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The Happening of the Possibility of My Loss of Respect for M. Night Shyamalan
I am sorry for the long title. The first thing that I would like to bring up is that the name of this blog has absolutely nothing to do with Shyamalan's new bee infested film. I came up with "The Many Happenings" way before this film was even announced. Sure, I am a fan of the horror film director and writer, but I wouldn't name my whole blog about his film, especially his newest one, and this is why. When M. Night Shyamalan became huge with The Sixth Sense back in 1999, he was said to be “the one” to revitalize the Hollywood horror genre. The ending plot twist, which I promise I won’t ruin, brought so many people, including myself, to so many emotional levels. At the end of the film reviewers said that they actually had their mouths stuck open, and that it made them not capable of waiting for his next film, which was Unbreakable one year later. Unbreakable wasn’t as good as The Sixth Sense, but it was still phenomenal. Shyamalan’s writing coincided with the icy cold but beautiful directing and made the film heart-pounding and even shocking when the ending; which happened to be a twist as well. I for one said to myself, “But wait a second, wasn’t there a twist in The Sixth Sense? Oh well, the ending here was still really good, maybe his next one won’t be so formulaic!” Silly Note: During the time Shyamalan worked on Unbreakable, he was also writing the screenplay for Stuart Little. For his sake, and yours, I won’t get into this. Do you remember the first time you saw the trailer for Signs? You were horrified, confused, excited, or just begging for more. Personally, I was all four of those, and I just couldn’t wait for whatever it was in those corn fields! Upon watching the film, I laughed at the humorous writing while being thrilled out of my mind from the fast paced horrific scenes one after another. The good thing here though, for those of you have seen it, is that the ending wasn’t much of a twist. We were educated about what was actually going on about half way through, and the ending was based on a bit of irony. Not the best irony, but irony is irony. The Village seemed to have been the either make or break film for Shyamalan. He may have already made a huge impact in the industry, but The Village’s trailer left much confusion to the audience. Was the trailer confusing because the story will be so good? Or, is it confusing because the story is going to be so bad? Well, after watching The Village, it seemed to be a little bit of both. The imagery was very beautiful and symbolic, and the story was top notch, but Shyamalan seemed to jump back to the formulaic plot-twist ending that he did in his films before Signs. Why would he go back to the formula? It worked the first few times, and then it evolved into Signs. Why not evolve it even further and make The Village better than what it was? This film made viewers lose a lot of respect for M. Night, but I personally just started to question him. The next film was different. From the get-go he claimed that Lady in the Water was a child’s fairy tale, and the kiddish rating of PG fueled that as evidence. I really didn’t know what to expect when going to see it, or what to expect when I was through seeing it. The story and characters were interesting of course, and Paul Giamatti’s performance was amazing, but really, M. Night, what were you thinking? You just lost a lot of fans because of your linear previous film, why would you bet your career on making another film like this? I did have fun with Lady in the Water but that is because I happen to enjoy dark fairy tales – but the majority of the market doesn’t, and it shows with ticket sales of that movie. I respect that you are trying different things, but this film really could have waited. You won’t ever see Quentin Tarantino going and remaking Winnie the Pooh, would you? Now, at this point, I was still a fan of M. Night Shyamalan, but a lot of people weren’t. I heard friends and family who didn’t really see what he was aiming to try and do, trash talk and put him down, saying things like, “I’ll never go and see another film by him again.” Just at the point of where a director gets his one shot at a big blockbuster film, in this case The Happening, people are just starting to hate him. Even the movie poster is a rub in the hater’s faces: “We’ve Sensed it,” – relating to either the Sixth Sense or Ubreakable, “We’ve seen the signs,” – you know what that is relating to, “Now…It’s happening,” – the filmmaker that you didn’t want to make another film is now releasing one. This seems to be telling viewers who hate M. Night to deal with it and just come and watch this film anyway. It has been advertised as an epic blockbuster and it easily seems as if more money has been put into this film than any of his others. Hollywood gave him big names Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo to role in it. Could this be Hollywood trying to help Shyamalan back on his feet? Are they giving him only one last chance? You bet. Hollywood is putting training wheels back on M. Night’s bike and pushing him down a hill. If the training wheels fall off and M. Night crashes and his once said Unbreakable career shatters, so be it. However, if the training wheels happen to stay on, (plot twist!), and The Happening is a hit at the box office, then M. Night will once again be respectable and worthy to keep on the table for even longer. I am sad to say that this is my last chance for Shyamalan as well. If I watch him fall off his bike, then I too, will not be interested in his future films. It is said that every Shyamalan film is based on something that happened to him in his childhood. Well, so far as a kid, M. Night Shyamalan interacted with dead people while crashing trains and beating up aliens with baseball bats all inside a monster and bee-like zombie infested community. That sounds like a cool childhood to me, and if it remains cool after The Happening, then I would love to hear more about it through his future films. |
 
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This intel was contributed by zea
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May, 2012
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