10 Terrible Movies That Wasted A Truly Brilliant Concept

4. After Earth

Will Smith After Earth
Columbia Pictures

The Concept: After Earth takes place in the 31st Century; Earth has long been abandoned and humans have settled on a new planet - Nova Prime.

While on a voyage that takes them away from their new home, Cypher (Will Smith) and Kitai (Jaden Smith) Raige crash-land on a mysterious, hostile world that's quickly revealed to be Earth.

However, humanity's old home is no longer recognisable, having been reclaimed by nature. Beasts run wild and the weather is unpredictable, pushing Kitai to his limits and bringing him closer to his distant father along the way.

Why The Movie Failed: If you ignore the horrible human characters (which you should) and strip down After Earth to its core, the potential is clear.

Most post-apocalyptic movies have our characters living on Earth, whether they're set 2 years or twenty years after whatever destructive event wreaked havoc on the planet.

After Earth switches things up in this regard. Earth is now the enemy, and it's beyond saving. The idea that we are now complete strangers on the planet that we used to call our home is, in many ways, a refreshing one.

But this potential is quickly squandered. After Earth cast Will Smith, one of the most charismatic actors on the planet, as an emotionless General. Jaden Smith, despite Will's best efforts, just cannot lead a movie. The CGI, in places, is atrocious. You can sense M. Night Shyamalan just going through the motions, and the director does not bring one ounce of stylistic flair to proceedings.

It would have been far better to ditch the father/son dynamic entirely (After Earth spends too much time on soap-opera family dynamics) and have a random group of mercenaries or scavengers dropped on the planet instead.

This way, we could explore this ravaged vision of Earth without the one thing that bogged After Earth down; the boring character drama. Sometimes, a brainless action movie is the best route to take - not every blockbuster has to be thought-provoking or ask big questions.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!