After Earth (aka Will Smith/Jaden Smith/M. Night Shyamalan film SET IN THE YEAR 3000 Anticipation Thread)

There really hasn't been a twist in an M Night movie since everybody went off about his movies having twists.

The Fresh Prince of the Forbidden Zone

It's a shame they already revealed the planet is Earth because they totally could have had Jaden find the Statue of Liberty or something

I feel bad that Will & Jada-Pinkett keep farming out their children to work. It's sad they're so bad off financially that they have to hire their children out like an 18th century family of farmhands.

Jaden is the father

― whelping at his sandpapery best (DJP),

That was my very first thought.

My theory is that Will and Jada have paid for some kind of Being John Malkovich body-swap process. They're grooming the kids so that, when the time comes, Will and Jada can "die" in a car accident and the surviving "orphans" can carry on their good work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWv53OJ-ydI

lol you guys, it's really more that Will and Jada are rather determinedly (and successfully!) attempting to create a super-wealthy black Hollywood dynasty

not really that big a mystery

i think my theory ties into your theory just fine

just throw in IMMORTALITY

how do they create the generation after Jaden and Willow

please note that any response that implies Jaden and Willow have to sleep with each other will result in permanent gasface

Unbreakable I enjoyed until the closing text, Signs until the twist.

Totally OTM. I'd argue that first 2/3rds of Signs was the best thing he's ever done. Of couse, I haven't seen a single thing he's done (outside of YouTube compilations of the "best" of The Happening) since I walked out of The Village.

did you end up crossing the interstate

just throw in IMMORTALITY

You're forgetting the $cientology connection. Jaden's been anointed L. Ron's new host body.

Jaden Smith played the most annoying movie kid in the history of cinema in The Day The Earth Stood Still. After 15 minutes i was thirsting to see his character get murdered.

lol co-writer Gary Whitta is the guy who did The Book of Eli... this is going to be spectacularly bad. I'm sensing Battlefield Earth levels of shittiness here.

Haha that piece of shit Gaz Whitta. He used to be an editor for PC Gamer and had these horrible columns. How did he become a fuckin big time screenwriter. how.

and yeah I bet this is going to be a totally weird combination of Scientology stuff and M. Night's born-again shit.

wait wait I remember him from PC Gamer

who is he hypnotizing into thinking he can write

did you end up crossing the interstate

Fortunately I parked on the right side of it, but it was so obvious what was coming that I realized I didn't need to sit through one of the worst-acted movies ever.

This is, he did, at one time, have some decent ideas but he should have never have been allowed to direct them.

add in the worst elements of 'i am legend'

lol I don't even remember Adrien Brody being in "The Village", I was too busy wishing death upon Bryce Dallas Howard

you should see the scene in lady in the water where Bryce tells M Night that his work will inspire a great leader but he won't be alive to see it. serious drama.

So the twist will be...

― Ned Raggett, Monday, April 4, 2011 4:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Jaden is the father

― whelping at his sandpapery best (DJP), Monday, April 4, 2011 4:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

cannot stop lolling

someone just pointed out to me how Philly-centric Will and M are. Can't believe I missed that.

The Fresh Prince of the Forbidden Zone

― Ned Raggett, Monday, April 4, 2011 8:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

irl lolz

i take people translated as data's "it's a madhouse" and raise him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3czMMsE-dU

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MxTRspXpQ

(did you really want to talk about will and jaden?)

Why did they name Willow after her father and Jaden after his mother? The eventual Scientology bodyswap also going to have tranny elements?

Jaden really freaks me out. All of his dad's stone-faced petulance without any of the charm.

Armstrong Just Don't Understand

lol

what....NOOO

lol

Five bucks says M. Night uses stock footage from "Batteries Not Included..."

sorry just have to repost...never fails to make me lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvmytj56Tck&feature=related

never seen the Smith kid and have no plans to. Haven't seen an M Night since Unbreakable.

(in case you forgot about Morbs' street cred)

forgot about drm

no, old man who picks time-wasting carefully

xp

They should film hours and hours of footage of Will and Jaden now, then Will solo against a blue screen, and then in 30 years Jaden in front of blue screen, and then make the first half of the movie Will and Jaden c. now and then the second half current Will interacting with future grown Jaden.

I thought that kind of delayed filming was the secret how they were going to end LOST. I was wrong.

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/first-full-synopsis-for-m-night-shyamalans-after-earth-revealed

“In After Earth, one thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape from Earth, Nova Prime has become mankind’s new home. Legendary General Cypher Raige (played by Will Smith) returns from an extended tour of duty to his estranged family, ready to be a father to his 13-year-old son, Kitai (played by Jaden Smith). When an asteroid storm damages Cypher and Kitai’s craft, they crash-land on a now unfamiliar and dangerous Earth. As his father lies dying in the cockpit, Kitai must trek across the hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon. His whole life, Kitai has wanted nothing more than to be a soldier like his father. Today, he gets his chance.”

Totally read rescue bacon there.

oh god

earth surviving until 3000 is like the most optimistic doomsday scenario ever

Cypher Raige!

"a young boy navigates an abandoned and sometimes scary Earth" kinda makes me laugh more than anything else

Fucking WOW.

