M. Night Shyamalan Is Sad That You Think His Career Has Stalled

Think like she does, Mr. Shyamalan. For the love of Krishna, think like she does.

Stalled? His career stalled with The Village and has been in a free fall since then. I’ll bet Disney is feeling pretty lucky to have dodged that bullet.

BTW, @jthomann, you are so right.

SO, was he trying to put his best face for the question or is he in a terrible state of denial about his career right now?

I’ve been reviewing science-fiction and fantasy movies for 35 years. I use a scale of 9 (superlative) to 1 (execrable). According to my records, here’s M. Night Shyamalan’s track record:

The 6th Sense (1999) — 9
Unbreakable (2000) — 8
Signs (2002) — 7
The Village (2004) — 6
Lady in the Water (2006) — 5
The Happening (2008) — 4
The Last Airbender (2010) — 3
Devil (2010) — ?

I guess you can figure out where this is headed and why I’m not particularly looking forward to “Devil”.

Nonetheless, I would never, ever say that Shyamalan is a sell-out to commercialism. He remains a unique voice, and it’s his voice alone. It’s just not one that I particularly want to hear any more.

I think this reporter just earned herself a place in his next movie.

I squirmed every moment he was talking. His ego will never allow him to see where his films have gone wrong. As a result, they’ll never get any better. I’d have more sympathy had I not taken my six year old son to see The Last Airbender. It’s the only time he’s ever asked to leave a movie early.

I abandoned all hope when I saw that he had cast himself as the hero genius guy in Lady in the Water. Up until then I was on board with his stuff. I would actually rate the Village and Signs as better than Unbreakable. The Happening was awful. My kids just finished gorging themselves on the animated Avatar the Last Airbender and I’m terrified that they’ll soon start begging to go see the live action one. I’ll just have to tell them that’s why God invented Redbox!

“Literally I would kill myself”

What are you: a 13 year old girl? Learn to accept criticism without the immature histronics. For the record, I liked Unbreakable and The Village. The latter had great cinematography and the idea was a dark fairy tale that worked in my opinion, irregardless of the ending, which I don’t remember (maybe that’s why I like it). The recent movies have been terrible. But as this clip shows, his ego and lack of self-awareness are threatening to become as big as Sarah Palin’s, which is no easy feat.