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.

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.

1/5.