After Earth
After Earth is a 2013 American post-apocalyptic action-adventure film starring Jaden and Will Smith. The film was loosely based on an original story idea by Will Smith about a father-and-son trip in the wilderness before it was eventually reworked into a sci-fi setting, taking place 1,000 years in the future where humans have evacuated Earth to another planet due to a massive environmental catastrophe.
The film was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gary Whitta. Will Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett, and business partner James Lassiter co-produced the film via their company Overbrook Entertainment while Columbia Pictures was the distributor. The film was co-produced by John Rusk, who was also the first assistant director on this film as well as on many of Shyamalan's other films.
The film follows father and son, Cypher and Kitai Raige, who find themselves crash-landing on the abandoned Earth. When Cypher gets injured from the crash, Kitai must travel across the wild environment in search of a backup beacon to fire a distress signal, while having to defend himself from the highly evolved animals, as well as an extraterrestrial creature that detects its prey by smelling fear.
The film was released in IMAX on May 31, 2013. Upon release, After Earth was panned by film critics and made $243.8 million at the box office against a budget of $130 million.
Plot
In the future on a human-populated space colony, Nova Prime, the S'krell extraterrestrial race attempts to take it over with creatures called Ursas, which hunt by "sensing" fear despite being technically blind. Humanity created a peacekeeping military organization, The Ranger Corps, to fight the threat. Their leader, General Cypher Raige, defeats the Ursas with a fear-suppressing technique he called "ghosting". Cypher's daughter, Senshi, was killed during an Ursa assault. Blaming himself for his sister's death, Senshi's 14-year-old brother Kitai trains to become a Ranger like Cypher but is rejected.Kitai's mother Faia convinces Cypher to take their son on his last mission before he retires. He takes The Ranger Corps off planet to train with a live Ursa, which is tied and immobilized in their spaceship. During flight, the ship is caught in an asteroid shower, causing them to crash-land on Earth, now a desolate and uninhabited planet which humans had evacuated a thousand years earlier due to an environmental cataclysm.
Cypher and Kitai survived the crash, but Cypher's legs are broken, and the main beacon for firing a distress signal is damaged. Cypher instructs Kitai to locate the tail section of the ship, which broke off on entry to the atmosphere. Inside is the backup beacon, which they can use to signal Nova Prime. Cypher gives Kitai his weaponized cutlass, a wrist communicator, and six capsules of a fluid that enhances oxygen intake so he can breathe. Kitai leaves to find the tail section, with Cypher guiding him through the communicator.
Kitai confronts many hazards; bitten by a paralytic leech after fleeing from a pack of baboon-like monkeys, he self-medicates but damages two of his capsules. After awakening, Kitai takes shelter just as the thermal shift arrives, where Cypher tells him a story about how he conceived "ghosting" to kill the Ursas.
Kitai reaches a cliffside waterfall, and Cypher learns about the broken capsules. Knowing that the only way to continue with two capsules would be to skydive, Cypher orders Kitai to abort the mission, but Kitai, believing that his father sees him as a disappointment, refuses to comply after blaming Cypher's absence at home for Senshi's death. Kitai disobeys Cypher's order and skydives down the waterfall but is captured by a large eagle, and his communicator is damaged. In the eagle's nest, Kitai fails to defend her chicks against large panthers before escaping to a river, where he drifts on a raft and a thermal shift nearly freezes him to death. The eagle, who had been following him, shelters Kitai, sacrificing her life.
Kitai reaches the tail section and learns that the ship's Ursa has escaped and killed the rest of the crew. He tries to activate the emergency beacon, but the atmosphere blocks the signal. He climbs up the volcano where he hopes the high altitude will help to activate the beacon, but he encountered the loose Ursa, and it attacks him. Kitai kills it using the "ghost" technique he learned from Cypher. After activating the beacon, he and Cypher are sent back to Nova Prime via a rescue team.
