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We all love Sixth Sense, but is there another that seems to work? Is there another good Shyamalan movie?
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The whole predestined thing really reminds me of The Adjustment Bureau, where I guess it really did look in to that in a lot of detail. In a more religious way then I suppose necessary but it served the plot more or less.
Why wont any videos play? All I get is a black screen.
I actually like Unbreakable better then The Sixth Sense. Whenever someone says they haven’t seen it and I put it in for them to watch they are blown away by it. Admittedly a geeky crowd but still. Unbreakable is more like an overlooked gem then a dirty pleasure…
It’s not that overlooked…
Wow, I like this. Cool thoughts!
For some reason I was under the impression that this was asking the question “is there another good Shyamalan movie to be had?” which, in my mind, is asking whether or not we’ll ever get another good one from him in the future.
To that end, I have this to say: for his sake, I hope he has another great one in him. But given his track record, it seems unlikely.
I’m gonna watch this video momnetarily, but just looking at the title.e. seriously? I thought everyone kind of agrees that Unbreakable is “good” at the very least, Signs a bit dodgy, and it’s only with the Village that he started tipping over into the shite side.
Shy’s career is widely thought of as a slow, gradual descent from brilliance into tripe, not “one good movie and a bunch of horrible ones”. I’d rather watch a defense of Airbender than what this nothingsaying, out-of-touch title appears to signify… and seriously, Village does a lot of things pretty fucking well.
Ah, watched the video… yea, Doug was a bit more aware than I’d assumed, but not much.
Anyway, some random thoughts along the way:
-Greek mythology was closer to Game of Thrones actually, no real heroes and villains. Well, some (Tantalos is a complete slime, Orpheus is completely awesome; Oedipus almost) – but a lot of those famous, beloved heroes like Odysseus, Heracles or Achilles (not sure about Theseus right now) were complete jerkbags by any modern standards, basically an organic, impulsive mix of good and bad, and any portrayal of, like, Hades or Ares as outright villains is obviously not authentic at all.
-I love the depressing, drawn-out Shyamalan dialogues, really moody and atmospheric – no idea why people complain about it. Those camera pans, on the other hand, not so sure about that… didn’t throw me off, though.
-That twist ending, from what I’ve gathered, is the main criticism of this film and why it’s inferior to 6th Sense – whereas Bruce realizing he was a ghost and moving on to the afterlife is a perfect closure to a story, usually, when the good guy is revealed as a / the main villain in a story like this, that leads into the next act where the heroes regather and then defeat the traitor – LoXG, GoldenEye, M:I, 24, you name it. Unbreakable didn’t really work as an exception, even though, considering Jackson’s scheme was completed by finding the hero, and he ended up arrested at the end, it’s also kinda comparable to Primal Fear where it worked brilliantly. Usual Suspects, too… so it does work in a lot of other cases, but this was kind of an unsure, tacked on halway between that and the usual superhero/espionage trope, and isn’t really working.
Though there’s been this idea for a sequel stuck in the buffer ever since, so I guess that justifies it a bit.
-The idea that fate, or being chosen by destiny, isn’t necessarily such a desirable thing, is nothing new or unusual: in fact, if you look at, say, Greek mythology or the Bible, the depressing version where everyone (including the gods) are slaves to the inevitable destiny used to be the NORM, and fate as the default luminous wish fulfillment, along with warm and fuzzy Christianity, is more of a modern invention if anything.
It makes sense in a world where paradise on earth seems so conveivable, and the facts point to a material, inherently meaninglesss existence – a benevolent destiny would be perfect for filling that void and close that gap! On the other hand, when hardship is the norm and unpredictable doughts and famines are explained by grim, vengeful gods, society soaked with “backward” morals brought on by those harsh circumstances, one sees how people might gravitate to the other version…
Obviously, none of that diminishes the way Unbreakable did it 🙂
Do films he wrote but didn’t direct still count? Because if they do there’s still “Stuart Little” to consider.