The Steady Decline Of M. Night Shyamalan
After a slow start to his writing and directing career, M. Night Shyamalan burst on to the Hollywood scene with his mind-bending blockbuster, The Sixth Sense. The cleverly written thriller shocked and wowed audiences around the world, resulting in veritable cult status and an enviable ranking of #128 on IMDb‘s list of the Top 250 movies of all time (as as voted by users of the popular site).
Since then Shyamalan has attempted time and again to recreate the mystique and intrigue of The Sixth Sense, and with the exception of maybe one or two features (in my opinion The Village was very entertaining), has never come close.
When I noticed a tweet by Riccardo Webb stating his rather candid assessment of Shyamalan’s most recent fantasy foray, The Last Airbender, I got to thinking again about Shyamalan’s career. I knew that the young director had not enjoyed the critical acclaim of his breakout film for at least a decade, but what I didn’t realise was just how mathematical the decline was. A quick glance at IMDb (again, I love this site), revealed a startling statistic:
Since The Sixth Sense, every movie that Shyamalan spouts forth declines steadily in rating, as decided by the users of IMDb (movies require thousands of votes before even qualifying for a rating, so it’s a pretty solid indication of a movie’s quality), with The Last Airbender managing only 4.4! Will Ferrell’s, um, seminal masterpiece Land of the Lost pips The Last Airbender with a rating of 5.3. I have seen Land of the Lost. I would rather lick the bum of a dead donkey than sit through that diabolical excuse of a movie again.
Needless to say, I will not be forking out cash to see The Last Airbender. Let’s pray this is as low as Shyamalan can possibly go, and that the undoubtedly talented director starts making some decent movies.
