No Surprise
Felt this way about him when I saw "The village", have avoided anything he's made since
Those of you unfortunate enough to have spent money seeing The Last Airbender will doubtless be only too willing to blow one more dollar to send M Night Shyamalan back to film school. That's the aim of the splendidly-named M Night School campaign, which declares: "Certainly, there must be 150,000 of us film lovers out there …
I recommend The Happening - genuinely hilariously bad (after the quite chilling start which I could take halfway seriously). I laughed and laughed.
The thing is that Shyamalan isn't technically a bad filmmaker at all - he just has terrible scripts, can't get good performances out of actors, and thinks he is a wondrous genius and so injects every scene with essence of PROFOUNDANDICONIC until the poor things collapse in on themselves.
Sadly I doubt this campaign will humble him any, but sooner or later people will stop giving him money to make films.
I almost walked out when Marky Mark, ambitiously cast as a science teacher, asks his class why the bees are disappearing. The students have a few stabs before Marky states "there's some things we'll just never know". EH? WTF! you're the science teacher FFS.
Sadly the wife insisted we stayed till the end.
' he just has terrible scripts, can't get good performances out of actors, and thinks he is a wondrous genius and so injects every scene with essence of PROFOUNDANDICONIC until the poor things collapse in on themselves'
I'm no expert, but technically, that sounds like bad filmmaking to me.
If you want a good night at the flix, the boys from brazil is the one for me
I paid to see Sixth Sense which was a decent film though the "twist" was 100% obvious to me from the opening scene. In fact I spent the film thinking "well they are desperately trying to convince me he's not dead..."
I paid to see Unbreakable which was average at best.
I paid to see Signs which was just terrible.
I paid to see The Village which was again obvious but had some interesting moments.
The trend has been absolutely going downhill from the start and thankfully I've completely avoided his later films because the ads alone for those were near unwatchable.
No, nobody will get another penny out of me in his name!!!
It only works because of the "clever" cuts between scenes.
From the top of my head, the one that stuck out was every time he goes to the basement door it cuts to him being in the basement until the very last attempt when he realises he's dead.
/shrugs
Maybe it's just hindsight, but the film seemed far less clever the second time around. I think that's probably true with all MNS's "twists", though.
Other people that agree with me that The Sixth Sense was a dire film. I remember when the wretched thing came out in the cinema and everyone was saying "Oooo, what a clever plot twist". Now, umpteen dire films later, I can cheerfully point my finger and say that you only have yourselves to blame for encouraging him.
.. the plot "twist" was extremely obvious if you pay any attention to what is going on. I know people have been conditioned by Hollywood schlock to sit and watch passively and wait to be spoon fed, but I do wonder how anyone could miss the fact that the only character who reacts to him at all is the "I see dead people" kid? It was an interesting idea tragically overplayed.
Hmmmm, I'd be more inclined to send Michael Bay. See with Shyamalan, it's obvious you're going to be dissapointed but at least it's his own creation, he's destroying his own work. Michael on the other hand gets good films but destroys them. God how I wanted to stand on his neck having watched Transformers 2. The problem is I knew it would be pants but felled compelled to watch it because there's cars that turn into robots man, ROBOTS!!!
It sure beat the heck out of the other film named Avatar.
Sixth Sense was OK, and Unbreakable was at least novel and quite fun. The Village was just dull and obvious and The Happening is a potential candidate for worst film ever "OMG IT'S THE TREES!!! THE TREES!!!!!" pretty much sums up that story.
If anyone needs to go to film school I think it's Ridley Scott -- so that he can learn that cutting every half second during an action scene does not make it "fast-paced" it makes it impossible to watch and shit. Gladiator was ruined by the over use of quick cuts and stupid up-close camera angles which made the film claustrophobic and choppy.
My wife and I got the Last Airbender on Bluray to make up the numbers on a blockbuster rental deal so I didn't mind too much that it was awful. But we did laugh our arses off at various points throughout the film from the imortal "but then we discovered he was a bender" line to the random jump cuts and disjointed dialogue to the WTF just happen and why moments.
