WARNING: SPOILERS

When the Academy Award nominations roll out in January, you’ll probably hear about Matthew McConaughey in this and Robert Redford in that and Chiwtel Ejiofor in the other, but nary a word about Will Smith in “After Earth.” Shame. It’s truly an astonishing performance. For 20 years, Smith has exuded effortless charm and fun onscreen and here he strips himself of both. He gives us nothing. He’s a lump. Kudos to director M. Night Shyamalan for culling such a leaden performance from such a charismatic actor.

“After Earth” is, in a word, awful. It’s a MST3K-type movie. You watch it with friends and toss jokes at the screen. It’s the only way to survive its 100-minute length.

It’s also a little creepy. It feels vaguely Scientology-y. Story by Will Smith, by the way.

Apparently in the near future we will make Earth uninhabitable (global warming, etc.), so will leave, travel light years, and settle on a new planet, which we will name Nova Prime.

All together now: Nova Prime? That’s the name we came up with? Did we get to vote on it? Were there other options? I’m sorry, but nothing indicates B-grade science fiction to me more than “Nova Prime.” I see a 1950s paperback with a drawing of a handsome man and woman grappling in the foreground, and a rocket ship in the background: 35 cents.

A thousand years later an alien race wants to take over Nova Prime (to rename it?), so they sic Ursas on us, huge, multi-limbed creatures which can’t see us until we exude pheromones; until we show fear. Which, since they’re scary, we do. But one man figures out how to defeat them: Just don’t show fear, yo. That man—and again with the names—is Cypher Raige of the United Ranger Corps (Will Smith). His heroism will eventually make him a general. It will also make him a leaden lump. No fear, but not much of anything else, either. Every bit of humanity is drained from his personality.

It’s a father-son story. Cypher’s teenage son, Kitai (Smith’s son Jaden), is attempting to live up to the old man (as is Jaden), so joins Ranger Corps boot camp. He’s good. He can run faster, jump  higher, than the other cadets, but in the field he’s a mess. Basically he’s afraid. When he was 10 he watched as his older sister was slaughtered by an Ursa, and the memory always drags him back to fear. It’s a source of tension between father and son, Stoney and Weepy, because the son was there and didn’t help; and because the father wasn’t there.

Eventually these two will be the only survivors of a crash landing back on Earth, where, as the injured Cypher tells his son ominously, “Everything has evolved to kill humans.”

Cool! Except, it turns out not everything has evolved to kill humans. That flock of birds just kind of swirls in the air, the gibbons don’t attack until Kitai throws a rock at them, and the bird of prey, yes, captures Kitai but eventually saves his life. Plus evolved jungle cats are more interested in the eggs in the nest than Kitai. But the leeches? They have totally evolved to kill humans.

Besides, the main concern isn’t the animals on Earth but the Ursa that was in a cage in the tail section of the ship, which landed 100 kilometers away. That’s also where the distress signal is located. Since Cypher is injured, he can’t retrieve it. It’s up to the son. It’s a journey in which he will keep doing the wrong thing (despite communication with and counsel from his father) until he does the right thing (without communication from his father). In the end he will live up to his father’s name. In battle with the Ursa, he will reach the still place of the soul and show no fear; because, as the father told him, and as the tagline reminds us, “Danger is very real, but fear is a choice.”

This is seen as a positive, by the way: showing no fear. But if it leads to becoming a leaden lump, what’s the point?

More, how do you show no fear? Here’s Cypher’s counsel:

Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity, Kitai.

Right. As in “Oh my god, that lion might eat me in one second!” People get so hung up on unreal future thoughts like that.

Domestically, the movie bombed this summer. Since “Independence Day” in 1996, Will Smith has starred in 16 movies. Twelve of them have grossed more than $100 million in the U.S. “After Earth”? $60 million. Because movies are real but going to see them is a choice.