M. Night Shyamalan Still Doesn’t Understand Why The Last Airbender Was Bad!

Director M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t had the best time the past decade.  While his movies have continued to make money it seems like the veil has been lifted and wasn’t the director many thought he would be.  There was a time Shyamalan was hailed as the next Spielberg but that label quickly faded after his movies continued to take a critical beating.  Many stories came down of how Shyamalan butted heads with producers and studio heads and his movies took a beating which makes many wonder why he keeps getting work.

Especially in the form of a Wayward Pines, a show on FOX where Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke (Matt Dillion) investigates a small Idaho town only turns up more mysteries.  While talking to IGN about adapting the show from the books the conversation quickly turned to Shyamalan’s other adaption.  The Last Airbender.

“You know, I’ve adapted a few things,“ Shyamalan said “I think the four things I’ve adapted are Stuart Little — which I just wrote — Avatar: The Last Airbender, After Earth, and now Wayward Pines. With both Stuart Little and Wayward Pines, I was just a part of the process. I think it was really wonderful and healthy; I approached it like — I want to do right by the material, and I want to help people create the tone and that kind of thing. The other two were more taking it and trying to make it my own, which is really a different thing entirely. With Wayward, I never felt like it was mine. I felt like I was in charge of it and stimulated by it and inspired by it. So I could say to the actors and the other writers and directors I hired, ‘Are you inspired by the material?’ So as each director came on, I would talk to them and say, ‘This and that inspired me. I want you to lean into this question. You can have whatever answer you want, but you need to lean into this part of the question.’ It was really healthy to kind of keep going back to the painting, even though you didn’t paint the painting, and keep having a discussion. It was provocative. There’s something really healthy about that.”

Even the shows creators, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante Dimartino, have stated that they just pretend that the movie doesn’t exist, which seems to be news to Shyamalan.

“It’s really weird because on the show the average age was, like, nine-years-old,” the director said. “My child was nine-years-old. So you could make it one of two ways. You could make it for that same audience, which is what I did — for nine and 10-year-olds — or you could do the Transformers version and have Megan Fox. I didn’t do that. That would have felt like, ‘Well, I’m going to make a movie about a kids show that my 10-year-old is watching and not make it for her. I make it for my guy friends.’ That felt like a betrayal of the innocence of the piece. In retrospect, is it too young to go out — it’s like what your intention is versus what they want it to be. Clearly, 10-year-olds — I go out and 10-year-olds are like, ‘That’s my favorite show! I love that movie!’ Parents come up to me and go, ‘They’ve watched The Last Airbender 74 times!’ Those kids, it’s for them. It was for them, to talk about mysticism and Eastern philosophies through a 10-year-old’s vernacular. So, you know, these are business propositions, which have very little interest to me, of like, ‘Hey, the business proposition is to get Megan Fox to be…’ You know, ‘You should age it ’til it’s that.’ That wasn’t the source material, you know what I mean? Whereas, also, like a Transformers, it’s really fascinating, because it’s valid for Transformers. You know why it’s valid? Because it’s the little boys that were playing with them are grown up now. They’re the ones who wanted to see Megan Fox. That’s absolutely appropriate, you know what I mean?”

Where do I even begin on why this entire outlook is wrong?  For some reason some very powerful people in Hollywood are under the misconception that making a show or movie for a child means you can make a bad movie because, you know, it’s for kids!  This idea is harmful because it makes a filmmaker lazy and produces a product that in tern shows children they don’t have to try hard and that anything will do because, once again, it’s for kids!

The cartoon, which you can watch, in it’s entirely, on Netflix is an amazing show that is made for both kids and adults.  It’s beautiful in it’s colors and design, the world is amazing to see the characters interact with, it’s deep and philosophical, and doesn’t completely hold back the way life works from kids.  There is is life and death, consequences to actions.  Over the course of the three years the show ran all the characters fully grew together, it’s a show I am grateful existed and finished it’s entire run and comparing an adaption of it to Transformers, is beyond insulting.

I have grown a strong disdain against Shyamalan for years now, but now I have a hatred for him as a film maker, and it’s not because he destroyed something that is greate, it’s because he doesn’t realize what he’s done.  I’m sure he’s a good guy, good to his family, and I don’t hate him as a person but as a film maker I can no longer stand him.