So ‘The Visit’ is hitting theatres son and once again it appears that you would need to hire an undercover detective team to find out that it has been directed by none other than M Night Shyamalan, the director that everyone loves to hate. In fact only one director seems to be rivalling him for the spot of the worst high profile director working today, Michael (explosion) Bay. But who is the worst?
Well looking past the actual quality of their films and focussing more on the money they make, Michael Bay is miles ahead. Shyamalan has had one commercial failure after another, to such a point where the studios will try their best to make sure you don’t know that he’s directing it. I never heard his name mentioned once in the advertising campaign for ‘After Earth’ while Bay has been openly associated with every project he’s involved with, Bay didn’t direct ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ but his name was the one that dominated the trailers. Even with that modest opening day, word of mouth spread so quickly that the film was dropping in the movie gross charts by day, starting at one, and finishing at number nine by the end of the week. Bay on the other hand has maintained a steady income from his films, a huge one in fact as, annoyingly, ‘Transformers: Age of Multiple Explosions’ was the highest grossing film of 2014, and Bay did the same thing with ‘That asteroid movie that wasn’t Deep Impact’ back in’ 1998.
But it’s for that reason that many will say he is worse as he seems to make films purely for the money, not to get any kind of artistic expression from it. He has been making the same kind of film for the past two decades, lots of action, little plot, sorted. Even his best film ‘The Rock’ was certainly not as complex as Shyamalan’s best effort ‘The Sixth Sense’.
Though that may not be a fair comparison, as both of them were good, and are now bad, for very different reasons. To the average movie goer the worst one will probably be Shyamalan, as Bay’s movies are still sort of fun. ‘The Rock’ and the ‘Bad Boys’ films are certainly fun to watch and there’s some very small enjoyment to have in the ‘Transformers’ franchise and ‘Pain and Gain’ but only on the lowest common denominator, and if you try to watch them back to back you will be left catatonic by the multiple and never ending explosions, stereotypes and revolving shots.
Shyamalan on the other hand is notorious for making arthouse films that aren’t well reviewed, so is there any point in branding them arthouse anymore? Bay has always said that he makes films for audiences and not critics, but with Shyamalan’s movies, if you can’t get good reviews surely there’s no point. ‘The Village’ was a failed psychological thriller and ‘The Lady in the Water’ was one of the worst attempts at a dark fantasy ever, it felt like something Guilmero Del Toro had left on the cutting room floor and the cleaner had assembled them with whatever was left.
Also, Bay was held up as a good action director at one point, and criticised for never doing anything new. But ‘The Sixth Sense’ was held up as one of the greatest horror movies of the modern age and many were calling its director ‘The next Spielberg’. When you think about how far Shyamalan has fallen in comparison to his potential, it’s quite staggering.
‘The Sixth Sense’ of course is mainly associated with its final twist and this brings me on to another point. While Bay is known for a number of cheap traits such as racial and sexual stereotypes, explosions and his frantic editing pace. Shyamalan meanwhile is linked with one thing, a twist. Nearly every film has featured a twist and none of them have topped ‘The Sixth Sense’, instead they are viewed as cheap, exploitive and simply bad. The twist in ‘Signs’ ruined that movie for me (invading aliens turn out to be vulnerable to water, having invaded a planet that is 60% water), in ‘The Village’ this Victorian era community is actually in the modern world, somehow.
But when he tries to do a film without a plot twist they are equally as bad. Look at ‘Lady in the Water’. This film stars Shyamalan as a writer who is destined to save the world through beautiful writing, really? That’s like Scorsese casting himself as Henry Hill, or Francis Ford Coppola casting himself as Don Corleone. Then in ‘After Earth’ the plot (which he didn’t write to be fair) was nonsensical and riddles with obvious directing. ‘The Happening’ is the worst attempt as a horror film in recent memory, working better as the best unintentional comedy in recent years. Then you have the atrocity that is ‘The Last Airbender’, in which he is not only running his own material, but butchering material that had legions of followers and admirers that were hoping for a great movie.
However, most of these films are original, they are original ideas in an age where more and more people are criticising Hollywood for having no original ideas. What’s more is the fact that however bad they are I wouldn’t say Shyamalan is a lazy filmmaker. Bay on the other hand has been making the same ideas with the same unoriginal concepts and the same clichés over and over again. Shyamalan has dabbled in horror, neo-noir, science fiction, fantasy and though most have been terrible, most have also been unique. Not only are all of Bay’s films the same none of them are really original. We all know ‘Transformers’ was based on a toy and cartoon series, then you have ‘Pain and Gain’ which many people are surprised about to hear was an original story as the callousness with which he treats real murder and crime is almost laughable. Then there's 'Pearl Harbour', when Spielberg made a war film he made it loom realistic, Bay made a war film to make it look cool and sacrificed all authenticity, dramatic potential and quality in the process. There’s also no risk to his movies, I know that this is going to be another big dumb nonsensical action film before I see it, maybe, just maybe with M Night Shyamalan his next film is a return to form, because he’s trying new things and taking chances. True, many are horrifically awful, and I would rather watch ‘Pain and Gain’ twenty times than go through ‘The Last Airbender’ again, but I’m still going to see ‘The Visit’ because there’s a chance that it could surprise me. But let me close this debate with a cool and refreshing bottle of Bud-Light, see what I'm doing, product placement, another reason why Michael Bay is terrible.
So those are some ramblings but out of these two, who do you think is the worst director? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks and bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment