Why I wasn't planning on seeing the live-action Avatar even before they announced the casting

[james_davis_nicoll]

"Written, Directed and Produced by M. Night Shyamalan".

He had one good movie in him and I've seen it. Tragic casting is only the (or rather "a") specific way in which his version will suck.

Comments

[seawasp]

I've heard several people say that he had only one good movie in him, but I've found there's some disagreement as to which of his movies was The One Good Movie. For me it was "Unbreakable".

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Me too. It's certainly the only one that bears up to being watched twice.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I liked Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, though I haven't rewatched either yet. I avoided Signs by reputation.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I avoided Signs by reputation.

Good call, it was terrible. Stylish, but terrible.

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the first two thirds of Signs. Shamallamadingdong did a nice job of building suspense, then flushed it all down the toilet with the reveal. It's the only movie of his I've seen, no real interest in seeing any of the others.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

did a nice job of building suspense, then flushed it all down the toilet with the reveal.

QFT

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I thought both of those were excellent - I've rewatched both & they held up well [[1]]. I also very much liked Lady in the Water. OTOH, I didn't see The Village or The Happening, & while I didn't actually regret seeing Signs, there also was nothing at all to recommend it.

So, for me he's at 50% very good and 50% dodgy to terrible.

[[1]] Rewatching The Sixth Sense was a different experience for me than most, since I bizarrely guessed the twist from watching an early trailer and went in looking for it. I literally didn't know that it was supposed to be a secret twist until I found out that everyone didn't know the psychiatrist was dead.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

See, I loved Signs and The Village, and I think at least part of the problem others have with them was expecting an entirely different movie than it turned out to be.

Neither is a monster movie. In a way, they're both really intimate psychological portraits (and in the latter's case, a sociological gedankenexperiment about what happens when you try to let a consciously-made society move to the second generation). Also, neither is really a 'twist' movie in the ways that Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were.

However, I do have doubts about a Shmalayan Airbender, because he's such a weirdly stylish director, and it's so ... actiony? Not brainless action, but still.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

You can make an intimate psychological portrait without throwing in sheer stupidness at the end.

If the aliens had mysteriously left with no explanation, if they'd been defeated by the government off-screen, if they'd come to a climax that stood up to the rest of the movie, if ANYTHING REMOTELY SANE had happened it would have been a great movie. In fact, if it had cut off mid-sentence before the stupidity started it would have been fine. But the ending of the movie actively ruined everything that came before, not because it "wasn't what I was expecting" or "wasn't the type of movie I like", but because it was TERRIBLE.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I thought Sixth Sense was his (apparently) one quite good movie, and Unbreakable was his (apparently) one decent-enough movie. I saw The Village and it was terrible, and I haven't heard anyone suggest that he's gotten better since then.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I really liked Lady in the Water, as did my father. However, I only recommend it to people who like old fashioned fairy tales.

[windswept.livejournal.com]

Bingo.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I do in fact like old fashioned fairy tales, but the reviews of LitW that I read -- even by reviewers I'm normally in synch with -- were so uniformly negative that I avoided it. Now I feel like I should give it a chance, but I'm still kind of afraid to :)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Agreed. It was very good, but also completely unlike his other work (or most other films).

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

Am I the only person on the planet who really liked The Village? Because I thought that it was a pretty good both atmospherically and as a take on the necessary unpleasantness that must go along with any utopia.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one.

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

Nope; it was quite interesting. But then again, I've never been one of those people who seem to think that his films are only about "the twist".

[bwross.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was part of it for me. The other part is that Avatar just naturally lends itself to becoming a CG orgy. I've seen the TV series already, I don't need to see a cut down version that could easily end up all flash and no substance. I might watch it, years after the fact, on TV, for "free", if nothing else is on.

CG orgy

[(Anonymous)]

y.

Most of the major characters have visually flashy powers. And they ride around on a flying beast that's quite deliberately modeled on the Catbus.


Doug M.

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

Which one of his movies did you like?

I'm inclined to say that he had one good piece of work in him -- and that was the video for REM's Losing My Religion.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Sixth Sense. I liked parts of Unbreakable but I thought the ending was terrible, both wrt the relationship between the husband and wife and the Cunnyng Plot Twyst.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I liked 6th Sense, Unbreakable...and the Village. Then again, I liked the 60s horror flicks that The village was based on, like The Wicker Man.

I also liked the point of th Village, which was that by trying to be "safe" from the modern world, the village elders were perpetuating crimes even worse than the ones that were inflicted on them.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I suspect that if someone were to look closely (not me, as these are mostly the wrong kinds of movie for me in the first place), they'd decide that the "one good movie" was spread out over all of them.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

For me, The Sixth Sense is outright a very good movie.

Unbreakable and Signs and The Happening had good things about them. In general, I think I would be happy for him to direct something written by a good scriptwriter. Even for Avatar the script might be okay because hopefully there isn't an opportunity for him to jam in a twist ending.

I'm not sure how to judge how good a producer he is, but I am disappointed by the Avatar casting.

[jamoche]

My take is that all his movies are about one thing - "look at how clever I am" - and there's no room to fit both the Avatar and his ego.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

In general I've found that when a movie is titles in the form of $DIRECTORS_NAME $MOVIE_TITLE... The result isn't pretty.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

STUART LITTLE was good, too, but he only wrote that one.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Could you remind me, what was the twist ending for that one? :P

[seawasp]

It turns out that Stuart was the result of genetic experimentation by his "parents" and to prevent this from being revealed they have to terminate Stuart, but he turns the tables on them in a rather gruesome sequence.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

The twist was that it didn't leave you feeling cheated, which was the most unexpected ending of all.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

do you plan on seeing James Cameron's "Avatar?"

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it changes your basic assertion that his good movie(s) are behind him, but I liked several of his films quite a lot. In particular, I quite enjoyed Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense and The Village.

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

From what I understand and for what it's worth, he is supposed to be a fan of the series.

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

Of course, Frank Miller's supposedly both a friend and a fan of Eisner's...

But yeah, I don't think this spells automatic doom for the Avatar movie.