Not actually enjoyable as a film but provides plenty of entertainment spotting all the ways it is bad in the same way Doomsday 2012 did (It's probably not the film you think it is, read the reviews http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132130/ )
I think Ridley Scott can only direct in the dark. Alien and Blade Runner were very atmospheric and the close-ups and cutting made them claustrophobic but the situation allowed for it. When you're filming an epic gladiatorial battle in a colosseum you surely want to create a feeling of awe and epic size, not a sense that they're fighting in a phone box against lions emerging from the ground in what has to be the worst piece of CGI since 100 Million BC.
I think he's a one-trick pony -- though a bloody good one-trick pony.
We could, but given our luck, there will be a twist in the plotline and the hitman will turn out to be from the future even though there was not indication of that at all when we hired him and even more shocking the hitman finds out he is direct descendent of Shyamalan and thus can not kill him without killing himself.
"considering that grandfather plots are approximately the third most hackneyed cliche in all of science fiction."
And the most misconstrued considering the alternate timeline theory to solve the grandfather paradox. Granted, time travel isn't called such by physicists, but "closed time-like loops"
The fact that serious scientist have to come with the alternative universes theory to reconcile paradoxes shows it by it self.
Think of it, Even if alternative universes were real, and the time travel was possible from the POV of the people on the original time line nothing had happened, the "time traveler" just disintegrated out of existence. It is a unfalsifiable hypothesis and therefore an invalid theory.
Plus is the lousiest plot devise/deus ex machina ever thought about.
GOD I HATE STAR TREK!!!!
I quite liked it. With such magic lines like:
"I could tell at once that you were a bender, and that you would realise your destiny."
It's almost, but not quite, bad enough to be good. I'm hoping he gets another $150m to spend on a film, his quality trajectory will soon create the best worst movie ever.
Off to watch Plan 9..
I don't get it. Shyamalan seems to be walking the traditional aspiring film maker path in reverse, each film just gets worse. It's not that he's a bad director, just that the films are. Perhaps it's a Hollywood in-joke we're not party to?
Full marks to the editors who cut the trailer for the Happening on TV recently and made it look like an excellent and must see film. I'm just glad I noted who directed in the credits so wasn't surprised as it got increasingly banal.
Shyamalan's main failing seems to be he's stuck in a rut, starting with the plot twist, then just using any tortuous crap to arrive at it; "So they wake up, it was all a dream. How did they get there..."
Leo (23 JUL-22 AUG)
Why not finally ruin the promise of your early directorial career by releasing what appears to be a big-budget remake of Mortal Kombat with the word 'Bender' in the title?
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/features/horoscopes/your-astrological-week-ahead,-with-psychic-bob-201008112995/
Although it's a bit funny, at the end of the day, everything he has done has made millions (sometimes hundreds of millions), not everybody can be Kubrick (which might be for the best, if you've ever seen Eyes Wide Shut), we need people like Shyamalan to do things differently (even badly) otherwise all films will end up the same.
Personally, I think people criticize successful people because they think it elevates them, by all means say you don't like their work, but it's just an opinion, I'm not a Tom Cruise fan, but his success is undeniable (see the segway from Eyes Wide Shut there) just google "Rich Hall Tom Cruise" and you'll see how successful doing the same thing over and over again can be.
I criticise because it's fucking annoying.
Take the example I used before of Ridley Scott's Gladiator -- that film would have been a great epic of our time if he just learned how to use something other than close-ups and quick cuts in action sequences.
I view it as a bit like criticising a restaurant where the plate was cold or they overcooked the vegetables or, in Shayamalan's case burned the steak -- ruining something which had potential.
about the M. Night thing, the problem is that his films are terrible, but the stories behind them are actually quite interesting. Like Unbreakable I thought was one of the best storylines ever as it was so original, and originality is something desperately missing from Hollywood these days. The same thing with Signs (I never rated 6th Sense that much anyway). The problem was that they were so poorly executed that the whole meaning of the message was lost by what tended to be a long drawn out over-indulgence in character reflection,
Agree - Unbreakable is good. There are damn few films like that which will take it slow and work on the characters. Usually it's 5 minutes of "I'm a regular guy", 5 minutes of "wow, something happened", and then they're straight onto beating up the bloke on a flying skateboard/evil mutant/alien menace/giant robot. If the blowing-shit-up part is all you want, Michael Bay and Uwe Boll are fine. Unbreakable is not that sort of film.
