# M. Night Shyamalan explains why he gets bad reviews now. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 13, 2013, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727 "2013-09-13T01:12:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/1 "2013-09-13T01:12:53Z")
Yeah, so here is what Shyamalan thinks is going on with his critical reviews, which plummeted lower and lower, bottoming out(so far) with the Last Airbender. [Quoting from here. I’ll just quote the Shyamalan part.](http://www.unleashthefanboy.com/movies/shyamalan-the-last-airbender/71393) > [@](#): > > I don’t know what’s going on with me and the critics in America. They’ve never got me. And it’s getting worse. It’s almost like “Go Away!”. I also think that I’m getting influenced by other cultures more, as you can see in the movie. So I’m not doing a straight up American movie anymore. The tonality are changing. I always had a European sensibility to my movies and the pacing is a bit off to them and it feels a little stilted and they need more electricity. And this is the way I think of things: Hitchcock, Corsair, Stanley Kubrick are my teachers. It could be a little of that. A little bit of cultural difference. Just like in this movie, I’m very used to going on a plane in the US, after being savaged by them, and then going to a place like Japan next, and they’re like “genius!”. You can lose your mind going on Saturday from being an idiot to Sunday being a genius. Luckily for me it’s not something I can fight. It’s not my fight to fight. I’m defenseless. The audience fights for me. And they have through my career. And I’m honored to have that relationship. And maybe in 20 years I’ll get a good review and we’ll sit here and say “I got a good review!” Yeah…or your movies really suck now. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/2 "2013-09-13T01:18:17Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Yeah, so here is what Shyamalan thinks is going on with his critical reviews, which plummeted lower and lower, bottoming out(so far) with the Last Airbender. > > [Quoting from here. I’ll just quote the Shyamalan part.](http://www.unleashthefanboy.com/movies/shyamalan-the-last-airbender/71393) > > Yeah…or your movies really suck **now**. “now”? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/3 "2013-09-13T01:20:43Z")
“Corsair”? Sounds like someone who made Tarzan movies in 1930 or something. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/4 "2013-09-13T01:24:12Z")
Ah, this explains everything. It’s not him, it’s us. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/5 "2013-09-13T01:30:15Z")
Yeah because it’s just like the way all those critics had nothing good to say about Hitchcock or Kubrick. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/6 "2013-09-13T01:57:04Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > “now”? :dubious: Yes. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/7 "2013-09-13T08:07:04Z")
I am apparently an outlier - I liked Last Airbender and some of his other stuff and didn’t really like Sixth Sense [not enough to turn it off, but I won’t deliberately watch it.] In my defense, I also like foreign and older movies - the stuff of silents and golden age of Studio stuff from the 30s and 40s which most people don’t like because they have the slower pace like a Shamalamadingdong film. [Sorry dude, I like the name bash] One of my absolute favorite directors is Fritz Lang, I adore M, the old Dr Mabuse stuff; Jean Cockteau’s stuff [especially his Beauty and the Beast] and even the interminably long Russian stuff - the battle on the frozen lake sequence from Alexander Nevsky and the baby carriage bumping down the steps in Battleship Potemkin are fantastic [and also the original sequences of stuff in today’s movies.] Maybe people should think about trying to shift their perceptions and watch his stuff with a nonAmerican point of view once and a while. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/8 "2013-09-13T08:54:08Z")
Obligatory link to [No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksKLHt9Kzg). ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/9 "2013-09-13T09:25:12Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > I am apparently an outlier - I liked Last Airbender and some of his other stuff and didn’t really like Sixth Sense [not enough to turn it off, but I won’t deliberately watch it.] > > In my defense, I also like foreign and older movies - the stuff of silents and golden age of Studio stuff from the 30s and 40s which most people don’t like because they have the slower pace like a Shamalamadingdong film. [Sorry dude, I like the name bash] One of my absolute favorite directors is Fritz Lang, I adore M, the old Dr Mabuse stuff; Jean Cockteau’s stuff [especially his Beauty and the Beast] and even the interminably long Russian stuff - the battle on the frozen lake sequence from Alexander Nevsky and the baby carriage bumping down the steps in Battleship Potemkin are fantastic [and also the original sequences of stuff in today’s movies.] > > Maybe people should think about trying to shift their perceptions and watch his stuff with a nonAmerican point of view once and a while. Yea… no. Bella Tarr and Tarkovsky are some of my favorite filmmakers and even I think he sucks. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/10 "2013-09-13T09:27:55Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > I am apparently an outlier - I liked Last Airbender and some of his other stuff and didn’t really like Sixth Sense [not enough to turn it off, but I won’t deliberately watch it.] > > In my defense, I also like foreign and older movies - the stuff of silents and golden age of Studio stuff from the 30s and 40s which most people don’t like because they have the slower pace like a Shamalamadingdong film. [Sorry dude, I like the name bash] One of my absolute favorite directors is Fritz Lang, I adore M, the old Dr Mabuse stuff; Jean Cockteau’s stuff [especially his Beauty and the Beast] and even the interminably long Russian stuff - the battle on the frozen lake sequence from Alexander Nevsky and the baby carriage bumping down the steps in Battleship Potemkin are fantastic [and also the original sequences of stuff in today’s movies.] > > Maybe people should think about trying to shift their perceptions and watch his stuff with a nonAmerican point of view once and a while. I’m a non American and his movies Stink. You cannot say with a straight face that the Village, the Happening or the Last Airbender were good movies. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/11 "2013-09-13T12:46:25Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > I am apparently an outlier - I liked Last Airbender and some of his other stuff and didn’t really like Sixth Sense [not enough to turn it off, but I won’t deliberately watch it.] I loved The Sixth Sense. I also liked the Last Airbender. But I’m not a cartoon fanboy so nothing was ruined for me. It was a kid’s action movie and worked as that. I have no problem with him as a director. I just think that after The Sixth Sense, as a writer he got too caught up in having a twist. The twist worked once and he tried to recapture that moment. It didn’t work. I think if his next few movies had be any other type his career and perception would be much different. