The Big Picture - The M. Night Shyamalan Rankings and ‘Old’

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

In July, the sometimes-acclaimed, sometimes-controversial, sometimes-downright-vilified writer-director M. Night Shyamalan released his 14th feature film, 'Old.' Joining Sean to talk about all things Shyamalan—from his best films to his worst and everything in between—is the cohost of 'Higher Learning' and one-half of the Midnight Boys on the Ringer Podcast Network, Van Lathan. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Van Lathan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Court Fits is The Ringer's new weekly NBA video series hosted by Big Waz, a.k.a. Wazney Lambre. Each week, we take you around the world of NBA fashion and share can't-miss style choices from your favorite players and keep you up to date on the latest news and releases in sneaker culture. Waz also talks to experts like Damian Lillard's personal stylist to give you behind-the-scenes looks at how the NBA's biggest stars choose their outfits. New episodes drop every Friday, so make sure you're subscribed to The Ringer's YouTube channel at youtube.com slash The Ringer so you never miss an episode. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show about M. Night Shyamalan. Last month, the sometimes acclaimed, sometimes controversial, sometimes downright vilified writer-director released his 14th film. It's called Old, so it's time to talk all things Shyamalan, and joining me to do so is the co-host of Higher Learning and one half of the Midnight Boys on the Ringer Podcast Network, the great Van Lathan. What's up, Van? What's up, Sean? How are you doing today, man? I'm very good, Van. A couple of weeks ago on the Midnight Boys, I heard you mention The Last Airbender

and your desire to do an M. Night Shyamalan pod. And I was like, damn, I too have been waiting to do the definitive M. Night Shyamalan pod. So here we are. So what made you feel that way? Why did you want to talk about Knight in a deeper, bigger way? He's one of the most fascinating careers that I think I've ever seen. It's not even so much,

everybody knows the narrative around his career, right? Starts off with this really culture-defining movie in terms of the sixth sense. It was Hitchcockian, it was Spielbergian, it was all of the aliens you know what i mean and had everybody talking from my grandmother down to the homies that i played madden with and has all this hoisted upon him and really is one of the first directors that i can remember who sort of became a victim of his own fame and his own reputation early on because after that you see

him slowly like wade away from the shore of uh creative genius out there to a weird sort of treading water and a dance that he kind of kind of does now. But he also comes back and delivers movies that I absolutely love. He delivers films that make you think. He delivers films that get better as the years go on. Some of the movies that you went

and was like, I wasn't feeling that now, you watch them at this point and you're like yo he's kind of doing his thing so the question for me about m night always is is he right because he has such a definitive view of what he thinks a great story is and what he thinks a great character is and oftentimes at the time that he releases those movies or those stories it doesn't quite jive with the movie going audience or hollywood but sometimes in hindsight and after a little thought he's right sometimes it happens that the movie that he made actually was the movie that needed to be. Think

about how far ahead of his time Unbreakable is. And think about the reaction to that movie at the time that it came out. So just a fascinating filmmaker with some really, really great, incredible films and really some of the worst movies I've also ever seen. It's kind of an amazing reputation and existence that he has as a pop cultural figure. And it's been an amazing lifespan too, because he, as you said, was as high as you could possibly be as a young director. And then I would say he probably sunk to about as low as you possibly can as a public filmmaker. And now he's back in kind of this interesting middle period. So we'll talk a lot about all of his movies and kind of the shape of his career.

But he's an interesting dude. You know, he was born in India and his parents immigrated to the United States when he was six weeks old. He's raised in Pennsylvania. Most of his films are set in Pennsylvania, largely Philadelphia, where he spent a lot of his time. He's an NYU film student. He does have kind of the outline of his career is similar to a lot of the people that we

celebrate on this show all the time. You know, he's not unlike, say, a Martin Scorsese. Went to NYU, made a student film, raised money, used his parents, used personal connections, made a couple of smaller films in the early stages of his career, but had huge ambition to tell big mainstream stories, but through his very specific lens. And in addition to being a guy who has a reputation as, I would say, a very creative, but sometimes stifled by his own creativity kind of filmmaker, and a guy who is, you know, arguably been a little too reliant on the concept of the twist, and we'll talk a lot about twists in this pod. He's also someone who has a very clear style. When you look at his

