10 Movies That Were So Bad You Couldn't Even Get Angry
6. After Earth
Yet another famous example of why nepotism in Hollywood rarely works, After Earth marked the intersection between Will Smith falling off his pedestal as the biggest and most bankable star in the business, and M. Night Shyamalan's descent from cinematic wunderkind to complete punchline.
While both have managed to resurrect their careers in the years since, the $130 million blockbuster marks a low point for star and writer/director, with even Smith admitting that After Earth ranks as the most painful failure he's ever experienced.
It makes for a pretty painful watch too, with Jaden Smith proving definitively that he shouldn't follow in his father's footsteps and try and attain leading man status, and it marked the last starring role of his career as he focused his energy on... whatever it is that Jaden Smith does.
If it wasn't for the Shyamalan/Smith combo, then there's no way After Earth would even have been made in the first place. Self-indulgent, ponderous, desperately tedious and with not-so-subtle ties to Scientology along with ideas that it's a much more lofty and important movie than it actually is, it lives on in infamy as a tone-deaf exercise in hubris.