Cast
Production
conceived the story for the film when he was watching the television show called I Shouldn't Be Alive with his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett, who also served as one of the film's producers. It was originally not a science fiction story but about a father and son crashing their car in the mountains or some remote region, with the son having to go out and get rescue for his father. Smith then decided to change the setting to 1000 years in the future, which imposed a higher production budget. The film was also intended to be the first in a trilogy. Smith had his production company Overbrook contact Gary Whitta with a simple log line for a film: a father and son crash landed on Earth 1000 years after it had been abandoned by humankind. Impressed with his idea and excited about the opportunity to work with him, Whitta fleshed out Smith's idea and pitched it to him, subsequently becoming the first employee on the project.A month after the release of The Last Airbender, Smith contacted M. Night Shyamalan on August 6, 2010, to wish him a "Happy Birthday" on his 40th birthday and also to persuade him to direct his film along with his son Jaden as the star. Smith and Shyamalan had planned to work on a film before but it never worked out. Impressed with the entire script, Shyamalan officially made this project—then entitled One Thousand A. E.—his next directorial effort on October 20, 2010, and quietly shelved his own secret untitled project with Bruce Willis, Bradley Cooper, and Gwyneth Paltrow loosely attached. There was another starring role for an adult male, but sources indicated that Smith would not be taking it on. Sony Pictures Entertainment has a first-look deal with Overbrook, so it was expected to be the studio home for A. E. Shyamalan later suggested the film would feature other members of the Smith family, and that it would not be in 3D but he had "an idea for something kind of technically interesting".
In December 2011, Columbia Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony, signed up both Will and Jaden Smith to co-star in the film with Shyamalan directing. Shyamalan, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gary Whitta, also additionally co-produced the film with Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Caleeb Pinkett, and James Lassiter. Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, made the announcement and said, "Night is an outstanding filmmaker who has a tremendous vision for this science-fiction adventure story and we couldn't be more excited to be working again with Jaden after our experiences on The Pursuit of Happyness and The Karate Kid," and added "We're thrilled to have the two of them together on this project." Shyamalan also added, "The chance to make a scary, science-fiction film starring Jaden and Will is my dream project." Will Smith's decision to take on the starring adult male role required him to step aside in producing and starring in the Hurricane Katrina drama The American Can, and offered the lead role to Denzel Washington instead. The shooting of the movie was also pushed back from September 2011 to January 2012.
On July 25, 2011, Smith travelled to Costa Rica accompanied by an entourage of about 20 people, including Shyamalan, to scout for locations to shoot the film. They visited sites like the Arenal Volcano, hot springs and a lake, and some beaches.
In September 2012, Columbia committed to a June 7, 2013 release date. Shyamalan also scouted locations in Philadelphia. Fifty percent of the filming was to take place at the new Sun Center Studios in Delaware County. Other locations would be in Costa Rica, Utah and Northern California. Shyamalan also visited Valley Forge Military Academy, the filming location of Taps, for research of the film, then entitled After Earth, as Jaden Smith would be playing a military cadet of the future.
The screenplay by Whitta and Shyamalan was later polished by Stephen Gaghan. Jonathan Young, a psychologist and screenwriter, polished the mythic journey structure. As reported by Screen Rant in 2020, "Some scripts sidelined Will completely in favor of his son, Jaden, but Sony wanted him on the big screen as much as possible."
Principal photography for After Earth began in February 2012. Much of the filming took place in Costa Rica, Humboldt County and Aston.
After Earth also became the first film from Sony to be both shot and presented in the emerging 4K digital format. It was primarily shot with Sony's CineAlta F65 camera, which was shipped in January 2012. However, a skydiving sequence required a smaller sized Canon Cinema EOS C500 4K camera mounted on the helmet of a professional skydriver. The cinematographer Peter Suschitzky who picked Sony F65 digital camera for the movie over other digital and film cameras, argued that benefits of film are lost when shown in theaters with digital projectors, as many are today.
On April 19, 2013, Shyamalan then announced that the release date had been moved a week earlier to May 31, 2013 in North America and Korea, which put it against Now You See Me and The Purge, scheduled to open in the United States in the same week. A few days later, the U.S. release of The Purge was rescheduled for June 7, 2013, taking over the slot vacated by After Earth.
Music
On May 3, 2013, it was revealed that Korean-American singer Jay Park would be participating on the official soundtrack of the film in Korea, with a song titled "I Like 2 Party". Then on May 5, 2013, another 30-second snippet of the song was then released with another teaser and trailer.In July 2012, it was announced that James Newton Howard would score music for the film in his eighth and final collaboration with the director. An album consisting of Howard's score was released through Sony Masterworks on May 28, 2013.