movies, and I always think about this when we talk about director-centric episodes if you put a put a blindfold over the name of the filmmaker at the beginning of the movie i think you could tell 70 to 80 percent of the time this is an m.dye chamelot movie you know like this is what so for you what do you see when you see an m.dye movie what are the what are the what are his ticks what are his signatures what are his stylistic choices um so he is and this some of these things are going to be super deep and some of these things are just going to be things that i recognize right he loves faces uh he is really into faces he knows he's fucking with his audience right so he oftentimes uses i watched rewatch the lady in the water um which is just brutal terrible uh like i rewatched the lady in the water um for this podcast uh because i was like i was incensed in the movie theater. Incensed. And I hadn't seen the movie since.

But when I go back to it, when I went back to the movie, you can tell that he lingers on an actor's face in order to pull their essence out of them and then deliver that to the audience. And that happens over and over and over again. He knows that what he's writing and situations that he's putting his characters in,

that he's created an internal dialogue and an internal struggle inside of the moviegoer and he lets that play out on his actors that's number one number two his movies have a certain dramatic weight to them you know uh a lot of times in an m. night Shyamalan movie it seems as if uh you know that you getting dialogue, but sometimes it feels almost like narration and what the people are saying because they're really giving you story and sitting in the middle of the drama so that you understand the world that's being created. And that happens over and over and over again in his films. And sometimes that's grating. Because a lot of these movies are very high concept films. These are films that you have to really, he throws you into a world. And that world, like, you can tell.

And then there's, of course, there's an aesthetic. His camera is quirky. He's almost got a Hitchcock style like that. I don't know, he was compared a lot to Hitchcock because he puts himself in his's almost got a hitchcock style like that i know he was compared a lot to hitchcock because he puts himself in his own movies and twist endings and things like that but his camera's a little quirky not wes anderson quirky i'd say more like uh surreal it doesn't really feel like these movies are happening on a planet earth that we've inhabited we feel like aliens watching a movie about earth you know what i mean like there's a there's a surreal nature to them but you can

definitely put your finger on it uh when you see it just like you know you see martin scorsese you hear leila for the 115th time and and you know the smoke is hanging in the shot and you're like we're watching Marty. I like what you said about the faces in particular. One thing that jumped out to me as I started revisiting all of his movies is he gets incredible performances in almost every movie, even the movies that are actively bad. And there are a few that are actively bad. You can't really point to the actors as the reason why the movie doesn't work. It's largely because of that thing that you're describing, which is he forces people to basically talk through the complicated setups of his movies.

And even in the performances that people have shit on, I'll use Mark Wahlberg in the happening. I was, I was about to come get you, Sean. I really want, I don't, I don't know if you revisited the happening.

I did. I was about to come get you, Sean. I was about to say, that is one of the worst on-screen performances that I've ever seen with Mark Wahlberg in a happening. It's fucking terrible, man. It is. It is. It is. But in looking back at the movie and then in watching some of the featurettes on the DVD and thinking about what they were going for, strangely, they got exactly what they wanted.

He got exactly what he wanted out of Mark Wahlberg. Now, whether or not that was a good story choice is something that we can debate, but he does have very clear vision. And most of the time, he seems to be able to execute on that vision. It's a tricky thing, though, because he just is doing a high wire act almost every single time. The Last Airbender is really the only non-original story he's done. I've spent the last five years complaining about the lack of original storytelling in Hollywood in the last 20 years. He's basically stuck to his guns. And even when he does do something like explore and build a superhero world, it's his own world.

It's not Marvel. It's not DC. He's not adapting. And so dc he's not he's not adapting and so you really want to applaud that but then also he opens himself up to so much criticism because the outlandish premises if they don't click he it seems clownish you know it seems like it's so easy to to mock what what what was your sort of like introduction to him? Were you in the theater for The Sixth Sense, introduced to this exciting young filmmaker? So here's the thing.

