After Earth‘s first trailer makes it look somewhat interesting, which is surprising all the people who think M. Night always equals terrible. M. Night only equals terrible most of the time. Get it right, people! Anyway, the Smiths crash, and Jaden has to find help for his injured dad (Legendary General Cypher Raige!) on Earth, which is now overrunned with apes with tails and saber-toothed tigers that want to eat man meat. It looks like dad is passing on the being a movie star torch to his son or something, though Jaden is still pretty young atm. At least they are doing things as a family, even if it is nepotism.

But enough of that, just remember that the saber-toothed tiger has a mohawk! That’s all I care about, this cool cat. He is the punkest cat ever! Suck on lasagna, Garfield!

Yes, it’s an After Earth post! M. Night Shyamalan is directing this post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith. Earth is in trouble, because global warming altered the core of the Earth, which altered Earth’s magnetic fields and now Earth has no protection from solar radiation. 1000 years in the future, Earth is abandoned and mankind lives on Nova Prime, because people in the future love dumb names. Speaking of dumb names, Will Smith is legendary General Cypher Raige, who is finally returning home to his family that he was too busy being a famous general to pay attention to. Jaden Smith is Kitai Raige, his 13-year-old estranged son. But an asteroid causes their ship to crash on the now abandoned Earth, Cypher is injured and Kitai must get their rescue beacon, proving he is part of the heroic family legacy.

I don’t know what he’ll find on the abandoned Earth, probably some mutant dudes and then a bunch of animal life monsters that will be impossible and just make me angry. Judging from the reasoning behind why Earth was abandoned, I’m not holding out hope for things to make a lot of sense. But I hope you like the AfterEarthSmithverse, because the studio is banking on you wanting to buy comic books, video games, and all sorts of other random crap!

A comic series called After Earth: Innocence will have some of the back story starting when Nova Prime was colonized, but even then there is backstory history all the way to 1908 and the Tunguska event. Later, the Raige family invents some stuff and becomes prominent, and then because someone writing this has a divine rights of kings fetish, thus the modern day (future) Raiges who are super generals.

Better After Earth than After Birth, I guess…

Post After Earth (after After Earth?), Will Smith is rumored to be developing a film around Cain and Abel, the biblical bros that ends in murder. Maybe this’ll answer the long-asked question as to where their wives came from! This will be Smith’s directorial debut if it goes forward.

After Earth news via Deadline and io9