After Earth (2013) on Netflix
PG-1320131h 40mActionAdventureSci-Fi
A thousand years after humanity abandoned Earth, Cypher Raige and his son Kitai crash-land there. Injured, Cypher guides Kitai alone toward the ship's lost tail section and its backup beacon.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb4.8/10217,913 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes12%
Trailer
Plot summary
A thousand years after an environmental cataclysm drove humanity from Earth, people live on the colony world Nova Prime, where the Ranger Corps under General Cypher Raige fights the alien S'krell and their Ursas, predators that hunt by sensing fear. Kitai, Cypher's son, trains to become a Ranger but is rejected; his sister Senshi died in an Ursa attack, and he blames himself. His mother Faia persuades Cypher to take Kitai along on his final mission. An asteroid storm wrecks their craft and they crash on the abandoned Earth. Cypher breaks both legs and the main beacon is damaged, so he sends Kitai across the planet to the ship's lost tail section for the backup beacon, guiding him by wrist communicator.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about After Earth (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Will Smith got the idea for After Earth while watching the TV show I Shouldn't Be Alive with his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett; the story originally had nothing to do with space, just a father and son surviving a car crash in the wilderness.
- Will Smith had pitched After Earth as the start of a franchise called 1000 AE, with plans for a sequel, TV series, video game, NASA educational tie-in, and even cologne and perfume lines, but all of it was scrapped once the film flopped.
- After Earth was the first Sony film shot and shown entirely in 4K, using the CineAlta F65 camera, except for one skydiving sequence that needed a smaller Canon Cinema EOS C500 4K camera mounted on a professional skydiver's helmet.
- Taking the lead role himself cost Will Smith another project: he stepped back from producing and starring in a planned Hurricane Katrina drama, The American Can, and handed the lead role to Denzel Washington instead.
- Will Smith recruited M. Night Shyamalan to direct by phoning him to wish him a happy 40th birthday and pitching the project during the call.
- Unlike his previous films, M. Night Shyamalan's name was deliberately kept out of the marketing; Sony instead built the campaign entirely around Will and Jaden Smith as a father-son adventure story.
- After the film's underwhelming box office, Will Smith joked about it on Jimmy Kimmel Live, quipping that it had been over two decades since he'd had a movie that wasn't number one and that "three is the new one."
- Some critics were struck by parallels between the film's plot, dialogue and imagery and the Scientology teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, particularly those in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and Dianetics: The Original Thesis.
