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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » M. Night discusses "The Last Airbender"...

   
Author Topic: M. Night discusses "The Last Airbender"...
Puffy Treat
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He sees it as a chance to change his image.

Hmmm. There's a lot of stuff from Book One that I hope makes the cut. Definitely the Blue Spirit episode. And poor doomed Yue.

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The White Whale
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I'm terrified that it's going to be awful. Please don't let it be awful.
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Lanfear
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Honestly, as a big fan of anime, I don't see the appeal to this western approach ( in reference to the television series)

However, I am a huge fan of M. Night, and think this movie will be interesting regardless of how it turns out.

I'll have to write it down, because I'll most assuredly be on a mission when this one hits theaters.

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Puffy Treat
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I can see the teaser tagline already: The man who made the world realize something is -HAPPENING- now will KILL THE MOON! [Big Grin]
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Puffy Treat
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quote:
Originally posted by Lanfear:
Honestly, as a big fan of anime, I don't see the appeal to this western approach ( in reference to the television series)

While the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender are on the record as being huge fans of anime, they never pretended it was anime. However, there has been something of a crossover audience.

They did utilize a lot of Eastern mythology, philosophy, and martial arts styles throughout the series.

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SteveRogers
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I also hope this doesn't suck. I thought the TV show was actually really cool. I wish the DVD's of the full books weren't so expensive.
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Samprimary
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This is probably going to be a total farce.

Screw a movie. Just bring back Avatar to the television, please.

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Sterling
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quote:
Originally posted by Puffy Treat:
He sees it as a chance to change his image.

Frankly, I think the change M. Night Shyamalan needs to make in his image has a lot less to do with giving up plot twists than with letting go of some of the ego.
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Puffy Treat
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
Just bring back Avatar to the television, please.

Other than Zuko's mother Ursa, what plot thread is left? Everything else in the series was wrapped up neatly.

Though Mike and Bryan did hint in the commentary for Book Three that they -do- have strong ideas about what the world of Avatar was like back in the Era Before Bending...hmmm...

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mimsies
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Ah, Sequoyah wanted to submit to the casting call for this. He was way too young. He does do Tae Kwon Do though!

He is still excited about the movie.

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Samprimary
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Since I did not see ~THE HAPPENING~ I can pretend, at least for now, that this movie stands a chance of not sucking.

But if I ever accidentally see ~THE HAPPENING~ i'm going to lose it in a sea of hideous self-reinforcing pessimism.

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Scott R
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quote:
“What’s great about doing something like that is that let’s say your instinct is to distill me down into three characteristics: thrillers, scary, twist. Let’s just say, ‘Oh, that’s what he does,’” Shyamalan explained. “Then when they come see ‘Last Airbender’ – which has none of those three things in there - and yet, you’ll be able to tell in 30 seconds that I directed it. Now you’ll have to go, ‘Wait, I realize there are other things that define him. [Things] I knew, but was never really acknowledging them on the same level as these other characteristics.’”
Oh, goodness. This translates to, "I'm going to make this movie suck worse than Pat Poyfair."
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docmagik
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I don't see this working at all.

It just won't.

I'm not an M. Night hater. I actually adore him, and if I could only pick one movie to watch in the theatre on any given year, I'd pick his. Any given day, I'd have a hard time deciding whether Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, or The Village is my favorite movie.

(Of course, even I hated The Happening.)

But what they guy is good at is real people, real situations. He's got that Steven King thing down--let's take this crazy situation but see the way real people would react to it and deal with it.

I don't know if this analogy will make sense out of my own brain, but to me, M Night is the suspense/thriller equivelent of Napoleon Dynamite. Just like the humor in Napoleon Dynamite stemmed from the fact that all these people were so un-movie like, so grounded, at their core, in reality, in the way they talked and fought and made their comebacks, rather than floating in slick-scripted movie land--that's the way the best of M Night feels to me. The reactions of the family in Signs as they start to worry, the way that Bruce Willis starts talking like a psychologist about there not being any drugs in the house when he's got a gun on him instead of like John McClaine, the way the mentally handicapped man in The Village was portrayed as complicated, rather than simply as either PC loveable or horror movie scary, but as sympathetic but sometimes scary but always worth caring about--a lot more like some real developmentally disabled adults can be.

The more he tries to get "Epic," the worse he gets. The action scenes in The Happening were the worst. There were some great tension scenes in The Happening. The idea that he did a good job of making a bright, sunny day in a beautiful green field seem ominous--I agree with all that.

The problem was that all the payoffs just stunk on ice. To borrow Card's terminology, the Dread was great--it was the Terror and the Horror that fell flat.

It's like he's great at lighting the fuse and letting it sizzle, but things fall apart at the boom.

I actually think the first movie might be okay.

Night actually does a pretty good job of handling people having to deal with the "idea" of something. So the first film, as we get to know the characters and the world, will probably work fine. (I'm thinking here of the scene in Unbreakable where he walks into the train station with his hands out. Scene works great. I can see similar scenes playing well in this film.)

But I just don't see it playing out from there.

Maybe he can do it. Especially given that he's got such excellent refrence material to draw from.

Oh, and Sterling's spot on about his ego. I'm really hoping that all the other people who will have to have input on this one, his ego will be checked a bit. It's not like Star Wars, where Lucas was cutting the checks so nobody had the guts to tell him there were problems with his script or with the dailies.

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