After Earth

After Earth is a 2013 American post-apocalyptic action film directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who co-wrote it with Gary Whitta. 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 evacuated Earth to another planet due to a massive environmental catastrophe. It is the second film after The Pursuit of Happyness that stars real-life father and son Will and Jaden Smith; Will Smith also produced via his company Overbrook Entertainment, and the distribution was by Columbia Pictures. 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, who targeted the story, visuals, performances of Will and Jaden Smith, and Shyamalan's direction. It 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. Peacekeeping organization The Ranger Corps defeat them with a fear-suppressing technique called "ghosting," but not before an Ursa kills Senshi, the daughter of Rangers' leader Cypher Raige. Kitai, Cypher's son, blames himself for Senshi's death. He trains to become a Ranger like Cypher, but is rejected when he applies. Kitai's mother Faia convinces Cypher to take Kitai on his last voyage before retirement. During flight, however, their spaceship is caught in an asteroid shower, causing them to crash-land on Earth, which the humans evacuated a thousand years ago due to an environmental cataclysm.