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Yeh, Phonehand, if you liked his previous films you'll like this one, I think I'm in the same boat as you, sure his writing isn't the best and there's some awkward story elements, but the mood and tension that he builds makes up for it in my mind.
Listen nobody can say The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable were bad-- they were both fantastic movies. Bruce Willis was the best thing that ever happened to Shyamalan. Signs I personally loved, I felt the tension and atmosphere were top notch and the symbolism while very very heavy worked out in the end. I do agree the story kind of fucked up at the end all for the sake of the symbolism, and I think he should have seriously re-written some parts there, but I was able to forgive it for how brilliantly the rest of the movie was done. And the fight at the end was beautifully filmed-- the music choice was perfect too.
The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening (haven't seen it yet) are just so badly made and at this point Shyamalan needs to do a genre film to get any kind of credibility back. If he's ever going to go back to his old way of storytelling he needs to get Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson and somehow pull off something evocative of his first three films.
The thing is, I understand what he's trying to do with all three of his latest films but they're just too concept driven and when the concept cannot sustain a movie or satisfy an audience in any way, it's a bad film. Just because it satisfies him does not mean it's a good movie. That train of thought might have worked for his first three, luckily, but now it's just not working anymore.
Urian on
0
Clint EastwoodMy baby's in there someplaceShe crawled right inRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
i'm a little scared by the fact that this guy is in charge of the Avatar movie
I haven't seen Unbreakable since it was in theaters, I really should get the DVD.
Signs was really good, but the whole horror theme only worked when you couldn't see the alien. The biggest scare, I guess, was actually seeing it's reflection in the TV, and then once it's full on screen all I could think was "...oh."
He's a master with suspense and build-up, but he seems to have trouble with endings. Basically, the guy's movies are the equivalent of not sneezing at the last second.
The scene where Jaoquin Phoenix watches that tape on TV was one of the most memorable moments in all of film for me. The movie really came at the beginning of my interest in supernatural stuff, and i'd never seen any kind of amateur video like that capturing such a shocking event before, so that scene in the movie was incredible.
Listen nobody can say The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable were bad--
i can say they're bad. they're tricks. they sacrifice your past investment in favour of an unexpected ending. he's gotten worse as he's gone on, and signs was stupid in completely other ways ('things happen for a reason', right? way to go, your blatant, unexplained focus on eventual plot details does not make the point where they come into play any more interesting), but they're still all bad. he leaned on his directional powers to pull through the sixth sense but he's only gotten more self-styled and ponderous, and it's no longer enough to disguise the fact that his scripts would be tossed out of a first year creative writing class
he is actually the worst film-maker in the world. i read a review recently which summed him up as 'style completely drained of content', which is pretty spot-on. if only his style wasn't boring and utterly predictable and as subtle as a brick shithouse, he might have one redeeming asset
Listen nobody can say The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable were bad--
i can say they're bad. they're tricks. they sacrifice your past investment in favour of an unexpected ending. he's gotten worse as he's gone on, and signs was stupid in completely other ways ('things happen for a reason', right? way to go, your blatant, unexplained focus on eventual plot details does not make the point where they come into play any more interesting), but they're still all bad. he leaned on his directional powers to pull through the sixth sense but he's only gotten more self-styled and ponderous, and it's no longer enough to disguise the fact that his scripts would be tossed out of a first year creative writing class
he is actually the worst film-maker in the world. i read a review recently which summed him up as 'style completely drained of content', which is pretty spot-on. if only his style wasn't boring and utterly predictable and as subtle as a brick shithouse, he might have one redeeming asset
The ending to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were not unexpected in the way that there was no support for them throughout the movie-- both of the movie's ending's were basically just seeing the events that took place throughout the film in a different perspective. There was plenty of support and buildup to each ending if you knew where and how to look, most people just went along for the ride and when the twist came it was shocking, but when you look back you can see how the ending came to be. It even explains that for you in each of them. The reason the endings are so effective is because of the investment.
