We are supposed to care about all this / this affects how one judges his movies, because...? Oh, sorry, I see this was published in Slate. This type of discussion here probably makes sense to its hundreds of readers.
Wasting no time, Shyamalan graduated NYU early.
Sure he didn't graduate FROM NYU?
He next wrote and directed a movie called Wide Awake (1998) for Miramax. It was the story of a sports-loving nun, played by Rosie O' Donnell, who helps a boy find God after his grandfather dies. The rough cut was too treacly even for Harvey Weinstein (a soft-touch for little kid movies, especially foreign ones), who unleashed a legendary speaker-phone tirade that humiliated Shyamalan and made O'Donnell cry.
I enjoyed Wide Awake. I wonder if the author has actually seen it.
The discussion of the writing of The Sixth Sense is strange, because I think the author thinks it should make us admire Shyamalan less, but it does just the opposite for me.
...what does M. Night do with his newfound power? He stays put in Philadelphia, refusing to move to L.A. and play ball. He creates a local film industry around his productions.
Won't move to Hollywood? The selfish bastard! ;-)
M. Night could not control the audience, however, and he was unhappy with the poor performance of his sophomore thriller, Unbreakable (2000).
Unbreakable, by the way, is my favorite Shyamalan movie.
The result was Signs (2002) and a teary Mel Gibson. It became a modest hit, but only after it was adopted by Christians as movie [sic] about the power of faith.
This is a little like saying Animal House was a hit, but only after being adopted by comedy-loving young people as a hilarious send-up of fraternity exploits. Um, news flash: the power of faith IS what Signs was about. It was about that and nothing else! What the hell is the author's point? (And where the hell is his editor BTW?) The mind boggles here.
M. Night was making fragile, sealed-off movies that fell apart when exposed to outside logic.
I don't know what the hell this is supposed to mean.
Viewed from the theatre lobby, the twists in both Signs and Unbreakable seem like rejected Twilight Zone episodes. Think about it: [..]
So the author has a problem with "the twists". The twists should be cleverer (or something). Whatever.
Think about it: A fragile comic book collector (Samuel L. Jackson) believes that his mission in life is to discover a real superhero, so he starts killing huge batches of people in airplane crashes and train wrecks in the hope that there will be a miraculous survivor?
Yes - that was the basic concept of Unbreakable. Your problem with that, Mr. Agger? Notice that his "criticism" here has absolutely no content.
Signs is even flimsier: An intelligent alien species that is killed when doused with H20 decides to invade a planet that is two-thirds water?
I'm tempted to just point out that for all we all, the Signs aliens had no choice but to invade Earth because it was the only planet they could get to which could support them. But to criticize Signs for the plausibility of its science fiction is to so miss the point of the entire movie. Yes, let's have a conversation about whether those aliens would or would not invade earth, that's so the point of Signs! I'm beginning to think this writer is just kinda dumb.
Without a believable plot, Shyamalan was exposed as a high-class purveyor of old-fashioned movie scares.
Look, Signs used "aliens" as a plot device. Given that, it's going to have a non-believable plot! There's no such thing as a movie about "aliens" which, simultaneously, has a "believeable plot". This is a facile criticism. Did Star Wars have a "believable plot"?
As for his own acting appearances, Slate's David Edelstein has said that Shyamalan's Signs cameo was so creaky the director should have fired himself.
I thought he was good in the role. I guess I have to defer to the expert, Slate's David Edelstein, however.
No one likes to be a cynic, to be the one laughing when Mel Gibson, as an ex-minister in Signs, has a lugubrious conversation with his wife as she lies dying in a car accident.
Except you (apparently).
My guess is that when he writes these wrenching scenes of father and daughter, or husband and wife, Shyamalan is striving for some universal and lucrative language of cinema
"universal"? Gee what a crime for a filmmaker to attempt to make films containing universal human emotions.
As for "lucrative", I think I'm starting to see where all this animosity is really coming from. Shyamalan has made lots of money. The author of this piece thinks that Shyamalan is trying to make money. What a no-no!
With the release of The Village, Shyamalan has more power at a younger age than any contemporary filmmaker, but it's unclear yet if he has anything to say.
At least not if you don't actually watch, or don't understand, his films, and spend most of your time obsessing on and jealous about Shyamalan's success, it's not.
Instead of making vibrant, relevant movies, he's created his Pennsylvania fiefdom and explored his own mind.
How dare he explore his own mind.
Dang, this writer is all over the map. Shyamalan's trying too hard to be universal, Shyamalan's insularly exploring his own mind. Which is it? Depends on the paragraph of the piece.
It's easy to understand why he's attracted to setting a movie in a period where people proclaimed their emotions in full and heartfelt sentences, or why he enjoys building a village that's impenetrable to the outside world. He's not making movies. He's making cocoons.
Where the hell is the "case against M. Night Shyamalan"?
All I really see here is a bunch of sour grapes. Let me guess, Michael Agger entertains notions of being a filmmaker/screenwriter in his spare time.....
Er, the problem is precisely that a planet two-thirds covered with water can't support such creatures, any more than one two-thirds covered with sulfuric acid could support humans.
Look, Signs used "aliens" as a plot device. Given that, it's going to have a non-believable plot!
I'm not inclined to excuses for incompetence (and, yes, that word is applicable to a writer who creates a "non-believable plot").
The credibility of a fictional plot is based on whether or not the story logic avoids gaping holes once the basic premises of the fictional universe are accepted.
If a galaxy full of various aliens is one of the premises of the fictional universe, then, yes, a story about aliens can have a believable plot.
However, the plot has to make sense given the facts of the fictional universe as they are established in the story. For instance, Star Wars would not have had a "credible plot" if a major plot thread had hinged upon Jabba the Hutt suddenly being a philanthropist after being established as a greedy ruthless SOB.
I trust this clears up the question.