After Earth Writer Was Hilariously Wrong In His Prediction For The Wil Smith Movie
M. Night Shyamalan returned to theaters in the summer of 2013 summer the big-screen sci-fi tale After Earth. Although the film looked stunning at first glance, there were still big questions about the film’s actual quality. Will Smith had a great on-screen presence, but the early looks of After Earth showed that it would mainly follow his son, Jaden Smith, instead.
As for Shyamalan, well… he was M. Night Shyamalan. Still, one of the film’s writers threw out out some pretty ballsy comparisons to earlier films.
In an interview with SciFiNow, screenwriter Gary Whitta gave audiences a taste of what After Earth could offer. Whitta compared After Earth to two very iconic movies. Whitta said, “Every single thing on this planet will kill you, so Jaden [Smith] has a pretty interesting journey in this movie just trying to stay alive. If you took Jurassic Park and then dumped King Kong into the middle of it, that’s kind of what you have in this environment.”
The father/son relationship is at the center of After Earth. Although the film is set in the future, long after humanity has abandoned our homeworld, After Earth is really about Cypher Raige (Will Smith) and his son Kitai (Jaden).
Whitta continued about After Earth, “The movie has to work on a human emotional level first, you cannot rely on the trappings of the science fiction premise or the concept gimmick; it has to stand on its own. They had that, and it was only subsequently that Will decided to set it 1,000 years in the future, so the budget went up a little bit, but it remained a story about a father and a son.”
Was Whitta correct in his assessment of After Earth? Well, not even close. For starters, After Earth earned just $60.5 million at the U.S. box office against a $130 million budget. Critics completely panned the film as dull and derivative. It was a plodding mess that ended up as a major setback for M. Night Shyamalan. Even with Will Smith’s star power, After Earth came up so (so, so) far short of expectations.
The plot? Well even that was promising for After Earth. After cataclysmic events, humanity has left Earth behind for another planet called Nova Prime. A thousand years later, a military recruit named Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his father, army General Cypher Raige (Will Smith), crash on Earth after a terrible collision with an asteroid. Abandoned and isolated in uncharted terrain, Kitai and Cypher must work together to survive the new Earth, which is now inhabited by dangerous plant and animal life that has evolved to kill all humans.
Gary Whitta (Book of Eli) and Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) co-wrote the screenplay for After Earth, while M. Night Shyamalan (The Last Airbender, Unbreakable) co-wrote and directed the sci-fi film. Will Smith and his wife and producing partner, Jada Pinkett Smith, served as producers.
Was