Signs was similar, though it was too heavy handed in it's "things happen for a reason" symbolism. It takes a story of a family trying to survive through a test of all their physical and psychological endurance, from struggles both within the family and without (the invasion). It's about a man of faith who turned away because of a tragedy of seemingly completely random chance, who by the end sees that event as something that happened for a very specific purpose that came to play in a very specific time.
First off, I have a problem with the concept of a movie being about the idea that things happen for a reason-- it's too simplistic. Shyamalan did himself a disservice by making Signs about such a simple idea when he had a story deserving of a more complex theme-- if he did it about the family itself and the psyche of the father as he goes through this, instead of just showing these events happening as if it were "gods will" in the unbelievable nature of how convienient they are, it would have been more powerful. But instead everything ends up happening perfectly and the father believes in god again. Oh, ok.
Signs excelled in every way except for the ending and the overall "message" of the picture. Shyamalan seems to be too arrogant or ego-centric to realize what strengths his filmmaking styles have and where they need drastic improvement. He hasn't learned a bit since Signs and only gotten worse in the aspect that Signs needed improvement in, to the point now where his fucked up concepts are simply ruining the film altogether.
Listen nobody can say The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable were bad--
i can say they're bad. they're tricks. they sacrifice your past investment in favour of an unexpected ending. he's gotten worse as he's gone on, and signs was stupid in completely other ways ('things happen for a reason', right? way to go, your blatant, unexplained focus on eventual plot details does not make the point where they come into play any more interesting), but they're still all bad. he leaned on his directional powers to pull through the sixth sense but he's only gotten more self-styled and ponderous, and it's no longer enough to disguise the fact that his scripts would be tossed out of a first year creative writing class
he is actually the worst film-maker in the world. i read a review recently which summed him up as 'style completely drained of content', which is pretty spot-on. if only his style wasn't boring and utterly predictable and as subtle as a brick shithouse, he might have one redeeming asset
The twist in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable doesn't sacrifice anything. It just casts what you already knew into a new light.
I only regret that I didn't see them when I was a little older and better able to appreciate them.
look, if you ask me, if the focus of a story is to mislead the audience into thinking something that's not true is true, or using stylistic choices to divert their attention - only to pull the rug out - you're mis-using screentime. sixth sense and unbreakable have little clues here and there that try to make a re-watch satisfying, but a few little bits does not a satisfying story make. i want to go into the sixth sense and think: i know he's
already dead
yet this is still a compelling film in every way - i would be as happy watching this knowing the ending as watching it for the first time. which is not the case at all. there are a few wanky hints but watching it again is like watching shamalyman's sleight-of-hand in slow-motion.
basically you might be satisfied feeling like the few scraps of clues and sparse tongue-in-cheek dramatic irony is enough to hold up a film on final analysis, but i want something i can actually think about
twists are cheap and unsatisfying. almost universally. it's so much harder to create content-fuelled drama which is layered in itself than it is to write one story, change it at the end, and back-track dropping a few scraps to make it seem planned. it's obvious and boring and as deep as spilled milk
You just don't like twist endings. Personal preference, then. You can't say that that kind of filmmaking style is universally bad, though, because it works out very well in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable for the reasons I first mentioned. He didn't change anything in those movies, the ending worked perfectly with everything that had preceded it. He didn't pull out the rug from under you, he just used your focusing on one narrative line against you.
I don't see how those movies don't let you think about them. Unbreakable made me think about the true intentions of people, differences in perception, the idea of what a hero really is, all kinds of stuff. It sounds like you just don't like Shyamalan. Half of his stuff isn't that good, the other half ranges from pretty good to great. But I do think Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are extremely thought provoking.
You just don't like twist endings. Personal preference, then. You can't say that that kind of filmmaking style is universally bad, though, because it works out very well in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable for the reasons I first mentioned.
