Maybe I'm weird, but I think that "Lady in the Water" deserves a remake; it had a good potential

Cafe Society
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Spoilers
Now, I’m sure some of you have seen “The Lady in the Water”, and liked it the way it was. That is OK, everyone is entitled to an opinion. And I know that there are other M. Night Shyamalan bad movies that “deserve” the remake more (“Avatar: The Last Airbender” could have been a pretty good movie as a proper, faithful adaptation of source material). Plus, I don’t think Shyamalan is all bad: I liked “The Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable” and “Split”.
But I couldn’t help but think that “Lady in the Water”, despite all of its ridiculousness, could have been a much better, even (sort of) serious fantasy movie with some changes. If somebody were to remake it, some new angles could make it a relatively good movie:

  1. Drop the exposition in the opening credits. Quite annoying and unnecessary. Hundred minutes is enough to explain the mythology behind the story, you don’t have to explain the basics from the beginning.

  2. Don’t include the character of Young-Soon Choi, or her mother. Quite annoying and unrealistic (yes, even for a modern fairy-tale). Just have Cleveland do the research about naiad/nymph mythology by himself. The Internet is much bigger now than it was in 2005; it wouldn’t be hard. Eventually, Story (“Lady in the Water”) can confide in him and reveal the details and specifics that he hasn’t figured out yet.

  3. You can still have the critic character, but make him a complex, interesting character. Maybe he has to work together with other residents and is the only one trying to find a rational explanation to the situation, but he eventually starts questioning his mindset and grows to believe Story, and care about her. Maybe, in the end, it can turn out that he is Story’s guardian, rather than Reggie.

  4. Story being sent to deliver the message to the writer whose book will change the world… It can still kind of work, just cast pretty much anyone else but, well, M. Night Shyamalan. With the critic being a complex and (eventually) sympathetic character, and the aspiring writer not being portrayed by M. Night, that story angle wouldn’t have been nearly as preposterous.

  5. Speaking of which, don’t give “The Lady in the Water” ridiculous names such as “Story” or “narf” (while expecting the audience to take it seriously). If you can’t come up with anything better, just call her “Lady in [from?] the Water”. Or “Aqua”, which is Latin for “water”.

  6. If you somehow managed to pay attention to the mythology that is explored (well, more like just mentioned) in this movie, you know that there are this violent monkeys, Tartutic, that are supposed to protect Story from the Scrunt, the evil dog that is supposed to drag her away and… kill her, I guess. But they don’t appear until the end, even though the Scrunt had attacked Story two times before. At one point in the movie, Story even wonders how come the monkeys haven’t appeared, but that is never explained.
    I think it would have been better had Story figured out the reason on her own, shortly before the ending. Maybe if she said something like: “They don’t care about me anymore. They don’t think that I can complete my mission-change the world, or, rather, encourage someone else to change it. So why save me? Or they simply don’t believe that it will matter. But I can do that. At least I hope I can. And it will matter. There is still hope. And I will do it, with or without their help. If I have to die, so be it. So others may live. I know that people have made plenty of mistakes, but I still love them, because every life is precious.”
    Of course, Cleveland Heep (the protagonist) and Story should still be played by Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard. Because they’re Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard. I don’t think they’ve aged that much anyway.

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Why would you assume that?
I read what the critics were saying and did not go near the movie.

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I’ve heard of people who liked it. I figured some viewers were able to give it a pass better than I could, presumably by watching it like a (very silly) fairy tale. That is not the way I felt, though.

4

I agree with your premise, but the problem is, you are saying “Movie X would have been a good movie, if they’d made a good movie.” That can be said of any bad movie (and even some only “good” ones).

M made the movie he wanted. No one forced him, no studio meddling was responsible for that. That’s all on him. I particularly think he like the critic being killed. He’s a stand-in for all of us, professional and armchair, who hate his films (that are not Sixth Sense and Unbreakable). The whole movie is just M making a feature-length butthurt whine about people who don’t like his movies. And meta-ironically, THAT movie sucks, too.

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Yeah, this reminds me a bit of the Phantom Menace arguments. Yes, some people like it just fine. However, many believe its one of the weaker Star Wars movies, we all know it’s part of Star Wars canon, and we know there is virtually no way it is going to be remade. At least not in our lifetimes.

This has not stopped people from endlessly criticizing the movie to this day, with a lot of wishing it could have been better. Hell, some people have done recuts, some people have made freaking full animations of how they would have done it differently. At the end of the day, it’s purely academic.

The Phantom Menace was the Star Wars Lucas wanted to make. He is aware people might not have wanted to see Darth Vader as a little kid, but he wanted to show Darth Vader as a little kid. I personally think Qui Gon Jinn was a superfluous character that could have been just been Obi-wan, with Yoda as his master. Just like I always pictured it and how it seemed to be based off the orginal movies. But I guess George wanted a red-shirt Jedi to be killed off and give some emotional impact at the end. Who knows. A lot of people like Qui-Gon, though, so maybe I’m wrong. And of course, I never wanted anything like Midichlorians in Star Wars.

I don’t want to derail this with Star Wars, but it’s kind of the same thing. Wow, neat overall movie, but oh it could have been better. But that’s the way the director wanted it, and you have to respect that.

6

Not that I think remaking this film would be a good idea, but if it was remade I would prefer leaving in the opening narration. I thought it was one of the redeeming aspects of the film.