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| What happened indeed? |
This is a director who was once regarded as the next Spielberg. I remember this well because as a child I had always wished that I could be recognized as the next Spielberg and took this sort of hard. HA...time changes our perspective sometimes for the better!
We're not going to try and reason what happened (even though I think the answer is obvious: EGO, FTW), instead I'm going to try and understand how this man is still getting work.
FACT: The reality is that ALL of Night's movies with the exception of Lady in the Water have been VERY profitable for whichever studio made the flick.
If I'm lying, I'm dying. It's the truth, I swear.
Lady in the Water's budget was around $75 million and pulled in close to $73 million. This movie is his only outright failure in terms of money. Remember that because it's important later.
The budget for the Happening (a movie where Mark Wahlberg talks to trees) was around $60 million and raked in around $163 million. So even on that shitpile, the studio made over a hundred million dollars!
The Last Airbender had a huge budget of around $150 million and still managed around $320 million for it's gross. Still very profitable even if the movie is generally viewed as a failure (as it actually should be).
So the reality we're dealing with is that the reason Night keeps getting work is because he still makes the studio's millions of dollars. From a strictly business standpoint, you can't really argue the numbers. However, if you're smart and you pay attention to the graph above and the general criticism that Night receives nowadays you can see that the backlash is coming or is already here and that very soon he's bound to make a movie that is not profitable will be a huge loss for the studio.
Here's where things get foggy. From an executive's standpoint, they can all pat each other on the back. And from a certain point of view they'd be right. But let's think about this for a second. While the Last Airbender made money, it was supposed to be a major franchise builder that could have made BILLIONS but was not well received and pretty much downright loathed, killing the chance of making the sequels that would've generated more and more money as the years went on...think about the loss of money just in merchandising and not even in terms of box-office or DVD/Blu-ray sales.
In my eyes, someone should have lost their job.
You can almost make an argument that the someone I'm talking about SHOULDN'T be M. Night.
That's right...I don't blame him for the failure of the Last Airbender...nope, I put that squarely on Hollywood's shoulders. Why? Because they continue to be an archaic form of business that shows no sign of business savvy.
Sure, Night made some money for ya Hollywood, but have you even watched some of his latest movies? The idea seems to be that because this guy made a couple great flicks early on in his career and that he became all the rage for like a year he's almost untouchable. And while he makes some money for you now that doesn't mean he's going to be a source of continual income, especially when you LOOK at what he's producing! Jeez, have some foresight and intuition! This cannot last.
Due to the success of the Sixth Sense, Night has basically been able to make whatever movie he wants to however he wants to make it. Very few director's are allowed to work this way...for this specific reason. Because sometimes a director NEEDS to be controlled in order to make a better movie. So while he's continually granted greenlights on shitty projects and handed possibly epic franchise's to mess up the studios turn a blind to the problem that has been brewing due to their own actions.
It's very simple. One can make a case that the last good movie Night made was the Village. I would argue that the last good movie he made was Signs. To me, the Village was meh. But let's not split hairs and stay focused here. So what happened after the Village?
Lady in the Water...
This is a horrible movie. And it should not have been made. The script is atrocious and filled with omnipotent levels of arrogance and the studio should have passed or at least demanded tons of rewrites. And to Disney's credit (the first studio it was brought to), they did pass on it. I'll give you one guess who picked it up.
Warner Bros...and that should really come as no surprise. Remember the studio that effed up the Batman franchise and TWO Superman franchises?
So Lady in the Water get's made and is a completely convoluted mess that's RAVAGED by the critics and viewing public alike.
What does Hollywood do next?
Well, Night sells them on a big comeback picture that's geared towards the Global Warming sheep and will be a bit of something new for him because it'll be R-rated.
If I were a studio executive at this point I absolutely would not have written Night off. I'd take his calls and I'd read his new script. He'd done a lot for the industry at this point, and I still think he has a lot of talent. The problem is that he's left to his own devices. So would I want to work with this talented man? Sure. But if the script he brought me was the Happening we'd have some serious discussions.
1. I'd be down to do an R-rated Shyamalan movie, but the Happening would not be it.
2. You wanna make a PG-13 version of the Happening? Fine. We need more action beats and less characters talking to objects that can't respond. The idea just sounds ridiculous.
This is what I would've brought up in a meeting with Night. And if you've caught on that I'm calling the man Night instead of Shyamalan because I don't like having to type out Shyamalan you'd be right!
However, this is what I would've brought up in a meeting with Spielberg.
Yet this is Night we're talking about who is absolutely no Spielberg and is just coming off of his very real first SOLID failure.
The Happening gets made and again it is a movie that should not have been. On the script level alone, it's not good. You have scenes with people talking to plants...that does not translate well to the screen.
Is Night responsible for his failures? Of course he is. But since filmmaking should be a collaborative effort he does not bear the full responsibility alone. Too many people were involved with saying YES when they should have been saying NO, or at least questioning some points of interest.
So yet again, I must say: I BLAME YOU HOLLYWOOD.
The fun part is that they'll pay for it (literally) eventually and learn nothing to the most infinitesimal degree. Sure they might get lucky and Night's next movie is a return to form, but the odds and history of the subject are against them.
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