I don't see how those movies don't let you think about them. Unbreakable made me think about the true intentions of people, differences in perception, the idea of what a hero really is, all kinds of stuff. It sounds like you just don't like Shyamalan. Half of his stuff isn't that good, the other half ranges from pretty good to great. But I do think Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are extremely thought provoking.
no, i don't like him, i think he's a ridiculous writer and doesn't know the first thing about satisfying drama. it's hard work, i've worked hard to be a decent writer, and i'll never have a tenth of the success he will, though i'm much better. as are most of the writers i know.
unbreakable i'll admit is probably his best film, but generally he doesn't tell us anything. stories are here to communicate and to help us understand and to show us the world we live in in a way we might not expect to see it in. when shamalyman subverts his worlds with a 'clever twist' it pretty much automatically cancels its bearings on our own, becomes 'film-on-film', matters only within its own context. maybe not all twists do that, i don't know, i've had too much rum. maybe not. but he's damn good at making his stories utterly irrelevant.
when shamalyman subverts his worlds with a 'clever twist' it pretty much automatically cancels its bearings on our own, becomes 'film-on-film', matters only within its own context. maybe not all twists do that, i don't know, i've had too much rum. maybe not. but he's damn good at making his stories utterly irrelevant.
I'm not sure what world you live in where there's Super-Hero Bruce Willis and dead-seeing Haley Joel Osment, but inside those movies the twists don't fuck with anything or make the stories irrelevant at all.
when shamalyman subverts his worlds with a 'clever twist' it pretty much automatically cancels its bearings on our own, becomes 'film-on-film', matters only within its own context. maybe not all twists do that, i don't know, i've had too much rum. maybe not. but he's damn good at making his stories utterly irrelevant.
I'm not sure what world you live in where there's Super-Hero Bruce Willis and dead-seeing Haley Joel Osment, but inside those movies the twists don't fuck with anything or make the stories irrelevant at all.
well there's always the vain hope that super-hero willis is some kind of figurative tool rather than an unexpected ending to a poor two hours, but then maybe i'm asking for too much from my apparently 'good' cinema
bsjezz on
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JC of DII think we're fucked up.I know I am.Registered Userregular
edited June 2008
Figurative tool for what?
The ending in Unbreakable is probably the one movie that changes the least from his "twists." David still is some type of hero if not of the comic-book variety. Elijah still found him through years of searching and helps David come to realize this. David found his purpose.
The only change once you get to the end doesn't subtract any of those plot points. It only adds "- by staging catastrophes and hoping people survived" to his method of "searching."
i haven't watched unbreakable in seven years and i don't intend to again, so i can't really talk about it in depth
if it does anything interesting it's that it engages genre, but i'd much rather watch a movie that engages genre consciously from the start rather than watch a ponderous, subjectless mood-piece that says, at the very end, 'oh and also they're superheroes! aren't i clever', when it's too late to give a shit
i haven't watched unbreakable in seven years and i don't intend to again, so i can't really talk about it in depth
if it does anything interesting it's that it engages genre, but i'd much rather watch a movie that engages genre consciously from the start rather than gives us a ponderous, subjectless mood-piece and then says 'oh and also they're superheroes aren't i clever' when it's too late to give a shit
Then he pulls a Lucas and tells us that its supposed to have sequels but no one wanted to make them.
BYToady on
Battletag BYToady#1454
0
JC of DII think we're fucked up.I know I am.Registered Userregular
i haven't watched unbreakable in seven years and i don't intend to again, so i can't really talk about it in depth
if it does anything interesting it's that it engages genre, but i'd much rather watch a movie that engages genre consciously from the start rather than watch a ponderous, subjectless mood-piece that says, at the very end, 'oh and also they're superheroes! aren't i clever', when it's too late to give a shit
Ummm....
Yeah you should definitely rewatch the movie if you think this is how it goes.
The premise from the very beginning is that Willis is a superhero.
The movie starts out with him being the only survivor of a huge train wreck, and he doesn't have a scratch on him literally.
okay the villain thing is the twist, but it serves to situate the film's characters into a pulp-comic style villain-hero relationship which was unexpected
again, it's the best of his films, but it's still not really great because of the terrible pacing and the fact that you can engage genre without using it as your only card. see: tarantino
okay the villain thing is the twist, but it serves to situate the film's characters into a pulp-comic style villain-hero relationship which was unexpected
again, it's the best of his films, but it's still not really great because of the terrible pacing and the fact that you can engage genre without using it as your only card. see: tarantino
I dunno... As much as I hate everything Shyamalan has done since the 90-minute mark of Signs, I think you're pretty off on Unbreakable. You should probably give it another watch. I thought it actually played out a "superhero in the real world" scenario very well, and very originally.
