Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

It's been awhile since a director fell from grace quite as painfully as M. Night Shyamalan has. After back-to-back break out hits (Unbreakable, Sixth Sense), he seemed untouchable. Then Lady in the Water flopped. Then Mark Walhberg talked to fake plants in The Happening, effectively destroying both their careers. Now M. Night is stuck directing the 3-D action adventure flick The Last Airbender. Ouch. You gotta wonder how this happened. The guy's clearly talented. Just read his scripts for Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. There both extremely well done. So how did a skilled writer/director end up doing a movie adapted from some animated television series?

The first possibility is that M. Night stopped caring entirely about making good films. Money became his sole interest. Another words, he turned into the Nic Cage of movie directors. I'm skeptical of this scenario because his recent failures have actually cost him money. Studios refuse to pay anywhere near top dollar for him now. Plus, the guy only makes a film every two years. If he really cared that much about the money, he'd churn out three crap movies a year.

The second, and more likely scenario is that Shyamalan's lost the ability to judge his own work critically. Think about it, this guy essentially became famous overnight. One minute he's a nobody, and the next everyone's gushing about his talent/brilliance. Most likely he also went from never getting laid to having attractive women groping him in public. Before long, he's convinced every one of his ideas is going to make Thomas Edison look like a retard. One day, M. Night starts thinking about plants shooting nuerotoxins into the air and causing people to run into oncoming traffic. Good idea? Hell yeah, he says, cuz I'm a ****ing genius. And geniuses don't need to spend more than ten minutes writing a script. See where I'm going with this?

It was almost inevitable he'd end up being chewed up and spit out by Hollywood. Hopefully, getting thrown into the gutter will be the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybe now he goes back to his roots. Starts putting real time and effort into writing again. Maybe we haven't seen the last of the real M. Night Shyamalan. But that's probably just wishful thinking.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

M. Night's career has actually just begun. I am not an avid fan, but I do like some of his stuff. I think he tried to hard to be original - sometimes that pays off and sometimes it bombs. In the long run thus far he is ahead of the game. He is, according to Box office mojo, the 27th on the directors list as far as $'s go. That ain't too bad in my book. He just needs to pull back on the reins a bit, connect with a more mainstream audience. If he can do this he will be allowed to let loose more in the future by studios.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

It's the second. He's pretentious and arrogant, as comments he made during Lady in the Water clearly shows, but because his failures were not costly flops, just flops, Hollywood is actually allowing him in their way to redeem himself in a way Michael Cimino wasn't allowed. I doubt if he has the instincts and skill required for the type of project he's on, but we shall see. His problem is he made himself a one trick pony by trying to recreate the formula of The Sixth Sense with each succeeding film, unusual subject matter with a jolting twist ending. The problem is, a really good twist ending isn't easy to come up with on a regular basis.

Maybe he was just hungrier in the beginning. Nick Cage was an engaging actor early on, I don't know what happened to him later, it seems like leading man syndrome, where an actor that once showed a rich variety of emotions ends up doing a string of movies holding a gun and snarling about revenge for 2 hours. Could happen to directors too.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

Couldn't disagree more, will. Unbreakable and Signs are both incredibly well-made films that really don't bear much in common with The Sixth Sense beyond some vague notion of look or feel, or dealing with the possibility of the supernatural. That's a wide net to cast.

Both are entirely new "tricks," however. Neither of them has the kind of twist The Sixth Sense has, and all three films would be pretty good even without their endings (particularly the other two). Unbreakable wouldn't lost much at all if you chopped off its last scene. I'll also point out that the films chalked up to following this formula are far and away his best, more acclaimed, and most successful; it's the apparently different ones that have been panned.

Anyway, I'm a huge Night fan, and I'm very disappointed with his last few efforts, but the guy has a lot of talent (this is someone who was nearly offered the chance to write and direct the fourth Indiana Jones film, for crying out loud). I think he puts out better work when he's hungrier and deliberately writes for a wider audience. When he tries to do something he's a bit closer to, or where he feels no need to reign his creativity in, the work seems to suffer.

I think The Last Airbender is a great fit for him. He's adapting, not creating an original story, and the trailers look very promising. I hope this marks a resurgence, and that with it comes a realization about what he does best.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

It always surprises me a bit at how many folks didn't get Lady in the Water. I thought it quite brilliant and would rate it as one of his best films. Not sure what comments you're referring to Will and perhaps you could post them or link to them. Not that it really matters, saying a director is pretentious or arrogant is like calling a superstar athlete a role model: pointless. Has every good to great director that ever made a film made the nice list? I doubt it.

http://www.mcnblogs.com/filmfatale/2..._beatdown.html

He also said his mission is to change the world with his movies

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

I read The Man Who Heard Voices, which is the book cited in that blog entry, so I've become pretty familiar with the most common accusations about Shyamalan. The book's pretty harsh, but as it is with most things, hearing his side of the story, and his passion to make each project as close to his vision as possible, lends him a bit more sympathy than the blog entry implies.

I think his mistake is partially saying what a lot of people in the industry probably think about themselves. Compared to any normal person, it's pretty out there, but hudged on a Hollywood curve, this doesn't seem particularly shocking to me. I'm sure there are quite a few potentially damning books floating around; most of them just don't get written.

Not that whether or not he's arrogant or pretentious or anything else really matters when discussing his merits as a director. There's a lot of talent there, even if he's not necessarily the kind of person you'd want to have lunch with.

And, as ol' Dizzy Dean said, "it ain't bragging if you can back it up." And Night can back up a fair bit in the way of arrogant comments, even if he hasn't the last few times out.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

I also enjoyed Lady in the Water and I think it got a bum rap.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

At first, I thought this thread title was "Why M. Night Shyamalan's car has died."

Now that would make an interesting thread.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

His car doesn't know it died and it sees dead people.

No, that's not how it goes. The car has to find Haley Joel Osment and then later it realizes it's dead.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

Sequel! The man could use a hit.

It could be like Christine 2!

Where is Martian Leader?

Even though his comments have been very harsh, I do kinda get what Will is saying in terms of M Night being a bit pretentious and maybe believing in his own hype a bit. Unbreakable was great, Signs very good, but at that point everybody had hyped him up as the 2nd coming, and I think The Village, Lady Water and The Happening is the consequence of a clearly talented guy over indulging in his ideas.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

well, that's just the twist.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

lol.

Re: Why M. Night Shyamalan's career has died.
 

Would it have been as controversial if the title of the thread had been otherwise?

I don't think it's over. I just think he needs to recognize when he's being brilliant and when he's being self-indulgent, preferably at the typewriter stage. His last two films tried too hard to be significant, but ended up feeling overblown and preachy.

The success of his first few films, I would argue, had to do with the fact that he didn't force the story and kept his fantasy grounded in reality. Lady in the Water in particular deviated from that principle, and that's clearly why it failed.

I think his best work is still The Village, where instead of maintaining the status quo of paranormal happenings in a normal setting, he transcended his own model and ended up making a pretty profound statement about death, grief, and the shaping power of society.