I mean, I was there for all of that. Sixth Sense hit huge. Came out of nowhere, and absolutely blew people away. And everyone turned Shyamalan into "the twist guy." Not just studios, audiences...
I mean, I was there for all of that. Sixth Sense hit huge. Came out of nowhere, and absolutely blew people away. And everyone turned Shyamalan into "the twist guy." Not just studios, audiences too.
People started trying to figure out his films just from the trailer. They'd huddle together on forums (which were this thing that existed pre-social media, kind of like Tildes now in many respects) and hunt for clues, propose scenarios. Groups would go to the films and actively dissect them in the first act, figuring this and that out instead of watching the story.
When your audience is demanding you twist them, but refuses to sit back and let the story play out so the twist can happen in the natural course of the story's flow, the whole thing fractures and falls apart. Which is what happened. Every Shyamalan story had to have a twist, and that twist was measured against the one nobody saw coming (Sixth Sense).
Then, when it became common that the group hivemind was figuring twists out even before the movie released, much less in the first half hour, the group hivemind consensus was "Shyamalan sucks, bored now."
My position is simple. Shyamalan is pretty good writer, and he's a pretty good director. The only problem he has is "the twist." You can't sell everything on "the twist." I mean, for fuck's sake, there's been TV shows and stuff where the braintrust behind them got pissed and began struggling to wholesale change entire unreleased episodes just because they saw hivemind posts about their show that had figured things out. That's what people do; they look for spoilers, and spread said spoilers.
One person is not going to out-clever the entire Internet. No matter how hard you work to bury something, how hard you try to obscure it, someone somewhere will figure it out. And it'll spread. Or, worse (and almost more common these days), people will be pissed they didn't figure it out, be pissed they didn't recognize the clues, and complain that "none of it makes sense."
So you're fucked either way as a storyteller. If you somehow manage to be subtle enough to have a twist play out, people accuse you of being lazy and of bad storytelling by not showing your work. But if you do make it obvious enough, they crow about how stupid you are for being lame enough that it's all really obvious.
If people would just watch the stories, the movie or the show, and let shit happen ... I feel most people would have more fun. When the goal is to "figure it out", that doesn't leave much room for watching or fun. It certainly doesn't allow for an organic unforced experience.
Kind of like what happened with Sixth Sense, when in that first two weeks (before the last gasp of monoculture mainstream media caught wind and blew the story up nationally) we all just bought a ticket and sat down to enjoy a movie. Only to gasp in shock as everything that'd been right in front of us the whole time suddenly snapped into clarity with the drop of a ring by someone we didn't realize had been a widow the entire time.
That was a fantastic movie experience.
I'm not sure where the story this trailer seems to tee up is going, but it's interesting. It's got Hartnett who I was just starting to like when he more or less disappeared. It's got Shyamalan, who I still like despite all the hell he's been put through. And the concept of a stadium concert as a sort of holding action for hundreds of cops to somehow find a serial killer in the crowd ... intriguing. I'd like to know more. And I will.
Possible that you're right. Just as possible that a big movie director has zero interest in the online opinions and snooping those people go through in order to spoil movies for themselves. It's...
Possible that you're right. Just as possible that a big movie director has zero interest in the online opinions and snooping those people go through in order to spoil movies for themselves.
It's likely he just likes twists as much as Tarantino likes feet.
I know you were just making a joke, but because someone else took you so seriously I'll give a serious response as well. I think Shyamalan's so called twist obsession is exaggeration. It only...
I know you were just making a joke, but because someone else took you so seriously I'll give a serious response as well.
I think Shyamalan's so called twist obsession is exaggeration. It only counts if you stretch the definition of twist so much. Like is "the aliens weakness is water" really a twist? Is Willis's cameo in Split really a twist? If it is then I guess Tony Stark appearing in The Incredible Hulk is also a twist. Even something like Knock at the Cabin isn't a twist considering the entire premise of the films is the characters' trying to decide if the prophecy is real.
I think 00s internet posters were silly with a lot of their film opinions, like when the consensus was that Tom Cruise was a bad actor.
I think just because some of the twists have been weak (Signs/water, Visit/imposters), doesn't mean he doesn't have a "twist obsession". The entirety of Split and the marketing leading up to it...
I think just because some of the twists have been weak (Signs/water, Visit/imposters), doesn't mean he doesn't have a "twist obsession". The entirety of Split and the marketing leading up to it was pointing at it just being a psychological horror and not a sequel to Unbreakable 16 years after the fact.
The other twists...
The Sixth Sense—Bruce Willis is a ghost
Unbreakable—Samuel L. Jackson is the villain
The Village—It’s set in the modern day
The Happening—The plants are killing people
Glass—They really are superhuman
Old—It’s all part of a clinical trial
...aren't as weak and well outnumber them to make me doubt that his fondness for twists is an exaggeration.
Assuming the trailer is actually telling us the truth, the twist is actually more subtle this time around: we don't want the protagonist to succeed. That said, I think there is quite a bit more...
Assuming the trailer is actually telling us the truth, the twist is actually more subtle this time around: we don't want the protagonist to succeed.
That said, I think there is quite a bit more going on. How could the authorities know that the person they are looking for would attend the concert? Why was the guy working the concession stand such a blabbermouth, and why would someone in his position know all about the plan anyway? It would make more sense for people like him to be treated like the concertgoers and told nothing.
Anyhow, at the very least it looks like a solid action movie.
I think that's unlikely or there's significantly more to it. I joked above that the twist is that M. Night is giving the twist away in the trailer, but he's never been known to be that easy to...
