Airbender: how not to adapt a series (Page 1 of 2)

How the fuck did Shyamalan make one awesome movie and one pretty good one?

His nose dive into incompetence baffles me.

What sounds like the problem is with AIRBENDER (other than the well-established fact that MNS has no idea how human beings speak or behave) is that, like WATCHMEN -- which I liked but thought could have been better as a movie -- the focus was on making sure that all the iconic scenes got into the movie, because the fans wanted to see them. So we end up racing from one plot point to the next without getting a good sense of what it means or why we should care.

WATCHMEN kind of worked even with that in mind, but it was also twice as long as AIRBENDER's running time. There just isn't enough time to do everything in a movie -- that would be true if it were a three hour movie (which it should have been) but it was literally the worst possible way to do the movie in 90-some minutes.

I don't know what remained and what was cut in the film, but I know you could cut Aunt Wu, cut Omashu and Bumi, and probably (though not without some difficulty later) cut Jet. You could also cut Haru and the Earth Kingdom prisoners, but they might be useful in terms of condensing the story by having Admiral Zhao be there, instead of Admiral Sulu.

What you cannot cut are the Kyoshi warriors, the Southern Air Temple and Northern Air Temple (although you could probably combine them and have all the necessary events take place at one or the other), meeting Avatar Roku, and the events at the North Pole.

Three hours would be tough, but it would be doable. The bigger issue is having time for each character to be a character rather than a pawn moved around making plot happen. That's what you really need the time for.

The problem with Shyamalan is that early on, he was insecure and worked hard to show he knew what he was doing, which meant that he put together something great because he was constantly second-guessing himself and making sure he was making the best choices.

But then after SIXTH SENSE, he had all of Hollywood telling him he was a total genius who could do no wrong, and he eventually started to believe that this was true, and stopped second-guessing his choices because he had been convinced they were self-evidently genius.

He used to work hard, but he made it look easy. Then he got convinced that it WAS easy and stopped trying, and stopped listening to any dissenting voices. If they don't like it, that must be their problem, because he's a genius you see.

I don't need to say the other name we're all thinking.

Then I guess it may just be a disconnect from reality. He claims a good 20 reporters told him THE VILLAGE was one of their favorite films of all time. That is not true. I don't have to be there to know it's untrue. That is as untrue as if he claimed 20 reporters flew into the room with supernatural powers. It is a violation of the laws of the universe. He may not be lying, if he truly believes it -- but if he truly believes it, he's flat-out delusional.

This isn't totally out of the question, though. I won't name names, but I worked with one filmmaker who will tell you that at the premiere of one of his films, the audience was hooting and hollering with excitement, really connecting with the material, and when the credits rolled they brought the house down with applause.

I was at that premiere, and that is not what happened. The film was bad. The audience was mostly silent, with the occasional incredulous laugh or jeer at a particularly clumsy moment. And when the credits rolled, most of the audience walked out, with only the small contingent of cast and crew near the front giving themselves a loud pat on the back.

So when he tells me about another premiere or screening that got a huge and overwhelming positive response, I can guess what really happened.

And I don't think the guy is lying. I think he genuinely remembers things going the way he tells it. But he, too, finds himself baffled because he believes that he does good work that people love and yet he can't get a break. And the problem is that the premise "I do good work that people love" is false and he is psychologically incapable of seeing it.

If that's the case with MNS, then the answer to why he started strong would have to be just pure, dumb fucking luck.

Sometimes you remind me that I really don't know you at all.

I'm sorry, but when you factor in THE VILLAGE, LADY IN THE WATER, and THE HAPPENING, not even counting LAST AIRBENDER, no movie is that good.

Certainly not UNBREAKABLE, which was tolerably good when it seemed like M. Night might be going somewhere with a sequel and was just smarter than the rest of us, but now seems like a bullet dodged at best.

He's not just making "bad movies." He's making "cinematic abortions."

I don't understand how it's possible not to hate THE VILLAGE. It teased a great but false premise, and gave us a stupider one in its place -- and one which, like his high point SIXTH SENSE, he ripped off from a kid's story. Maybe I wouldn't have such a problem with it if the idea it had advertised with hadn't been so fucking awesome and now wasted forever.

SIGNS was alright but got self-destructively stupid at the end. LADY IN THE WATER was unforgivably dull and self-indulgent.

A douchebag film reviewer who's always wrong about everything? Really?

A writer whose currently-misunderstood work will actually become the salvation of all mankind, played by Shyamalan himself? REALLY?

I'm sorry, no. Fuck you Shyamalan.

As I say, I have no particular quarrel with UNBREAKABLE -- it's not as good as SIXTH SENSE but it didn't make me fear for the worst the way SIGNS started to. But it's not enough to exonerate him from the rest of this. He's done.

Just so Jeffrey's got a wingman on this one, I liked The Village quite a bit, and the "twist" had already been spoiled for me before I ever saw it, too.  There are a lot of great moments in there, not just scary ones but nice character touches as well.   

Like Signs and Sixth Sense, The Village showcases Shyamalan's nifty skill at creating terror from the simplest of everyday situations.    (Signs was pretty good until the lame ending, so I put it in third place among those three movies. )

Have never watched all of Unbreakable - apparently it's about comic books and my disinterest in that topic is already on record -  so I've got no real opinion about that one, and haven't seen any of M's other movies at all.    But Sixth Sense and The Village are both right up there on my list of nifty thrillers.

I think Shyamalan's got serious skills as a filmmaker, but I haven't made enough of a study to have a real opinion on how he's become such a pariah.*     If whatever's been getting in his way can be gotten out of the way, I think he's got plenty of potential to knock another home run.

*But my first recommendation is the same as most people's - enough with the cameos.

All that is gone, yes.

The Kyoshi warriors and Suki (and maybe Bumi) have been moved to the second film. We have the South Pole and Air Temple, Aang discovering Earth Benders are being oppressed in a village and starting an uprising... and then a voice over saying they're moving north and doing the same thing and that's it for all their travels towards the North Pole. We do get a detour where Aang goes alone to the Northern Air Temple and gets captured so the Blue Spirit can rescue him, and Avatar Roku has been replaced by a Dragon in the Sprit World.

That's what's missing, more then anything plot related. Zuko is the only real character who is interesting in this version, while the rest are treated so badly they even use voice over to tell us Sokka falls for the Princess instead of trusting us the way the cartoon did.

The Happening was my favorite comedy of 2008.

The Happening was way more of a comedy to me, I think it was my favorite one the year it came out.

That's so odd. To me "Unbreakable" is the most boring piece of sh%t ever commited to celluloid.

/Z

Seeing it tonight because this chick is gorgeous. God I hope it's hard to pay attention to.

*vomits*