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M. Night Shyamalan. What Happened?

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chalkitdown1 said:
Don't most people like the smell of their own farts?
m-night-shyamalan.jpg
 
I always thought people didn't realize how fucking nuts it is to build a whole career on this stupid "twist ending" thing. Because that is all there ever was to his movies.
 
I really hate to be 'that guy' but it needs to be said. He can probably direct your fantasy aspirational 'movies' or movie games much more proficiently that every poster can in their minds eye.

His directing style, framing, pacing is there. He knows how to do all that. His problems lately is he can't string those notes into a piece of music.

And I do think he fell into his own hype and the audience, rightly, expected a twist in every one of his movies after the 6th Sense, Signs and Unbreakable.

I think he's the kind of director who needs to go away for 10 years to recharge, think up of new ideas and surprise us again.

I have no dobut he a few great movies left in him
 
Technically hes on the rise again, he did the story for Devil, and that has like a 55% on RT. His next movie has Gary Whitta writing and Jaden Smith acting so that should be...interesting lol.

Regardless of what you might think about him, his movies do very well at the box office so he isnt going anywhere.
 
zero margin said:
Didn't he write it?

The story belongs to him, the screenplay was written by Brian Nelson, who also wrote Hard Candy for example.

You guys should also read Running Out of Time.. wich came out in 1995, here's the plot:

Jessie Keyser is a 13-year-old girl from the village of Clifton, Indiana in the 1840s. During a village-wide bout of diphtheria, Jessie's mother reveals that the actual year is 1996, and that Clifton Village is actually a tourist attraction, a replica of a historical village. She secretly sends Jessie out of the village to retrieve a cure for the disease from a man who disagreed on having Clifton as a tourist attraction

uhm.. yeah.
 
quadriplegicjon said:
He has to stop writing his films. I still think he is actually a really good director, just a shit writer.
Didn't he write Signs? As far as I'm concerned, that's his best screenplay. I linked to this scene in the "greatest line from movies" thread. I think having Mel Gibson had a lot to do with how that scene turned out, but it shows (including the scene directly after that) that MNS has writing chops.

I don't know who made The Last Airbender.
 
He's a horrible director at getting good performances out of his actors. The Happening had some of the worst(funniest) 'acting' jobs I've ever seen in my life.
 
Unbreakable and Sixth Sense were the best. Signs is a distant third because those 2 were that much better, and everything else is somewhere below the cliff.
 
Kusagari said:
He's a horrible director at getting good performances out of his actors. The Happening had some of the worst(funniest) 'acting' jobs I've ever seen in my life.

Mark Wahlberg is an actor? I thought he just played himself in every one of his movies.?
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The acting in 6th Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs was great.
 
I think the problem is that he keeps trying to top himself with every movie he makes.

He works best when given a limited budget and a simple story.
 
Borgnine said:
Where is everyone getting "he got too full of himself" from? I've never heard anything like that, unless I missed something. Just seems to me like the quality of his creative works has declined since his first one, this isn't unheard of.
Have you seen Lady in the Water? It's not exactly subtle.

wikipedia said:
Variety magazine wrote a scathing advance review that appeared on July 16, 2006. Common complaints about the film were that little effort was put into getting the viewer to believe in the world, that few moments of the film could be taken seriously, and that Shyamalan was using the film as a form of self-indulgence; instead of having a minor cameo, as in most of his films, Shyamalan cast himself as a visionary whose writing changes the world, and included a film critic —portrayed as arrogant, self-assured, and passive —who is despised by the other characters and who ultimately is violently killed. Many reviewers attacked this perceived self-indulgence...
 
People saying he's still good at directing and pacing needs to watch The Last Airbender.

Terrible pacing issues, the worst edits, and all of the actors acted like they weren't given directions for what to do in any scene. Most just stood around until they had a line to say. Not to mention the amateur framing of dialog scenes. Just extreme closeups and awkward positioning of the actors.

On top of that, in interviews he gave after the movie was scored and reviewed, he sounded delusional as hell. Saying he doesn't listen to the critics anymore. Well guess what M. Night, it was these same critics that you listened to when they praised you for Sixth Sense.
 
I for one love The Village. If you don't watch it expecting some big horror movie, it is fantastic. Something about the environment, the music...
 
The Happening was an abortion. We rented it expecting the comedy, and we became horrified at how long and drawn out Shamaylan dragged out this terrible concept. People may defend his unique cinematography, direction or whatever but whatever skill he had he'd lost by this. Cringe worthy dialogue, non existent moments of suspense a poorly cast ensemble which just didn't suit roles and had the chemistry of lumps of lumps of wood.
 
Bit-Bit said:
Terrible pacing issues, the worst edits, and all of the actors acted like they weren't given directions for what to do in any scene. Most just stood around until they had a line to say. Not to mention the amateur framing of dialog scenes. Just extreme closeups and awkward positioning of the actors.

EARTHBENDERS!
 
I loved Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable, and The Village. All his later ones sucked.

Yes, I loved The Village.
 
dave is ok said:
He didn't even come up with the "twist" in Sixth Sense until his third or fourth draft of the screenplay. His entire career is one happy accident.
Which only shows how stupid is this movie.
I mean, how many times doctor should have eat/drink/use toilet/open door/have conversation with anyone/buy anything?
And who hired him?
It it was one day, sure, I could believe some perfect storm of coincidences.
Six months? Even deaf,blind and mute idiot would figure out something's wrong.
 
trineo_feo said:
I for one love The Village. If you don't watch it expecting some big horror movie, it is fantastic. Something about the environment, the music...



