23rd August 2010, 11:34 AM
(This post was last modified: 23rd August 2010, 11:55 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
I've gone into depth explaining exactly why I didn't like the vast majority of his movies in another thread. In summery, he's got this weird view of human behavior that says "everyone is somber, sad, and serious all the time". It worked AWESOME in the sixth sense, because it made perfect sense. However, it didn't work very well at all in the majority of his movies. That's basically my problem with the "human study" part of the equation, I just don't SEE actual human behavior IN most of his movies now. The fact that a lot of his movies have "twist" revelations isn't the problem, it's that a lot of them revelations are just plain stupid and insulting. Just ANY plot won't work. It has to actually be somewhat intelligent. Emotion isn't the ONLY equation to solve in story writing. Humans are also rational beings, and if everyone in a story is acting like complete idiots, well, that kinda makes me not want to watch any more.
Lady in the Water was nothing more than a writer's self-inflated importance writ large on the screen. It was him saying "I create WORLDS, worship me" in the most obvious and overplayed way I've yet seen in a story. It was silly. Oh, and as I said in that other thread, any artist who's ONLY possible counter to critics is to create a fictional straw-critic in their own works and then kill them is being a child.
I'm different than a number of people in that I disliked the big reveal at the end of Unbreakable. I actually liked most of that movie, because I really didn't notice the "one note emotionalism" of Night's movies yet and it still kinda worked here, though still better in Sixth Sense. I really enjoyed most of the movie, but the ending? Yeah, to me that came off as... silly. When you have one mood for the people in your whole movie, and at the very end ONE human is suddenly cackling like Lex Luther... it throws you off.
The problem with "The Village" more than anything else wasn't necessarily the story-telling (though it did suffer from the "everyone's always somber and serious all the time" feel, seriously it's become clear that that's the only emotion Night thinks people have), so much as the lame plot twist. The sixth sense's plot twist was intelligent, it was a person who was in denial of what happened to them (and on another level, in denial of everything he did wrong in his life). The Village? "Turns out they're in modern day" really doesn't MEAN anything to me. It's just a "reveal" for the sake of a reveal. There's nothing TO it. Worse, I predicted it from the PREVIEWS because that plot's been done before, IN JOHNNY QUEST.
"The Happening" was moronic. The "eco-friendly" message was just stupid, like Captain Planet level stupid. There's NO amount of writing skill that can save that premise. It would be like Shakespeare trying to salvage "The Core". Premises and basic story concepts MATTER. It doesn't matter how realistic or dramatic or whatever perfection of a certain style you get for your characters if they're reacting to the world's clouds turning into goats flooding the world with milk or something.
I haven't seen The Last Airbender (and wasn't even aware it was based on a cartoon until a friend told me, this friend also told me that apparently he DID want to make it, that he asked to write it because his kid watched the show or something). However, from what others have told me it suffers from the obvious, fitting an entire series into a few hours, and from Night's style, apparently the original show had a much wider range of human emotion (read: comedy) which just got reduced to "brooding, this is my brooding face, because of how fer serious this war is, it's so serious, see how serious I am?". Again I haven't seen it myself, but that's apparently a general consensus on the problem with it.
So yeah, it's not that we're so awed and terrified of his POWERS as a writer that it makes us uncomfortable (though I'm sure he'd love to think that), it's because his stories are really terrible now.
MAYBE this new one will turn it all around, but considering I'm predicting the big reveal in advance and the "message" really isn't much of one, I'm not convinced as it stands. I went to see Scotty Pil, and for the record GR? Never heard of this guy before the thread you made, but WOW, that movie is awesome! It's just so perfectly made! I mean, yes, it won me over the moment they played the intro music to Link to the Past to start it (I mean, like ripped straight from the game), but it's not just that. The style, the writing, the story, the overall presentation, all perfect! I really can't complain about anything here. It's... it's the perfect movie, and the majority of people aren't going to "get" it because of all the in-jokes directed at old school gamers. Even the 8-bit Universal logo reminds me of the "bombastic" Lucasarts and Sierra logos before their old games. The whole "style" of the movie I've seen before, from this same director (a sort of extremely fast "plot point to plot point" execution with almost no fluff at all), but I think it's with THIS one that this particular style is finally perfected. I honestly think this could change a lot of movie making.
