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Honestly the twist wasn't what made me dislike the movie. The twist was the final nail in the coffin that made it such a bad movie in my view. I can see where maybe he was trying to do a morality play, but it was so badly done that I'm still not certain exactly what his point was. I think it has something to do with a Utopian society, but I felt that Terry Goodkind's latest book did a much better job covering the topic even as heavy handed as it was.
Not a Utopian society, but just people going to extreme measures to protect their children -- at least on the small scale. On the large scale, the dangerous measures people will go to in order to feel "safe" -- such as the Patriot Act and the establishment of Homeland Security after 9/11. I don't want this thread to turn into a political discussion -- since those are forbidden here -- but that is one of the points he is trying to get across with this movie.
I must confess that I'm astounded by the reaction The Village is suffering from some of the more intelligent people out there. Astounded and disappointed.
It's a mistake for people to go to a movie with an expectation of anything other than to see a good movie. When this occurs, potential gems -- like The Villgage or Fight Club -- end up doing poorly because movie viewers want to be lead around by the nose. It's to the point now that most trailers tell you everything you need to know about a movie without needing to see it.
This movie was excellent in that it covered so many issues relevant not just to our time, but to any. Sure, it's obvious that Shyamalan is influenced by other "time-out-of-time" stories and such, but to the general movie going population, this is something new. The problem is, so many went into this expecting something in particular at ended up with something far deeper than they expected.
The major problem Shyamalan faces in his films is people going to see it with the intent of uncovering the twist rather than doing the unthinkable: WATCHING THE MOVIE! It doesn't help that, since all of his films to date have a supernatural/fantastic element to it, that everyone expects the same in all of his films.
There are many gems in this story that, if people put aside their expectations and concentrated on the film, they'd appreciate it.
Perhaps the trailer for this movie should have been just 10 seconds - show the title, show M. Night's name, and show the opening date. Set up no expectations.
I went to see this movie based solely on the writer/director's name. I'll go see his next movie based solely on his name, too.
Perhaps the trailer for this movie should have been just 10 seconds - show the title, show M. Night's name, and show the opening date. Set up no expectations.
The Serge, believe me when I say that it wasn't the movie's depth that turned me off . I got what Shyamalan was saying--how could I hnot have gotten it? He wasn't especially subtle.
But that wasn't the problem. The acting was great, the mood was great, the themes were interesting, even the basic dilemmas were interesting.
The problem for me was twofold:
1) He was clearly setting things up to be a twist, and he flubbed the twist terribly, such that instead of being a delight, it was something I dreaded (and not a good kind of dread, either). That was, for me, a failure on his behalf as a storyteller.
2) Similarly, characters at multiple points in the movie acted in mind-numbingly stupid fashions, without any motives for so acting --especially
with keeping a monster-suit in Noah's prison
. Again, this was sloppy storytelling.
These problems were so great for me that they really detracted from my enjoyment of the many things he did right. It had nothing to do with the trailer, and everything to do with what I saw as structural flaws in the piece itself.
And these things could've been fixed. As I said before, if he'd removed the twist element, the movie would've been tremendously improved: the twist didn't work at all and served only to distract from the other stuff he was doing. And thirty seconds more film-time could've removed the biggest plot-hole from the movie, and another couple minutes could've removed several other plot-holes. To compensate for this, they could've removed such unnecessary bits as
Noah's long chase of Ivy through the woods
, or just made the movie a few minutes longer.
When intelligent people dislike something, rather than assume those folks have lost their intelligence, it might be worthwhile to look at what their concerns were. Obviously intelligent people can like this movie, too, but there's no cause for disappointment in us for disliking something you like .
When intelligent people dislike something, rather than assume those folks have lost their intelligence, it might be worthwhile to look at what their concerns were. Obviously intelligent people can like this movie, too, but there's no cause for disappointment in us for disliking something you like .
I kinda thought Signs had the twist going on, inasmuch as
all these random irrelevant things in the guy's life--his daughter's water glass obsession, his son's baseball obsession, his other son's asthma, his dying wife's crazy nonsense words--all came together in the end, stopped being random, turned meaningful. Based on these events, the protagonist was forced to conclude either that there was a God, or that he was starring in an M. Night Shyamalan movie; for obvious reasons, he concluded the former
In any case, the last couple scenes of that movie had me reworking in my head much of what I'd seen previously, which is basically what a good twist accomplishes for me.
I was justa t teh dentist, where I read an interview with Shyamalan. Boy's got ego, I can say that.
. I got what Shyamalan was saying--how could I hnot have gotten it? He wasn't especially subtle.
