Congratulations M. Night, you set the bar pretty damn low after Lady in the Water and The Crappening but congratulations you managed to out do even yourself. It has been a long time since I've seen a movie that is this thoroughly terrible.
Earlier this afternoon, I was listening to an interview with Mr. Shyamalan on /film. It was enlightening if an only because he seems to think he has made a great movie. He seems to be moving into Uwe Boll territory in the sense that he seems oblivious to the rest of the world and assumes that it's not him it's them.
Something else he delves into is the race controversy that he finds himself in, stating that he's pissed off at anyone who feels the casting was racist. I really don't have much of an opinion on that other than the white actors he DID cast were terrible so why not try some of other races. Really, the quality of acting really does follow racial lines to the point of it being ridiculous. Lets not get to ahead of ourselves though as Dev Patel, Shaun Taub, and Aasaf Madnvi was merely tolerable and I'm giving HIM the benefit of the doubt assuming he meant it to be campy.
I don't like ripping on kids so I'll leave them alone. Perhaps if they worked with a different director (name one, it doesn't particularly matter whom) they'd do terrificly. Their acting is wooden and the dialogue they had to work with was terrible. It seems Shyamalan would rather tell than show which defeats the purpose of making a movie otherwise do us all a favour and make a damn radio play.
There is plenty else wrong, name an aspect of moviemaking and they probably fucked it up. I suppose the costumes weren't terrible and I don't really remember the music so I can't really comment on that but everything else...
A few points before I leave:
1. The self-sacrifice of a character has a lot more fucking gravitas if you meet her more than 5 minutes before and she has more than 30 seconds of screen time. I don't care how cute and blond she is.
2. Fight scenes are a lot more tense if there is some risk of losing. Peter Jackson kind of makes this mistake in Return of the King (a deus ex machina is involved and before that it seems like the good guys might lose beforehand so I really find myself on the fence).
3. the main character MUST have some weakness otherwise there is no struggle. Simply going from the most powerful in the world by a little to the most powerful in the world by a whole hell of a lot isn't the best character arc to go with from a struggle perspective - just sayin'
4. Pick a motherfucking protagonist, jesus h christ.
5. If one group is holding another group captive don't make them more powerful than the group that is being held captive! I imagine their convo went something like this:
Fire ppl: Don't use your bending abilities or else!
Earth ppl: Sure!
I'm sure I could come up with a hundred more flaws but this should be plenty to get you to stay away from this movie. In case anyone is wondering, I paid for Toy Story 3.
Congrats motherfucker,
P.S. I'll try to publish more blogs, my sincerest apologies.
P.P.S. Also, is there any better father in all of literature than Mr. Bennett? I think not.
