It is, of course, bad form to kick a man when he’s down, but here goes.
First it was merely M. Night Shyamalan’s boastfulness that grated, such as when he told Time:
“Except for Pixar [qualifier], I have made the four [qualifier] most successful original [qualifier] movies in a row [qualifier] of all time.”
Some have have tried to dispute this claim, but I believe Shyamalan has crafted enough conditions that his statement is factually correct. (We must ignore George Lucas, but I’m guessing that M. Night would disqualify the final three Star Wars movies because they’re sequels — hence, not “original” in his sense of the word.)
This is the Michael Bay Defense: My movies might suck, but they make a lot of money!
Worse still, Shyamalan thinks of himself as a misunderstood artist; Michael Bay (I hope) knows that he’s a hack and a whore.
One would think that the performance of Lady in the Water would humble Shyamalan. One would be wrong.
At a press conference earlier this week, the writer-director suggested that his latest movie’s box-office failure has no relationship to the fact that almost everybody thinks it sucks:
“I said to my wife that Lady ... may have benefited from my name being removed. At least then it would have signaled to people to look at the movie with a new language in mind.”
I suppose one could assume an innocent construction of that statement, but it reads terribly. M. Night Shyamalan: Creator of New Cinematic Languages!
It’s not that Shyamalan’s name obfuscated audiences’ ability to understand Lady’s new cinematic language; rather, the new language that he invented to tell his story is ludicrous.
I wonder if Shyamalan considered that this comment would forever make Lady in the Water the cinematic equivalent to Esperanto.
>almost everybody thinks it sucks
Speak for yourself. For everyone who disliked it there is someone who did like it.
Victoria:
Fair enough on my imprecise writing. “Almost all movie critics think it sucks.”
As for speaking for myself, I have not seen it.
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