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M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, The Last Airbender, opens today. It is the first movie that he has directed that is not entirely his conceptually, although he did write the screenplay (because if there is one thing we all know, it is how good M. Night Shyamalan is at writing screenplays?). In the grand M. Night Shyamalan tradition, the movie is getting terrible reviews. It currently has a 9% on RottenTomatoes, which is actually up from 4% yesterday. Here is a sample quote from a review:
A soul-crushing disaster made worse by unnecessary, counterproductive 3-D, The Last Airbender fails to immediately qualify as the worst film of the summer only by virtue of the year’s abundance of other candidates.
And here is another one:
The current national priorities should be as follows: reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan.
Agreed! Perhaps, at long last, after years of foisting his personalized garbage on our faces, perhaps with his meat-fisted destruction of a franchise that some people actually LIKED before he came along, this will be the end of M. Night Shyamalan. He can move back to his Philadelphia farm house, hug his movies, and think about what he’s done. I have no idea why Hollywood continues to give this man tens of millions of dollars to do a job that he has proven time and again he is incapable of doing. It is like hiring someone to pump gas, and having them pour the gas all over your car, and then setting your car on fire, and in response, you buy a new car, and go back to do it all over again. And here’s the thing: SPOILER ALERT: he was never any good. Ever. Not even once.
I’m sorry, you guys, but The Sixth Sense, his triumph, is a mediocre movie! KABOOM! Your mind is just like “I quit, I’m too blown.” Seriously. It’s a completely serviceable Senior Thesis Project with an O’Henry twist ending that he wrote junior year. Don’t get me wrong. Scary Movie 2 wouldn’t be the same without the “I see black people” jokes in it, or whatever they are, but Bruce Willis might as well have woken up at the end of that movie and said “What a weird dream. NO MORE SHELLFISH BEFORE BED.” Garbage.
And do not even get me started on Signs, or The Village, or Lady in the Water, or The Happening.
The same car on fire, back and forth forever. At what point do people realize this guy has absolutely no idea what the fuck he is doing, and STOP giving him more money than it is even possible for the human mind to actually conceptualize? I’m not trying to be a jerk. We should all be so lucky as to realize our dreams and turn our terrible, hackneyed ideas into a reality. But this is getting ridiculous. Enough. (It would be thematically appropriate here for me to say “just kidding! Surprise, everything you thought was true is actually false,” as, like, a classic Shyamalan twist ending. Except that I genuinely believe that he is the worst and stand by everything that I have said. So, NO TWIST!)
Ugh. M. Night Shyamalan, with your fucking made up rock and roll name and your being so stupid. GO TO BED.
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What a pro. He even gave his own career a twist ending
I re-read that old Deus Ex Malcontent piece on this guy again last night. Rad. A+.
Link, pretty please?
Google.com
Dork
HAHAHAHAHA LOL!!!
http://www.deusexmalcontent.com/2008/06/short-attention-span-theater-welcome-to.html
Thank you!
I’m afraid that anything we could possibly say would fuel said car fire.
It is a sad day for car fires.
so many people were so excited for this. too bad their car is on fire
It’s a shame because the show the film is based on, while being for children and I, being an adult (sort of), is quite enjoyable.
Is that really a sentence, Josh?
The sentence is just very ambitious and misunderstood.
BOOM goes the mansamite.
Dear Mans,
Please, the next time you do something awesome in real life (like file a brief! or whatever lawyers do) please shout this awesome tagline that our friend Napolean Complex has so kindly, generously, and brilliantly offered you.
Sincerely,
PT Smith (Age 24)
PS: “Boom goes the mansamite.” – ATGSTTS
“Mansamite” sounds like something that English children had to eat during WWII.
The twist is I’m actually an 80s businessman who froze himself in order to find a cure to a terrible disease he has. Inability to construct coherent sentences is a side effect of the freezing.
Damn that boneitus!
My only regret is that I was too busy being an 80s guy to cure boneitus.
Don’t you worry about coherent sentences. Let me worry about blank.
audience response to the last airbender:
Dude, look oooooooooouuuuuuuut!
that’s awesome.
i see what you did there.
M. Night Shalamalam is the name of my queercore punkabilly band.
Mine’s called N. Might Llama-shan
Shut up, Gabe! If you piss him off, he won’t tell us about his top secret new movie!
That new movies is going to be SUCH A SECRET, I bet no one will ever see it, ever.
Hold on, I thought the position of this website is Danny Boyle = Bad, Slumdog Kids = Good. A twist indeed!
