Zombie Column: 47 Ronin

So, Evan was in town for the holidays, which meant we saw a movie, because that’s what we do. Also, it was unilaterally decided that I would be going to visit them soon for another weekend of movies. I had no say in this. On the plus side, they have Netflix, so if I get sick again (it happened last time), we can at least pack in several movies at their home.

There were three options of movies for us. First was the new Hobbit movie, but it seemed more like a family movie, in that Evan promised to take his wife, and I should probably take my nephew. Secondly was Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which seemed like a ripe case for Hangover 2 syndrome (a sequel to a massively successful comedy that rehashes the same jokes with little humour). Third was 47 Ronin which had the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the three, so we went to that.

Trailers this time included I, Frankenstein (Evan pointed out the irony of titling it that. I guess I, Adam would have been lost on everyone. Although I, Daemon would have been pretty cool), Endless Love (about a shady guy who turned his life around, then fell in love with a good girl, whose dad looks into the guy's shady past. What the hell’s a love movie trailer doing in front of this movie?), Non-stop (Liam Neeson Neesoning his way through a plane mid-flight), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (in which Wolverine is sent back into the past to stop a war on mutants, because time travel has always worked out so well. Alright trailer with terrific music).

47 Ronin stars Keanu Reeves as Kai, a white guy in Ancient Japan (he’s actually the son of a British sailor and a Japanese woman, putting the time of the movie somewhere after the British had arrived, but before mythical creatures had died out). He hangs around the province of Arco, and is in love with Arco’s lord’s daughter, although he knows that her place is far above his in society. Arco hosts a tournament that the Emperor and the lord’s rival attend. Under the influence of witchcraft, the lord harms his rival. He’s permitted by the Emperor to commit Sepuku. The rival will take over the land by marrying the lord’s daughter. The lord’s samurai are forbidden to take revenge and cast out as Ronin. After one year of mourning, they team up with Kai and take revenge. Revenge with a side of honour, making it more Justice than Revenge.

The beginning of the movie states that those who understand the 47 Ronin understand Japan, but that’s not really true. Samurai are viewed a lot like knights. Back then, they were normal people who acted like normal people, with all their good qualities and bad. Much, much later, we look back at them with idealism as paragons of Honour, but they were not. Knights were kind of into the pillage/rape/murder thing, and I would wager small amounts of money that one of the reasons for the Crusades was so that the pillage/rape/murder could happen on foreign soil to the people of a religion Europe didn’t really care about.

Samurai were the same way. Some time later, important Japanese people got together and said “This is how Samurai acted, and so should you” regardless of whether or not Samurai actually acted that way. I’m sure some did, just as I’m sure some knights actually were knights in shining armour. But to say to understand the 47 Ronin is to undertand Japan is wrong. It’s actually understanding what Japan wishes it was. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We all idealise the past. All the founding fathers had foibles – they were people, after all. Nobody’s perfect. Anyway, I just wanted to state that.

So, the movie itself? Well, it looked great. They had $175 million for a budget, and they spent a lot of it on effects, and the rest on costumes so elaborate, they were ridiculously over the top. There wasn’t a lot of humour, but that’s okay in a serious movie like this, trying to get the point across that honour is worth dying for. The music is perfectly adequate.

The only real letdown, actually, is the action, which is kind of a big deal for me. There were only a couple of extended set pieces in the movie (there were some other very short ones). The first was good, the second was a battle in a flaming village that was a huge letdown because they went with the shaky-cam, short-cuts method instead of having awesome flaming fights, and the last was actually pretty good, and featured one of the better human vs dragon battles I’ve seen. In fact, I don’t really remember seeing anyone battle an Eastern-style dragon before. Still, the potential was there for so much more awesome, and they dropped the ball.

In conclusion, I’m going to have to give this a DVD rating. On the ride home, we compared it to Battleship, but upon further review, I think the scenery bumps it up a little. Not much.

