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After Earth

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I know, I about died when I saw that this morning -- 1 out of 17 reviews was positive so far... and the positive one came with some caveats. And the score was only 2.5/4 ... a positive?

Ahhhh, that sucks. I was really pulling for M. Night. I stayed with him longer than most. I enjoyed up through The Village, but Lady In The Water finally lost me. It's in there somewhere in him, but he can't seem to get it out anymore.
 

Totenkindly

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Ahhhh, that sucks. I was really pulling for M. Night. I stayed with him longer than most. I enjoyed up through The Village, but Lady In The Water finally lost me. It's in there somewhere in him, but he can't seem to get it out anymore.

I stuck with him through most of Signs (and even liked the wife plot point), but it all seemed too neatly wrapped up (contrivance alert!) and so the ending felt very dumb to me.

I gave him a chance with the Village and got to the midway point before my enthusiasm dimmed.

Never saw Lady in the Water.... but I did see The Happening. *doh* Sigh. Great first five minutes. 'nuff said there.

I just feel like he can't rein himself in (or else thinks his ideas and thoughts are SO amazing) that he just don't know how to raise the crops anymore. Bringing something to life means shaping, pruning, etc., not just tossing a bucket of water and as many bags of Miracle-Grow you can find on your Wonderful Amazing Stupendous Ideas.
 

PeaceBaby

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Ahhhh, that sucks. I was really pulling for M. Night. I stayed with him longer than most. I enjoyed up through The Village, but Lady In The Water finally lost me. It's in there somewhere in him, but he can't seem to get it out anymore.

Me too - I was rooting for this to be an M Night grand slam. I still want to see it and decide for myself, but sad to see that the critical mass is really trending to negative at this point.
 
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I stuck with him through most of Signs (and even liked the wife plot point), but it all seemed too neatly wrapped up (contrivance alert!) and so the ending felt very dumb to me.

Hmm, I hear this criticism of Signs a lot, but I'm not sure it's valid. The entire theme of the movie is that coincidences aren't really coincidences and that having faith will make things fall into place. That theme demands a "contrived" ending. If you reject the theme, that's fine, but the movie is internally consistent. That criticism sounds to me like "movie about faith has too much faith in it."

Never saw Lady in the Water.... but I did see The Happening. *doh* Sigh. Great first five minutes. 'nuff said there.

I just feel like he can't rein himself in (or else thinks his ideas and thoughts are SO amazing) that he just don't know how to raise the crops anymore. Bringing something to life means shaping, pruning, etc., not just tossing a bucket of water and as many bags of Miracle-Grow you can find on your Wonderful Amazing Stupendous Ideas.

I thought there was a nugget of a good idea for a movie in Lady In The Water, but it wasn't realized, like, at all. I think The Happening did have a fantastic beginning, right up until they got out of town.

After thinking about it, maybe his problem is lack of attention to character in favor of attention to plot. Look at his successes - they're full of memorable characters we care about. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs all had the plot twists, but they also had great characters. The subsequent movies have the plot, but don't have any characters you give a damn about, even when they're played by good actors. A good character can cover for plot deficiencies in the same way a good singer can rescue a mediocre song.
 

Totenkindly

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Hmm, I hear this criticism of Signs a lot, but I'm not sure it's valid. The entire theme of the movie is that coincidences aren't really coincidences and that having faith will make things fall into place. That theme demands a "contrived" ending. If you reject the theme, that's fine, but the movie is internally consistent. That criticism sounds to me like "movie about faith has too much faith in it."

I don't believe his "theme" was handled consistently. Parts of it were complex, and then it was saddled with what amounted to stupid magic thinking that shows an inconsistency in tone. Maybe that inconsistency does not bother you, but to me it only revealed his own love for his own ideas without being able to examine them from other people's perspectives. If the movie had stayed on a level that was "adult" (the part about his wife's death) rather than trying to meld it to infantile and contrived resolutions, then I would have thought it a wonderful movie.

The trivial ending trivialized the movie.
 

Magic Poriferan

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If we go by Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, then the convention is that The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs were all good, and nothing has been good since.

