In their place are tired aphorisms about finding your center and rooting oneself in the present - whatever that means.

The only things missing are bonus rounds and on-screen score boxes. Given Whitta’s background in digital gaming, it’s not surprising that “After Earth” unfolds like a videogame. Rule 3: to escape the ursa, Kitai must “ghost” or reach a Zen-like state where he doesn’t show fear. Because the temperature fluctuates wildly, Kitai must find a hot spot before sunset. The rules: Because the air is thin, the boy must slurp down a breath vial every 24 hours ‒ and he only has enough to get him there and back. Everything rests on Kitai, whose progress is monitored via his sensor suit. Darn! The only one that works is in the ship’s tail section, which broke off upon impact 80 mile back. If they’re to be rescued, they must activate a distress beacon. “Everything has evolved to kill human,” explains the father, who has been seriously wounded in the crash.

The ship, which resembles a stingray, runs into a Category 4 meteor storm and crash-lands ‒ you guessed it! ‒ on mother Earth, which has reverted to its primordial state with oversized tigers, monkeys and raptors.

Shyamalan and co-screenwriter Gary Whitta (working from Will Smith’s story) oblige with a last mission before retirement. Obviously a father-son bonding ordeal is in order. The teenager also shoulders a fair amount of guilt: he believes he was responsible for his older sister’s death by an ursa, an alien beastie that’s blind but can track you by your pheromones. Son Kitai (Jaden Smith), a Ranger-in-training, both worships and fears the old man. Ranger Commander Cypher (Will Smith) stays true to his name: He’s a washout as a father, a Santini-like hardass who causes acute indigestion at the dinner table and demands his kids snap to and salute him. A case in point: the dysfunctional Raige family. However, he still carries 21st Century emotional baggage, feelings of neediness and self-loathing. Carbon emissions have made Earth uninhabitable, off-limits. Those global-warming experts were right all along. The plates are intersected by numerous smaller and larger rivers, some of which have cut deep into the terrain.We’re in the distant future. The largest ore deposits are found in Kryvbass around the city of Kryvyi Rih in the west of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, while the coal deposits are mainly located in the Donbass region around the city of Donetsk. They are rich in raw materials such as iron ore and coal. These plates consist mainly of rock from the Ancient World, which has been raised again by the formation of the Alglidian mountain belt in the last 10 million years. These include the Podolian Plate, the Dnieper Highlands or the Donets Plate. In the central part of the country, higher areas with terrain heights between 200 and 470 m (Kamula), which are called plates, extend from west to east. Hopes are placed in the development of fields in the Black Sea. In the area of lowlands, there are smaller gas and oil deposits, especially in the central Ukrainian Poltava Oblast, but these are not sufficient for the country’s self-sufficiency. Due to the small differences in altitude, the rivers of this area flow very slowly. The terrain there reaches heights between 0 and 200 m.

On the part belonging to the Eastern European plain, especially in the north and south of the country, large lowlands such as the Dnieper Lowlands and the Black Sea Depression extend.

After earth 3d