After Earth
Before starting, let a few things be known:
In China, there's usually only 1-2 western movies a month, the rest are Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean and Japanese. Because of the limitation, the fact the movie theatres are beautiful and cost absolute peanuts to go to, I basically take whatever I can get.
In the case of After Earth, I'd never heard of it, I just saw the poster and thought may as well.
I also didn't know this was a Shyamalan film until the credits rolled.
Now, getting it out of the way, the film is pretty much your average throwaway junk. Some of the dialogue was appalling, the cliche immense, the predictability a guarantee, and aspects of the acting that were on the verge of making me want to leave.
In-fact, I almost bailed after the first 20 minutes. The opening narration was dire (Jaden Smith does not possess oratory, or really any other abilities), and the back story just your average Earth got attacked by Aliens so we can't live there no more guff.
However, by the end of the movie, I felt I'd been entertained. I felt as though I had been entertained enough to warrant the £3.50 the ticket cost, and that it could have been worse, all in all. When I saw Shyamalan's name, I was a bit surprised. I don't hate Shyamalan like so many other people do, I think he has some good directorial qualities and I enjoyed Unbreakable, Signs and The Village. But this is REALLY generic Hollywood for him. I mean hate the guy if you want, but he's not normally one to go with such base material.
Jaden Smith, and Will Smith to an extent (who really seemed to be struggling to make the trite dialogue and sentimentality work at points) had moments of absolute appallingness, and weirdly moments where they gave a strong performance. Jaden, I think, in the scene where he got real pissed at his Pa, surprised me a little. Problem is that's about halfway through the movie.
Also, the CG is cocking terrible! It looks like Jumanji. Thankfully there's not enough of it to be intrusive.
So what the hell am I on about? Well, the main crux of the movie is the kid needing to run a mission that's do or die through the most inhospitable everything-will-kill-you environment known to man. When that kicks off, it becomes, well, entertaining. I found myself suddenly impressed by the ever present sense of extreme danger. Despite ridiculous holes and implausibilities, the directorial aspect gave it enough tension to make the scenes work, and the camera work and environments were quite intriguing.
There's way too much sentimental baloney and all that saluting nonsense, but in the end, yeah, it qualified as a decent enough throwaway popcorn movie. Not as good as Oblivion, although not a whole lot worse either. IT WAS MUCH BETTER THAN MAN OF STEEL.
Then I checked Rotten Tomatoes and... 11%?
Eleven percent?
Really?
Ok, so Man of Steel is on a much deserved 56%, pretty much on the money for me, but... 11%? No. It's not. This is why I get totally fucked off with the world in general, because nobody seems to have a cocking clue about anything. Yes, it was just a shitty movie, yes, as mentioned, it's really take it or leave it, and there's so much trite nonsense you need to be vegetating to allow a lot of it to pass (as I was), but it has enough directorial skill and an engaging enough central survival premise (with a minimal cast of just two, which is preferable to a large cast of paper thin idiots) to make it an entertaining couple of hours. No more, no less.
So yeah, I just don't understand how these critics have jobs, frankly.
tl:dr It was better than Man of Steel.
| My games - 
As much as I hate to say it.
Maybe I should rewatch First Blood