Back to M Night, I think we can ALL agree that Michael Bay's movies are still worse (except maybe The Happening, wow that was just insultingly bad, but it's still close).
Lady in the Water was nothing more than a writer's self-inflated importance writ large on the screen. It was him saying "I create WORLDS, worship me" in the most obvious and overplayed way I've yet seen in a story. It was silly. Oh, and as I said in that other thread, any artist who's ONLY possible counter to critics is to create a fictional straw-critic in their own works and then kill them is being a child.
I'm different than a number of people in that I disliked the big reveal at the end of Unbreakable. I actually liked most of that movie, because I really didn't notice the "one note emotionalism" of Night's movies yet and it still kinda worked here, though still better in Sixth Sense. I really enjoyed most of the movie, but the ending? Yeah, to me that came off as... silly. When you have one mood for the people in your whole movie, and at the very end ONE human is suddenly cackling like Lex Luther... it throws you off.
The problem with "The Village" more than anything else wasn't necessarily the story-telling (though it did suffer from the "everyone's always somber and serious all the time" feel, seriously it's become clear that that's the only emotion Night thinks people have), so much as the lame plot twist. The sixth sense's plot twist was intelligent, it was a person who was in denial of what happened to them (and on another level, in denial of everything he did wrong in his life). The Village? "Turns out they're in modern day" really doesn't MEAN anything to me. It's just a "reveal" for the sake of a reveal. There's nothing TO it. Worse, I predicted it from the PREVIEWS because that plot's been done before, IN JOHNNY QUEST.
"The Happening" was moronic. The "eco-friendly" message was just stupid, like Captain Planet level stupid. There's NO amount of writing skill that can save that premise. It would be like Shakespeare trying to salvage "The Core". Premises and basic story concepts MATTER. It doesn't matter how realistic or dramatic or whatever perfection of a certain style you get for your characters if they're reacting to the world's clouds turning into goats flooding the world with milk or something.
I haven't seen The Last Airbender (and wasn't even aware it was based on a cartoon until a friend told me, this friend also told me that apparently he DID want to make it, that he asked to write it because his kid watched the show or something). However, from what others have told me it suffers from the obvious, fitting an entire series into a few hours, and from Night's style, apparently the original show had a much wider range of human emotion (read: comedy) which just got reduced to "brooding, this is my brooding face, because of how fer serious this war is, it's so serious, see how serious I am?". Again I haven't seen it myself, but that's apparently a general consensus on the problem with it.
So yeah, it's not that we're so awed and terrified of his POWERS as a writer that it makes us uncomfortable (though I'm sure he'd love to think that), it's because his stories are really terrible now.
MAYBE this new one will turn it all around, but considering I'm predicting the big reveal in advance and the "message" really isn't much of one, I'm not convinced as it stands. I went to see Scotty Pil, and for the record GR? Never heard of this guy before the thread you made, but WOW, that movie is awesome! It's just so perfectly made! I mean, yes, it won me over the moment they played the intro music to Link to the Past to start it (I mean, like ripped straight from the game), but it's not just that. The style, the writing, the story, the overall presentation, all perfect! I really can't complain about anything here. It's... it's the perfect movie, and the majority of people aren't going to "get" it because of all the in-jokes directed at old school gamers. Even the 8-bit Universal logo reminds me of the "bombastic" Lucasarts and Sierra logos before their old games. The whole "style" of the movie I've seen before, from this same director (a sort of extremely fast "plot point to plot point" execution with almost no fluff at all), but I think it's with THIS one that this particular style is finally perfected. I honestly think this could change a lot of movie making.
Back to M Night, I think we can ALL agree that Michael Bay's movies are still worse (except maybe The Happening, wow that was just insultingly bad, but it's still close).
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)