So I just watched Avatar: The Last Airbender

[Derived Absurdity]

Damn, that was great. Just as good as I was hoping it would be, sometimes even better. It feels like the type of thing I would like even more a second time. Azula is probably my favorite character.

Now to watch the movie again so I can truly appreciate just how profoundly it fucked it up.

[Monk]

Great show

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

Damn, that was great. Just as good as I was hoping it would be, sometimes even better. It feels like the type of thing I would like even more a second time. Azula is probably my favorite character.

Now to watch the movie again so I can truly appreciate just how profoundly it fucked it up.

There's a great scene from the nostalgia critic review that compared the show's earthbending with the movie's.

And that's really the thing I was ultimately pissed at. I already knew the director, cast, and writing were all poor. But they couldn'y even give us equivalent bending effects. I mean a little blind girl could do more in the cartoon than 6 men could with earthbending. Fuck you M. Night. I know you said you made it for 9 year olds, but you clearly have no idea what makes a good kids' movie. Fuck you & your pretentious, lame twist-obsessed ass. You had a twist in Last Airbender & that was completely fucking up such a rich, quality piece of source material. At least you fucked it up so much we know you'll never taint Aang's (pronounced with a hard A sound you douche) name ag...


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Well...fuck.

[Gendo]

twist-obsessed

I've always felt that people take this reputation too far. So Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village all had twist endings. (Haven't see Airbender). But people seem to assume that all his movies will have twists, and thus accuse various plot points of being bad twists. Examples:

- Water is what harms the aliens in Signs. Nostalgia Critic made a big deal out of how the twist was given away early on. But I don't see how that's a twist at all. Similarly with the meaning behind "swing away". We didn't know the meaning at the beginning, and by the end we do know the meaning. That doesn't make it a twist ending.

- The Happening; plants are causing the event. Again, it's put forward as a theory early on, and ends up being probably correct. But it gets accused of being a bad twist. It's not a plot twist.

- Lady in the water; hoe the different characters turn out to be various roles. Again, I just don't see how that's a twist. We know from the start that someone is role X. It's not a twist when it becomes known which character that is.

Anyway, not meaning to defend him as a whole; I agree with most of the criticism about him. Many of his movies are terrible. I just don't get it when people take one of his movies as say "gee, you know what the big twist is in this one??" When it's a plot point that doesn't seem to me was ever intended to be a big twist.

To clarify; I would define a twist as taking something that you assumed to be true, and then it turning out to be untrue. In Sixth Sense, you assume all along that he's alive. You assume that because that's just a normal thing to assume about every movie character in every movie unless given reason to think otherwise. But in Signs, it doesn't make sense to say that you spent the movie assuming that water wouldn't hurt the aliens. That water hurts the aliens is just new info about the aliens you are given eventually; it doesn't contradict prior assumptions you had.

[Cassius Clay]

With 'Signs', I don't think I had ever seen a movie combine the concept of religion/higher power with an alien invasion. Those two concepts/beliefs are often at odds. People who tend to believe in aliens tend to doubt a god exist, and people who believe in God tend to doubt aliens exist(being made in God's image and all). The twist for me was that in this alien invasion story, there is some legitimate religious shit going down(and, others have speculated that the aliens are actually demons).

On a barely related note, what I like about some of his best "horror" movies is that horror isn't primarily the point of the story. Which I think has the effect of making the horror aspects feel even more unsettling and less "campy". 'I think that's what he was going for in his most recent movie...though less successfully. The Others' with Nicole Kidman had a similar thing going for it.

[Derived Absurdity]

M. Night indeed sucks and is terrible in pretty much every way. There is simply no way to defend him anymore. The last movie he made that could reasonably be considered "not awful" was released twelve years ago. The Last Airbender is one of the worst movies ever made. It's easily the worst fantasy adaptation ever made. That being said I think the thing where he's going to make a sequel is a hoax.

And I am not a fan of the nostalgia critic. Glossing over the fact that he's simply annoying as fuck, I don't think he's a very good film critic. He seems incapable of digging down and analyzing anything beyond the surface. Any time a film tries anything in any way subtle or interesting, it flies completely over his head. He doesn't get themes, subtext, metaphors, or even basic storytelling mechanics a lot of the time. His review of Fury Road showed that quite clearly. And it became clear when he went through M. Night's filmography. Did he seriously not get that the aliens in Signs are supposed to be metaphors for demons? And that the water is actually meant to be holy water? People who get mad over how "aliens can be destroyed by water!!" are taking it way too literally and show they don't subtext at all even when it's obvious.

