It’s hard to reconcile with his image now, but after he hit the big time with “The Sixth Sense,” there was a brief period when M Night Shyamalan seemed like one of the most exciting mainstream directors to emerge in some time; “Unbreakable” and “Signs” are both deeply flawed films, but also fascinating ones, and demonstrated someone with an incredibly sure directorial hand. Hell, this writer would even make a case for the reevaluation of “The Village” despite Adrien Brody’s attempt to go full retard.
Few would defend the work that’s come since, however, the woefully self-indulgent “Lady in the Water” and the simply laughable “The Happening” (the latter nearly has value as a so-bad-its-good midnight movie, but it’s so boring that it can’t even manage that), and Shyamalan’s now doing penance in CGI-heavy tentpole land, with this summer’s adaptation of a Nickelodeon cartoon “The Last Airbender”
The project, which follows bald ‘airbender’ Aang and his friends blablabla superpowers blablabla destiny blablabla someone-got-a-copy-of-Joseph-Campbell-for-Christmas blablabla evil Fire Nation blablabla trilogy, ran into controversy early on by casting overwhelmingly white actors in parts portrayed as Asian in the original series, although Shyamalan rectified this by casting “Slumdog Millionaire” star Dev Patel, as, wait for it, the bad guy, leading the Fire Nation, which is made up entirely of Arabic or Asian actors. Phew, crisis averted…
Despite this, the project is somehow gathering decent buzz online from recent trailers, apparently because people are so desperate for an exact cross-breed of “The Matrix” and “Lord of the Rings” that they don’t care about things like competent line-readings. Anyway, a Japanese trailer provides our last look before the film’s release at the end of June (in hastily-converted 3D, no less), and, while the tone kind of suits its anime-tinged background, we just can’t get past the fact that the main character looks like a kid from the Make-A-Wish foundation who asked for his very own franchise.
But, if you watch it til the very end, there’s a commercial for a “Last Airbender”-branded fan. So there’s that. [Empire]