(On a side note before we begin our blog sojourn, as you can see, we have been trying out new themes and skins for our site. I think I’ve found one that looks not only formidable but also somewhat like a writing-esque setup. That said, sully forth!)
For those of you who read this blog with slight regularity, you may have realized by now that I am what some would deem a “nerd.” I reference nerdy shows, I make random nerdy pop culture references … so it should come to no surprise that I was discussing with a colleague why the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie was atrocious.
As an enthusiastic Last Airbender fan (all look out for the new mini-series this upcoming fall!), you can imagine my hatred for M. Night when it was made clear halfway through his film that he had failed the franchise, and furthermore, had failed the art of storytelling and cinema altogether.
“He did it for himself!” I exclaimed after watching an interview with him. “He didn’t do it for the fans, he didn’t do it for the story, he did it for himself!”
This is why I believe M. Night, once a shining prodigal star in the night sky of brilliance, is now a sham.
Now some would agree that one should not write for their audience. While working on a novel, the writer should be thinking about himself and only himself. Well, this is all well and good if you’re doing reflective writing or some sort of a diary, but if you plan on sharing your work, you must assume that it is going to be just that: shared. This means that there will be a collaboration in the storytelling.
Theatre artists are well aware of this. If you ever speak to a playwright, he will tell you that he most certainly thinks about his audience. Is the audience going to be able to follow the story? Is the audience going to enjoy the story? Is the audience going to get anything out of the story? If not, then why write it? Playwriting is one of those arts that cannot just be completely created by the writer himself. He needs actors, a stage, and an audience at the very least in order for the take to be realized fully.
Fiction writers and poets (and screenwriters, M. Night!) should see their work in the same light. While we’ve talked on this blog about writing for ourselves, we also need to keep in mind that these characters are going to live in the heads of our readers. The moviegoers are going to need to connect to the pictures you put on the screen and follow the story without going, “What?” Once I had a writer friend who said to me, “Well, I write for myself and that’s all that matters.”
No, it’s just one piece of the puzzle if you’re planning on letting anyone else partake in your tale.
This is where M. Night fails to deliver. His stories are convuluded, self-indulgant, self-congratulatory, and created mostly so he can sit down in a theater and enjoy it. Now this sounds harsh, but let’s unpack my statement. Please sit down and watch Lady in the Water and explain the plot to me. If you say, “It’s about an alien chick in an apartment complex’s pool and she helps Paul Giamatti heal from the death of his family,” then you may feel like you did a real bang-up job of picking apart the nonsense that is that script. And I would congratulate you too … if it hadn’t been for articles and interviews I’ve read about this particular movie. Turns out Lady in the Water is an anti-Iraq piece. That’s right. The movie where Bryce Dallas Howard has fish skin and Paul Giamatti is a janitor who must call upon a gigantic eagle and ward off wolves made of grass … that movie is about the Iraq War. And to top it off, it’s based on Bob Dylan music!
None of this make any sense? Well, it makes sense after M. Night walks you through his meaning behind every single complicated piece of symbolism. But without the director sitting there and spelling it out for you, no one gets his message. And he starts to do himself a disservice.
And while we’re on the subject of Lady in the Water, let’s look at my claim that he is “self-indulgent” and “self-congratulatory.” M. Night is actually an actor in Lady. He’s the prophet writer. That’s right. The prophet writer.
M. Night is writing a book that is a manifesto of his ideas and beliefs. That manifesto is something he is killed for. Yes, someone assassinates the prophet writer.
Furthermore, a little boy in Iowa then reads the manifesto and he is propelled to run for President of the United States.
And even furthermore, that little boy ends up bringing peace to earth and goodwill to all men.
That’s right, ladies and gents. M. Night wrote and casted himself as the prophet manifesto-writing author who is assassinated and inspires the President of the United States to end all wars. Ever.
This goes beyond the usual Mary Sue-ing that most authors dabble in. There’s no harm in elbowing yourself into your own story, hundreds of people have done it. Dan Brown does it in every single book he’s ever written! But M. Night does what he does best: takes it to a whole new level of crazy.
Speaking of taking it to a whole new level, let’s switch back to The Sixth Sense. Now for those of you M. Night fans who have been thinking in your head, “Yeah, but what about Sixth Sense? That was amazing!” You’re right, it was amazing. He was in his mid-twenties when he wrote and directed that movie, and it’s a piece of brilliant cinematic gold.
But go back and watch it. Listen to the way the characters talk. Soon you’ll realize something about the dialogue.
Everyone talks exactly the same.
Then go and watch The Village. You know that weird, broken ye olde English everyone was speaking in that movie?
Go back and watch The Sixth Sense.
Now scroll forward to The Last Airbender.
There it is again!
One writer once advised me, “Flip open to a random page of your manuscript and read a line of dialogue. You should know exactly who that character is who is saying that line without looking. If you don’t, then you haven’t written your characters strong enough.”
Each character has a different voice. But all of M. Night’s characters speak as if they are a teenage girl writing Arthurian fanfiction. “They know not what they do,” “He is the hope this world needs,” “You will not hide things from me!” Who talks like this?
And the best one is from The Village: “”Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others won’t know we want to do them.”
What?! I can’t even say that once, let alone five times fast!
This leads into M. Nights tragic flaw. His hubris, if you will. M. Night never … ever … grows. He was told at a young age that he was brilliant (because he was), and he never decided to up the ante. Here we are over ten years later, and his best movies are still the first two he made! The Last Airbender, if he had spent the past ten+ years honing his craft and listening to other people’s advice, would have turned into a real masterpiece.
But M. Night is a writer who directs American Express commercials showing his brilliant imagination off, when he hasn’t given us a big enough collection of movies to be allowed that honor. He isn’t Alfred Hitchcock, he isn’t even Rob Reiner. M. Night stopped growing, and he stopped writing for others. And that is why I believe he is the world’s worst brilliant writer.
