After Earth is M. Night Shyamalan’s next film. It’s a science fiction story about a boy and his father navigating an abandoned planet after their space ship crashes. I accidentally wrote ‘space chip’ above before, and it made me think that maybe the twist in After Earth will be that they’re actually inside a can of Pringles!!! IT COULD HAPPEN. I believe the film is mostly about the son, as he is estranged from his father, and the two of them have to learn how to get along to survive in this new wilderness. Not sure though. Will Smith and his son Jaden are the stars.

As this is a Shyamalan film, plot details are scarce, but you can be sure it’ll look really nice, and fill you with hope that it’ll be great, then suck butt.

After Earth

After Earth is, as I said already, M. Night Shyamalan’s next film as director. I’m fairly certain the concept is from Shyamalan, but he apparently did not write this one. I’ve felt for years that his biggest weakness is his writing, and while it’s by no means horrendous (it’s actually more the plot than the writing itself, he scripts films rather well), it might be a huge step up to have the input of other writers to help make the film better. To that end, Stephen Gaghan and Gray Whitta wrote the screenplay for After Earth.

The movie most certainly has potential, but … who’s falling for the M. Night Shyamalan factor? How many times are we going to say ‘That movie looks really good’ then we proceed to punch ourselfves in the balls, wondering why we paid for one of his movies again? Nobody really knows why M. Night Shyamalan still gets to make movies, especially ones that we know could be great. Why would they let M Night touch After Earth? He destroyed The Happening,  The Last Airbender, and  Devil was a huge flop, why risk letting him ruin another franchise?

We wouldn’t.

After Earth Trailer

After Earth Release Date

June 7, 2013.

Pictures

Who’s In It?

Will Smith
Isabelle Fuhrman
Jaden Smith
Zoë Kravitz … (rumored)
Sophie Okonedo … (rumored)
David Denman
Kristofer Hivju

What’s Good About It?

If Will Smith is involved, you can be sure you’ll get an entertaining performance, and the combination of Smith with one-time golden boy Shyamalan could make for a really great film. Shyalaman always gets great performances out of his actors, and I feel like the money that must be invested in this film will necessitate a decent story. The studios aren’t going to just hand Shayamalan money these days. Once upon a time he had the chance to just make what he wants, but he’s been screwing the pooch lately. I suspect the story is actually really good to get Smith involved and get the budget for a science fiction film released in June.

What’s Bad About It?

It’s M. Night Shyamalan. No matter how good it looks, it’ll probably suck. Unless THAT’S the twist! Maybe we’ll all suspect a turd, and it won’t turd out quite so bad, and we’ll be shocked!

Our Clever Prediction

I suspect After Earth is going to be pretty good and make a lot of money. Shyamalan needs a big hit so he can go back to making the films he wants and letting us down. Having Will Smith and his real life son play father and son on screen should be cool, as they already did it in The Pursuit of Happyness, so I have high hopes for at least a reasonably good film in After Earth. Fingers crossed.