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.
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.
Last edited by Yoda; 05-15-10 at 11:39 AM.