Shyamalan a ding-dong

I didn't see Signs [fortunately] but saw The Village. A parable kinda doesn't work as a parable when you spend nearly two hours beating me over the head with it.

From Random House's abridged: Parable-- A short story designed to convey a truth or moral lesson. [Ital mine]

From M. Night's unabridged: Parable-- A never-ending crap-tacular in which I waste everyone's time and the studio's money.

 

Unbreakable was great. If you didn't like it, you probably never liked movies with superhero stuff as a kid and didn't get it. It was about a real-life superhero who didn't know he was a superhero. He had genes immune to sickness and harm. His nemesis was the opposite - evil and weak-gened.

It only seemed boring if you don't know what is going on and didn't have the imagination for it.

If you see Signs a second time, it ain't so good. Very contrived with giant holes of logic. Why would space aliens invade a planet that's filled with water if water kills them? The whole Blair-Witch-you-don't-see-the-alien-until-the-end-thing is old hat too.

 

for what it's worth, michael bamberger of SI, and the subject of a thread or two on here about his days on the phillies beat, is the author of m. knight's book titled 'The Man Who Heard Voices : Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.'

not surprising, since both have philly ties.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/15...60090/ref=sr_1_15/102-7959060-3416905?ie=UTF8

 

Answer me this: I know enough to know that superhero nemeses usually have world domination or some such goal in mind. What was the villain's ultimate goal here, besides slaughtering innocents and killing the superhero for no personal gain?

That's why that comparison doesn't work for me.

 

Oddly enough, Bambi once reported M. Night to the Director's Guild of America for using the same piece of three-second stock footage in two different films.

Go figure.

 

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't know why we needed to know what the evil guy's ultimate plan was exactly. Maybe it was world domination, criminal enterprise or just selfish pleasure.

The point was he was an evil, bad guy, and superheros go after evil,bad guys.
You'll see that this week when Superman takes on Lex Luthor.

With Unbreakable, the superhero motif didn't make itself clear until the end. That was the surprise ending. It was a different, more realistic superhero movie, which is what made it cool.

It wasn't like Bruce Willis' character came from an exploded planet on a rocket ship with magic ice crystals.
Instead, he just had real good genes and didn't realize his advantages until the end of the movie. I thought that was really neat.

 

Yeah, I kinda know Lex is evil, but that's my point--even if his master plan is just getting Lois in the sack, there IS an objective there [and a quite understandable one, in that particular case].

I see where you're coming from, even though we disagree, but Lex isn't a good example.

 

That's pretty much the point in a nutshell.

Billy Madison seems to have bought into the plot device in itself. Plot devices in themselves are not good ways to tell stories.

Just saying: "Well, you didn't get the plot device" is a non-argument. There was not much of a story to go along with it; that's the point.

 

Excellent point, and one which a lot of today's screenwriters don't understand.

 

His "plot devices" are as contrived as his middle name, which he created when he was at NYU.

 

Because no one uses stage names. :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_name

 

He's a director, though he seems to fancy himself an actor, too.

He doesn't have to have a cool name.