- ERIK’S ENVIABLE DVD SHELF Present but not pictured: Such classics as Dude, Where’s My Car?, Into the Blue, and the complete, 10-season box set of Stargate SG-1.
Pictured above? Those are, somewhat embarrassingly, mine. Randomly shelved between my favorite Michael Mann flick and the real The Office, there’s a solid sampling of M. Night Shyamalan’s major films: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water. (No doubt I’ll get some shit for having anything beyond Unbreakable on my shelves, but hey, at least I don’t own The Happening.)
I note this ’cause Shyamalan’s latest—a god-awful live-action adaptation of the great Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender—made $40 million this weekend, a big number that’s all the more impressive and/or depressing thanks to the fact that the film currently boasts an eight percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s not really surprising: Terrible movies frequently make tons of money. (Though that’s certainly not to say everything that rakes in dough is automatically terrible, nor that terrible movies don’t just as frequently bomb.) In fact, in The Last Airbender‘s case, success was kinda expected: The cartoon has a huge and diverse fanbase. It’s just… disappointing. And maybe more disappointing for me, the guy who owns no less than five of Shyamalan’s movies. Up until fairly recently, I was the guy who was still a fan of Shyamalan; now, I’m one more person who just wants him to stop making movies.
Airbender‘s impressive opening isn’t an automatic green light for a sequel—it cost $150 million to make, so it has a long way to go before it becomes profitable for Paramount—but I was hoping it’d bomb, and bomb hard. An opening this big (heh) means Shyamalan will keep getting work—something that wasn’t certain after Lady in the Water and The Happening. This is the equivalent of giving your dog a Milk-Bone after he takes a big shit on your bed.
The reason I have those Shymalan DVDs if I want him to stop making movies? ‘Cause some of those are fucking good. The Sixth Sense is still fantastic, original and weird and fun and sad. Unbreakable is still one of the best superhero movies ever made. Signs still creeps me right the fuck out. The Village has moments of austere and chilling beauty. Lady in the Water… uh, okay. I’m not sure how I ended up with Lady in the Water, but it does feature (A) the incredibly egotistical Shyamalan playing a writer whose work will save the world and (B) a movie critic getting killed by some sort of hell-hound made out of plants or something, so at least it’s got some entertainment value. But in general: Aside from Water, the above films are gorgeously shot and, frequently, impressively edited. More so than many recent American filmmakers, Shyamalan—in his early work, at least—has a truly impressive command of tone and an incredible eye: His slow pans through the gorgeous and ominous Village, his clever and escalating tension in Sixth Sense, his insightful, weird channeling of E.T.-era Spielberg in Signs, used to tell a very different alien invasion story. I won’t deny that Shymalan’s twists don’t always hold up, nor am I gonna argue that his sometimes clumsy scripts are works of art—but the guy, at one point, could be a hell of a director.
He’s not anymore. Watching The Last Airbender—an embarrassingly poorly written film that has clearly been edited down from a longer version, resulting in a frequently confusing, incomprehensible mess of goofy gibberish—I had the same feeling that I had watching The Happening: embarrassment. This shit is fundamentally broken, stupid and bland and awkward and tone-deaf, and all the more so when compared to something like Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. Meanwhile, the frequently derided Shyamalan seems to neither know nor care how unwatchable his films have become.
That’s a bummer for all the families that dropped a shit-ton of money for tickets to 3D screenings of The Last Airbender this past weekend, but—more selfishly—it’s a bummer for me. God knows the last thing this world needs is one more self-involved, self-important, self-loathing film critic whining about how disappointed they are in this or that, but fuck it: Stop it, Shyamalan. Your stuff used to be good. You used to give a shit. You used to be able to tell what was working and what wasn’t. At the very least, your films used to be beautiful to look at, or have more good moments than bad ones.
I wanted The Last Airbender to fail not because I wanted a bad adaptation of the Avatar cartoon—god, that show could have been made into an awesome movie—but because Shyamalan’s version of it was terrible. And also, just a little bit, because maybe having a film that big fail—not only on an artistic level, but a commercial one as well—would send some sort of message to Shyamalan and the dumbasses who keep hiring him: Either it’s time for Shyamalan to stop making movies, or he needs to go back to making movies that’re worth people’s time.
