It's the year 1,000 A.E. — After Earth, hence the name of the movie — a millennium since humanity fled an ecologically ravaged Earth for a new home on another planet. Commander Cypher Raige (Will Smith) and his sulky 13-year-old son Kitai (Jaden Smith) are out on a routine training mission when their spaceship crash lands after an asteroid storm and a random warp jump. The planet they land on: Earth.
Raige Sr. is injured and can't walk, and their distress signal beacon lies 100 km away where the tail of their spacecraft landed. Kitai, an unproven warrior, must traverse a planet where — as his dad tells him — "everything has evolved to kill humans." As if that wasn't bad enough, a captive alien Ursa that was in the spaceship's hold seems to have escaped. Genetically engineered by an alien race to wipe out humanity, the Ursa are fearsome predators that literally smell fear, hence the only way to combat them is to become fearless, something Raige Sr. has mastered and his nervous son hasn't. Cue the daddy issues that will be resolved by the last reel.
Based on a story idea by Will Smith and directed by M. Night Shyamalan — who rather remarkably still has a career after his previous stinker "The Last Airbender," let alone the three or four that preceded it — "After Earth" is a slipshod, half-baked product that crashed at the U.S. box office, despite being helmed by the ever popular Smith. The reasons for this are numerous, but let's start with the obvious.