Sixth sense's twist had been done loads of times before
Dating back to victorian literature and Ambrose Bierce
Still a decent film, mind you, but anyone into ghost stories generally would not have been surprised by the end
Posts
Also,
The Happening is Happening Again
or
Oh Shit, It's Happening Again?
Apparently a guy swears in the movie by saying "Cheese and Crackers".
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=50238
You predicted M. Night Whatever's next movie would be terrible, boring and completely dependent on mood over laughable dialogue and no plot?
You must be psychic
Amazon Wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/BusterK/wishlist/3JPEKJGX9G54I/ref=cm_wl_search_bin_1
I tend to enjoy his movies
I like his cinematography and music/ambiance choices
Stories are usually interesting enough and I like the characters
So creative
set your controller on the ground in front of you
worst screenwriter in the world
This is not a good thing.
I'm still reeling at the memory of that one.
I honestly can't remember, in any other film, being so disappointed by a plot twist that it completely ruined the remainder of the film.
I mean, come on. The entire fucking premise of the movie was a total lie. What the Hell.
The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening (haven't seen it yet) are just so badly made and at this point Shyamalan needs to do a genre film to get any kind of credibility back. If he's ever going to go back to his old way of storytelling he needs to get Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson and somehow pull off something evocative of his first three films.
The thing is, I understand what he's trying to do with all three of his latest films but they're just too concept driven and when the concept cannot sustain a movie or satisfy an audience in any way, it's a bad film. Just because it satisfies him does not mean it's a good movie. That train of thought might have worked for his first three, luckily, but now it's just not working anymore.
like i just naturally am assuming the worst
Signs was really good, but the whole horror theme only worked when you couldn't see the alien. The biggest scare, I guess, was actually seeing it's reflection in the TV, and then once it's full on screen all I could think was "...oh."
He's a master with suspense and build-up, but he seems to have trouble with endings. Basically, the guy's movies are the equivalent of not sneezing at the last second.
i can say they're bad. they're tricks. they sacrifice your past investment in favour of an unexpected ending. he's gotten worse as he's gone on, and signs was stupid in completely other ways ('things happen for a reason', right? way to go, your blatant, unexplained focus on eventual plot details does not make the point where they come into play any more interesting), but they're still all bad. he leaned on his directional powers to pull through the sixth sense but he's only gotten more self-styled and ponderous, and it's no longer enough to disguise the fact that his scripts would be tossed out of a first year creative writing class
he is actually the worst film-maker in the world. i read a review recently which summed him up as 'style completely drained of content', which is pretty spot-on. if only his style wasn't boring and utterly predictable and as subtle as a brick shithouse, he might have one redeeming asset
The ending to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were not unexpected in the way that there was no support for them throughout the movie-- both of the movie's ending's were basically just seeing the events that took place throughout the film in a different perspective. There was plenty of support and buildup to each ending if you knew where and how to look, most people just went along for the ride and when the twist came it was shocking, but when you look back you can see how the ending came to be. It even explains that for you in each of them. The reason the endings are so effective is because of the investment.
Signs was similar, though it was too heavy handed in it's "things happen for a reason" symbolism. It takes a story of a family trying to survive through a test of all their physical and psychological endurance, from struggles both within the family and without (the invasion). It's about a man of faith who turned away because of a tragedy of seemingly completely random chance, who by the end sees that event as something that happened for a very specific purpose that came to play in a very specific time.
First off, I have a problem with the concept of a movie being about the idea that things happen for a reason-- it's too simplistic. Shyamalan did himself a disservice by making Signs about such a simple idea when he had a story deserving of a more complex theme-- if he did it about the family itself and the psyche of the father as he goes through this, instead of just showing these events happening as if it were "gods will" in the unbelievable nature of how convienient they are, it would have been more powerful. But instead everything ends up happening perfectly and the father believes in god again. Oh, ok.
