Panned by critics, director M. Night Shyamalan's films light up box office
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Writer/producer/director M. Night Shyamalan on the set of "The Last Airbender."
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PHILADELPHIA -- What's wrong with this picture?
M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender," his adaptation of Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" cartoon series, topped $125 million in its first month of release. It's already the 13th highest-grossing film of the year, and in the few overseas markets where it has opened so far (Russia, Ukraine, Japan), the CGI-driven fantasy has attracted enthusiastic crowds and about $30 million in additional box office.
But take a look at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, the online movie-review aggregators, and "The Last Airbender" is among the most widely reviled releases of 2010: "Mind-bendingly turgid!" "The worst botch of a fantasy epic!" "An agonizing experience in every category!"
Or this, from the Chicago Reader's Cliff Doerksen: "The current national priorities should be as follows: reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan."
Like the menacing creatures lurking in the dark woods of the filmmaker's "The Village," like the ominous aliens skulking through the cornfields of his "Signs," the Shyamalan haters are out there, loud and legion.
"Yeah, it's a phenomenon -- that's a kind way to put it," says the director, laughing it off last week at a Starbucks close to his Chester County, Pa., farm. "It's something that I've thought about forever. ... It feels a little bit personal."
He may be onto something there. In 1999, "The Sixth Sense," his somber shot-in-Philly ghost story, earned six Oscar nominations (including best picture and best director), $672.8 million worldwide, and a Newsweek cover story touting him as "the next Spielberg." And it proffered the pop-cult catchphrase "I see dead people."
Since then, the director's movies have continued to fare well. Certainly, none has approached "The Sixth Sense's" mega-numbers, but with the exception of 2006's "Lady in the Water" (in which Mr. Shyamalan gleefully kills off a character who happens to be a movie critic), none have tanked, either.
First Published August 8, 2010 12:00 am