And The Happening... say what you want about The Happening, but there was definitely some interesting shit involved there, and he completely missed all of it. The Happening failed on every level, but what M. Night was trying to do conceptually really interesting. Almost all of it was obviously a conscious, intentional subversion of the adventure-disaster genre. Almost all of the things TNC whines about in that movie were done on purpose. You can't criticize a movie right if you don't even know what it's about.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

twist-obsessed

I've always felt that people take this reputation too far. So Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village all had twist endings. (Haven't see Airbender). But people seem to assume that all his movies will have twists, and thus accuse various plot points of being bad twists. Examples:

- Water is what harms the aliens in Signs. Nostalgia Critic made a big deal out of how the twist was given away early on. But I don't see how that's a twist at all. Similarly with the meaning behind "swing away". We didn't know the meaning at the beginning, and by the end we do know the meaning. That doesn't make it a twist ending.

- The Happening; plants are causing the event. Again, it's put forward as a theory early on, and ends up being probably correct. But it gets accused of being a bad twist. It's not a plot twist.

- Lady in the water; hoe the different characters turn out to be various roles. Again, I just don't see how that's a twist. We know from the start that someone is role X. It's not a twist when it becomes known which character that is.

Anyway, not meaning to defend him as a whole; I agree with most of the criticism about him. Many of his movies are terrible. I just don't get it when people take one of his movies as say "gee, you know what the big twist is in this one??" When it's a plot point that doesn't seem to me was ever intended to be a big twist.

To clarify; I would define a twist as taking something that you assumed to be true, and then it turning out to be untrue. In Sixth Sense, you assume all along that he's alive. You assume that because that's just a normal thing to assume about every movie character in every movie unless given reason to think otherwise. But in Signs, it doesn't make sense to say that you spent the movie assuming that water wouldn't hurt the aliens. That water hurts the aliens is just new info about the aliens you are given eventually; it doesn't contradict prior assumptions you had.

-Signs - I would argue Nostalgia Critic got the twist wrong. To me, the twist was apparently God had been guiding this event all along simply by having the deceased wife say "Swing away".

-Happening - fair point

-Lady in the Water The twist isn't the role, but who played the role.

You forgot:

Devil - in which it turn out the old lady that supposedly died turned out to be the devil.

The Visit - in which it turned out the grandparents they kids weren't visiting really weren't their grandparents.

[Cassius Clay]

M Night is a shell of himself...but there's hope. 'The Visit' was bad but I can still see signs(not a pun) of the old M Night in it. It's like what happened to George Lucas(though, it's more likely that it's because partners like 'Spielberg' had a lot of influence on his good movies)

[Derived Absurdity]

There is no hope. M. Night sucks and will suck until the day he dies.

[Cassius Clay]

Maybe. I will always look forward to his movies and will probably be continued to be disappointed.

[Derived Absurdity]

Me too! I love his movies. Except TLA, I hated that shit.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

Here's the Nostalgia Critic earthbending rant:



Dammit. It didn't have the best part.

[Gendo]

Here's the Nostalgia Critic earthbending rant:



Dammit. It didn't have the best part.

Not the clip I was thinking of... a few minutes after that clip ends is where he actually talks about the earth-bending effect. Here he was just complaining about how they put the earth-benders in a prison made of... earth.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

Yeah. I thought the clip was going to include his rant on what Earhbenders could do in the show vs the movie. I thought I edited my post to include a link to the video starting at that point

[Monk]

M Night is a shell of himself...but there's hope. 'The Visit' was bad but I can still see signs(not a pun) of the old M Night in it. It's like what happened to George Lucas(though, it's more likely that it's because partners like 'Spielberg' had a lot of influence on his good movies)

Lucas definitely benefited from the creativity of others in the original trilogy. The first Star Wars was saved largely because he had so many helping hands, especially his (now) ex-wife, who basically saved the entire Death Star battle by editing it so it wasn't a boring mess. Empire and even RotJ, he allowed others to have a lot of creativity. Although he was still hands-on, he didn't control every aspect. This was not true with the prequels, which is why it's such a terrible mess - some really cool ideas, but terrible execution.

[Cassius Clay]

It also occurred to me that it's that inherent conflict between extraterrestrial and supernatural/religion that made the ending if 'Crystal Skull' so bizzare. The previous otherworldly reveals at the end of Indiana Jones' movies have always been religious. Aliens just don't make sense in that world. I mean...who's fucking idea was that? Fucking assholes.