On a final note, there’s a really nifty scene where (before the final battle) the remaining Ronin all sign their names on a piece of paper detailing their goal. Each signs their name, then draws their katana a few inches, presses their thumb against the blade, and leave a bloody thumbprint next to their name. I just thought that was pretty cool.

Zombie Column: Riddick

There are many, many people who are probably making the Riddick-ulous pun right now, so I won't be joining them (just standing beside them and pointing it out a lot). Unless, of course, I wasn't referring to the adjective, but instead the spell from Harry Potter, able to turn a bad movie into a good one. Sadly, my magic is just not that strong, and Riddick remained as it was.

We saw the movie up at CrossIron, although not in the fancy 3D UltraAVX theatre. Riddick wasn't in 3D, so I guess they didn't want to waste the extra money they could charge on it, or something. Still, good theatre. Previews for the week were Oldboy, Runner Runner, and 47 Ronin (which had a surprisingly long trailer). I could go for Oldboy (even though I know all the spoilers for the movie it remade) and 47 Ronin, because who doesn't like Keanu Reeves or Japanese martial arts movies with supernatural actions scenes?

Riddick opens with the titular character abandoned on some desert world (a little more varied than Tatooine, but not much. More like Geonosis, actually). There, he battles the elements and the predatory native creatures, all of whom seem to want to kill him. And that's all he does for about the first third of the movie. It's boring. Wow, is it ever boring. There's a brief flashback to the Necromongers, and then it's back to camping on death world. Whoo.

After that, he goes exploring onto the slightly nicer part of the world. It's more of a tundra than a desert. He comes across a Merc station (put there by who knows to house and re-supply any mercenaries that need it). Then he sees a rainstorm and decides that enough's enough, time to get off this rock. The only problem is that the only way off involves being captured by bounty hunters, so Riddick calls them over from whatever planet they were on.

Two bounty hunter crews arrive, and there's a lot of setting up, and patrolling, and Riddick gaining intelligence by staying far away and staring at them. Then there's some offscreen killing, and some really lame action and then the movie ends.

So, this movie is terrible. The first part is slow, and the second part is slow, and the third part is slow and lame. I can understand now why it took so much trouble to produce (Evan was telling me Vin Diesel had to mortgage his house to get the necessary funds). I mean, who would have looked at this script and said "Yeah, I want to make this. It stars an action hero with cool powers in an action hero franchise, only this time, he doesn’t do any action!"?

Is there anything redeeming about this movie? Well, after this, they won't be able to make any more. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, since I liked Chronicles of Riddick (I'm the only one). So the chance for another one of those is gone. But if they wanted to make more movies like this one, then it's a good thing they won't be able to.

Other than that, there are one or two chuckles to be had. Also, for fans of Battlestar Galactica, Katee Sackhoff is in it, and it's always nice when TV actors get roles in movies. I mean, she's in a completely unnecessary topless scene, so maybe it's not so good either. The movie had already earned it's R-rating with topless scenes in the flashbacks, we don't need famous actors doing them just for funsies.

All in all, I'm ranking this as a Free on TV movie. Not the absolute worst we've seen (Hi, Last Airbender), but probably ranking somewhere between Wrath of the Titans and Faster.

The World's End

It's the end of the world! Or at least, The World's End. Which is the movie we saw on Sunday night before Labor Day. Evan's back in town for the week, so we put the word out and saw the movie with Jeff, Steve, and Norm.

Preview were for Don Jon, Machete Kills, Last Vegas (The Hangover with old people) and The Family, which was probably pitched as a comedy sequel to Goodfellas. The latter two have Robert De Niro, and Evan is in on both. If I want to see old people, I'd rather see Schwarzenegger and Stallone in Escape Plan, but I suppose I could be talked into The Family.

Anyway, The World's End is the capper to the Cornetto Trilogy, whose previous entrants were Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. All of them star Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, are directed by Edgar Wright, and are written by Pegg and Wright. All of them are also spoofs of genres. Shaun of the Dead spoofed zombies (and Romance!), Hot Fuzz spoofed action movies, and now The World's End spoofs Invasion of the Body Snatcher type movies.

