The Last Airbender - M. Night's latest

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I think it looks good. It has an epic feel that Shyamalan hasn't had in his previous films. Of course, that wouldn't have been appropriate for The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, LitW, and The Happening. Those were more intimate stories for the most part.

I'm curious to see him tackle a somewhat different kind of film. Sure this has supernatural and fantasy elements in it, but the fact that it is a make believe world that has its own mythology and rules puts it in a different realm than his other films. As much as I've enjoyed all of his previous films, even Lady and The Happening, this looks like a great change of pace.

I know I'll get tons of flack for this, but M. Night is one of my favorite directors. The fact that he's making a fantastical martial arts film sounds good to me.
 
Am I the only one confusing this movie with Avatar? I always thought of this as "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and I just saw a trailer for Avatar. Not the same.
 
Hawk Teflon said:
Am I the only one confusing this movie with Avatar? I always thought of this as "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and I just saw a trailer for Avatar. Not the same.
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And thus the lawyers. They wanted to call the film Avatar (based on the tv show and maybe comic, not sure?), but Cameron and/or the studio brought out their lawyers, forcing knight to change it to the last air bender.
 
jpastuch said:
My favorite fact about M Night's films: they're all terrible.
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I happen to think that Unbreakable is phenomenal. Also, I have a soft spot for Signs. And of course The Sixth Sense. How can you say they're ALL terrible movies? Sure, he's been off the mark as of late. But he was promising early on.
 
Even by retarded standards, Signs was bad. The ending had a guy swinging a baseball bat at glasses of water to kill an alien- an alien that, despite his weakness being WATER (seriously?), came to a planet made out of- you guessed it. Water.

And the whole twist was that God killed Mel Gibson's wife, so she could give him a cryptic message that would eventually make sense as his brother had to "swing away" to hit the glasses of water...something he would have done anyway. So, Mel Gibson's wife died for absolutely no reason.

Sixth Sense was a silly, hollow movie- built around a twist.

And let me refresh your memory on Unbreakable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyP-xmt5Fk

Yeah. Not quite as good as you remember, eh?

But maybe a movie based on little kid's cartoons will be better for M. Night, because he makes films with the intellect of a 10 year old. So in all honesty, this might be a good move for him.
 
I won't be watching any films where white folks are strategically substituted for Asians. Love David Carradine, but he's past on friends and it's 2009. Screw this film as well as "Dragonball Evolution" and any other film where a bunch of white people (not one, not two but almost all) play Asians simply because some white people are sad little narcissist who can't get over the fact other races exist in America and the world. Screw this film and it's producers. I hope it fails like "Dragonball Evolution".

Screw Hollywood! Make you your own movie F&%$ Hollywood racism! By the way, the idea that "white people can't watch Asian leads" is a lie after close to fifty years of Martial Arts movies and many starring people with names like Lee, Chan, Li and Jaa. ALL FREAKIN' ASIAN!

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/08/16/hollywood-discomfort-with-asian-lead-characters/
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/01/22/avatar-get-a-tan-become-asian/
http://community.abcfamily.go.com/forums/shows/samurai-girl/whiteout-asian-characters
http://www.racebending.com/v2/2009/07/31/aang-is-white/

An Asian character could have his own cartoon and be loved world wide by fans all over.
aznaang.jpg


Until that character starts making money, then we have to whiten him up a bit.
whiteaang.jpg


I know you're reading this going, what is the angry black man made about this time, but yea, that's the truth in your face. I hope I never have to sell out to the point of replacing a whole cast of non-white ethnics with whites.

-Nate
 
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Signs was a great movie simple but great and the acting was incredible except for M's cameo though. What the bloody hell was an indian doing in the middle of nowhere ?
 
jpastuch said:
And let me refresh your memory on Unbreakable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyP-xmt5Fk

Yeah. Not quite as good as you remember, eh?

.
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It's even better than I remember, this was one of the most inspirational movies ever for me. Personally it's scenes in the film such as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-pVs_4lUHg&feature=related

that made me wanna learn about filmmaking.

The way you're rubbing off his ALL his films and his directing makes it sound like you have a personal feud with the guy. Fact is, he's the real deal and I'd love to see you make a 5-10 min short that draws attention as good as any scene or segment in his films.

Not saying the man is perfect, but he did deliver with unbreakable, 6th and even signs ... I hated The Happening and didn't bother to watch the village or LitW. Doesn't make him any less of a success though.


Back to topic, the last airbender looks cool. And as for the name AVATAR, I read somewhere that James Cameron filed suit because it would cause confusion with the name of his upcoming film, so the producers changed the name of the film to The Last Airbender, but the characters name is still Avatar (confusing?).
 
Mosin said:
The way you're rubbing off his ALL his films and his directing makes it sound like you have a personal feud with the guy. Fact is, he's the real deal and I'd love to see you make a 5-10 min short that draws attention as good as any scene or segment in his films.
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Well, I've seen four of his films, and they were all flat out awful. Why on Earth do people assume when a director is bad at making movies, somehow I have a personal feud with him? And guess what? I have made better short films than him. EVERYONE on here most likely has. He's a hack, and his newest hack movie is going to be hacking up the theaters, stealing the spot from actual talented people. Because the bovine public hasn't learned their lesson from The Happening, and theaters make cash off him. Not because he's talented.