I know, you know, Van loves to spin a yarn. Spin? So I'll spin a yarn for you. So The Sixth Sense comes out. I'm going to Louisiana Tech University, right? Louisiana Tech is in Ruston. The biggest movie theater louisiana tech is a it's a it's a big-ish school by 11 000 kids but louisiana tech you guys have heard of louisiana tech

uh noted great guy carl malone he's never done anything wrong um he went to louisiana tech along with like uh terry bradshaw because so y'all know louisiana tech louisiana tech so it is uh in Ruston, Louisiana. It's the nearest movie theater, like big movie theater that you can go to and see new movies is about 25 miles away, 30 miles away in Ruston. Not horrible in Monroe. Not horrible, but you had to go. It was a thing to go to the movies.

You had to drive all the way to Monroe to go to the movies. It was like a small little rinky-dink theater in Ruston where I saw Varsity Blues. But, you know, see the movies like six, eight months after they come out. Anyway, so The Sixth Sense is coming out. And because the movie's buzzing, but at that point,

I was only going out to Ruston to see like Phantom Menace. Like movies I could not miss because I was staying on campus a lot. And I didn't have a car. Like I had to, I actually paid for one of my friends to get all their tires fixed on their car so that we could go to see Phantom Menace. Wow. He said that.

What a letdown. He said, bruh, hold another podcast. Anyway. So the Sixth Sense is out and everybody's saying you got to see it. The only place it's playing in Monroe. There was a girl that worked with me that she worked with me at the Kennel, which was the place where you go and play pool and bowl and all of that. And she was telling me about the Sixth Sense. And I kept telling her, I was like, just tell me about the movie.

I'm not going to be able to go see it. She's like, I can't tell you about it. She was like, why? I was like, I can't tell you the big deal about the six cents it'll like ruin the whole movie for you and i'm like just tell me everybody keeps talking about it what is it is it scary she goes like not really it's kind of scary but not really but there's like a huge huge huge deal about it and for like three days i kept badgering her and she turned around and she looked at me one day and she went bruce willis is dead

i was like what she was like he's dead the whole time i hope that you're happy you i just ruined the whole movie for you i was like how could he be dead and she's like the the whole movie, he's dead. I'm like, I'm watching him on screen with the kid. He can't be. She was like, see? And so with that in mind, that drove me to go see the movie. And you would think that knowing that before you saw that film would have ruined the movie for you. It didn't. Because the execution of that character and being plopped in the middle of that world,

I remember thinking, yo, this guy's a fucking genius. I haven't, nobody's moved me like this since Tarantino. Like, this is completely fresh completely new like I had and it got ripped off a bit like a million times after but I'm thinking to myself not just in what the twist of the movie

but the performance of Haley Joel Bruce Willis and all of his weird vulnerability it's just, I thought it was in many ways a perfect film. Cause it was like a horror fantasy that like, I really got swept away in and I went in knowing what it was about.

And after that, I do the same thing I do with the new filmmaker that I love. I go, I'm gonna stick with this guy for a little while. And at first it was the right decision oh yeah you know what I mean he he kept he kept delivering in the in the same way so but yeah so uh that was the whole thing but there was a narrative even around me discovering that there was a story like I was stubbornly chasing the sixth sense uh because i didn't want to take the 30 mile drive to to to rustin but

it was actually it was actually that that got me to go see it but still when i saw it i didn't miss anything i did it was just the movie was too well done so it's funny that you tell that story i have told this story on the podcast before but i also had the sixth sense spoiled for me before i had a chance to see it oh did you i also... I was a senior in high school when it was released. So I was busy getting drunk in parking lots or whatever and not necessarily going to movies on opening weekend. But I had it spoiled by a correspondent on The Daily Show. What?

The Daily Show at that time had a movie critic. And I want to say it was either at the earliest stages of Jon Stewart or right at the end of Craig Kilburn. I think it was Jon Stewart in 99. And the movie critic came on and he spoiled the Bruce Willis is dead thing. I want to say it was like six to eight weeks after the movie had come out. So, you know, it had been a cultural phenomenon. It totally, you know, this is a filmmaker who ultimately was like on the cover of Time magazine.