Yes!!!!


Am cry tears of joy.
 
trineo_feo said:
I for one love The Village. If you don't watch it expecting some big horror movie, it is fantastic. Something about the environment, the music...

I like it too. It's not built so much on TWIST where the idea is to pull the rug out from under you, it's just kind of a mystery. Also it's got Brody in it who's cool and the unveiling of Bryce Dallas Howard's hotness.
 
Veidt said:
Abrams is the next spielberg. no one else.

lol what a load of bullshit.

anyways dude hit the loony bin after Signs....and coincidentally so did Mel Gibson. And Joaquin Phoenix went crazy a few years later *shamalanalan twist.jpg*
 
Catalix said:
Have you seen Lady in the Water? It's not exactly subtle.
This made me laugh a little:

Also panned was the fact that the film was based on a bedtime story Shyamalan told to his children; Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat commented: "If Shyamalan is going to use his kids as a focus group for future projects, maybe he should start making movies for Nickelodeon already and stop wasting our time".[15] Shyamalan went on to direct a film adaptation of Nickelodeon's Avatar the Last Airbender television series, which got overwhelmingly negative reviews.
 
B_Rik_Schitthaus said:
and the people who should of kept his shit in check assumed he must know what he's doing and gave him carte blanche.

Kind of like what happened in the Star Wars prequels.
 
Discotheque said:
what the hell. he just bangs his chest like a chimp during the entire film. It's all about Boogie Nights. Sure he's probably just playing his marky-mark persona there but that's his best performance for sure.
Yeah but he's different than

1238512492_the-happening-wahlberg.gif


which people think is the same in everyone of his movies.It does take a lot of confidence to play the role of Dignam in the movie.
 
I like Unbreakable and the Village.

If I remember correctly, Shyamalan wanted the twist in "The Village" to be that it contained horror elements. It was originally going to be marketed as a period love drama, which it is, without the thriller elements.

I think the film would have fared a lot better if so. It's about a crazy cult in a forest, really.
 
Polk said:
Which only shows how stupid is this movie.
I mean, how many times doctor should have eat/drink/use toilet/open door/have conversation with anyone/buy anything?
And who hired him?
It it was one day, sure, I could believe some perfect storm of coincidences.
Six months? Even deaf,blind and mute idiot would figure out something's wrong.

I thought part of it was the fact that ghosts/spirits in the 6th Sense had a hard time accepting that they were dead to a fault that they would disregard things that would have shown they were already dead.
 
The ghosts in the sixth sense didn't literally perceive the world as it is though, until he accepts he's dead he is experiencing a completely distorted version of reality.

Either way, it's not great. Unbreakable was good, I wouldn't recommend any of the others. He's not very good.
 
You know I just don't think you're supposed to delve too deep in to the realities how the ghosts went about their daily lives, it's like how come we never see batman go to the bathroom! That movie scared the hell out of me though when I first saw it, especially that kid with the jelly on his head. God damn. Also the scene with the mom in the car at the end got me too.
 
I think M. Night has an awesome style, but good grief his movies are bad.

He's at the other side of the spectrum of bad that Michael Bay is in. Instead of loud and stupid, it's weird and unintelligible.

Veidt said:
Abrams is the next spielberg. no one else.

Perhaps, I guess. Not really much to be against or for it.

SpacLock said:
There will never be another Spielberg.

Each age has it's greatest director. Spielberg is for the modern age.

Zoramon089 said:
Not after Cloverfield he isn't

Matt Reeves?

Talladega Knight said:
news to me that he directed cloverfield

It's J.J. Abrams' fault that his name was all over the movie though. It was the way to make the movie sell, and no one would be hyped for it otherwise. Spielberg does it too, in fact.
 
I LOVED Lady in the Water.

The problem with it and public reception was two-fold:

1) Critics panned it because of the critic character in the movie (played by Bob Balaban). He played the role perfectly.

2) The movie was written as a bedtime story. However, it was advertised by the movie company just like his other movies. People went in expecting a huge shocking twist at the end when, in fact, there wasn't one.

I still think it is a fantastic movie.
 
I love Unbreakable.

I don't think his early success was a fluke. I just think that like many directors he doesn't understand why his first film was so critically successful, yet remains fixated on it, and probably fixated on the wrong aspects (not just the 'twist' but that is certainly a part of it). Sometimes naivety works in a director's favor.
 
Plinko said:
I LOVED Lady in the Water.

The problem with it and public reception was two-fold:

1) Critics panned it because of the critic character in the movie (played by Bob Balaban). He played the role perfectly.

2) The movie was written as a bedtime story. However, it was advertised by the movie company just like his other movies. People went in expecting a huge shocking twist at the end when, in fact, there wasn't one.

I still think it is a fantastic movie.
Critics rightfully panned it because Shyamalan cast himself as a writer who was destined to change the world.

And beyond that, it was still a shit film. Narf? Scrunt? Eatlon? Are you fucking serious? It was ridiculous.
 
add me to the people who liked village and wait for it

Tha happening. I enjoyed the movie it was good campy fun. of course all other movie of him before that I like too.
 
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