After Earth

Synopsis

1,000 years ago, the extreme environmental degradation of the Earth by humans initially pushed them to the Nova Prime planet . However, on the latter, creatures created genetically, the Ursas, kill human beings …

One day, General Raige, a Ranger, goes on a mission, taking his son Kitai with him. Unfortunately, a rain of asteroids causes the crash of their ship on Earth. All the crew was killed except them. Their ship is separated into two pieces 100 km apart. A distress beacon would allow them to contact other Rangers, but it no longer works. Fortunately, there is a second, but it is in the second part of the device. General Raige, who had his legs broken in the crash, decides to send his son Kitai to look for the other beacon. The latter will explore unknown places filled with wild animals that have taken control of the Earth, but also face the disturbing extraterrestrial creature Ursa who escaped during the crash. They will have to be courageous and learn to collaborate if they want to go home …

Technical sheet

Unless otherwise stated or supplemented, the information mentioned in this section can be confirmed by the IMDb database .

• Original French title: After Earth
• Quebec title: After the Earth
• Director: Mr. Night Shyamalan
• Scenario: Stephen Gaghan and Gary Whitta , from a story by Will Smith
• Artistic Direction: Robert W. Joseph , Naaman Marshall and Dean Wolcott
• Sets: Thomas E. Sanders
• Costumes: Amy Westcott
• Photography: Peter Suschitzky
• Editing: Steven Rosenblum
• Music: James Newton Howard
• Producer: James Lassiter , Caleeb Pinkett  (in) , Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith
• Production Companies: Blinding Edge Pictures , Overbrook Entertainment and Relativity Media
• Distribution Companies: Columbia Pictures (United States), Sony Pictures Releasing France (France)
• Country of origin: United States
• Original language: English
• Format: Color – 35mm – 2.35: 1 – Dolby Digital sound
• Genre: science fiction
• Budget: 130 million to $ ²
• Duration: 100 minutes
• Release dates ³ :
  • Canada , United States : May 31 , 2013
  • France : June 5 , 2013
  • Belgium : June 12 , 2013

Distribution

• Jaden Smith (VF: Abraham Rist, VQ: Vassili Schneider ) : Kitai Raige
• Will Smith (VF: Greg Germain , VQ: Pierre Auger ) : Cypher Raige
• Sophie Okonedo (VF: Mbembo, VQ: Nathalie Coupal ) : Faia Raige (at the beginning of the film, Cypher Raige calls her “Freya”)
• Zoë Kravitz (VF: Joséphine Ropion, VQ: Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse ) : Senshi Raige
• Glenn Morshower (VF: Patrick Bethune ) : Commander Velan
• Kristofer Hivju (VF: Joel Zaffarano ) : the chief of security
• David Denman (VF: Laurent Morteau ) : McQuarrie
• Lincoln Lewis : Bo
• Sacha Dhawan (VF: Julien Lucas ) : the pilot
• Isabelle Fuhrman : an apprentice Ranger
• Jaden Martin: Kitai Raige young

Source and legend : French version (VF) on AlloDoublage ⁴ and RS Dubbing ⁵ ; Quebec version (VQ) on Doublage.qc.ca ⁶

Production

Genesis and development

Will Smith imagines this story after seeing the docufiction I should not be alive with his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett ⁷ . Originally, the actor develops a story in the present in which a father and his son have a car accident in the mountains. The father being wounded, it is the son who must fetch the help alone. Will Smith then decided to set the story 1000 years later, in the future, and think of a trilogy ⁸ . Will Smith and his company Overbrook Entertainmentcontact writer Gary Whitta with the basics of history: a father and son crash on Earth, 1,000 years after it was abandoned by humanity. His first script is titled 1000 AE ⁹ .

A month after the release of The Last Master of the Air , Will Smith contacts Mr. Night Shyamalan to wish him his birthday and to offer him to direct the film ¹⁰ . Later, the director decides to change the title to After Earth while the script is subsequently arranged by Stephen Gaghan ¹¹ .

In parallel, a 300-page textbook retracing 1,000 years of history is written by Peter David , Michael Jan Friedman and Robert Greenberger, to further develop the world of film. This book serves as a basis for all the secondary elements and reveals what has happened to men since their departure from the Earth. Caleeb Pinkett, one of the producers states:”What struck me in this book is not only its degree of precision, but also how strangely premonitory it was. Peter imagined the story of a whole universe, but then events similar to what he wrote began to happen in our world, like the meteorite rain that hit Russia a few days ago. months and looks like an event described by Peter in the book. This proves how his approach is credible and it anchors the universe After Earth in reality, even if it is a science fiction film ” ⁹ .