The Sixth Sense, you couldn't have a bigger movie. This is a hugely lauded, Oscar-nominated, box office smash. Still, you know, I'm 17. It's like six weeks go by. I couldn't make it to the movie. I wanted to. That was probably the biggest lull in my movie going in my entire life from 17 to 19. Because, you know, you're busy at that time.

Had the movie spoiled for me. Similarly saw it. It did ruin something essential to telling the story you could just tell he he's just an incredibly gifted filmmaker who knew how to build a world right out of the shoot i similarly you know as bill simmons would say got season tickets tonight got super excited and frankly i totally agree with you unbreakable and even signs i was like damn we we got one maybe we do have our hitch even signs i thought signs was fantastic i love signs no i loved it i loved it um the village is where things start to wobble a little bit um you know you mentioned that

unbreakable kind of saw the future let's talk about that movie quickly sure um did you respond to that right away did you get it were? Were you in that world? Yes. I was frustrated with people. Like, the movie had me kicking people out of my house. You know what? Get the fuck out. Because they didn't like it.

Yeah, because they were like, this shit is boring. I was like, you know what? Go home and watch the fucking Looney Tunes. Get out. You don't know what you're talking about. I hate you.

But from the beginning, look, superhero stories are about the push-pull between good and evil. It's about a character understanding who they are and why they have to do something great. And somebody else going, you want to do something great and I want to stop you because I want to do something terrible. There's not really a movie that establishes that better than unbreakable unbreakable gives you clear motivations everything that the mcu is not and i love the mcu you know this ringer verse pew pew everything that the mcu is not unbreakable is a hero that is vulnerable that you don't know it that doesn't have a nine-picture deal

to where he's going to stick around and be there every single time and on a lunchbox, just a guy figuring out his power, a villain who you understand clearly. The movie starts with the story of Mr. Glass, who you understand clearly his motivations, why he is who he is,

and why he's never going to change and then their interplay where they're where where you're trying to convince somebody that he's a part of a world that he doesn't even realize that he's a part of you watch the hero discover his powers you watch what heroism does to families this the best scene in the movie is the scene where his son picks up the gun his son picks up the gun his son is his up the gun. His son is, his son believes in his father more than his father believes in himself more than,

it's just, you have the, you have a real human drama playing out between, you know, Bruce and his wife. It's just,

the movie doesn't miss at all. I feel like it's, it's one of the finest stories of humanity and heroism that we have. I love the film. I watch it all the time. And it's got the most cringeworthy scene in any movie ever. What's that?

The train scene where he takes his ring off and tries to get at the girl. Oh, that's right. And she's the agent for the, so tough, I think I'm gonna go find another seat. And then the camera comes back to him and his look, the look on his face is deflated. I haven't seen Bruce that way since Marcellus Wallace.

Marcellus Wallace took him down a couple of notches, but to me, it just doesn't miss. Tonally, it's perfect. It looks perfect. Samuel L. Jackson gives a haunting yet vulnerable performance, and at the end of the day, it's what we all want to see from a hero.

We see a guy find his strength in the end. One thing that's interesting about his films is they're often described as thrillers. You know, the twists are usually

what define them in many ways to the public. But the first few movies in particular, and even old to some extent, are really mysteries. Like, I'm looking at the Wikipedia page

for Unbreakable and it's described as a neo-noir. And it is a neo-noir. Oh, for sure, yeah. Much, much more. And I feel like we now live in the era, you're familiar with the director bullshit

of the MCU filmmakers where every time they make a movie, they have to be like, well, this is, you know, like a 70s paranoia thriller, like the Parallax View. And it may be inspired by those movies, but those movies are never like that.

