Both Tom Cruise & Will Smith Get Post-Apocalyptic

Both Tom Cruise & Will Smith Get Post-Apocalyptic

: Published on Monday, December 10 2012; Written by Katie Marzullo

As I’m sure you all know by now, next Friday, December 21, marks the end of the Mayan calendar, and with it, our very existence. Yep, we are a mere 10 days away from the Apocalypse, so now is as good a time as any to get jazzed about a couple of post-Apocalyptic movies that just released trailers but will never actually see a theatrical run because, well, we’ll all be dead or something. But we can imagine what might have been, right?

First up, we have Oblivion, which looks like an unofficial sequel to movies like Independence Day and Armageddon, where humans have won the war over aliens/Mother Nature, but now we have to pick up the pieces after half the planet has been blown to bits… indeed, those movies never actually talk about THAT, do they? YAY, we won! But… oh yeah, everything’s been destroyed. Crap. So, to ensure that those pesky aliens don’t try and gum up the works again, Earth sends Tom Cruise to a distant planet to wipe out the rest of their population. But then he runs into some complications and stuff, like encountering another traveler to the planet whom he’s not sure is on the side of Good or Dastardly, and I think he finally meets up with Xenu as well or something… Anyway, it looks cool in a Minority Report-meets-Prometheus kind of way.

Then there’s After Earth, which sees our favorite post-Apocalypse survivor/alien butt-kicker hero Will Smith also venturing to another planet, and he’s brought his boy Jaden along for the ride this time. It’s a barren planet, a virtual wasteland that hasn’t seen life in a millennium… SPOILER ALERT: It’s Earth!!! Yes, M. Night Shyamalan, whose last few movies have been sort of meh, has decided to reveal the big plot twist right there in the trailer this time. Unlike Oblivion, this film feels a little more esoteric, using the backdrop of an abandoned, lifeless Earth as a metaphor for more cerebral themes, like the concepts of creating one’s own reality and the physical manifestation of thought. At least, that’s what I get from the trailer… I hope I’m not off-base on that, though, because that sounds really interesting!