My fear is that they finally will do "Unbreakable 2" and it will suck as badly as everything MNS has touched since.
I'd love to love Shyamalan, but his movies are a mockery of my so-called intelligence. Oooh, the alien is under your bed, ooooh! And what's even more annoying is the soap-box packaging of inane philosophies, and last but not least, how the volume suddenly goes up under you at the theater and startles you over something insignificant to the plot. So annoying and immature..
I'm not afraid to admit it, perhaps it's not cool to do so. Then again, I don't spend half my day criticising MS, calling them M$, thinking Windows is sh*t, thinking IE is sh*t and that FF is the best thing since sliced bread.
I liked 6th Sense (also guessed the twist pretty early on)
I liked Unbreakable, good story, fairly well acted
I liked Signs, good hidden meanings in there.
I liked The Village (guessed the twist early as well)
I liked The Lady In The Water (was expecting a twist, perhaps the twist was that there wasn't one)
The Happening was okay, slightly dissapointed though
The Last Airbender was okay
So, am I alone in actually liking his films? I liked the stories beneath all of them, thought they were quite good actually.
I believe there was a conscious decision after The Villiage to drop the whole "twist" thing as it was getting stale and distracting from the films.
IMO, this was definitely the case with The Village (which actually had at least TWO major twists). Personally, I felt that a lot of people got so concerned with the twists that - as with Signs - they tended to miss what the film was really about (in this case, trying to come to terms with grief).
You are not alone, apparently, for there was at least one more person in this forum responding in kind.
I, on the other hand, think M. Night Shyamalan's movies are all crap, starting with "The 6th Sense." I guess the reason I was disappointed in that movie from the moment I exited the theater was because I had recently seen "The Others," by Alejandro Amenábar, and was aware of how a truly creepy ghost story with an OMG-THEY-WERE-DEAD-ALL-ALONG twist ending should be.
Amenábar is the brains and soul behind other excellent films that have been so successful in the International circuit, they ended up been destroyed by Hollywood in American remakes. Such great honour has been bestowed on "Tesis" (which ended up as "8mm," ugh!); and "Abre Los Ojos" (which lead to the horrible, HORRIBLE, "Vanilla Sky").
I guess I always thought "The 6th Sense" was Hollywood's version of Amenábar's "The Others," a fact that intuitively made perfect sense.
-dZ.
I saw Devil, most recent Shymalan foray, a few weeks ago and while I will not claim it was an excellent film I did enjoy it. I was pretty standard supernatural horror and having the protagonist all trapped in an elevator served to heighten the tension for me. I also thought the decision to film the entire opening credit sequence upside down served to unbalance the viewer from the beginning.
'...starting with "The 6th Sense." I guess the reason I was disappointed in that movie from the moment I exited the theater was because I had recently seen "The Others," by Alejandro Amenábar, and was aware of how a truly creepy ghost story with an OMG-THEY-WERE-DEAD-ALL-ALONG twist ending should be.'
'The 6th Sense was made in 1999 - 2 years BEFORE Amenábar's "The Others"...
I mean, he hasn't done well since "Signs" (Which suffered from stupid aliens, but was otherwise a very good movie), but can't we think of someone worse? Guy Ritchie?? Uwe Boll?? Michael Bay?? (Brits don't get Robot Chicken, but Google "Robot Chicken Michael Bay Explosions" sometime for a good laugh at Michael's expense)
At least M. Night's worst films remain interesting for the first 15-30 minutes. That's more than some directors can manage :)
... but Shyamalan's movies are perplexing. The actual Premise for the movies is usualy sound, but they are realised in such a way that all the suspense and intrigue are somehow missing. It would be interesting (and considerably more entertaing) to see someone else do the same movies. I so wanted 'Signs' to be a good movie, but c'mon... Mel Gibson a disalusioned priest?
Oh, and re: Ridley Scott. An excellent director who is just having a dodgy patch. Will be interesting to see what his return to the Alien series will produce. He's already expressed his feelings that the franchise has gone off the rails a bit and I take that as a good sign.