It opens with a flashback to 1990, when a group of five kids graduated from school and got hammered, because that's what one does when one celebrates. The tried the in/famous Golden Mile, the feat of having a pint at each of the twelve local pubs. Now, British beer is kinda strong (or so I heard) and twelve pints is not an insignificant amount. Combine that with whatever available substances there are to smoke (illegal or not), and you've got the makings of a terrible hangover. Two friends had to drop out early, and the rest made it nine deep before winding up on a hillside watching the sunrise over their vomit stained shoes. Whee.

Flashforward to the present time, and we get the leader of the pack, Gary King, telling this to a support group of some kind. It might be AA, it might be a rehab centre, it might be some other kind of therapy. One of the other guests asks if he regrets not making it to all twelve. A plan is hatched.

Meanwhile, the rest of the friends are decently successful. They're all in jobs that require suits and ties, and they're all visited by King to make the trip home to undertake the Golden Mile again. A lot of cajoling later, they all agree. I doubt they actually want to go, but they seem like the type of people who are too polite to say no to an old friend, even if he's still acting like a teenager 20 years later.

So they all meet up at the train station and are picked up by King, who takes them on a road trip home in the same car they used to party in 20 years ago (nicknamed "The Beast", although I'm pretty sure guys don't name their cars). They check into a hotel and begin their quest, and things start to get weird. And progressively worse.

There are many times during the night when it would behoove them to turn tail and run back to London, but King won't let them. He's bound, bent, and determined to finish the Golden Mile. Come Hell or High Water. Mostly Hell.

Towards the end of the movie, we find out why in a surprisingly emotional scene. I shouldn't be surprised by now. Wright and Pegg always manage to slot in these one or two genuine moments into their comedies. In Shaun of the dead, it was the titular character refusing to shoot his friend, even after he had been turned. In Hot Fuzz, there was Angel desperately calling for Danny after the police station exploded, or when Angel is convinced Danny's a bad guy. These sudden heartfelt moments in the midst of comedy. I like them. Not long enough to drag the movie down, but it helps us get to know the characters and makes us like them more.

It's easy to like the four other characters, but King starts the movie off like a jerk, and doesn't really get better until near the end. But it's explained, and we actually like him at the end. Not like, say, A Good Day to Die Hard, where John McClane starts the movie off like a jackass and by the end, is still just a jackass. That's not explained, and really annoying, considering how much we liked him in the previous movies.

So this movie does a better job of character development. You know what else it does a good job of? Well, the comedy's there, but you should know that by now. But they did a really good job on the action. I was pleasantly surprised by how much action there was in this movie, and how good it was. I mean, there wasn't enough to fill an action movie, but it was definitely enough to bill it as an action-comedy, like The Other Guys. Great stuff.

The music wasn't really anything I notice. So pass on that. The ending went in a completely different direction than any of us were expecting. The last scene made sense, but none of us really like it. And finally, Rosamund Pike was in it, which is always a bonus. So it gets the Theatre Rating from me.

Massive Mindless Movie Mega Marathon

With some careful planning and luck with scheduling, I set off for the movie theatre on Saturday at about a quarter after 11 in the morning with two bottles of Boost (My eating habits are ... peculiar). $65, 13 hours, and one headache later, I returned home, having completed the rarely seen quintuple-header. I managed to pack in The Lone Ranger, R.I.P.D., Red 2, Pacific Rim, and This is the End. I thought I would share some quick thoughts on each of them, if I can separate them all out from the jumble of memories they seem to have conglomerated into.

Trailers were often repeated. I saw ones for The Wolverine, Kick Ass 2, and Thor: The Dark World multiple times, and remember at least one showing of Insidious: Chapter 2 and Saving Mr. Banks (I think that's the title. It's the story of how Walt Disney got the rights to Mary Poppins).

The Lone Ranger

The movie opens with a slightly different Jerry Bruckheimer title screen. Usually it zooms along a highway until the lightning hits the tree; this time it zooms along railroad tracks. Then it actually starts with a fair in San Francisco, which uses an Old West exhibit as a framing device for the story. It's also one of the reasons the movie takes two and a half hours. Framing devices add time, okay guys?