Signs excelled in every way except for the ending and the overall "message" of the picture. Shyamalan seems to be too arrogant or ego-centric to realize what strengths his filmmaking styles have and where they need drastic improvement. He hasn't learned a bit since Signs and only gotten worse in the aspect that Signs needed improvement in, to the point now where his fucked up concepts are simply ruining the film altogether.
The twist in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable doesn't sacrifice anything. It just casts what you already knew into a new light.
I only regret that I didn't see them when I was a little older and better able to appreciate them.
yet this is still a compelling film in every way - i would be as happy watching this knowing the ending as watching it for the first time. which is not the case at all. there are a few wanky hints but watching it again is like watching shamalyman's sleight-of-hand in slow-motion.
basically you might be satisfied feeling like the few scraps of clues and sparse tongue-in-cheek dramatic irony is enough to hold up a film on final analysis, but i want something i can actually think about
twists are cheap and unsatisfying. almost universally. it's so much harder to create content-fuelled drama which is layered in itself than it is to write one story, change it at the end, and back-track dropping a few scraps to make it seem planned. it's obvious and boring and as deep as spilled milk
I don't see how those movies don't let you think about them. Unbreakable made me think about the true intentions of people, differences in perception, the idea of what a hero really is, all kinds of stuff. It sounds like you just don't like Shyamalan. Half of his stuff isn't that good, the other half ranges from pretty good to great. But I do think Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are extremely thought provoking.
Speak for yourself.
no, i don't like him, i think he's a ridiculous writer and doesn't know the first thing about satisfying drama. it's hard work, i've worked hard to be a decent writer, and i'll never have a tenth of the success he will, though i'm much better. as are most of the writers i know.
unbreakable i'll admit is probably his best film, but generally he doesn't tell us anything. stories are here to communicate and to help us understand and to show us the world we live in in a way we might not expect to see it in. when shamalyman subverts his worlds with a 'clever twist' it pretty much automatically cancels its bearings on our own, becomes 'film-on-film', matters only within its own context. maybe not all twists do that, i don't know, i've had too much rum. maybe not. but he's damn good at making his stories utterly irrelevant.
i generally do
I'm not sure what world you live in where there's Super-Hero Bruce Willis and dead-seeing Haley Joel Osment, but inside those movies the twists don't fuck with anything or make the stories irrelevant at all.
well there's always the vain hope that super-hero willis is some kind of figurative tool rather than an unexpected ending to a poor two hours, but then maybe i'm asking for too much from my apparently 'good' cinema
The ending in Unbreakable is probably the one movie that changes the least from his "twists." David still is some type of hero if not of the comic-book variety. Elijah still found him through years of searching and helps David come to realize this. David found his purpose.
The only change once you get to the end doesn't subtract any of those plot points. It only adds "- by staging catastrophes and hoping people survived" to his method of "searching."
if it does anything interesting it's that it engages genre, but i'd much rather watch a movie that engages genre consciously from the start rather than watch a ponderous, subjectless mood-piece that says, at the very end, 'oh and also they're superheroes! aren't i clever', when it's too late to give a shit
Then he pulls a Lucas and tells us that its supposed to have sequels but no one wanted to make them.
Ummm....
Yeah you should definitely rewatch the movie if you think this is how it goes.
The premise from the very beginning is that Willis is a superhero.
The movie starts out with him being the only survivor of a huge train wreck, and he doesn't have a scratch on him literally.
The hero thing isn't the twist.
again, it's the best of his films, but it's still not really great because of the terrible pacing and the fact that you can engage genre without using it as your only card. see: tarantino
Are you related to Primus
hey satan...: thinkgeek amazon My post |
I dunno... As much as I hate everything Shyamalan has done since the 90-minute mark of Signs, I think you're pretty off on Unbreakable. You should probably give it another watch. I thought it actually played out a "superhero in the real world" scenario very well, and very originally.
sketchyblargh / Steam! / Tumblr Prime
Dating back to victorian literature and Ambrose Bierce
Still a decent film, mind you, but anyone into ghost stories generally would not have been surprised by the end
Get off his nuts. His hairy, awful, lack of good plots nuts.