“wwwwest”, are you suggesting that Gabe is a huge hypocrite because if M. Night Shylomanstein was living in squalor then Gabe would lay a huge guilt trip on all the white liberals reading his blog, but since this filmmaker is successful then Gabe is a racist? Is that what you are saying?
Actually, yes. But I mean it in a playful pally pal way. Not a trolly troll way.
Hahahaha TROLLY time!!!
I think this failed since he didn’t make himself the hero of the story
Bryce Dallas Howard is pretty
Unbreakable was good! Right? Or am I misremembering it?
If by “good” you mean “steaming pile of cinematic turd,” and by “misremembering” you mean “yes” then, correct.
“Unbreakable was steaming pile of cinematic turd! Right? Or am I yes it?”
Yes, this is what scut farkus meant, and is also a logical and coherent sentence
No.
you remember correctly, it was indeed good. I usually agree with Gabe, but I think all the Shabalaba-dingdong movies are pretty cool
No, “Corey Van Hunter” you are wrong. All of his movies are terrible. Case closed.
Why did you put his name in quotes? Are you speaking to the figurative Corey Van Hunter?
On the internet, no one knows your true identity.
Especially if you watch it with the mindset that it is a comedy.
“Joey, we don’t point guns at friends!”
When we saw that part in the theater, my friends and I totally lost it. We got shushed so hard. Then we preceded to yell it at each other for weeks.
In conclusion, Unbreakable was comedy gold to 15-year-old me.
It was certainly not comedy gold for 10 year old me. It’s on my list of things that scared me greatly from 8-10: Turok Dinosaur Hunter, Gremlins, The Birds, and Unbreakable.
I am a fan of Unbreakable! But I am also a superhero nerd. Also I liked Signs, I thought for a summer thriller-y movie it was good, if you ignore the last third about the aliens. I’m mainly in it for Joaquin Phoenix being goofy.
I like cartoons too much, and this is a very sad day indeed. I could give a shit whether Shyamalan is successful or not. Truth be told, I enjoyed several of his movies. I didn’t even bother seeing The Happening, even though I wanted to (because of the previously stated enjoyment of several of his movies).
But there are very few contemporary American cartoons that are as wonderfully original, beautiful, and enjoyable as Avatar. Fuck Shyamalan for aggressively ruining something that is great.
I’m agreeing with you so hard right now.
In my “friend group” (i am not cool) we refer to him as M. Night Shyamalamadingdong, which makes him slightly more tolerable, but not much.
Also, what is the deal with his eyes? Why are they always SO OPEN?
I am genuinely concerned that is going to be construed as racist. Not the nickname, the eye-thing.
oh really? shit. wasn’t supposed to be AT ALL racist. i just feel like…he has crazy eyes? is this making it worse? fuck me, sorry guys, pretty hungover today.
HOLD ON HOLD ON. It’s really probably me worrying about race and class too much because it’s 4th of July weekend and I worry that patriotism is too closely tied to nationalism and racism to be okay anymore. I guess “big eyes” doesn’t really fit into any established race tropes regarding the Subcontinent anyway? But maybe it should?
Not Racist: Why are Shamallama’s eyes SO OPEN?
Maybe Racist: Why are Jackie Chan’s eyes SO CLOSED?
Probably Racist: Ya know, Hitler did some good things, too!
WAY Racist: Blacks made me do crack at gunpoint! / Whites made me do meth at gunpoint!
Way to strike out my next three comments before I even had a chance to make them.
No, but seriously farkus, thanks – sometimes I just think/say/type shit without fully processing it, so I appreciate being called out if something is borderline. I referenced “blind patriotism” yesterday and starting a huge, unintentional fight with my roommate – another example of not thinking before speaking. Know your audience, Gina. Know your audience.
Ummmm…Gina is a pseudonym, not my real name.
Only on Videogum can we have a thread openly discussing/joking about Mel Gibson screaming “nigger” into voicemail, followed by a thread where a commenter is passive aggressively browbeaten into apologizing for pointing out that an asshole director has creepy bug eyes.
we might be friends in real life then, as my group of friends also calls him that… is that you bill?
i just had the greatest moment of panic – “SOMEONE’S FOUND ME ON HERE!” But no, my name is not Bill. Or Gina. Neither one of those is my name.
at ease chaka khans mom… your true identity has not been revealed after all.
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see
I’ve always called him Night M. Shymamalam
i just realized i spelled his name wrong in that earlier post, and i am deeply ashamed. or not at all.
FAKE
I want to say “Nice scoop!” to you right here.
What happened to movie #8?
I feel a twist coming.
Is that his new movie that might star Gwyneth Paltrow? Now those pictures I saw of Gwyneth circulating around the internet completely make sense.
