Well I have to admit I wasn't expecting much out of this movie when I watched it considering the output of Shyamalan movies, since his wonderful Sixth Sense, have been some of the worst films I've seen. I've also got to admit I haven't seen a Shyamalan movie since his disastrous movie Lady in the Water. So needless to say, this movie's expectation wasn't at all that good. But I have a soft spot for anything science fiction and will ultimately give it a chance just based on that genre, despite any biased I might have for anything or anyone involved in the film.
So after saying all of that I've got to admit this movie wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. It definitely hit the middle ground of entertainment. It was a mediocre B-film with some great production design and good special effects. All of this added up to a movie that wasn't boring but wasn't spectacular either, which it should have been, I think.
The movie gave me enough back story line that I wanted to know more about the type of society the characters lived in now. I really wanted to know more about everything involved in there military, government, their culture. I found it interesting as the screenplay gave me enough to chew on but didn't by any means fill me up on that knowledge, which by the end of the movie I was still hungry for more knowledge about their society. I don't find too many movie able to do that now-a-days.
This movie kind of played out like an episode of a TV series where the larger part of the storyline was in the background and this part of the TV series was the episode dealing with the crash on the planet and the survival of the main character as he or she learns about themselves based on that survival. It really felt like a Star Trek episode told on a grander scale with way better special effects but the over all concept was the same. I really liked the science fiction part of this movie. All of the sci-fi gadgets and concepts were pretty cool and fit into the movie without overburdening every scene with effects.
This movie also had a humor that balanced out the seriousness of the subject matter, which has been a huge problem for sci-fi in general. Sci-fi has become so serious and science focused it looses a lot of the humanity that the audience can connect with. The humor in this movie helped to ground the characters a little more in reality. This movie also established the characters way better than in sci-fi movies as it gave the audience a lot more to connect with than in normal sci-fi. By doing this they focused more on the humanity of the characters letting the special effects and grand epic action
scenes become secondary to the movie. In this aspect of the movie Shyamalan's presence can be felt and for the first time in a long time, he's made a movie where he's not overshadowing himself but is just telling a story, which he has needed to do for a long time. He's always been good at making characters and focusing on the human aspect of them but he's always let the story line get away from him as the movie progresses. This is the one time, in a long time, that hasn't happened. He's made a movie where the focus isn't on some twist or crazy idea but on the humanity of the characters and how they respond in the situation they're presented with.
Like I said before this isn't a great movie but it's an entertaining movie and extremely focused on the subject matter, whereas most movies explain everything so much so that the story line gets lost. Nothing like that happens in this movies, in fact the opposite happens. If you're in the mood for a good B-movie that not going to tax your mind too much, than you can't go wrong with After Earth.
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