The Last Airbender is probably gonna get at least one sequel. It’s tentatively planned for a 2012 release.
Shymalan has a great eye, but is generally a less talented writer. Picking on The Happening’s plot twist is probably unfairly easy, but everything after Unbreakable left me cold. Lady in the Water was embarrassing to watch- too much of the creator’s ego was in the script.
I hoped that with someone else’s source material, he would actually be able tell a pretty good story and create a compelling fantasy world. That hope has departed, and, yes, he really should stop making movies.
The Happening is loads better than Lady in the Water!
I definitely have a personal relationship with Shyamalan’s films. I feel like he’s this guy I met in 1998 who I really liked. Then he started to act weird and my friends began to question him. “No,” I said, “When I met this guy he was so awesome. He’s just figuring out who he is.” Then he started to use hard drugs and actively alienating people so I kind of fell out with him, but I’d still stand up for him and be like, “Yeah, we’re not really friends, but maybe some day when he gets his shit together…” Then he made The Happening and I stopped going to see his movies.
You’re pretty spot on about Sixth, Unbreakable, Signs, and Village, although the latter was just enough off course for me to be the last of his films I’ve bothered to see.
What you fail to realize is that “Airbender” is a children’s movie and my kids adored it. Yes it was hard for me to suffer through but it is going to be one of the most beloved children’s films in a while. You know only when your kid bawls to see it again.
Yep, count me as one of the few who has seen “Lady” more than once. Two dates during the opening weekend; couldn’t tell the other girl “it blows, saw it yesterday with another girl.”
its a kids movie. i think the critics have been way too harsh. you have to see it in the context that it was created. its not perfect, but it’s not worse than the star wars prequels and the acting is not worse than the god awful acting in any of the Twilight movies. Ten year old’s love it. My nephew and his friends loved it and will continue to love it. they want to see it again. Most everyone in the theatre i was in clapped at the end. My prediction is it will be a timeless classic that children will adore for years to come while all the critics who hated it (mostly because they are angry at Shyamalan for his past films) will stand around scratching their heads.
The “children’s movie” label is a poor excuse. Pixar and Dreamworks have been churning out children’s movies for years now, and meet with both critical and box office success on a regular basis. Why should the bar suddenly be lowered for The Last Airbender? $280 million was put into this film (the aforementioned $150 mill, plus $130million for advertising) and even though it’s exceeding expectations, it’s hardly a success yet. This movie dropped the ball. Also, the name pronunciations and racial issues with the cast that many people seem to be hung up on are the least of this movie’s problems. Granted, it had it’s moments, and the costumes and many of the sets, especially the Northern Water city were good. However the few good things are very much overshadowed by the obvious shortcomings.
I think people rip on Shyamalan because it is the popular thing to do; film buffs hate to voice an unpopular opinion. It took me about 15 minutes into the film to stop being confused, but once I realized it was for children I “got it.” After that it was wonderful. Also, I like Lady in the Water a lot. You guys have put Shyamalan in the same place that the public put J.M. Barrie so many years ago when he wanted to do theatre for children: you made his early work too sacred. He’s just an artist, and I like most of what he’s done.
it’s too bad that the movie is so low-quality that the “Children’s movie” line is an effective defense, because the source material transcends any of that (even though it was a cartoon on nickelodeon, it’s amazingly well-written, plotted, developed, etc.)
As a rule, kids are terrible judges of quality… they’d probably be just as impressed if you waved a glow stick around for 90 minutes, as long as they could also stuff their faces with overpriced, over-sugared theater candy while you did so.
Yeah, “children’s movie” excuse is way lame, especially when all the kids I know, and have heard from (and anecdotally, have heard about online) seem to hate the movie too, regardless of whether they dug the original animated series.
Just because your kid likes it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a passable piece of shit. It could just mean your kid is kind of stupid.
At least in “The Happening”, there are people lying down in front of lawn mowers and stuff.
“The Village” pissed me off so bad, I couldn’t see straight for 2 days.