Anyway, Dan Reid (Armie Hammer) starts off the movie as an idealistic prosecutor, believing in Due Process of Law, and not believing in guns. By the end of the movie, he doesn't believe in Due Process of Law, and does believe in guns. Because this is America, Dammit, and guns can solve what the law can't! Or something like that. As an aside, four of the five movies I went to depicted violence as solving the main problem. Mind you, it could be that four of the five movies I went to were action movies, and action movies generally contain violence. Otherwise they'd just be labelled dramas, or romantic comedies, or real life (ugh, who wants that?)

In this version, Tonto is played by Johnny Depp, who tries to bring some of the off-kilterness of Jack Sparrow to the role, but also tries to treat Native Americans with respect. It doesn't really work that well, but the action and humour are enough to keep the movie going.

And the music too. The climax takes place aboard trains (duh) with Hans Zimmer writing a score based off the Lone Ranger theme (and as I have been informed by the internet, also the William Tell Overture. I thought that was something else), then spiraling off in all directions before coming back, then going off again. It's a tremendous sequence with tremendous music. Almost worth the price of admission (particularly a matinee admission), but not quite. Still the rest of the movie has just enough to be a theatre movie by my odd and increasingly pointless ratings system. Also, I like Armie Hammer. And his hat.

R.I.P.D.

If you've read anything about this movie, you've probably heard that it's terrible. And I can certainly see where that's coming from. I didn't think so, but then, I have a hard time thinking any movie is terrible (The Last Airbender and Star Wars: The Clone Wars aside).

It starts off with a ridiculously hot French woman making out with Ryan Reynolds (because that is that natural order of things, and you do not mess with the natural order of things). Soon, he's called onto a drug bust, where a shootout results in his death. Whoops. He wanders outside while everything is frozen, and then is sucked up into the sky. He's pulled into small office, where he's pretty much coerced into joining the R.I.P.D., whose job it is to make sure the dead don't go on living on Earth covertly (as they are wont to do).

Things take a turn for the worse when a plot to bring back all the dead people is revealed. Also, Reynolds' ex gets pulled into it, because love crosses over life boundaries and such. Now you're getting the picture of why so many people call it terrible. Plus, Jeff Bridges isn't great. I know he can do whatever he feels like post-Dude, but his shtick wears a bit thin here. Still, there are some good laughs, and some good action. Not quite enough to make it a theatre movie, but solidly in the Blu-Ray books.

RED 2

Oh look, it's Mary-Louise Parker again! She was in R.I.P.D. as well. This time she’s the love interest to an old guy ... wait, that was in R.I.P.D. as well (she and Jeff Bridges’ character used to have a thing, but he's a bit of an asshat, so it didn't go well). Anyway, in this installment of Red, Frank and his team are targets because of an operation from the 80's and ... wait, that was the same as the original Red as well. Man, things tend to repeat, don't they? Anyway, this version of Red sidegrades from Morgan Freeman to Anthony Hopkins (I respect Sir Anthony Hopkins a lot, but Freeman, played God and Visa).

So Frank and his team go on the lam, globetrotting around most of Europe this time while government agents from various countries try to kill them. Don't worry though. Frank is played by Bruce Willis, and it's commonly known that he can only die by nuclear explosion while in space (cool fact: Die Hard was a documentary). And John Malkovich plays a lovably paranoid lunatic, so he's pretty much safe (he'll be able to see everything cover). Neil McDonough takes over from Karl Urban as the government agent sent to track down the Frankettes, except this time he lacks the morals that Urban's agent had. So we get to see him kill a lot of government people. The American government: Adept at killing other members of the American Government!