They are MCU movies. They look, sound, and feel like MCU movies. Knight's movies actually use genre convention to do something that is a little bit more traditional. He actually sticks to the mystery storylines, the neo-noir framing devices to tell his stories, which is fascinating because I don't think very many other filmmakers could get away with that,

especially in 2021. We're in a moment now where you need significantly more sort of special effects mythology world building big stagey set pieces to get away with that unbreakable is a very small and very intimate movie intimate yep and there's not a lot of CGI. The one big kind of fight sequence is shot really awkwardly. You know, that kind of showdown with the killer at the end of the movie where the camera is sort of like out of frame at times. And you see Bruce Willis kind of moving back and forth. And he doesn't, he's not an action filmmaker, which is really interesting when you look at the arc of his career, because he starts to make more and more action, perhaps to his

detriment. Let's talk about signs, because I feel like signs is where his ethos gets concretized. This is when Knight, his faith, his idea, his belief in God, his sense of family, these big ideas that kind of course through all of his movies that certainly you would pick up on those ideas in The Sixth Sense and in Unbreakable. But by the time you get to signs, you're like, this is a man who fears and believes in God. This is a man who feels that there is nothing more important than the family unit. This is a person who, even in the face of alien invasion, needs to keep it together and secure the pains of trauma and work through it. I rewatched Signs this week. I was kind of amazed. Mel Gibson is a difficult person to talk about in 2021.

I thought he was unbelievable in this movie. Obviously, Joaquin Phoenix before he goes on to become the Oscar-winning Joaquin Phoenix. It's a movie that probably is best remembered for the great alien freakout reveal when they show the footage of the South American kids and they see the alien. But up until about the last 15 minutes,

I was like, this is one of the great thrillers of the 20th century. And then, you know, it does what a lot of Knights movies do, which is it starts to become a little, it's forced to explain itself. And sometimes the explaining doesn't always work. What are your feelings about signs now? So first of all, i want to have a moment where i i recognize that you said concretized that's a good word

thank you man okay like that's a word that's a fucking that's a hundred dollar word right here i'm sorry i'm not i'm not trying to stunt i no, no, no. It's in my back pocket. It's stunting. It's not stunting when you got it. Live with it. It's concretized. I'm like, no, Sean is not fucking around. So, no. So, signs.

Signs and Inception are two movies where I'm sitting in those movies going, okay, this is the guy. By the time Inception had come out and I was in Inception, I was like, Nolan's never going to make a bad movie. He's the best ever. No one can fuck with him. Every single movie is better than the next.

And there's nothing he can do wrong. When I was in Signs, Signs just got me from a bunch of different places. Number one, it's not hard for me to talk about Mel Gibson because so many of these guys are falling off now that fuck it. They were good at what they did when they did it, and then they became horrible people. It's just happening all over the place. So screw it.

We are where we are. Mel Gibson was one of my favorite people to watch on screen. He's got a charisma and a presence and he knows how to manipulate his eyes. He's a great actor. He was a great actor and a great movie star and a great director, but a fucking asshole.

That's the way that it goes. Just life. But Signs was one of the first movies that I watched to where I'm watching this... How can I put this? i don't even give a fuck about the aliens i want to see this family be okay and the aliens the the alien invasion was the method in which a family worked through some of the things that they were going through

to where the characters find themselves that is so hard to do it's it's very difficult to make an alien movie that's not about the aliens is there very difficult to set stakes that are the end of the world alien invasion we don't know what's going on and really have the interpersonal play the history and the trauma of the characters be on front street and it takes a lot from your actors, man. It takes a lot from your actors. And I just watched the movie and I felt it's weird when you go to a movie and you feel incredible joy, incredible wonder, fright, and despair all at the same time in one film you know and then redemption at the end release and signs did all of that signs is not his best movie but signs is the movie that you go okay

yeah yeah yeah all right cool right he's not gonna miss in each one of those first three movies too there is a sequence you know in the first film obviously it's the big revelation about about bruce willis and what happened to him but then in unbreakable i think it's that moment between bruce willis and his son at the dinner table when bruce willis confirms to him that his son was right and then in signs it's that flashback to when we see mel gib Gibson's wife is pinned against the tree before she dies. And they have that conversation together and they talk about their kids and they talk about their life. Where it's like incredible dramatic filmmaking.

