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5 Awkward Aspects Of After Earth

After Earth has been surprisingly divisive among reviewers and audiences, with opinions ranging from those who consider it a pleasantly entertaining bit of filmmaking from maligned director M. Night Shyamalan to those who have declared it in step with his recent string of duds and possibly the worst movie of 2013 so far. I understand both of these views to an extent. I found it to be something of an improvement over outright disasters like The Happening and Lady in the Water, in that I didn’t hate every single second of it. In fact, I found it to be mildly enjoyable, which surprised me coming from Shyamalan and the relatively untested starpower of Jaden Smith. There was a decent number of things in the film to admire.

[h2]3) That weird dialect[/h2]

After Earth

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The most noticeable stylistic feature of After Earth, at least according to the views I’ve encountered, is the dialect that these futuristic humans speak in. At least, I assume it’s a type of dialect. They could just be talking weird. But most seem to conclude that it’s meant to signify a futuristic style of speaking. A kind of amalgamation of Alabama with Oxford, it would seem. Never mind the fact that most of the vocabulary can’t change too much because we need to be able to understand what they’re saying.

It’s maybe a minor quibble, but it’s another one of those noticeable little things draws attention away from the movie’s real strengths in its core narrative. Instead of focusing on the main thrust of what Kitai and Cypher and saying to each other, it’s easy to get distracted by the way they’re saying things, even well into the film when we should be used to the dialect, perhaps because it seems like they slip in and out of the “weird” talking depending on the level of intensity in a scene. It leads me to think that Shyamalan is still fairly strong with big picture arcs, but when it comes to these details he can’t quite get a handle on solidifying a tightly bound product. It may seem like nitpicking but these parts add up to a whole that leaves me and plenty of others with an uneasiness toward these more awkward elements.

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