After Earth film ripped

Wonderful on the outside Treacherous on the inside....! Cults have millions of members around the world who also thought they were immune.
joe sz
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After Earth film ripped

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Is Scientology unwatchable?

Religion News Service
David Gibson | Jun 3, 2013

The news is not good for the new movie “After Earth,” which means the news is not good for Sony Pictures, or Will Smith … or, it seems, Scientology, whose sci-fi inflected religious system inspired what was to be a summer blockbuster. Now it’s looking like a summer bust.

As the NYTimes reports, “After Earth” took in 18 percent less than the lowest of prerelease expectations and may have ended Smith’s reputation as a surefire action-adventure box office draw — not to mention hurting the budding career of son Jaden, his co-star. Oh, and how much further off track could M. Night Shyamalan’s career go? He used to pose big questions in intriguing ways, but he directed and co-wrote this movie, yet another flop for him.

The movie has been ripped in reviews, and may well add to the narrative of decline and crisis that has been surrounding Scientology: an exodus of members, tell-all books, lawsuits, celebrity scandals. Well, maybe Scientology IS like a real religion after all.

But the main difference may be that Scientology just isn’t watchable. “After Earth” appears destined to join John Travolta’s 2000 film “Battlefield Earth,” which aimed to introduce Scientology’s unusual cosmology to the public, as among the Worst Movies Ever.

This is ironic given the Hollywood DNA in Scientology’s genome — it draws celebrities like moths to a flame. It’s also odd in that biblically-based dramas — like the eponymously-named History Channel series, “The Bible,” are going gangbusters and spurring copycats.

Could it be that Scientology itself is the problem? Religions succeed in part because they tell a convincing story that undergirds the eternal truths they preach. Maybe Scientology doesn’t have such a coherent story, or one that is so easily told. Even “The Master,” the 2012 Paul Thomas Anderson drama that gives a fictionalized account of the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) got raves (and Oscar nominations) for acting and direction but still puzzled critics who weren’t sure what it was about.

Apropos, Ex-Scientologist Marc Headly explains some of the Scientology motifs in “After Earth,” including the display of “Robotic Emotions”:

Will Smith’s character is pretty much devoid of all emotions for the entire movie. While this may be part of his character or something that was directed in the script, in Scientology, one goes through great amounts of training and counseling to control one’s emotions and “mis-emotion,” as described by Hubbard. Anyone who has done even the smallest amount of Scientology training will recall sitting and staring at a person for hours on end without being allowed to blink, smile or turn one’s head. Will Smith pretty much masters that for the entirety of this movie.

Yeah, that’s not a formula for cinematic success, really.

What also may hurt the cause is how cagey Scientology’s adherents can be about Scientology. Tom Cruise got got out on video explaining the religion, but normally the religion imposes strict rules on confidentiality. “The first rule of Scientology is you don’t talk about Scientology.”

Hence this passage from Will and Jaden Smith’s two-handed interview with New York Magazine:

Q: I’ve read that you believe life can be understood through patterns.

Will: I’m a student of patterns. At heart, I’m a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything.

Q: Do you think there is a single theory to everything?

Jaden: There’s definitely a theory to everything.

Will: When you find things that are tried and true for millennia, you can bet that it’s going to happen tomorrow.

Jaden: The sun coming up?

Will: The sun coming up, but even a little more. Like for Best Actor Oscars. Almost 90 percent of the time, it’s mental illness and historical figures, right? So, you can be pretty certain of that if you want to win—as a man; it’s very different for women. The patterns are all over the place, but for whatever reason, it’s really difficult to find the patterns in Best Actress.

Q: Do you see patterns too, Jaden?

Jaden: I think that there is that special equation for everything, but I don’t think our mathematics have evolved enough for us to even—I think there’s, like, a whole new mathematics that we’d have to learn to get that equation.

Will: I agree with that.

Jaden: It’s beyond mathematical. It’s, like, multidimensional mathematical, if you can sort of understand what I’m saying.

Q: Are both of you religious?

Will: No, we are students of world religion.

Maybe they need to study some more before their next film?

