From The Golden Razzies website:

"The Last Airbender" led Saturday's Razzies with five awards, among them worst picture, worst director and worst screenplay for M. Night Shyamalan.

The movie also received Razzies for worst supporting actor (Jackson Rathbone, who was cited for both "The Last Airbender" and "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse") and for a special award, worst eye-gouging misuse of 3-D.

It's a shame, because he had such an explosive start.


Phil

I haven't seen Airbender. I loved The Sixth Sense.

What do you think went wrong?

Sandra

Too much creative control.

Little every single thing that can go wrong with a movie went wrong with this one. It's just a godawful mess from the first frame to the last. It's such a shame because the series is quite good. It's fun and silly and filled with imagination and humour and solid heart when it needs to be.

The film version deserves all the bad attention it gets. It's only a shame that it isn't bad enough to sink Shyamalan permanently.

Quoted from mcornetto Too much creative control.

On whose part? I was talking about this idea of creative control just tonight.

Personally, I love the idea of handing something over to someone else and then watching what happens with it. Although, there are some times when I feel strongly about something and then I know I need to pursue it somehow somewhere...

The thing is that probably some of the best things that happen in film (or science or anything really) is by accident.

Perhaps it's a matter of the whole shebang not gelling for a number of reasons. If the people working on the project don't have that magic, then it's probably going to show in the finished project.

Sandra

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. On whose part?

On Shyamalamadingdong's part.  He's obviously not seeking feedback on his ideas, or if he is he's not getting it, maybe he's getting total agreement or maybe he's just not listening to it.   You can see this because if you look at Devil - his ideas work - just not in his hands.  

Either way, after Sixth Sense, he went straight downhill.  I haven't seen Airbender but from what I've heard it's probably the nadir of his achievements.   Hopefully - anyway.

Well, to me, M Night hit his peak with Signs. I actually didn't think much of Sixth Sense when it came out in theaters. I enjoyed another film which was released around the same time - Dave Keopps' Richard Matheson adap Stir Of Echoes ten times more.

Unbreakable was alright, but it was Signs that finally won me over.

Then came The Village, which actually was a good film- until M Night threw in his plot twist reveal. The end result was that the reveal caused a massive plot hole that no one could ignore, ruined the entire film. It didn't make any sense. Disney passed on Lady In The Water and he bitched. He went to another studio; Disney execs were made to look stupid morons...until the film came out and proved the choice to be the right one. It's also when many lost some respect for M Night, when he bitched to Disney.

The Happening had its moments. I'll give it that. But I was more into the paranoia by the people caught up in the situation than something, em, "downwind"...

But why did Last Airbender F-L-O-P?


The film was annoying, choppy and hard to follow. It felt like you missed out on many details and fantasy action. Kind of like...what was that flick a few years back, Aargon? Kind of like that- where there is no sense of place, and the FX, while good, became overwhelming and takes over the story. It also dragged.

And I already seen Chris Columbus Percy Jackson...not much better. All these kidz and elemental powers...all the same facial movements and movement, I'm bored.

Think of it like a jigsaw puzzle. You work at it, engage your brain. Joy comes over you as the picture forms. Then you find out a few pieces are missing. Not the edge pieces either. You get ticked- the picture is incomplete.

The Sixth Sense was the only film he did worth watching. The rest are absolutely terrible.

Two things

First: he tried to cram too much information. Give the material time to grow. There was no rush to finsh book I that quickly. Make it into two films.

Second: Fighting sequences sucked. All those moves that the actors did to use their water/fire/ground abilities was a waste of film time. One move and that's it.

I think he had only a couple of good ideas in him and he didn't know where to go from there.  Unbreakable is probably in my top twenty films of all times, and The Sixth Sense is great, too.  Both were his earlier works.

A think what might have happened is that his movies started getting bigger and bigger.  Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, when you think about it, were very simple films, with very low below-the-line budgets.  Maybe he should go back to that.


Phil

His career hit a pothole during the second week of The Village's release; made a lot of money the first week, then everyone said how horrible it was, had a historical second weekend slip, and that was that.  Never recovered.  Sixth Sense is a great story.  Unbreakable was good.  Signs I loved because, I think as Me mentioned in the OWC thread, it took a huge thing like an alien invasion but didn't use expensive effects or sets.  Good ideas those were.  He needs to rediscover some of that magic he had earlier on.

The Happening was marketed as his first R rated film.  I mean come on.  Did he think that one up?  

I liked The Sixth Sense and really liked Signs.  The Village I thought was decent until it fell apart at the end.  Never saw Airbender and probably never will.

I will say The Happening was so bad I watched it in stunned silence.  Until, that is, I saw  what's got to be the most unintentionally hilarious scene ever, with Mark Wahlberg trying to outrun the wind.  I remember laughing my azz off when I saw that.  

But as for M. Night having a bad year, Airbender made 320 million worldwide.  Somehow, I think he'll manage to pull through,

Quoted from Ryan1 The Village I thought was decent until it fell apart at the end.

I agree.  I thought it had an interesting initial premise and marketing campaign which is why it was all the more frustrating when everything came apart at the end.  I like how Ebert put it:  

Quoted Text "The Village is a colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn ... To call the ending an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It was all a dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore."

Quoted from Ryan1 But as for M. Night having a bad year, Airbender made 320 million worldwide.  Somehow, I think he'll manage to pull through

Agreed.  $320 million for taking a shit is a pretty good day's work.  It's just a shame the quality of his work has gotten so shoddy.  

I thought The Village was okay.  Interesting  premise.  Bad execution.  And a blind girl who took pretend-to-be-blind lessons from Ben Affleck.

He needs to get smaller with his work.  Simple stories.  Easy concepts.


Phil

I want to like him because he's a story-teller, and there aren't many decent ones around at the moment.

Creatively, there's a few things that have conspired against him I'd say.

1. Time. I read an interview with him talking about Sixth Sense, he said it wasn't until the 5th re-write that he even found the final story and there were a few more before he got it right. Once you've had a hit like that film, the offers will come in..you're not going to get the chance to develop you stories over that time-frame again.

Signs was a good film, but the plot-holes in the story (advanced aliens who are aware they are vulnerable to water, yet don't protect themselves...too silly for words)could surely have been discovered with a few more re-writes.

2. The fact the twist became so famous...he's got himself stuck into a rut of his own creation...constantly looking for the next twist. You don't always need them. The Village was a high quality supernatural thriller for 80 minutes...after the end it was a farcical joke. The idea of people going to hide away from evil is a good one though and worth exploring...but the two ideas didn't mix.

3. Sensitivity to criticism. Lady in the Water featured an absurd critic who got his come-uppance. It was like he was signing his own suicide note...embarrassing. You could almost hear the sluurp as he disappeared up his own back-side.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films 3. Sensitivity to criticism. Lady in the Water featured an absurd critic who got his come-uppance. It was like he was signing his own suicide note...embarrassing. You could almost hear the sluurp as he disappeared up his own back-side.

The best example I can think of, of a fantastic idea gone terribly wrong.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films Signs was a good film, but the plot-holes in the story (advanced aliens who are aware they are vulnerable to water, yet don't protect themselves...too silly for words)could surely have been discovered with a few more re-writes.

Don't forget that this film is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest plot device:  Mel Gibson's daughter leaving all those half-filled glasses of water around the house.

Tangent thought: the daughter was played by Abigail Breslin who, IMHO, is the best under-eighteen actor/actress out there.


Phil