Yeah. Really affecting powerful film directing. And even though, you know, it's a movie about an alien invasion, he grounds the movie. It never gets too big. It's really, really impressive to go back and look back at those movies and admire what he was really going after. And then we get into a complicated second phase. Now, I'm trying to open my heart to the second phase of M. Night Shyamalan's career. After the big trio and the Time Magazine cover

and all of the plaudits and the box office success. You could make the case that things start to fall off a little bit with signs. The Village, I think, is arguably his best made movie and also perhaps his kind of like least well-conceived twist because of how predictable I thought that the film was. But this is a movie that's... I knew it literally. It was... 10 minutes in a movie that's... I knew it, literally.

It was... 10 minutes in, right? Yeah, I'm like, yeah. Like, it was easy. And they fucking... That movie was... That movie... That's the movie where I thought,

that's the Houston We Have a Problem film. That movie's not that bad. It's not. It's pretty good. Yeah, that movie's not that bad, but that's the Houston We Have a Problem film right there. And there's... For myriad reasons. But ahead i'm sorry i was just gonna say i mean it's a movie that's shot by roger deakins it's got an incredible collection of people working on it because by this time he really is one of the signature directors in hollywood so he can command

a level of craftsperson to work on his flicks that's it's got a huge cast of unbelievable actors i think that looking at it again the william hurt performance is amazing it's got a huge cast of unbelievable actors um i think that looking at it again the william hurt performance is amazing it's one of the best william hurt performances the last 25 years and yet because you probably figure out the twist pretty early especially if you're a night fan it that actually did ruin the movie to me that i felt like oh is it really going in this direction and then it actually does go in that direction and then there's something ultimately very unsatisfying about the movie so like what are the problems you, oh, is it really going in this direction? And then it actually does go in that direction. And then there's something ultimately very unsatisfying about the movie. So like, what are the problems? You know, what, what, what is it specifically you think that he

became too enthralled with as a director? Um, I think, uh, uh, and look, I don't know M night and he seems to be a really mysterious, cool dude, which I like. I like my director's a little mysterious. I'm like a James Toback guy. Be a little bit out. Be a little bit out there. Maybe not James Toback, though. It's a sketchy dude. Is he sketchy?

Oh, my God. Is there another one now? I haven't heard about this. Just research, yeah. Just research it, man. I like a lot of James Toback's movies a lot, but... All right, well, let me cross James Toback off the list. You know what?

I don't like anybody. Because... Fuck it. I don't... Whatever you're talking about, I'm serious. I'm sorry. A lot of people listening to this, I'm going to say Van is fucking stupid.

He didn't know what James Toback did. I really haven't heard anything about James Toback. But, you know, anyway. It's a full-time job trying to evaluate what level of quality person your favorite artists are and there's no way who knows who's right there are some very tough stories about james okay all right so fuck take jones james tobeck out of there forget about it anyway uh but no i like my director's a little mysterious and he played into that part this movie though and I say all that to say that this movie to me dripped of I'm the next Spielberg uh it this movie was because they came out they had invented some creature the creature was going to be the people were

trapped in the village and the creature was going to be there so this was going to be the big this was going to be the big solidifying movie right this was going to be there. So this was going to be the big solidifying movie, right? This was going to be the one that goes, oh, I own all of you guys. This was going to be my Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, where we're all there, not just the big money. We're going to win seven, eight Oscars. We got a top flight cast. And when you go into it, those expectations are really what made us look at the movie as a slight failure. The fact that such a big deal was made about something that was not just classic M. Night Faire,

but just a little bit under the level of some of the films we had just seen. And we were like, uh-huh, he didn't quite nail his big golden moment. And then the movie, even though it's not that bad, the actual film was ruined by the twist.

If they would have actually been in a mystical world where there was some kind of demon that actually would have been better I agree you know what I mean like that actually would have been that would have made that movie significantly more interesting

than what it was because what happened in the end actually rendered a lot of what we watched completely impotent it rendered a lot of what we watched completely impotent it rendered a lot of what we had it was completely unnecessary and i thought yo man i didn't come in here to watch these crazy white people like out in the middle so that's not what i wanted to see some special shit and and so i i think that that was actually the point the film itself is not as horrible as people remember i think that's the point though that the celebrity and