Anyhow, we follow various shenanigans and plot twists, and get introduced to Catherine Zeta-Jones and her bangs. She's supposedly Frank's Kryptonite, which causes the romantic friction that is contractually obligated to happen in sequels to movies with love stories. Still it's quite funny (see: Malkovich, John) and the action is pretty good. It's always nice to see Helen Mirren holding massive weaponry, but I don't think it's enough to push it into theatre territory. I might need a second opinion, but I'm deeming it a Blu-Ray movie for now.

Pacific Rim

Giant Robots. Fighting. Giant Monsters. Aw. Yeah!

So this movie was about giant robots fighting giant monsters. There are more things I could say, like there's a love story that's implied, but never stated (we get a headbutt of love, but that's it). Or why they don't use bunker busters on the monsters (bunker busters are bombs meant to penetrate several yards of dirt before exploding, hopefully in the underground bunker of your enemy, and not in some civilian populated area that could cause massive collateral damage). Instead they designed giant robots to fight them, because apparently our governments are run by 13-year old boys. Not that I'm complaining. That's several orders of magnitude more mature than I would be if I ever found myself running a country ("five-day weekends! And free beer!").

But I will state the music is tremendous. Listen to that and tell me you wouldn't want to strap on 250-foot armor and go beat down giant aliens. It's by Ramin Djawadi, and if you don't recognize the name, don't worry - I didn't either. Then I looked at his wikipedia page and found out he also did the equally fantastic music for Person of Interest. Suffice it to say, I will be checking out more of his music.

Definitely a theatre movie. It does a great job of making everything seem huge, and putting us in the middle of the fights, staring up at these titanic creations and mutations duking it out in different locales, including the Technicolor battlefield that is Hong Kong at night. It. Was. Awesome!

This is the End

Appropriately titled for the last movie I saw in theatres that Saturday, it's the story of how celebrities deal with bad stuff. How do they deal with it? Not well. Not well at all. Mind you, since they tend to deal with good news by doing cocaine, it's not a stretch to imagine how poorly they'd do in the apocalypse (since there's a rapidly depleting supply of drugs). To be honest, that's actually not how all the celebrities dealt with the crises in the movie. Most of them died violently. The rest freaked out.

Anyway, while this movie is about dealing with incredibly bad times, it's also about friendship, and probably a little about the truth of being a celebrity (selling out, moving on from friends and making new ones), and strangely enough, it's actually about sacrifice. Who knew? There's also an incredibly large number of dirty jokes, filthy language, and disturbing spiritual imagery. So be warned before you go see it. I'm not sure how many people I know who would actually want to go see it, but I’m aware of enough of pop culture that I wanted to see most of it spoofed. And I did. And then the second half of the movie started. Not quite as funny as the first half, but with an actual, good (if misunderstood) message. So there's that. All in all, I think it's a Blu-Ray movie, but that might just be because that's when the headache started.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mom!

Zombie Column: Man of Steel

Evan was in town this past weekend, and due to extenuating circumstances (like, our city got nice and flooded), we were able to take in a movie after church. We decided on Man of Steel (over This is the End and World War Z) and dragged Amy along with us, because of course we did.

Honestly, I can’t remember what most of the trailers were. Pacific Rim, maybe? White House Down was the first, and Evan called that as we entered the theatre, so bonus points for him. I think I got the others, though, so I’m not entirely sure who wins that round.

Anyway, the movie opens with a mother giving birth, while Russell Crowe helps. I’m not entirely sure he should be around any births, since he might snap and start hurling phones at various medical personnel, but maybe that’s why he’s assisted entirely by robots here. After that, the movie shifts into a fairly long action scene. General Zod (Michael Shannon) leads an insurrection right before Krypton blows up while Jor-El (Crowe) sends his son to Earth. This is totally how every movie should start. Way over the top action scenes with a ton of explosions to get us invested in it.

Then the movie slows down a lot, but by that time we’re already hooked. It spends about an hour letting us get to know Clark Kent (Henry Cavill, whom we recognize from Immortals, but that’s about it. He’s my kind of guy, though – he almost missed the call from Zack Snyder because he was busy playing World of Warcraft) while he gets to know himself.