David Gibson is an award-winning religion journalist, author and filmmaker. He is a national reporter for RNS and has written two books on Catholic topics, the latest a biography of Pope Benedict XVI.


http://davidgibson.religionnews.com/201 ... watchable/
Lost in Space
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Re: After Earth film ripped

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My theory, for what it's worth, is that people do not want to see this movie because they don't like the central premise that we have had to leave Earth because it has been destroyed and is unlivable and not because they have moral or philosophical issues with the central tenets of Scientology. L.Ron Hubbard was, after all, quite a success as a SciFi writer, aside from his other activities.
joe sz
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Re: After Earth film ripped

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Hubbard was a "success" in the pulp fiction market, but a second rate success for the uneven, sometimes confusing quality of his prolific writing, which is most likely why he turned to psychology [dianetics] and religion [Co$] to make his fortune.
That Hubbard was by habit a hasty and careless writer who saw sf as a convenient marketplace, but who wasn't deeply committed to the work he turned out for it, so that even his best stories were first-rate only in brief moments and rare flashes.

And finally, that while Hubbard may have been among the dozen or so writers who made the Golden Age golden, the Golden Age would have been just about as golden without Hubbard's contribution as it was with it. His work may have been necessary, in the sense that it served the useful function of keeping Campbell's magazines running, but it wasn't essential to the development of modern science fiction. His stories weren't notable for their transcendence. Nor was he one of the key writers involved in the conceptual restructuring of space, time and dimension that was the central undertaking of the great Campbellian Works Project.
http://www.enter.net/~torve/higher/hubbard.html

I tried reading Battlefield Earth...interesting in parts but brutish in style compared to the genius of a Heinlein or Asimov.
Lost in Space
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Re: After Earth film ripped

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Well, he may well have been mediocre in a number of ways. I have done some research. But if it could be said that Scientology is Sci Fi, he has succeeded in gripping the imaginations and in some cases the pocketbooks of many! I have read that he founded Scientology on a bet that he could make a religion out of a science fiction story. And others have done the same, not naming any names you understand, lol.
I still think that the bulk of the general public is more concerned with whether a film will be fun or uplifting (like Hitch and The Pursuit of Happiness) or whether it may be grim and depressing with no silver lining, in which case they would prefer to give it a miss, than they are with it's larger themes or religious or quasi religious purpose. Also, they prefer movies that, while showing disasters, sure, also show them as localized an not on such a sweeping cataclysmic scale that the Earth itself is unlivable. Even 2012 had survivors, and parts of the Earth (e.g. Africa) are even more habitable than they have been previously, for example. Star Wars makes no mentioned of Earth, because it's in a galaxy "far far away", and so we can imagine that Earth is still ticking along as usual.
joe sz
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Re: After Earth film ripped

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LiS

the legend is that Hubbard invented Co$ on a bet but the history says something else. Hubbard was deeply invested in the occult early with a rocket scientist guy named John Whiteside Parsons who was into Aleister Crowley stuff and the Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley channeled his infamous "Book of the Law" from an entity ?? that most Satanists still use as a core doctrine. Hubbard believed he was 'channeling' all his Co$ stuff and he later specifically channeled OT3 after he formed Scientology.
Parsons and the occult [edit]Parsons saw no contradiction between his scientific and magical pursuits. Before each rocket test launch, Parsons would chant Crowley's hymn to the Greek god Pan.[5] In 1942 Parsons was chosen by Aleister Crowley to lead Agapé Lodge of OTO in California following Crowley's expulsion of Wilfred Smith from the position.[6]

Parsons and Helen Northrup were married in April 1935.[7]

Sara Northrup (aka "Sarah Elizabeth" or "Betty" Northrup), began living with Parsons and Parsons' wife, Sara's half-sister Helen Northrup; later, Parsons and Sara started an affair, which caused strife with Helen and eventually led to Helen leaving with Wilfred Smith.

Parsons' 11-room home, nicknamed "The Parsonage", became a boarding house for a variety of artists and eccentrics, including journalist Nieson Himmel, physicist Robert Cornog, and author and future Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard became involved with Parsons' mistress Sara Northrup and they later married.
Lost in Space
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Re: After Earth film ripped

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I have heard about his affair and subsequent marriage to Helen. Somewhere online is a lengthy transcript of his private thoughts about that marriage and also about his military service (which was not greatly to his credit) and his struggles with fidelity, his belief in his powers and his concurrent deep sense of inferiority and shame and it shows how very self-critical he was and also that he struggled with his mental health. I believe he broke with Parsons early on. He does appear to have somewhat admired Alastair Crowley but Scientology bears little resemblance to the Golden Dawn or Satanism, taken as a whole.
In any case, I still think that the commercial flop that the latest Will Smith movie appears to be does not have that much to do with public perceptions about Scientology, and may have something to do with its grim premise.
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