might be enjoyable as long as the main star doesn’t die in the first 20 minutes leaving only his son to do all the heavy lifting.

I was going to make an inference from this picture, but mmm, volcano. After Earth takes place in…the future! Surprising, I know. Mankind messed up Earth, forcing us to leave and Earth evolved without us. Unfortunately, the new place we moved to had deadly creatures as well. Creatures that were blind, but could smell fear and would go on a killing rampage against humans. Great new planet! Well, Cypher Raige (Will Smith) was the first soldier able to conquer his fear, making himself invisible to the creatures and helping us take back the planet!

Now he is a decorated soldier and lead commander of the armed forces. His son, Kitai (Jaden Smith), can’t even crack the ranger squad. In an attempt to bring them closer together, Cypher brings his son a simple transport mission which unfortunately runs into a freak teleporting asteroid storm, of some sort? The ship crashes down on a strange planet, killing everyone but our father son pair. Cypher has broken both of his legs, and the homing beacon is in the tail half of the plane, 100km across the planet.

Of course, it is Earth they have crash landed on. The wildlife there have evolved to take out human life! Even worse, the ship was transporting one of those blind “smell fear” creatures, who most certainly got loose on the planet and is looking for blood. Yay!

Oh hey, there he is, near the finale of the film. How convenient! Well, the good news is that Will Smith survived the crash. The bad news is, he didn’t really do anything in the film! His character gets to be a stoic commander, devoid of all emotion, which means he doesn’t have to do much in the way of acting. Just a lot of grimaces, and slowly talking to his son over an intercom.

Yes, After Earth is basically Will Smith trying to turn his son Jaden Smith into an action star. Which is fine, but people don’t like being duped into expecting an action movie with Will Smith as an action hero, and instead getting an “action movie” with Will Smith on the side. Speaking of action, I would define this movie’s genre of “Sci-Fi Drama Adventure”, as there wasn’t really much action. A lot of running away from Jaden’s character. So yeah, in addition to the ruse, we have a bit of a boring movie.

This isn’t even taking into account the recent theories that this movie is also a vehicle for Scientology. But I won’t get into that. I don’t care if movies are secretly religious, in fact, I liked Battlefield Earth. I thought it was hilarious.

After Earth turns out to be very predictable, giving nothing new to the genre. For those worried about the director, he really isn’t the problem with this movie, and there are secret twists to worry about. The problem is just the entire concept.

1 out of 4.

Jackie Chan is a beast. Can anyone top this guy? He has been in a billion things, some good, some not so good. Hell, some times he is barely in the movie. But he is always the best part.

But for The Karate Kid remake, where Jackie Chan is trying to replicate the role popularized by the great Pat Morita? Can he do that? In a remake, will he still somehow be the best part of the movie?

Yes. Even while looking like some sort of sailor scout.

So there are notable differences between this movie, and the original karate kid. So I won’t go over them, they should be obvious.

But hey, Jaden Smith is the star, and he lives with his single parents mom, Taraji P. Henson. They are living in the best city ever, Detroit, but they are transferring her job to China. What the heck. So they move!

China sucks for Jaden. When he was trying to impress this chick on the violin, Zhenwei Wang, some other guy gets mad, Wenwen Han, and tells her to get back to playing. Serious business, the violin. So they fight, and Jaden loses soundly. Then he has problems at school, not knowing the language. He wants to fight back, but instead of ignoring the bullies, he actively pisses them off more, by throwing lots of dirty water on the group of kids.

He then gets beat up again. Rightfully so, that time. He had no end game there. Run until what? Thankfully (?) Jackie Chan comes out of no where and saves him. The kids are mad and try to fight him too. So at this moment you are thinking that Chan is about to kick six middle school aged peoples asses in a fight? Pretty much. He doesn’t hit any of them technically, but also, whatever, it looks like he is beating up children.

They try to get the dojo guy to make them stop fighting, and get thrown out. They agree to leave him alone though until a Kung Fu tournament coming up, if Jaden enters. So of course he does, unknowingly, because he doesn’t speak the language. Then training happens. Questionable training involving his jacket, but not actual Kung Fu. Just kidding, somehow it helps. He also sees the Great Wall, a temple, masters of the art, etc. Then a tournament. Shady dealings, and final kick.

Size of picture is intentional. Take it all in folks.

Here’s what bugs me about the movie. Jaden Smith. Son of the William of Smith. I didn’t like him in this movie, I didn’t think it worked. They made the target demographic way too young. This is all involving middle schoolers. These love felt gestures, these crazy tournaments, all of that. It just feels weird when they are so young, not even in high school.

But really that is my biggest problem. A miscasting of the technically main role. I guess they salivated at the mouth at the thought of sequels, so if they do it while he is young, they can make more movies before he looks like he is some 30 year old mugging people with Kung Fu. Oh yeah, Kung Fu? In the Karate Kid? What?

That decision is also questionable. But everything else I loved. The movie could have been shorter, and the mom less annoying. But man, China. Good call. Lots of nice scenes, training was great, tournament was great. The last last scene had a little bit of a surprise to it too. I don’t think what happened is possible, thanks to physics, but hey, I didn’t expect it. I even rewatched the last fight, and slowed it down. Still kind of confuses me.

3 out of 4.