Eventually the action starts back up, again in tremendous manner. Say what you want about Snyder, but he can sure do special effects. They’re almost Bay-ish in their size, intensity, and frequency. I didn’t really have any quibbles about the action, just a question. If two invincible beings face off, can one defeat the other by punching? Has punching ever been the answer to invincibility? Has punching ever been the solution outside of movies, TV, and boxing? Not that that’s a small sample, mind you. Right now I’m going through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there’s an awful lot of punching of immortal beings. Some kicking too, just to mix things up.

Well, tangent over. One thing I really liked about this movie is the number of people I recognized. You’ll probably know Amy Adams as Lois Lane, and Kevin Costner as Pa Kent, and possibly Diane Lane as Ma Kent. And Morpheus – sorry, Laurence Fishbourne (but really, will he be known as anyone else?) – as Perry White. There’s also Richard Schiff (Toby from The West Wing) as a military scientist, and Michael Kelly (Mark Snow from Person of Interest) as a reporter from the Daily Planet. I mean, his character in the credits is Steve Lombard, but he’s pretty much the guy at the Daily Planet who’s not Morpheus. Oh yeah, Christopher Meloni’s in it too (from one of the Law & Order spin-offs. Also, the really ugly guy from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle).

There are some jokes in here, but not a lot. The music is suitably heroic, but not quite to my tastes. I would have put slightly different chord progression in there, but Hans Zimmer is beyond reproach at this point, so you may as well pick up the soundtrack if you like his other stuff. I’ll stick with Audiomachine.

That’s pretty much my only quibble. The movie is fantastic from beginning to end. Not even the douchebag who answered his phone (twice!) could spoil it. Definitely a theatre movie for me.

Eyes on Spies

So, I’ve got spies on the mind. Firstly, it’s because I just got through Covert Affairs. It’s about a newbie CIA officer played by Piper Perabo. I got into it mainly because I was charmed by her guest starring on Go On (a tragically cancelled sitcom) and because it’s on USA, and I’ll watch just about anything from them (seriously. Covert Affairs is the 5^th show from them I watch regularly. It’s a good thing it’s cable, because trying to keep up with 24 episodes for all those shows would take up waaaaay too much of my time).

Secondly, it’s because Burn Notice (another USA show) is back on the air. Burn Notice is about an ex-spy, and takes great pleasure in pointing out how spies actually do things, as opposed to how they’re portrayed to do things in movies (Covert Affairs tends to go the movie way, not the realistic way).

Thirdly, it’s because I finally caught up with the Edward Snowden story this morning. Or at least, what I think is the Edward Snowden story. From what I can tell, Snowden used to work at the CIA and then leaked information to some newspapers last week that the CIA has been monitoring the internet and cell phone calls. Now he’s in Hong Kong.

Firstly, about the phone call monitoring – HOW IS THIS NEWS?!? I mean, not to go all conspiracy theorist on you, but the NSA has been doing this for years. They monitor calls, and certain key words trigger closer scrutiny. Any useful information would be shared with the FBI (for domestic matters) and the CIA (for international matters), and if they’re feeling really nice, they might even share it with other countries (for a quid pro quo, of course, because that’s how the intelligence community works).

About Snowden himself? Guy’s a douche. He promised not to reveal secrets, and then he did. He gave his word and then broke it. I don’t mind that he had a moral dilemma about it. That’s fine. That’s what your conscience is for. But you can’t share information you got there. That’s against the law, and depending on the nature of the information revealed, possibly treason.

On the other hand, I have no problem with the newspapers printing what he told them. They got the information fair and square, and broke no laws getting it. They’re not beholden to the government, so there’s nothing preventing them from revealing any secrets at all. It’s kind of their job.

Now, Snowden is in Hong Kong. After his identity was revealed (he actually outed himself), he checked out of his hotel, not to be seen since. He told the newspapers he was leaking information because he was worried about the rights of American citizens. Then he WENT TO CHINA, a land renowned for the rights of their citizens (“On this day in Tiananmen Square, nothing happened”) and their unwavering devotion to justice and law (*cough* copyrights *cough*). And of course, they would have absolutely no interest in the American Intelligence community. None at all.