It's sometimes scary, generally quite pleasant. Lots of peace and quiet.

how is it he is still allowed to make movies? he's done like 4 bombs in a row now

the last airbender did surprisingly good money for being so critically reviled

i think maybe lady in the water is the only MNS to lose money at the box office (and it probably made some money in subsequent release windows).

but there's a strong perception of him as a guy who makes flop after flop, and despite what it may look like hollywood producers are kind of sensitive to critical response, especially when every film he's made since... the village (?) has gotten a drubbing.

so he's reduced to helming will smith vanity projects, and like most such projects this one is going down in flames.

so I really do wonder, perhaps out of morbid curiosity-- where does MNS go from here?

i kind of wonder if he'll go the john singleton route: attaching his name to ever-more-downmarket franchises and star vehicles, only being able to get a film off the ground twice a decade.

it's going to be ugly.

Speaking of Singleton, what derailed his career? Was it Shaft?

series of flops + shitty on-set behavior

and not being able to bring films in on time/budget or so i've heard

Singleton, Dickerson, Hughes Bros. - is Spike Lee the only vet of the great black filmmaker renaissance who kept making films? He probably should have stopped, too.

M. Night - it's amazing to see how quickly the good will vanished. "The Sixth Sense" is solid, "Signs" and "Unbreakable" massively flawed but ambitious in the right ways. But "The Village" is a beautifully shot mess, probably the first movie he made where the reveal at the end earned derisive dismissals. "Lady in the Water" is his most ridiculous ego-flop. And his last two have echoed as punchlines. This one is a smart move, since the Smith family will take the heat. As put in the Atlantic:

Shyamalan's involvement notwithstanding, After Earth is a vanity project of the burgeoning multinational Will Smith Inc. The movie stars Smith and his 14-year-old son, Jaden. It's produced by Smith, his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett, and longtime friend and business partner James Lassiter. And it's based on a story written by Smith as a vehicle for his son, a story that he conceived while he and his brother-in-law were watching television together. Which is a long way of saying that it might be best to give Shyamalan a pass on this one.

Ernest Dickerson has directed 5-6 episodes of The Walking Dead, but that's all I've seen his name on recently.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/m-night-shyamalan-reveals-he-ghost-wrote-shes-all-that-says-his-next-film-will-be-micro-budget-effort-20130530

i saw the trailer for that one m-night movie DEVIL in a theatre and yknow it was exciting and kinda scary and lots of heavy breathing and panicking and quick shots of scary things happening in darkness, and the audience sat in polite fear, and then it said

FROM THE MIND
OF M NIGHT SHYAMALAN

and the entire theatre as one burst into laughter

Like for Best Actor Oscars. Almost 90 percent of the time, it’s mental illness and historical figures, right?

Will Smith took 'never go full retard' to heart?

I await Armond's challopsy rave review.

would you settle for the bright, reputable Matt Zoller Seitz?

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/after-earth-2013

Ebert's remaining atoms of consciousness somewhere plotting murder.

Some of Shyamalan's images echo classic movie tales of survival and madness in nature: "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Searchers," "The Naked Prey," "The Edge."

This review is hazardous, I think I damaged my left eye from the eyeroll this sentence induced.

Hate Roeper, but even he has some good zings:

This movie is “Take Your Kid to Work Day” to the extreme.

As for the plot, I guess recycling remains in vogue centuries from now. There’s so little here we haven’t seen done previously, and done better.

(If we have the knowledge and wherewithal to evacuate an entire planet and transport millions if not billions to another galaxy, why can’t we figure out a way to save our own world? It seems cheaper.)

“After Earth” is a film without wit or sparkle. At times the special effects look so cheesy that you wonder if they’re going to pull back and show members of the crew rocking the ship or working the strings on puppets.

TBF i have no stake in whether this film is good or bad. i'm glad that MZS has a different take on it. i don't know that i'm ready to spend $10 to find out whether he's right.

but you could say that of most movies. i haven't actually seen more than one or two new movies in the theater over the past three months. i think the last one was "barbara," which was a disappointment to me.

Some of Shyamalan's images echo classic movie tales of survival and madness in nature: "Aguirre: The Wrath of God,"

Movie critic kismet - this is from The Onion AV Club:

Austere, roomy compositions—courtesy of Peter Suschitzky, the longtime David Cronenberg cinematographer who also shot The Empire Strikes Back—frame Jaden Smith’s character against vast backdrops of swaying foliage; during certain stretches, After Earth looks more like an elaborate Werner Herzog homage than a big-budget sci-fi flick.

Word is that Now You See Me film is beating it this weekend. (And the new Fast and Furious still beating both.)

This review is hazardous, I think I damaged my left eye from the eyeroll this sentence induced.

― ...also i'm awesome (Nicole), Saturday, June 1, 2013 1:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i dont see why shyamalan would be incapable of quoting the searchers

I'll put up with a lot of junk in return for some herzog knock-off shots.

does this film feature 5min long shot of Will Smith hypnotizing an iguana y/n

the audience sat in polite fear

+1

mzs is usually wrong imo

dude loves to heap elaborate praise on seriously mediocre shit

he is certainly a fan of hyperbole

seitz is a really good & thoughtful writer.

Wow, this is SO BAD. Not even worth watching on an airplane. I gave up shortly after the ship crashed. Like, nothing that happened had any meaning whatsoever. There are no stakes. I could not possibly care what happens to anybody in it.

So the twist will be...

― Ned Raggett, Monday, April 4, 2011 4:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Jaden is the father

― whelping at his sandpapery best (DJP), Monday, April 4, 2011 4:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

SET IN THE YEAR 3000