Role Distribution

Jaden Smith confirms his presence inNovember 2010, before being joined by his father Will Smith inApril 2011⁹ .

Shooting

The film is shot with the Sony F65 digital camera ( 4K , 2D ¹² ). This is the first time that Mr. Night Shyamalan has gone digital ⁹ .

Most scenes of the film are shot in Costa Rica ¹¹ (including La Fortuna , the Arenal Volcano ). The rest of the movie was filmed in the United States ( Spaceport America in New Mexico , in Philadelphia , in the Utah , the Humboldt County , …) and in Switzerland ¹³

Music

The music of the film is composed by James Newton Howard , who has already worked with Shyamalan for Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), The Young Girl of Water (2006) , Phenomena (2008) and The Last Master of the Air (2010).

List of titles ¹⁴

Home

Home Review

The film receives very negative reviews. On the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , it gets only 11% favorable opinions, for 188 critics identified ¹⁵ . His score on Metacritic is slightly better with an average of 33/100 for 41 critics ¹⁶ . Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal writes, ” Is After Earth the worst movie ever made? […] Maybe not; There’s always Battlefield Earth to remind us how low the bar can go.  ” ¹⁷ ( ” After Earth it is the worst movie ever made? […] Not necessarily, because there Battlefield Earthto remind us how far the bar can go down ” ).

In France , opinions are equally divided. On the Allociné website , the film won an average of 2.4 / 5 for thirteen titles ¹⁸ . Some journalists are, however, quite laudatory of the film. Olivia Cooper-Hadjian of the site Critikat.com writes “Shyamalan manages to make us want to follow this path once more” ¹⁸ . In Les Inrockuptibles , Hendy Bicaise thinks that “Shyamalan remains true to himself: the rhythm is slow, dialogue whispered, gestures calm, to better detonate (n) er action scenes” ¹⁸ . Laurent Duroche of Mad Movies appreciates the”Stunning natural landscapes” as well as the “ever-flashy staging, only concerned with telling its story in the most fluid way possible” ¹⁸ .

Some French critics are quite divided. Jérôme Momcilovic of the Chronic’art site writes ” After Earth is neither a big Shyamalan nor a big blockbuster. Do not cherish least, until something better, these little belief seeds planted in the desert increasingly dry film Hollywood shack breaker ” ¹⁸ . In Les Fiches du Cinéma , Gaël Reyre writes that it is simply an “honest family entertainment” ¹⁸ . Vincent Ostria of L’Humanité tries to save a little film which, according to him, “is not the failure that the American critic (who hates Shyamalan) describes,” but he regrets”The moral lesson style” you will be a man my son “[which] seems simple” ¹⁸ . François Forestier of TéléCinéObs writes “Nothing upsetting, but it’s nice” ¹⁸. Julián Monge-Nájera, scientific advisor of the BBC and NatGeo, writes about the scientific content of the film: “This Earth has a pleasant climate during the day, but reaches the freezing point during the night. Is it possible ? Indeed, yes. It happens in many tropical heights … In the film, Kitai uses drugs to survive the low level of oxygen in the atmosphere. And this type of medicine exists, the epigallocatechin-3-gallate, a component of green tea … what seems impossible is that the Ursas were not annihilated by the advanced civilization that we see in After Earth ” ¹⁹. One can also wonder how in 1000 years, the animals and the topography could evolve so quickly whereas such an evolution would be counted in hundreds of thousands of years for the living beings and in millions of years for the geography.

Laurent Pécha de Écran wides is much less shared and says that “the fall of Shyamalan continues. After Earth , it’s anti-spectacular SF, vehicle to the glory of the Smiths. For the B series, it would pass but there is talk of a so-called blockbuster ” ¹⁸ . Jean-Philippe Tessé of Cahiers du cinéma speaks of a “nanar of space” ¹⁸ . In The Fantastic Screen , Jean-Pierre Andrevon thinks that there is not much to save in the film, except “some beautiful scenery and a short moment of emotion when the mother eagle moans in front of her little ones torn by the fauves »¹⁸ . Frédéric Strauss de Télérama finds that the result is simply “as stupid as it is unfriendly” ¹⁸ .

Box office

Derivatives

A comic entitled After Earth: Innocence was published as the novel After Earth: Ghost Stories , returning to the origins of the story ⁹ .

Notes and references