I think that's unlikely or there's significantly more to it. I joked above that the twist is that M. Night is giving the twist away in the trailer, but he's never been known to be that easy to figure out and parent-protects-evil-child is a trope already that'd be beneath his twist-y style.
M. Night's latest twist: Revealing the twist in the trailer.
I mean, I was there for all of that. Sixth Sense hit huge. Came out of nowhere, and absolutely blew people away. And everyone turned Shyamalan into "the twist guy." Not just studios, audiences too.
People started trying to figure out his films just from the trailer. They'd huddle together on forums (which were this thing that existed pre-social media, kind of like Tildes now in many respects) and hunt for clues, propose scenarios. Groups would go to the films and actively dissect them in the first act, figuring this and that out instead of watching the story.
When your audience is demanding you twist them, but refuses to sit back and let the story play out so the twist can happen in the natural course of the story's flow, the whole thing fractures and falls apart. Which is what happened. Every Shyamalan story had to have a twist, and that twist was measured against the one nobody saw coming (Sixth Sense).
Then, when it became common that the group hivemind was figuring twists out even before the movie released, much less in the first half hour, the group hivemind consensus was "Shyamalan sucks, bored now."
My position is simple. Shyamalan is pretty good writer, and he's a pretty good director. The only problem he has is "the twist." You can't sell everything on "the twist." I mean, for fuck's sake, there's been TV shows and stuff where the braintrust behind them got pissed and began struggling to wholesale change entire unreleased episodes just because they saw hivemind posts about their show that had figured things out. That's what people do; they look for spoilers, and spread said spoilers.
One person is not going to out-clever the entire Internet. No matter how hard you work to bury something, how hard you try to obscure it, someone somewhere will figure it out. And it'll spread. Or, worse (and almost more common these days), people will be pissed they didn't figure it out, be pissed they didn't recognize the clues, and complain that "none of it makes sense."
So you're fucked either way as a storyteller. If you somehow manage to be subtle enough to have a twist play out, people accuse you of being lazy and of bad storytelling by not showing your work. But if you do make it obvious enough, they crow about how stupid you are for being lame enough that it's all really obvious.
If people would just watch the stories, the movie or the show, and let shit happen ... I feel most people would have more fun. When the goal is to "figure it out", that doesn't leave much room for watching or fun. It certainly doesn't allow for an organic unforced experience.
Kind of like what happened with Sixth Sense, when in that first two weeks (before the last gasp of monoculture mainstream media caught wind and blew the story up nationally) we all just bought a ticket and sat down to enjoy a movie. Only to gasp in shock as everything that'd been right in front of us the whole time suddenly snapped into clarity with the drop of a ring by someone we didn't realize had been a widow the entire time.
That was a fantastic movie experience.
I'm not sure where the story this trailer seems to tee up is going, but it's interesting. It's got Hartnett who I was just starting to like when he more or less disappeared. It's got Shyamalan, who I still like despite all the hell he's been put through. And the concept of a stadium concert as a sort of holding action for hundreds of cops to somehow find a serial killer in the crowd ... intriguing. I'd like to know more. And I will.
When I watch the movie.
Possible that you're right. Just as possible that a big movie director has zero interest in the online opinions and snooping those people go through in order to spoil movies for themselves.
It's likely he just likes twists as much as Tarantino likes feet.
I know you were just making a joke, but because someone else took you so seriously I'll give a serious response as well.
I think Shyamalan's so called twist obsession is exaggeration. It only counts if you stretch the definition of twist so much. Like is "the aliens weakness is water" really a twist? Is Willis's cameo in Split really a twist? If it is then I guess Tony Stark appearing in The Incredible Hulk is also a twist. Even something like Knock at the Cabin isn't a twist considering the entire premise of the films is the characters' trying to decide if the prophecy is real.
I think 00s internet posters were silly with a lot of their film opinions, like when the consensus was that Tom Cruise was a bad actor.
I think just because some of the twists have been weak (Signs/water, Visit/imposters), doesn't mean he doesn't have a "twist obsession". The entirety of Split and the marketing leading up to it was pointing at it just being a psychological horror and not a sequel to Unbreakable 16 years after the fact.
The other twists...
The Sixth Sense—Bruce Willis is a ghost
Unbreakable—Samuel L. Jackson is the villain
The Village—It’s set in the modern day
The Happening—The plants are killing people
Glass—They really are superhuman
Old—It’s all part of a clinical trial
...aren't as weak and well outnumber them to make me doubt that his fondness for twists is an exaggeration.
Assuming the trailer is actually telling us the truth, the twist is actually more subtle this time around: we don't want the protagonist to succeed.
That said, I think there is quite a bit more going on. How could the authorities know that the person they are looking for would attend the concert? Why was the guy working the concession stand such a blabbermouth, and why would someone in his position know all about the plan anyway? It would make more sense for people like him to be treated like the concertgoers and told nothing.
Anyhow, at the very least it looks like a solid action movie.
Hopefully the trailer isn't giving away too much and there's still a good twist or two
Calling it here: The daughter's the chopper, and he's just a 100% supportive father in everything she wants to do. Everything.
I think that's unlikely or there's significantly more to it. I joked above that the twist is that M. Night is giving the twist away in the trailer, but he's never been known to be that easy to figure out and parent-protects-evil-child is a trope already that'd be beneath his twist-y style.
It’s also going to be Dexter style “he had it coming” killings at the minimum
This looks intriguing but it’s such a visual downgrade from Knock at the Cabin it has me feeling it’s gonna be a weaker Shyamalan.