Explaining why people do or don’t go to the movies is the ultimate pseudo science. We like to cite lots of numbers, because that helps us pretend that it’s not essentially a gut-level prediction. Numbers have the added benefit of giving studio people something to point at to avoid taking responsibility for any decision in case that decision goes bad. “Hey, man, it’s not my fault, I was just going by the numbers!” We Monday morning quarterback all the marketing when the numbers come in, but no one really knows.

This weekend, when After Earth brought in $27 million for a movie the studio was expecting/hoping to do upwards of $35 – 40m, and got beat by a magician movie, there was no shortage of explanations for its failure. The obvious one being that it was a crappy-looking movie, from a director who has made four or five infamously-crappy movies in a row, starring a guy who’s been dutifully squandering the goodwill he’s built up over the years by shoving his obnoxious kid in our faces every chance he gets. But hey, the internet is not a place for Occam’s Razor. So it is that a competing theory has been gaining steam, one that says that After Earth failed because the marketing didn’t emphasize that was an M. Night Shyamalan movie enough. Whoaooooahaooh. Up is down, cats and dogs, living together, etc.

From Forbes, which wasn’t the only place where I saw this theory, sadly:

We’ll truly never know whether Sony would be looking at a bigger opening weekend for the Will Smith/Jaden Smith vehicle After Earth if they hadn’t chosen to hide the fact that the film is directed by M. Night Shyamalan.  I’ve argued for much of the last week that said decision was a marketing blunder, and I stand by that assessment. The idea that M. Night Shyamalan is ‘box office poison’ isn’t confirmed by the facts of his fourteen years in the Hollywood limelight.

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The results are in, and Will Smith’s midas touch was no match for M. Night Shyamalan’s kiss of death, as their collaboration, After Earth, opened in third place, behind 6 Fast 6 Furious and Now You See Me, with $27 million. The studio had been planning for $35-40 million.

Will and Jaden Smith’s sci-fi adventure After Earth wound up in third place this weekend with a very disappointing $27 million. That’s in between last year’s notorious sci-fi bombs John Carter ($30.2 million) and Battleship ($25.5 million). It’s also half of MIB 3 ($54.6 million) and The Karate Kid ($55.7 million), which were the last two movies from Will and Jaden, respectively.

The audience was 51 percent male and 60 percent were 25 years of age or older. They gave the movie a “B” CinemaScore, which suggests middling word-of-mouth that should keep the movie from holding on well. Add in the fact that Man of Steel is on the immediate horizon, and it’s unlikely that After Earth winds up with more than $70 million or so. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Which is bad, considering the budget is estimated to have been around $130 million, making After Earth a certified flop unless it kicks ass worldwide. (Which it might, foreigners love Will Smith almost as much as Johnny Depp). The media pile-on has been so bad that it’s actually tempting to, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, feel bad for poor M. Night Shyamalan. Of course, it would be a lot easier to feel sympathy if, after five straight sub-50%-on-RottenTomatoes movies in a row, and three below 20, he could just once admit that something he made wasn’t perfect, instead of blaming the audience and our ignorant, unworldly lack of European sensibilities. IT WAS ABOUT TREES, YOU FLIPPER-HANDED SIMPLETONS! Letting M. Night direct again, and another vanity project for Will Smith and his dumb kid no less, Sony was basically daring audiences not show up. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I just hope this doesn’t affect Jaden’s line of drop-crotch pants. I’m sure one little setback isn’t enough to stop a veritable fashion revolution.

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“Yo, welcome to… welcome to… LINE???”

Opening Everywhere: After Earth, Now You See Me, The East

Opening Somewhere: The Kings of Summer

FilmDrunk Suggests: By the time you read this, I will be neck deep in dirty margaritas on a lazy river filled with tourist pee in the Bahamas, and I won’t care how fat or pasty I look. But if you’re not also doing that, try to find a theater showing The Kings of Summer and see that so it makes more money than After Earth.

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M. Night Shyamalan’s Smith family picture After Earth hits theaters today, and because it’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie, or, I suspect, because it’s not very good, the reviews have been quite negative. Actually, for every 10 reviews, there’s about seven negative, and three devil’s advocate, here’s-why-it’s-not-as-bad-as-everyone-else-says reviews. I tend to believe our friend Laremy’s succinct statement on the matter, because out of all the critics, he’s the cutest (sorry, Kyle Smith):

“After Earth is f*cking terrible, Jaden Smith is not an actor, Will Smith is not a father, and the whole thing is this extended chase scene in which you want the kid to die horribly because all he does is cry like a little bitch about everything. At one point the person next to me said, “C’mon kid, just sack up”. Now if they’d called the film that, I’d have been in.”

It’d be easy to just compile some mean quotes about Jaden’s acting, but it’s too easy. It’s no fun piling on. Instead, I thought we’d use the negative reviews to do what we’ve done a few times before: cobble together the plot and let you decide for yourself. So here it is, everything I learned about After Earth, using nothing but review quotes.

A thousand years ago, we learn, humans fled the Earth after rendering what was once a paradise uninhabitable. They now reside on “Nova Prime…” (Vulture)

…where they wear a lot of white and decorate their homes with flowing sailcloths. (NY Times)

…where all garments and surfaces are dominated by a curious honeycomb pattern, and where we eat our meals with implements that resemble three Lucite chopsticks joined at one end. (Slate)

“After Earth” opens with a teenager, Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith), washing out from some kind of ranger academy. It’s a bummer because all he wants to do is please his father, Cypher (Will Smith). (NY Times)

(Nova Prime) wasn’t a hospitable place at first, as they were hunted by ferocious predators, blind but able to smell fear. Only a great soldier who’d learned to control that emotion was able to help vanquish them. -NJ.com

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We’re back minus Ben this week, who’s in Tokyo, but we brought back fan favorite, SF comedian Matt Lieb to pick up the slack. Film.com’s Laremy Legel is present in spirit, as I read a statement from him about After Earth.This week’s topics include a lengthy discussion of 6 Fast 6 Furious, stories from my recent Mexico trip and all the hookers I met there, Bret saw Side Effects and The Ambassador, and Matt Lieb relates his fathers’s advice shortly after 9/11 – “the best time to buy stocks is when there’s blood in the streets.”  Enjoy.

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