If you’ll allow me one more bit of tin-foil-hatness, Snowden is either being made very rich, or very hurt.

Zombie Column: After Earth

What's this? A zombie column three weeks in a row? Am I getting back into movies? (no). Have I lost my mind? (yes). What's going on? What's going on is this is a coincidence. I got a sudden invitation to StarTrek a few weeks ago, which was awesome (about 87% as awesome as FF6). Last week as Fast and Furious 6, which we'd planned on seeing for quite a while. Then this past week my brother's family was in town for some regional church stuff, so my brothers and I took the chance to go to see a movie together. It's probably the first time all three of us have gone to see a movie in years. ThePhantom Menace may have been that movie. Ian and I share similar tastes in movies, but Duncan actually has movie-going standards (one of his favourites is 12 Angry Men), so it's not often that I can go to a movie with him and have us both enjoy the experience.

Anyway, we went to see After Earth. The big question Ian and I had going into it was if the power of Awesome (Will Smith) could overcome the power of Suck (the director was M. Night. Shyamalan). We tied the trailer game (Duncan sat out, because he pays attention to more important things than pop-culture. He's like, responsible and all). I got Thor, Ian got Percy Jackson, I got White House Down (I'm all in on that), and Ian got Grown-ups 2 about half a second before me. We laughed at the trailer, but Duncan astutely said "And now you've seen all the jokes in the movie."

After Earth opens with narration by Jaden Smith, telling the history of Earth. We left it, seeking a less polluted/warring planet, and landed somewhere else. Aliens came to kick us out by bio-engineering hunters that smelled the pheromones we exuded when we're afraid. A small cadre of warriors learned not to fear, and they fought back. The rest of us tried not to giggle at what a preposterous development that is.

I mean, come on. An alien race that can bio-engineer animals can't tailor a virus to kill us all? They smell our fear, but not our sweat or other excretions? Why can't they bio-engineer eyes (alright, eyes are hard). Ears, maybe? This just seems dumb. Also, why are aliens always so technologically limited? If they developed only 1% faster than us, they'd already be 140 million years more advanced than us (with a 14 billion year old universe). 5 million years ago, we barely had anything that remotely resembled a human. 200 years ago, we barely had electricity. In 140 million years, we could be pure energy. And yes, pop culture insists on aliens that can be fought with our weapons, that are within at most a few thousand years of us technologically. It's fairly limiting. And stupid.

Anyway, in an effort to get to know his son, Will Smith takes him intergalactically camping, only their ship malfunctions and they crash land on Earth. "Everything has evolved to kill us" he says, which I think is wrong. Firstly, not everything on Earth evolved to kill humans. Secondly, it's only been a few thousand years - how much could a species evolve in that time? Thirdly, humans have been gone for most of that time - how could animals evolve to kill missing prey?

Still, it's a survival story, and Jaden Smith does a good job of portraying waaaayyy in over his head. Will has a broken leg, so he's stuck in one place. Jaden has to trek to a broken part of their ship to retrieve and set off an intergalactic flare. Also, they brought along one of those animals that smells fear (it was supposed to be a military exercise), but it escaped in the crash, so they'll have to deal with that at some point.

That's pretty much the movie. It's not a great movie, but it's the not the pile of crap I expected. Ian thought the power of awesome outweighed the power of suck. Duncan thought the opposite. I thought it was a wash. The music was decent, there were a few jokes, but there wasn't a whole lot of action, there were scenes in there whose only purpose was to be called back to near the end of the movie, and the actors couldn't stick to their accent. I think it was supposed to be southern, but they kept on forgetting - "Oh yeah, my character has an accent" and so some scenes had it, and some didn't. Still, very good special effects (say what you want, but Shyamalan can do effects) and quite good scenery. But it's not enough to redeem this movie. Worth a look at some point, but it's only DVD quality at most. Probably free-on-TV, according to my rating system.