M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan scored big box office with The Last Airbender. He’s got a new movie coming out called Devil which bills itself as “From the Mind of M. Night Shyamalan.”
I’m glad this one came from his mind because it seemed like he pulled the last couple out of his ass.
I didn’t know you could bill a movie based on the part of a person’s psyche it came from. Soon we’ll see taglines like “From the SOUL of Michael Bay.”
“From the DESPERATE YEARNING FOR ACCEPTANCE that brought you The Mummy Returns.”
“From the BONER of the man who directed Body Heat.”
I liked The Sixth Sense. I liked Unbreakable. But there were SIGNS in Signs that M. Night was full of horse-shit.
Water kills the aliens? Really? Only a fair and loving God would hobble alien invaders with such a debilitating weakness. Or a hack screenwriter. Am I supposed to believe these aliens have the capability of interstellar travel but don’t have the technology to see that 70% of our planet’s surface is covered in a substance that is lethally poisonous to them?
After that film came The Village. It’s just bad. The twist was obvious. The best thing in the film is Adrienne Brody in a bizarre turn as a village idiot. To quote another film, he goes “full retard” and the result is troublingly hilarious and wrong.
Then came Lady Water. The title of the film is supposed to be The Lady in the Water but check out the poster.
The “in the” is too small! I prefer to call the film Lady Water.
I saw this in the theater and, man, it really is just a big old bowl of lukewarm lady water.
On this film, M. Night’s ego really does go out of control. Couple facts about Lady Water:
1.) One of the characters in the movie is a film critic who gets torn apart my the monster in the movie. Oh, and he DESERVES it. He obviously just panned M. Night’s last picture. What is the idea M. Night is trying to get across? People who don’t like my movies should die a horrible death eaten alive by a monster? Monsters will eat you if you don’t like my films?
2.) M. Night Shyamalan is in the film. He plays an actual role, as he did in earlier films. But this time he has way, way more lines. And his character is, get this, a man destined to write a novel that will change the world, inspiring a young man to unite all the nations of the globe. So basically M. Night wrote himself a character that is “the greatest storyteller of all time.” This character has lots of teeth-grindingly pretentious lines like “But I’m only one man. How could I be important?”
3.) The script for Lady Water was so bad that the studio that had made Shyamalan’s first couple films (films that had scored in the billions in box office sales) refused to back the movie! That’s how bad it was. So Shyamalan took to the script to Warner Bros. and got it made. You’d think that would be enough. You’d think that’s a win for M. Night and he could be happy. But no! He had a book published about his brave battle to get his film made, written by a childhood friend and sports writer, the book is entitled (big sigh and eye roll here) The Man Who Heard Voices: How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.
Look at all that soft lighting. That’s the kind of light that surrounds geniuses all the time.
The book is, of course, just one big long press release. It’s a literary blow-job.
Why doesn’t M. Night bill his movies “From the Mind of the Man Who Heard Voices”? I think that would be dope!
4.) The movie Lady Water is horrible. It’s boring. The plot makes very little sense. Which is disappointing because it stars Giamatti, an actor I really enjoy watching.
The amazing ego at work here really is staggering. Here’s a tip. If you’ve started to give yourself cool superhero names like “The Man Who Heard Voices” then maybe it’s time to take stock. You are not a legend. You are a guy who makes monster movies. Just make good monster movies.
After Lady Water we had the abortion that is The Happening. They should have called it The Crappening. ::JARED HIGH FIVES EVERYONE IN THE ROOM::
Seriously, though, it was bad. Plants all over the world rebel and start releasing a chemical that makes humans commit suicide. That’s really the plot. This chemical travels on the wind so there are several long scenes where a big group of people walking in a field just run from the wind. I’m serious. It’s just people running from gusts of wind! If it sounds ridiculous you should see the film. It’s like the most embarrassing family picnic ever. Just a bunch of adults in their forties running around in a field.
And now Airbender, a kid’s franchise that has already made millions worldwide. It was a can’t miss hit. It didn’t even have to be good. So many kids love The Last Airbender cartoon and the toys that there was no way they wouldn’t drag their families out to see it in droves, especially in a summer like this one without a lot of family friendly blockbusters. God, take your kids to see Toy Story 3, not M. Night’s desperate and cynical grab for a box office success. I didn’t see this but my roommate Nate saw it and said it felt like you were watching something Made-for-TV, which is one of the worst criticisms I can think of for a summer movie.
So I’m going to skip Devil. I’ve had more than enough opportunities to enter “the mind” of Shyamalan and it’s really shitty and boring and crass in there. If I ever want to enter his mind again I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity. He’ll probably self-publish another book about what a genius he is at the next possible opportunity. And there’s always the American Express advertisements he was featured in where he rattled off a list of his personal favorite things.
One of these was: “My soundtrack? My daughter playing Chopin.”
Oh go fuck yourself.