Fake and LOL
So that’s how it ends? With a wave of garbage cresting over the Himalayas? What a twist!
this must be what the Mayans predicted
Nice scoop!
Okay, so fantasy and fiction aren’t his forte — but we all have to admit, the man has capital-T talent! I’d like to see him try his hand at making something very real. Perhaps a biopic. Maybe using someone else’s script — hey, why not remake Amelia, the biopic of air-legend Amelia Earhart? It’s a movie I personally missed, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, plus that it has some room for improvement! Has anyone here seen Amelia? I bet M. could write a really cool twist ending, too, so we’d see what really went down over the Pacific that fateful day.
No thank you- he will end the movie with Amelia making it hope safely and revealing that she was impregnated by “the air people”.
Poor Shams (that is a thing people called him). He’s been hit by the Mel Gibson curse, just like Mel Gibson.
Fucking Shyamalans, why do they keep getting work?
he looks like a cave man. I have never liked this guy
Yeah apparently this role was written specifically for Marky Mark. What a low blow.
say hi to your mother for me.
M. Night only works with heroes, clearly.
What was wrong with the Village, Gabe? Oh, the part where the “twist” was that they actually lived in secret in 2005 or whatever in a field yet spoke in olde English for NO REASON and wore petticoats and never had a need for modern medicine in like 30 years? You’re upset because the blind girl did not notice that she was riding in a car because she was BLIND? Or was it because in AMERICA in the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY not a single authority, journalist, or low-flying aircraft ever caught wind of an entire city engaging in a decades-long reenactment of the Jamestown Settlement? Come on, man, I think you’re being a little nitpicky, don’t you?
I can’t imagine a person that was satisfied with that movie.
UGH (crawls out of cave)
I am that person. YOU GUYS, I liked the Sixth Sense, I liked Signs, and I liked The Village. I did not see Unbreakable, and I saw The Happening, thought it was pretty stupid, but…it had some genuinely creepy/scary sequences. Now is the part when everyone can say “if by sequences you mean Marky Mark” etc etc. Fine. Say that. But I don’t apologize. Also, Lady in the water sounded too stupid for words so I didn’t see it.
I could go into why I like the films I mentioned, but…I don’t think anyone really cares. I will say that the whole M Night Shyamalan “mythos” bullshit is what destroyed his career and created fiascos like this current Aribender ridiculosity, and Hollywood is as much to blame for like, creating this weird cult of Shyamalan and breathlessly following it to it’s natural fucked conclusion.
i also liked the village. once you know the twist, certainly you can find the flaws, but i honestly didn’t see it coming.
i have seen the sixth sense, but have no recollection of watching it. i’m sure i would have been surprised by the ending, but i probably heard about it prior to seeing it, so it didn’t have a big effect.
lady in the water was bad, happening was terrible, and i have never understood the appeal of mel gibson* so i don’t really want to see signs. or maybe i have already. SPOILERS i do remember those terrible looking alien beings that you see at the end.
*he was in signs, right?
I have this weird thing with M Shamalalama where whenever I think of him, I forget one or two of his movies, so I’ll think something like, “He’s terrible, but I mean, Sixth Sense was okay, Unbreakable sucked, the Village sucked, and I didn’t see it but the Happening didn’t look good at all, but that’s not terrible terrible, he could be worse.”
Someone then reminds me, “But he also made Signs and Lady in the Water.”
“Oh my god, you’re right, he could not be more terrible.”
“He just came out with a new movie and it’s more terrible.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“Leaving where?”
“Everywhere.”
Do you ever wonder if there’s a shadow-Videogum populated by commentors who adore the work of Shyamalan and cannot stand Paul Rudd?
They’re super-excited that Leno got the Tonight Show back, and they’re stalking Ke$ha.
The weird thing is that as much as I hate Ke$ha, I know way more about her than a lot of other people. At dinner a month ago I tried to start a conversation about how sick I was of her and not a single one of my friends knew who she was, and these are informed people! I guess what I’m saying is that the line between stalking and actively being revolted by is thin for yours truly.
That place is called Perez Hilton dot com
Bizarrogum.com
And there’s no irony. And the lead writer starts of every post with “I Girls…”
I don’t like Paul Rudd. He is far too charming and handsome to be real.
You obviously haven’t met me IRL
OK, Winwood, where do I go to meet you? Do you do live appearances somewhere? BTW, if you don’t look like this I might be slightly disappointed.
See my comment above, though I wouldn’t say I adore MNS and I like Paul Rudd a lot. DIDN’T WE ALL START OUT AS SHADOW PEOPLE?