Though, like I said. Last Airbender looks to be marketed to kids. Since his material is 6th grade level stuff (this isn't meant to be insult), he might do a good job relative to the material. For 10 year olds.
 
jpastuch said:
Well, I've seen four of his films, and they were all flat out awful. Why on Earth do people assume when a director is bad at making movies, somehow I have a personal feud with him? And guess what? I have made better short films than him. EVERYONE on here most likely has. He's a hack, and his newest hack movie is going to be hacking up the theaters, stealing the spot from actual talented people. Because the bovine public hasn't learned their lesson from The Happening, and theaters make cash off him. Not because he's talented.

Though, like I said. Last Airbender looks to be marketed to kids. Since his material is 6th grade level stuff (this isn't meant to be insult), he might do a good job relative to the material. For 10 year olds.
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Just pretend for one second you are not you and re-read your post. This is a personal feud. Sure, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and no director, even the greats like Kubrick, Welles, Kurosawa, or Hitchcock are perfect. And this isn't to say that M. Night Shymalan should even be mentioned in the same sentence, paragraph or book as those directors. But the fact of the matter is his films please a pretty big audience, including a lot of people here. Generally, they're well acted and pretty well directed. Sometimes, his story telling is pretentious (see: Lady in the Water). Sometimes, his twists are SUPER predictable and just not interesting (see: The Village). Sometimes, his films suck outright (see: The Happening). But other times, his films captivate the minds and hearts of people who love the cinema, as well as average movie-goers (see: Signs, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense).

And here's the thing. He's directing huge feature films, and you're sitting here criticizing him to no end on an online message board. If you can do what he does millions of times better than him, then why not go do it already?
 
Finnegan said:
Just pretend for one second you are not you and re-read your post. This is a personal feud. Sure, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and no director, even the greats like Kubrick, Welles, Kurosawa, or Hitchcock are perfect. And this isn't to say that M. Night Shymalan should even be mentioned in the same sentence, paragraph or book as those directors. But the fact of the matter is his films please a pretty big audience, including a lot of people here. Generally, they're well acted and pretty well directed. Sometimes, his story telling is pretentious (see: Lady in the Water). Sometimes, his twists are SUPER predictable and just not interesting (see: The Village). Sometimes, his films suck outright (see: The Happening). But other times, his films captivate the minds and hearts of people who love the cinema, as well as average movie-goers (see: Signs, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense).

And here's the thing. He's directing huge feature films, and you're sitting here criticizing him to no end on an online message board. If you can do what he does millions of times better than him, then why not go do it already?
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How could I have a personal feud with someone I don't know and have never talked to? I don't communicate with him- ever. Do you know what personal feud means?

Notice I'm judging his work as a director. I think it's awful, the lowest common demoninator garbage that stays in theaters because his name makes a buck. Not because he's good...BECAUSE PEOPLE GIVE HIM MONEY TO MAKE MONEY FOR THEM. That's not me yelling- just wanted to make sure you got that part. You know, the hedgemony of Hollywood that's been around for 75 years and the one that basically narrows down your choices at most cinemas. What makes a buck...not because it "please (s) a pretty big audience". That pretty big audience thinks that The Happening is one of only 10 movies playing in the world, because a commercial theater only plays the 10 biggest sold movies. So, people flock to it like farm animals, claim it sucks, then drift away.

If you like him, whatever. I'm not trying to sway you. You seem to think because I have a thought out argument and frustration with money deciding everything I have some sort of personal feud with a guy I'm critical of. And I don't care how "huge" his movies are- they're terrible. Huge, terrible movies. So, hope I made my point better! Enjoy Windbender.
 
The biggest twist in M. Night's work is that we all go see his newest films thinking that they will be good.

Thought let me just say, I enjoyed ALL of his films except Unbreakable. That movie bored by balls into not making sperm any more.
 
Liked every M. Night film, except for "The Happening", his worst film, hands down IMO.

He needs great actors to drive his stories. His films are normally driven by very strong "leads", or "heroes"- you had Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Paul Giamatti, Bruce Dallas Howard, Samuel L Jackson... All actors that trully bring out the depth of his characters. In the Happening, however, Mark Walberg was just hollow, as was the female lead. Add to that an unfocused story, and the result was a B Movie. In fact, that's part of M Night's main attribute and also biggest risk of failure- he wants to tell complex things with very simple premises, and likes to add layers of reading to his films. The problem is, if the acting and the premise don't "immerse" you on the film experience, everything else fails, and people don't get into the film and take the time to look at the nuances. "The Happening" was supposedly a film reflecting on the paranoia after and during 9-11, but for me as an audience, due to the terrible acting and the, well," anticlimatic villain", I was immediately out of the film's mindset and could only laugh and look with disbelief at certain absolutely camp setpieces (the Iphone video of the lion and man scene, for example)
The Last Airbender's success depends greatly on the acting. Let's hope its up to par to M Night's usual storytelling, or there will be a chance for something bad "Happening" again...
 
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