the reputation of m night started to become uh in a way at cross purposes with the filmmaker that we believed him to be uh and that we still kind of know that he is but that was the first time for me the interesting thing is you know with all of his twists some of them are heavily telegraphed and others are shocking when you see them obviously the sixth sense despite it being spoiled for us i think for most people it was mind-blowing and the village it really does aggressively telegraph where the story is going i mean there are clues in the first 10 minutes of the movie about the reveal. And frankly, I just don't think you need any of those. You don't need to linger on the actress faces to indicate that something isn't right here. You don't need to

have that droplet of dialogue that indicates that there is a wider world out there. So it does feel a little bit like he's getting high on his own supply. You mentioned Lady in the Water, which he makes in an effort to create kind of a fairy tale. You know, it's based on a story that he told his children. He does actually do the thing that you're describing. He builds this true magical world, this mythological creature and figure. And there is a monster that is like actualizes the monster we think exists in the village. He does all of those things. And also in that case, he screws it up.

I mean, that movie I found out, all the movies I watched, including The Last Airbender, I had the hardest time getting through the second time around because I knew how dissatisfied I was with it the first time. It didn't really offer me anything else. It also feels the most archetypal, broad strokes, not really writing people,

writing these outlines of humans and not human beings. the most archetypal broad strokes not really writing people writing you know these these these outlines of humans and not human beings and even though he's got great actors like paul giamatti bryce dallas howard there's tons of great actors kind of populating the apartment complex jeffrey wright um it still feels caricature-ish and i think a lot of his worst movies have these really tough characterizations where you're like this is not a not a real guy this is a this is a guy that lives only in knight's head um anything else jump out to you when you revisited the movie uh just on my 2021 woke warrior shit the um the asian mother and daughter character were a little hard to watch you know what i mean just but look i don't remember having a problem with it then so but i was like laying on that a

little heavy there at night um but just that the movie is completely nonsensical and almost boring in its audacity uh and and like i remember the hubbub about it when it first came out because you know the internet was a thing but it wasn't as much of a thing as it is now guys these are the this is different okay i remember reading the actual magazine actual magazine about the problems that the movie had had at touchstone uh and they basically told him yo first they told him no we don't want to do this. We don't get it. Then he piled it.

Then they said, go ahead, we'll finance it. And then he went, fuck it, I'm leaving anyway. That's right. Like he, like he... He went to Warner Brothers, right? Went to Warner Brothers.

He was like, they told him, no, we don't get this. We don't understand this movie. And he was so offended by that that even when they came back and said, hey, we'll still finance the movie.

Don't leave. He went, I'm leaving anyway. You guys don't understand filmmakers anymore. And when the movie flopped, it was execs all over town that were spiking the football because there's not a story there. There's just a bunch of weirdness and I don't understand how he thought

that that movie was going to do anything for his career or any of the actors in it. This is the first time that he just makes a straight up stinker. Like a bad movie, a boring movie, a pretentious movie, a weird movie, and one that you wish that you actually didn't waste the time seeing. That's the first time that it happens. Even some of the films before that might have had their flaws, you can justify having seen the movie and devoted the time to it, right? The Village has a fantastic cast and it's really good and long pockets. You know, they telegraphed the ending, so what? Hey, I came out of it. I'm cool with it.

This one, I remember leaving going, Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's like, it's a true like zero star movie in my mind. Like I really don't, I really don't like watching it. There's an amazing document though of the making of this movie. And there are very few documents like this in the history of Hollywood.

But Michael Bamberger, who was a journalist and was largely a reporter at sports illustrated at the time, struck up a relationship with M. Night and convinced him to basically follow along the entire journey of the making of Lady in the Water. And he wrote a book. That book's called The Man Who Heard Voices or How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale. And let me tell you, as someone who's read this book, it is a wild book because there is so much belief from Bamberger in Shyamalan in the book. And he is so

overstating his genius throughout the movie. And then you do ultimately reach this moment where Bamberger sees Lady in the Water, who despite being on the set the whole time, he sees the finished product and he realizes, oh, wow, this movie is not good. This actually does not work. And he doesn't kill Shy kill shamalan for that specifically but we very rarely get a chance to see directors and their hubris on display this specifically as we do in the bamburger book i would recommend it to anybody who's interested in in hollywood history because i don't know if we'll ever see another book like this again because of this book um and you know as you said he leaves the cozy confines of Buena Vista and Disney,

