This is how you deal with this alien...
Posted on 05/31/2013 10:34:22 AM PDT by RummyChick
Will Smith has never spoken openly of his connections to the Church of Scientology, but they are well documented. Whether or not Smith is a devout member or simply curious about this Hollywood faith, he has visible ties to the group. In 2007, he donated $122,500 to several Scientology rehabilitation organizations. Two years later, he and wife Jada Pinkett Smith opened California's New Village Leadership Academy, a private school founded on the teachings of Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard. Yet to this day, when asked about his own involvement, Smith suggests close friend Tom Cruise introduced him to the practices of Scientology, but that he's not a member. He's simply a "student of world religion."
The clearest evidence of Smith's investment in Scientology might be his newest blockbuster film — this weekend’s After Earth. Based on a story by Smith (and a script by Gary Whitta and director M. Night Shyamalan), the film is a father-son adventure that teams the superstar with his wunderkind offspring Jaden. Together, they traverse the dangerous landscapes of a creature-ridden future Earth. Surprisingly, what's been advertised as an Avatar remix plays out more like Battlefield Earth, another film that hews to the tropes of a science-fiction epic — just like Hubbard's doctrines for Scientology. Here’s how the film parallels the faith’s teachings:
The Movie's Villain Is Emotion "Danger Is Real. Fear Is a Choice," reads the tagline on the After Earth posters. Its vast cosmology aside, at its core, Scientology is about setting doubts and conflict aside in order to value the self. That's the main hurdle for Jaden's character Kitai Raige, who finds himself failing to measure up to his commander father, Cypher. The film is set 1,000 years after humans have departed an ecologically devastated Earth. Mankind is asserting itself as an intergalactic military presence on the outskirts of the universe. There is only one problem: Their new planet, Nova Prime, hosts a vicious alien race that feeds on fear. Luckily they have Cypher — he's known as a "ghost," a human who can suppress his emotions and the accompanying pheromones that allow the aliens to sniff people out.
In Scientology terms, Cypher is a properly cleansed "thetan," the Church's version of a soul. He's calm and collected, empowered without having to demonstrate that power. As Cypher puts it in the film, "fear is imaginary," and if a person is able to see past that illusion, they can be maximally effective. Kitai is the opposite of his father. In Church terms, he is a misguided thetan — full of rage, haunted by memories, and terrified when out of his comfort zone. He has a desire to be a hero, but it’s not instinctual. His choices are guided by what he thinks are his father's demands. Hubbard's writing has indicated that Scientology's goal is to rehabilitate a thetan's control over MEST (matter, energy, space, and time). Kitai’s journey over the course of the film is that pursuit. He must regain control over the physical world through management of his fear.
Will "Audits" Jaden Over the Course of the Movie One of the most powerful moments in 2012's The Master is when Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) "processes" Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). An interrogation meant to peel back the layers of the emotionally damaged sailor, it's a riff on Scientology's practice of auditing. The Church believes people are stricken by engrams, mental images akin to memories that cause pain and confusion. Members of Scientology are audited to rid themselves of these emotional blockades by talking through them while using an E-meter (a device that tracks electrical resistance) to measure precisely where the engrams live.
The bulk of After Earth is essentially that scene from The Master on a blockbuster scale. Following a crash landing on Earth, circumstances require Cypher to remain at a control panel while his son battles his way through the wild. Kitai can barely take a step outdoors without flashing back to a moment when he witnessed someone's death back home. Thankfully, Cypher is able to audit him from afar. Coached by his Dad, Kitai finds inner peace, the knowledge that he's stronger, faster, and more capable than anything Earth throws at him. Cypher even has a futuristic version of an E-meter at his disposal — Kitai's "Smart Fabric" suit delivers up-to-date health stats to his auditor. Heart rate is going up? Kitai must be lying or afraid or unable to cope with his pesky engrams.
Level Up After Earth is essentially a map of Scientological development. It's a man-vs.-nature story because Scientology suggests that all of life is just that. Before Kitai is set on his journey of personal discovery, he trains to be a Ranger (like his father) in the fashion of Scientology students. Smith's New Village Leadership Academy is said to employ the techniques of "Study Tech," a Hubbard concept that focuses on climbing the ladder. Kitai's biggest woe is that he can't reach the next level of military school. That's par for the course in Scientology, where learning is described as a gradient, "a gradual approach to something, taken step by step, so that, finally, quite complicated and difficult activities or concepts can be achieved with relative ease." It’s one of the parts of Scientology that many have focused on — the idea of having to pay for classes in order to advance upwards through the religion’s levels. Some critics have compared After Earth's structure as being like that of a video game, Kitai going from level to level. That's really Study Tech.
