Critics: “After Earth” Worst Movie Ever Made

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I’m a huge science fiction fan, and the more adventure the more fun, you know like when earth is all messed up because of what we did and now it’s the future and there are monsters and stuff…you know! That kind of sci-fi!

As to Will Smith, well, he’s done a few really good sci-fi, adventure type movies, but not lately.  Not lately at all according to critics.

If you are one of the last remaining M. Night Shyamalan fans we have some bad news, because After Earth appears to be a train wreck of epic proportions. But if you just love reading snarky movie reviews, then the news is good indeed. Here’s what people are saying:

  • “Is After Earth the worst movie ever made?” asks Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. Heck, “it doesn’t seem like a movie at all, but a sermon.” Will Smith’s character endlessly pontificates at his son, uttering his “almost literally unspeakable dialogue” very …. very …. slowly … for … some … reason. “I’ve never seen a movie that moves so slowly, or takes itself so seriously.”
  • By the end “you’re actively cheering for a teenage kid to get eaten by a tiger,” writes Laremy Legel at Film.com. “I didn’t plan to feel this way … but you did this to me, After Earth,” by making your characters so horrifically unlikeable—one’s a jerk, the other’s a “nincompoop.” The story, meanwhile, “stupefies us with nonsense, such little thought and logic went into this idea that it can’t even be considered a rough draft.”
  • Lou Lumenick at the New York Post gives it one star, and it’s only getting that much “because Smith’s longtime enablers at Sony apparently encouraged him to whittle this humorless sci-fi epic down from a much longer movie.” Even now, the movie is likely to put you to sleep. After this (and his last decade of duds), “director M. Night Shyamalan would be lucky to get a gig directing traffic.”
  • But Dana Stevens at Slate cuts the film a tiny amount of slack. “Once you accept the elemental simplicity of After Earth’s plot … you can stop resenting the movie for all the things it’s not (a rollicking summer actioner, a typical Shyamalan twist-based narrative),” she writes. And “there’s a compelling creepiness to this quasi-mythical quest tale.” But Jaden Smith simply isn’t ready to “carry an entire action movie on his slender shoulders.”

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Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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10 years ago

So Travolta’s ‘Battlefield Earth’ finally has competition!

About bloody time 😉

RickRay
10 years ago

Maybe Will Smith’s brain is being TOTALLY taken over by Scientology. I hope L. Ron Hubbard isn’t tuning in from atop his lofty, imaginary volcano. Even he’d be disappointed.

Reply to  RickRay
10 years ago

I forgot that he was that gullible. So sad, anther reasonable person taken in by the evil source.

10 years ago

Oddly enough, the worst sci-fi movie I have seen was “Nightfall” which was based upon what has been hailed as the best sci-fi short story ever written. It starred David Birney and a bunch of people I never heard of – before or since.

It was so bad, I nearly walked out, but being based upon the Asimov classic, I kept thinking it HAS to get better. It didn’t.

Waterworld was pretty bad, but at least it was watchable, and Total Recall was trash even if it was based upon a Phillip K. Dick story.

Jess
10 years ago

Don’t know about worst movie ever made, that title goes to Gigli. Worst sci fi movie made, hmmm my thinking is the horror that was Lost in Space with Matt LeBlanc from Friends, Waterworld or that horrible thing with John Travolta about the space people with bumps on their heads.

10 years ago

If you like distopian sci-fi, you mg be a Phillip K. Dick Fan. I have a lot of his stuff and a good art of it is post apocalypse-themed.

I could email you a couple of samples if haven’t read them.

You are right about Will Smith. Lately he seems to be more interested in promoting his son’s career at the expense of his own. Maybe after you have that much money, why not?

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