Now here’s a guy who I almost don’t want to retire because there’s still an outside chance that he could bounce back. But he has such a long way to go to get there. I can’t think of another director who followed the highs of films like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, two absolutely excellent movies, with so many failed projects leading up to a movie like The Last Airbender. How this ever happened still baffles me. I can’t fathom just whether he got lucky in those first two movies, or whether someone else deserves credit for them, or whether he’s just been unlucky for the past, you know, 15 years.
To be honest, I gave up after The Happening, so I didn’t see that last one. I had seen every other one up to that point though, and they were dumb in a fun way at the best of times, but at this point the trajectory of Shyamalan’s career just sort of depresses me. He seems sad in interviews. It’s possible he should pursue something else; maybe get into television where he can work within someone else’s framework (it actually looks like he may be doing this). And maybe his Will Smith vehicle coming out this summer will restore his integrity a little. I would love to be proven wrong about this guy’s skills. The safe thing to do would be to bow out gracefully, hang up his director’s megaphone and maybe work behind the scenes somewhere. I’ll give him one thing: continuing to work in such a high profile business while people hack away at his skills and character rather unmercifully takes cajones.
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