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/12 "2013-09-13T12:58:05Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Maybe people should think about trying to shift their perceptions and watch his stuff with a nonAmerican point of view once and a while. Screw that. I’m the audience. It’s his job to communicate with me, not the other way around. He’s a no-talent hack and always has been. He just got lucky once. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/13 "2013-09-13T13:00:25Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Screw that. I’m the audience. It’s his job to communicate with me, not the other way around. He’s a no-talent hack and always has been. He just got lucky once. UNBREAKABLE was pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![Orr\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ee59a6/32.png) [@Orr\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orr_G)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/14 "2013-09-13T13:25:30Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > Obligatory link to [No One Likes M. Night Shyamalan](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksKLHt9Kzg). I haven’t seen that before. That’s his best since _Unbreakable_. This whole Shyamalan thing has bothered me for a while. I don’t dislike the guy (although if he keeps up with the narcissistic angle on his delusional rants, the hatred will grow), I just don’t understand what’s happened to him. I mean, I guess it’s the old trope about being too successful too quickly, and letting that go to your head, but… I mean, hasn’t he seen his own movies? On some level, he _has_ to know. Right…? ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/15 "2013-09-13T13:43:34Z")
He has seen them…many times…and is surprised by the twist everytime. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/16 "2013-09-13T14:04:03Z")
I LIKE M. Night Shyamalan. He is an excellent craftsman who has managed to be a good director, scenarist, storyteller, scriptwriter, and even actor. I mean this without any irony. Look at any individual scene of his films and it’s _good_, by any objective standard. On the other hand, I have hated every movie since _The Sixth Sense_. I’ll admit that _Unbreakable_ was alsowell-made, but it wasn’y my cup of tea. But every movie since then has suffered from a shattering sense of – what? I’m not sure what to call it. It’s stupidity of premise. It’s the sort of thing that you would let go under “willing suspension of disbelief” if you were more forgiving or indulgent. but even WSOD has to be earned and the audience has to feel it’s deserved. The problem is that, once you figure out what it is in a Shyamalan movie, it seems so dumb that you no longer want to feel a party to it. and, knowing it’s a Shyamalan film and that there’s going to be some odd twist, you generally know what it is before The Reveal, andthen you feel like a jerk watching the rest of the film. We actually watched _the Happening_ and _Signs_ in our house with MST3K-ish comments throughout. In an earlier thread about this, I said that Shyamalan needs someone else to write his scripts to avoid this, but apparently that didn’t help with _the Last Airbender_. I didn’t see it, but Pepper mill and MilliCal – big "Avatar’ fans – went to see it and were sorely disapponted. (MillCal , when she first heard Shyamalan was directing, started chanting “Please don’t suck! Please don’t suck!” as if this could prevent it. It didn’t help.) I really don’t know what the solution is. It isn’t blaming the audience, though. “They expect a twist, so it’s ruined” doesn’t cut it. _The Twilight Zone_ lasted for _years_ on TV, and veryone knew there was going to be a twist. O. Henry made a career of twist endings. So did plenty of sf/f writers in the 50s. It’s to your advantage, actually – the Shyamalan name used to draw people in looking for that twist. What disappoints them is when it’s not worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/17 "2013-09-13T14:29:15Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > … But every movie since then has suffered from a shattering sense of – what?.. This is exactly it for me. It’s as if for every movie, he has some fill-in-the-blank sentences, and the blanks are filled in by blindly drawing random words out of hats. For Signs, one sentence was, “The aliens are killed by \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_”. He happened to draw the words “water” and “baseball bats”. But for the luck of the draw he would have made a movie where the aliens were killed by “Dr. Pepper” and “Courtney Love’s Sweat” ---
**Author:** ![FlyingDragonFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c89c15/32.png) [@FlyingDragonFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingDragonFan)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/18 "2013-09-13T14:54:06Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > “Corsair”? Sounds like someone who made Tarzan movies in 1930 or something. 😛 I’m thinking that was maybe a transcription error. When I watched the video, I heard “Kurosawa.” Here’s a pretty telling graph of his [Rotten Tomatoes ratings](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/08/charting-m-night-shyamalans-downfall/55902/). ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/19 "2013-09-13T15:08:35Z")
The last one I saw by him was The Village. The twist was so obvious from the trailer that I wondered if it was a red herring. I spent the movie thinking of how things could be better, as well as being astonished at the laziness of the plotting. That’s not my usual take on movies: I usually go into full on suspension of disbelief mode. There was a lot to like about the movie, but the plotting was so foolish that it ruined the experience for me. It has nothing to do with the pacing, which I quite enjoy. ---
**Author:** ![FlyingDragonFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c89c15/32.png) [@FlyingDragonFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingDragonFan)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727/20 "2013-09-13T15:14:08Z")
I think part of the problem may be that Shyamalan has lost his ability to set a compelling mood. _The Sixth Sense_, _Unbreakable_, _Signs_, and I’ll say even _The Village_ had this gloomy, tense feel to them that really supported the plots. _Lady in the Water and The Happening_ both had what could have been good stories, but the mood of the films were too flat and boring. And as far as _The Last Airbender_ is concerned, c’mon! Magic kung fu warriors, how do you screw that up? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/m-night-shyamalan-explains-why-he-gets-bad-reviews-now/668727.md?page=2)