All right, perhaps I was being a little excitable... nor have I had the courage to actually view Highlander 2.

Well, you've really missed something, sister! The best part for me is that when I saw it, I did not yet know about it. I assumed it couldn't possibly be good, but did not know of its reputation. I was sincerely at a loss after the movie ended. Good thing it happened to just be on TV.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Ahhhh, that sucks. I was really pulling for M. Night. I stayed with him longer than most. I enjoyed up through The Village, but Lady In The Water finally lost me. It's in there somewhere in him, but he can't seem to get it out anymore.

I liked Lady in the Water better than the Village. Something about the community of people in the apartment complex and the weird mythology was enjoyable enough. Though I totally understand people didn't like it. I just found the twist in the Village predictable, I guessed it from the opening shot. Given the twist, the rest of the movie was not interesting enough to justify the movie. It reminded me of a Goosebumps book, and one of the worse ones.

The Happening, however, is a piece of shit, and looked terrible from the trailers, which is usually a bad sign. Why are people dying in rejected set pieces from the final destination movies? Why would I care? When I found out it was killer plants and had an "environmental" message, that was enough to kill whatever interest. (My problem is not with environmentalism, but with "movies with messages", I should add.) I finally saw it last year at a bad movie screening at a (sadly, now defunct) indie theater, and, yeah, it's terrible.

Last Airbender also appears to suck. The TV show has enough fans that if it were any good, some of them should have liked the movie, but they all hate it. All the fans seem to think it's shitty, not just the purists who get upset when they change things.

I hope he has a comeback, but it doesn't really look like After Earth is it.
 

PeaceBaby

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I don't believe his "theme" was handled consistently. Parts of it were complex, and then it was saddled with what amounted to stupid magic thinking that shows an inconsistency in tone. Maybe that inconsistency does not bother you, but to me it only revealed his own love for his own ideas without being able to examine them from other people's perspectives. If the movie had stayed on a level that was "adult" (the part about his wife's death) rather than trying to meld it to infantile and contrived resolutions, then I would have thought it a wonderful movie.

The trivial ending trivialized the movie.

Interesting take on it. What do you see as infantile though? You've piqued my curiosity.

I feel differently myself. To me it was a movie about how sometimes things are so hugely coincidental that they cannot be simply brushed aside as coincidence. A man lost his faith to regain it through his personal interpretation of his wife's final words. How suddenly everything fit together for him, small became large, even though her words seemed so random and ludicrous. I loved the ending, it was about a choice, an attitude, a belief. If anything, everything about the plot was just a backdrop to that moment. That's what is so great about it, imo. What initially was ludicrous was not what was ludicrous after all.
 

Totenkindly

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The Happening, however, is a piece of shit, and looked terrible from the trailers, which is usually a bad sign. Why are people dying in rejected set pieces from the final destination movies? Why would I care? When I found out it was killer plants and had an "environmental" message, that was enough to kill whatever interest. (My problem is not with environmentalism, but with "movies with messages", I should add.) I finally saw it last year at a bad movie screening at a (sadly, now defunct) indie theater, and, yeah, it's terrible.

Yeah, I think someone else mentioned the Happening, elsewhere (not this forum), in a way that is both provocative and possibly just BS. Here, I found it and will quote:

I actually read a theory once that the acting in that movie was actually purposely flat and stale so as to suggest a breakdown of communication pervading modern society and that the ending was supposed to be unbelievable because it's supposed to suggest that nature won't forgive us and actually Shyamalan is actually an avant-garde mastermind... or rather the worst avant film director who ever lived.

So there you have it. That's probably the only profound comment I've ever discovered in a discussion of that movie.

Which is disappointing. The first 5-10 minutes was one of the creepiest movie openings I think I've ever seen.

If we go by Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, then the convention is that The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs were all good, and nothing has been good since.

RT and MetaC are generally helpful, although I know I've had movies that were highly rated on RT (such as MI4) that I really didn't much like, and a few movies I thought were better than their RT ratings. MetaC seems to score a bit lower than RT, but I think they use a different basis.
 
