So this summer, you’ll have no shortage of Earth-as-a-barren-wasteland-and-metaphor-for-our-excess movies. Tom Cruise rides motorbikes alone next month in “Oblivion,” and not too long after, M. Night Shyamalan delivers “After Earth,” which presents the planet as having evolved to kill humans. It turns our there is something scarier than the wind in “The Happening“….
Okay, okay, snark aside, this actually doesn’t look too awful — or at least not “The Last Airbender” awful. On the plus side, this looks appropriately epic and huge, and most importantly, it stands on its own from its closest comparison point, “Oblivion.” And the action stuff doesn’t look as corny as we though it would. On the downside? What the fuck are those accents? And we’re not really keen on watching a whole movie of Furrowed Brow Will Smith trying to reconcile his relationship with his son. For a movie set far in the future, that’s a pretty tired concept.
Anyway, we’ll leave it to you to let us know what you think. Trailer below — “After Earth” crash lands on June 7th.