Shyamalan and Schadenfreude

After Earth is Will Smith's softest opening of all time...and I'm pretty happy about that. Am I a bad person? Yes. I am reveling in a star's decent from the heavens. I am also enjoying the derision of the work of thousands of talented people. That's messed up. But you know what's even more messed up? The ridiculous amount of time Shyamalan's head has been stuck up his ass and how no one is taking his keys away from him. This is after crashing four straight projects into the dirt. But why? The combined stench of both nepotism and ineptitude kept audiences away from AE, but why wasn't The Last Airbender a similar flop? Directors better than Shyamalan could ever hope to be, have had their careers ended over a fraction of his missteps. How does he keep getting work?!

I used to be a fan. I grew up on farmland believing in aliens, so naturally, Signs got my goat and then some. On that topic, I'm sick of hearing people saying they were invaded by aliens with water allergies. They weren't hurt by water, they were hurt by what Bo could taste in the water, because it was (say it with me) "contaminated!" But really, they were ridiculous in  a whole host of other ways. I'm not saying Signs wasn't the beginning of the end (it was) I'm just sick of hearing about that point specifically. Bet you didn't plan on seeing me defend his writing here did ya? Well, I'm gonna defend him some more in a bit, but until then, lets look at the putrefied creative sinkhole that is the last ten years of his career:

GET IT?!

Lady in the Water was half a movie, The Happening had a chase scene against wind, and everything except the casting on The Last Airbender was all Shy's fault. I mean its like he tried to get the least convincing performances possible out every actor in that thing...even the special effects seemed to buckle under that film's stunning hackery (its a word now). But again, do not place the whitewashing of the actors at his door. That's Nickelodeon's doing (the following is all pure speculation of course, but I can't think of a more plausible explanation).

The Avatar animated series, which is honestly one of the best written of all time, had Asian protagonists of various regains and skin tones. Tibetan, Chinese, and some Inuits. It remains one of the network's biggest hits, but I'm convinced the American production house feared what live action Asian actors would do to the movie's bottom line. So they cast the heroes as white folk and the villain (paradoxically the lightest skinned character on the show) as an Indian. What did they do to cover their ass after committing the most recent case of whitewashing in Hollywood history? Hire a vaguely Asian director.

The actors of Precious doing the one thing their characters never did.

As infuriating as his career is...how many great non-white directors can you name? I wouldn't say Spike Lee, he also had one great film followed by a descent into frustrating mediocrity. Help me out here, I really can't think of anyone! Precious was pretty interesting and Monster's Ball was too, but I'm still struggling to call Lee Daniels a great director. As forward and liberal as we like to see Hollywood, it is still almost exclusively a white man's game. As much as I despise Shyamalan as an artist, he clearly knows how to play that game like a champion. So instead of focusing on how bad a director he is, lets be more upset about how there is no one else of merit with an equally diverse cultural background to take his place.

BAM! how's that for a twist article ending? The system was the problem the whole time... wait! Ang Lee.