The pressure is on Will Smith.
His new film, After Earth, has crashed in the US, breaking his box office winning streak.
The sci-fi epic, which sees Smith and his son, Jaden, stranded on Earth thousands of years in the future, made an underwhelming $US27 million on its opening weekend.
It limped into third place behind Fast and the Furious 6 and the heist movie Now You See Me.
After Earth, which Smith co-wrote and produced, was supposed to be a sure-fire hit – a boy’s own adventure that drew heavily on the jaw-dropping jungle scenes of Avatar.
Considering Smith’s star power, and the fact every blockbuster he’s starred in the last 20 years has debuted at number one, the result will be making Hollywood sweat.
After Earth’s producers will be hoping it performs better over seas, but that may be hard ask in light of the pounding it has taken from the critics.
The majority have dubbed it a “bomb” and a “catastrophe”.
More troublesome for Smith are the claims that After Earth is a $US130 million ad for Scientology.
Many critics have noticed that the film trades heavily on imagery and concepts associated with the controversial religion, particularly the tagline: Danger is very real. But fear is a choice.
The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote: “Casual students of Scientology may find their ears pricking up at those maxims because fear and its overcoming receive a lot of play in Dianetics, a foundational text by the creator of Scientology, the pulp science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.”
Joe Morgenstern, from the Wall Street Journal, accused the film of being one long mind-numbing sermon. “The sermon echoes a central theme of Scientology. Is that the production’s subtext, or are there reasons yet to be uncovered why humour and humanity have been essentially banished; why everyone looks pained; why the very notion of entertainment has been banished in favour of grinding didacticism, and why Mr Smith, who has been such a brilliant entertainer over the years and decades, looks as if he has undergone a radical charismaectomy”
The Hollywood Reporter even got a former Scientologist review the film. Marc Headley, who wrote about his experiences in the book Blown For Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology, said: “The movie’s climax takes place on a volcano that could have been ripped right off the cover of Dianetics, the look is so similar. In Scientology, the volcano is a common thread through many different teachings. This image was used not only on the cover of Dianetics, but has also been used in many of Scientology’s TV ads over the years.”
Matt Patches, writing on the entertainment website Vulture, noted in excruciating detail all the nods the film makes to Scientology. It’s an eye-opener of a read. Patches concludes that the film’s main villain isn’t a murderous alien or any one of the hostile creatures that inhabit the abandoned Earth: it’s “emotion”.
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He claims that Smith’s father character spends the entire movie “auditing” his son.
This is the kind of press – not the bad reviews – that can turn a once-invincible movie star into box office poison.
John Travolta has been a dud ever since he made his love letter to Scientology, Battlefield Earth.
Tom Cruise, arguably Scientology’s biggest mouthpiece, is dismissed by many as a kook. His couch-jumping antics in 2005 followed by his publicised attack on anti-depressives and psychiatry – viewed by Scientologists as the work of the devil – landed him in movie star jail. His split from Katie Holmes last year led to claims he had planned to indoctrinate his daughter into a cult.
Smith has been evasive when it comes to answering questions about his links to Scientology. Although he says he is simply a “student of world religion”, his links to Scientology are undeniable. He has donated large sums to several Scientology organisations and together with his wife opened a private school founded on the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard.
Most movie-goers are unaware of this; to them, Smith is a charming, good-looking, highly entertaining performer, who cracks wise in films and does impromptu renditions of the theme song to the Fresh Prince.
But his odd theories about life have seeped out over the past week.
He came off extremely kooky in an interview he did with Jaden in New York Magazine.
In it, they started espousing some very bizarre theories about patterns and multi-dimensional mathematics.
Smith: “I’m a student of patterns. At heart, I’m a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything.”
….
Jaden: “I think that there is that special equation for everything, but I don’t think our mathematics have evolved enough for us to even-I think there’s, like, a whole new mathematics that we’d have to learn to get that equation.
Smith: “I agree with that.”
Jaden: “It’s beyond mathematical. It’s, like, multidimensional mathematical, if you can sort of understand what I’m saying.”
One person who will be relatively relieved is After Earth’s director, M. Night Shyamalan.
Like Smith, Shyamalan was once box office gold. After The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, he was seen as the next Steven Spielberg but his last few films – The Happening and The Last Airbender – have all been financial and critical duds.
His name has been largely absent from After Earth’s marketing materials, which gives him a get-out-of-jail card.
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