The Airbender Movie isn’t any good??? This is what I’ve been dreading for months!!! I’m still going to see it. ::SIGH:: I just feel really sad about it.
WATCH THE TV SHOW! It was good! Avatar the Last Airbender! Seasons 1-3 availabe on Netflix!
It is also a pretty-good-for-the-kiddie-area ride at Kings Island! A ticket there will cost you about what a movie ticket costs nowadays, anyway.
What makes this even more of a failure is that it is opening against the Twilight Juggernaut. So not only is it a terrible movie, but it is going to be a financial disaster and serve as a sacrificial lamb to Twilight.
“I am a fool”
-The Last Airbender producers
That makes it a financial failure but also makes it a way for Shyamalan to (potentially) rationalize its lack of success, which will just FUEL HIS DESIRE TO MAKE MORE MOVIES.
NOTHING can stop Shyamalan’s drive to be the red, green, AND yellow wire of a BOMB!
He stole the ending of 6th Sense from R.L. Stine’s masterpiece Say Cheese & Die, anyway. Thievery is applauded in this country.
Not to mention stolen from the classic film “Carnival of Souls”. and probably an episode of Twilight Zone.
but if he goes away i’ll no longer have a reason to make my brilliant, otis day and the knights referencing, joke of calling him “m. night shamalamadingdong.” the world will suffer from this loss.
Ebert’s lede bears repeating: “The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that.” And NY Magazine’s Vulture blog read that to Shyamalan over the phone! Co-operative THE BEST-NESS.
I think Signs is his best movie, actually. It’s a really effective treatment of paranoia and “fear of the unknown,” and the extent to which the 24 hour news cycle amplifies both. Everyone I know who doesn’t like it seems to focus on the last 3 or 4 minutes and makes fun of the ‘special’ effects… But I think to get mad at the movie’s conclusion is missing the forest for the trees.
I also like Unbreakable, but mostly because I feel like it’s beautifully shot in the style of a paneled comic book. I think Jim Emerson actually wrote a piece on that for the Chicago Sun Times… I doubt I can explain it nearly as well as he can.
I haven’t seen The Village or The Lady in the Water, and I doubt I’ll see this mumbo jumbo. RIP, M. Night Shyamalan.
Oh come on! Not even once?
I liked the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and maybe even Signs…
http://tiny.cc/gvay6
Damn. How do I insert a picture? This is my mom, not me by the way.
That is your mom, and you call her every week to tell her how you are doing and make sure she is doing okay.
Everyone needs to read Charlie J. Anders’s review of the film over at io9. Yeah, I know this isn’t io9gum, but this criticism is one of the most incredible things I’ve read (outside of Videogum, don’t hate) in the past year.
http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamalan-finally-made-a-comedy
The Last Airbender sucks…? Now who will I give my moneys to?!
I liked Unbreakable and Lady in the Water. I am deeply sorry.
The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were good. Signs was iffy. The Village was slow and incorrectly marketed and I hate Sigourney Weaver. Lady in the Water was terrible. The Happening remains the single worst movie I’ve ever paid money to see (and I saw Meet the Fockers).
UGH.
How does M. Night Shyamalan continue to keep working in Hollywood? Other directors make just one film that gets slaughtered by the critics, and they’re kicked off studio lots. Shyamalan makes six totally craptastic flicks that really belong in the straight-to-DVD bargain bin (are there people on here seriously saying that Unbreakable was good? Unbreakable is TERRIBLE!) and is handed $250 million to direct a trilogy about a franchise he has nothing to do with. And the worst part about this? Shyamalan already has another film in post-production and ANOTHER film in pre-production. Someone please explain this to me! How many thousands of people attend film school every year. NONE of them are better than M. Night Shyamalan? Not ONE of them???
They all made money!
Budget Gross
Sixth Sense
55 Mil 294 Mil
Unbreakable
75 Mil 95 Mil
Signs
72 Mil 228 Mil
Village
72 Mil 114 Mil
Lady in the Water
75 Mil 42 Mil
Happening
48 Mil 64 Mil
Last Airbender
150 Mil (for 1st installment) 57 Mil (Opening Wkend on mostly 3D Screens)
I’m following this career up until the triple-whammy of Village, Lady in the Water and The Happening. Directors have never worked again after such modest returns, and then to get handed control of a major-market trilogy? I mean, who else loses $33 million of Disney money (aside from Disney itself), harasses their entire production department over screenplay drafts and pitches and doesn’t get kicked to the curb?
I bet you they’re banking on the idea that he can recapture whatever it was that made such great returns on The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village.
This movie made Spaceballs look awesome.
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