It's only when he reaches Earth and is audited by his father that the trainee looks inward and aligns himself with the priorities of Scientology. For the Church, life is subdivided into eight "urges of survival," known as dynamics. The first dynamic prioritizes survival of the individual over everything else. In the film, Kitai confronts harsh elements and outruns hoards of animals all to save his father, but he's only able to succeed because of self-actualization. Typically, a hero might pick up skills and adapt to an alien environment. Not in After Earth, where Kitai separates himself from everything he knows in life and invests in his potential invincibility. He quests on, trusting his own abilities even when there hasn't been an established reason to trust them.
Anti-Psychiatry Aliens? With After Earth's Scientology roots in mind, every element starts to ring familiar in the context of the religion. The threatening alien, turned murderous by the scent of emotion, is a literalization of the organization's hard stance against psychiatric medicine. From the very beginning, Hubbard was critical of psychiatry, calling it an evasive practice that sidelined spiritual thinking. In his paper "Crime and Psychiatry," he claims that psychiatrists "advertise man as a push-button stimulus-response robot" and use inhumane practices to elicit response. That's the role of After Earth's blind, carnivorous beast, who hungers for fear while simultaneously provoking it.
Without being too obvious, Smith has delivered an incredibly mainstream platform for the Church's ideology. After Earth’s subtext makes every beat feel like a nod to the lessons of L. Ron Hubbard. Fleeing Earth to another planet only to return to home mirrors the idea of thetan resurrection. The ship Cypher and Kitai take on their mission isn't that far off from the Douglas DC-8–esque ship that took Xenu's kidnapped souls to earth. And the prominently advertised volcano that functions as a backdrop to a large After Earth set piece? Just look at the cover to Hubbard's book that started it all —Dianetics.
Thanks. I just Googled his name. Anne Archer’s son...didn’t see that coming.
wow, you might be on to something.
Usually at least the “him” in the movie is fun and wisecracking. In this one his character just seems to be emotionally distant and kind of abusive. If I wanted to watch somebody being a jerk to their kid I could just go to one a junior talent show.
Scientology celebrity kids run amuck.
Jaden Smith is going for emancipation.
Not sure why he recently dressed up like Iron Man on his date with the Kardashian-
The previews look awful, and match the reviews. If you need a sci-fi fix go see the new Star Trek movie or Iron Man 3. Neither are what I would call great cinema, but they’re well done and entertaining.
This is how you deal with this alien...
wHiel U wear HoW 2 SpeL UR NamE!!~!~ I wAz BeeinG Rraind to CONQure Galazxies!!
Am I the only one who thinks movies peaked in the 1960s? “The Sand Pebbles.” “Flight of the Phoenix.” “Bridge Over the River Kwai.” “Von Ryan’s Express.” “Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines.” “The Bedford Incident.” “The War Lover.” Etc, Etc.
Ping.
So they need a planet to live on and they have a intergalactic millitary presence...
What?? They cannot build some damned space colonies...? They can't build domed cities on any exoplanets???
I guess we really are dumber in the future...
That is like saying, yeah we can travel to another planet in another solar system because the homworld needs a special element to solve a problem, when if we have the tech to travel to another star system we would have enough tech to solve that problem we needed that special element for....
Oh wait...
Well at least it made money...
“Nova Prime” literally mean, from the Latin, “New First.” Shouldn’t it be called “New Second”?
I don’t think I can take 2 hours of that preposterous accent Smith puts on (from what I heard in the promos).
Xenu’s volcano is in the distance in this clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUcNyzu4IdM
For me, special effects have wrecked movies. Too much emphasis on bells and whistles at the expense of plot development, the senses must be assaulted constantly.
Jaden Smith promoting the wrong film on his date...lolol
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/jaden-smith-out-kylie-jenner-1922001
http://www.showbiz411.com/2013/05/31/will-smith-movie-after-earth-being-called-out-by-critics-for-scientology-references
“After Earth,” the new Will Smith movie, is a bust. At least critically. Almost every critic and movie blogger hated, including yours truly. The movie is being cited for being dull, slow, and humorless. But it’s also being cited for referring to the text of Scientology, Dianetics.
The tag line of the film is “Fear is a choice.” It’s emblazoned on shoulder bags that were given away at the premiere the other night. Now both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have called out Smith– who invented the story– for repurposing gobbledygook of Scientology in the “After Earth” monologues. They’re right of course.
Smith denies being involved in Scientology. But he’s been closely associated with Tom Cruise. He funds a private school in Calabasas, California that teaches Scientology curriculum. And his whole “I can save the world” gestalt–humorless, un-ironic, savior stuff– coincides with his statements from a few years ago that Scientology had as much validity as the Bible.
“After Earth” is such a bore that it’s unlikely anyone will join Scientology after getting through it. Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal actually wonders in his piece today if it’s the worst movie ever made? (Worse than “Cable Guy,” or “Gigli” or “Glitter”? Hmmm….Maybe it’s Scientology training osmosis or subliminal communication. Because most people will be sleeping through this interminable film.
Worst film ever made? You gotta watch “Manos: The Hands of Fate” to get near that mark.
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