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I feel differently myself. To me it was a movie about how sometimes things are so hugely coincidental that they cannot be simply brushed aside as coincidence. A man lost his faith to regain it through his personal interpretation of his wife's final words. How suddenly everything fit together for him, small became large, even though her words seemed so random and ludicrous. I loved the ending, it was about a choice, an attitude, a belief. If anything, everything about the plot was just a backdrop to that moment. That's what is so great about it, imo. What initially was ludicrous was not what was ludicrous after all.

That's pretty much exactly what I thought of it. I think the theme is kind of encapsulated in this quote, which I just had to track down all over the internet:

When you go into a managed forest you see a mass of tree trunks. Then at a certain point you look again. You realize they’re all in perfect rows. Clarity. Clarity of vision. What you’ve been looking at from the wrong angle and not seen at all. You labor, you sweat to see what you couldn’t see from that other perspective.

That's The Edge talking about finding a creative groove, but I really think it's applicable to Signs in a philosophical sense. The realization that the trees are in perfect rows is what happens at the end of the movie, and I think that's why it's not a contrived or lazy ending.
 

PeaceBaby

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The realization that the trees are in perfect rows is what happens at the end of the movie, and I think that's why it's not a contrived or lazy ending.

Yes, you've captured the essence of what I want to say beautifully with that. Glad you took the time to dig that quote up.
 

The Ü™

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You're not wrong. The wolves in the Twilight movies aren't that great. It's a shame too, because the VFX house that did the wolves is usually top notch.

They also did that silly dragon thing in Mirror, Mirror, though to be fair, it was mostly a poor (or just bizarre) concept that was otherwise well-animated. I think some of Phil Tippett's best work post-Jurassic Park was in The Spiderwick Chronicles. IIRC, I think they worked on the creature voiced by Seth Rogen and the troll.

There was also a CG Nick Nolte.

spidervfx08_SpiderwickChron.jpg


The difference between that and the real Nick Nolte is seamless.
 

PeaceBaby

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Just read this:

Said Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers: “ 'After Earth' merits comparison with 2000's ‘Battlefield Earth,’ John Travolta's godawful film tribute to the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.”​

oh nooooooo :cry:

:laugh: now I have to watch 'Battlefied Earth' again to see which truly merits the title of worst sci-fi flick ever.
 

Totenkindly

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Just read this:

Said Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers: “ 'After Earth' merits comparison with 2000's ‘Battlefield Earth,’ John Travolta's godawful film tribute to the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.”​

oh nooooooo :cry:

Yeah, it's pretty much a bloodbath this weekend; the critics are relentless.

"Compared to the wackadoo ramblings of The Happening or the stark-raving silliness of Lady in the Water, this film is a more generic failure..." -- critic Ethan Alter, "Television Without Pity"

Looks like AE is sitting at 12% on RT right now. (11 pro, 73 against)
Now You See It hasn't fared well either... it's dropped to 45%. Pretty soon it'll hit the Total Recall remake...

:laugh: now I have to watch 'Battlefied Earth' again to see which truly merits the title of worst sci-fi flick ever.

I've never seen it. I'm scared, mama.
 

Ivy

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Well, you've really missed something, sister! The best part for me is that when I saw it, I did not yet know about it. I assumed it couldn't possibly be good, but did not know of its reputation. I was sincerely at a loss after the movie ended. Good thing it happened to just be on TV.

Now I'm curious. What's so bad about Highlander 2?
 

The Ü™

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I didn't think Lady in the Water was that bad, but The Happening, on the other hand...was worse than The Village. And The Last Airbender at least had nice scenery going for it, and the most convincing CG fire of its day...but other than that, it was crap. And the dialogue made George Lucas look like Shakespeare.

M. Night has never been a bad director, though sometimes his home video style of shooting doesn't work, but the main problem is that he doesn't get others to polish his scripts for him, even when his movies are more ambitious in scope.

But at least he doesn't try to hammer in the twist ending as much as he used to.
 

Totenkindly

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Now I'm curious. What's so bad about Highlander 2?

It was just a cheap robot Fortran knockoff of the first [MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION], who is never around when you need him. And it's not water-resistant either.
 
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