where he had made movies for the first seven or eight years of his career. And then he kind of starts wandering. He bounces from studio to studio. I would say his films basically get worse from there. From Warner Brothers, he goes to 20th Century Fox to make the happening now the happening van I will say having just re-watched it quite a a prescient COVID-19 movie if I'm being totally honest if you look at the reactions the sort of like the disaster and the the not just the human toll but the human reaction to a an infectious disease like there is in this movie is kind of amazing now it is weighed down by this these like largely laughable mark walberg and zoe deschanel performances where you're like i i have no idea what the what you're going for here like is this why did you put a sitcom inside of a disaster movie it's like a crazy it's so weird but like i was nuts i mean

my wife and i were talking about it because we saw this movie together and i forced her to sit and watch it with me again she was like seriously why are you doing this like we saw this movie theater we were like what the fuck man and re-watching it after i finished it i watched the dvd featurette it's it's m night it's it's walbert they're talking about the making of the movie there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff you know i've seen tens of thousands of these most of the time it's just studio fluff they're talking about the making of the movie. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff. I've seen tens of thousands of these. Most of the time, it's just studio fluff. They're just kind of supporting the release of the film. In this one, Knight said something really interesting. He was like, this is a really hopeless and despairing story that I'm creating.

And so what I want in the center of the story is light, is friendship, is someone that I like, that I feel safe with. And Knight had struck up a friendship with Mark Wahlberg. They were boys in real life. And so he was like, I'm going to cast my friend, Mark, who to me represents light. Now, I don't really think anybody thinks as a performer, Mark Wahlberg represents light. I like Mark Wahlberg as an actor on screen, but he's kind of like a douchey, bro-y action star. He's not a kind of like buoyant, effervescent on-screen presence. Mark Wahlberg is also interviewed in this featurette, and Wahlberg says, I don't know what my friend M. Night is talking about. I'm not like that.

So what I did is I based my performance on M. Night. This is actually what M. Night is like. He is wide-eyed, sincere, a little bit goofy, looking for the bright side, but working hard to get to the bottom of the problem. And so when you see the movie through that lens, even though the performance does not work, I actually think that they nailed it. And yet, he just made one very specific kind of movie-making storytelling choice that didn't work for me at all everything else the trees the disease the the fear the east coast paranoia all that stuff i actually really really admired because it's a movie that has otherwise been so critically reviled um have you changed your tune on the happening at all over the years no um no uh i think what they should do for

the happening is they should put whatever that little documentary that you watch was in front of the movie every time it runs. It would be helpful. So that you have some context. The Happening was the first time where I sat in the theater. Lady in the Water, I was just watching something bad, right? It just wasn't working. The Happening is the first time. Even though Lady in the Water does, I will say this.

Lady in the Water has a sneaky good Paul Giamatti performance. It does? Yeah, yeah. But The Happening is the first time where I watch the movie and I'm like, what am I watching? little jokes and scenes and you don't in really heavy moments and you don't know whether or not you're supposed to be laughing or whether or not you're supposed to be or whether or not it's inappropriate to laugh and he says that he does that on purpose he says that he wants people to question whether or not they're supposed to be laughing at what it is that they're seeing or how they're supposed to be interpreting emotionally what's going on the screen yeah he likes to wrong

foot the audience you know he likes to kind of keep you on your toes right and this movie was a lot of those scenes strung together and mark walberg with the almost the toxic avenger trauma type it's like you know kabuki man pd I've seen all of those movies, you know, like almost like a weird jumping out of his, just like a weird, I couldn't connect to the performance at all. And it kept taking me out of the movie over and over again.

And it was like, yo, man, two in a row is what I was really thinking. But the happening, it's not nearly as bad as Lady in the Water. And once again, it's a movie that I did rewatch it. It's a movie that if you watch it now, you go, okay, not that bad, right?

Like, not that bad. But it also is a film that is a casualty of its time. When does that movie come out in? I think it's 08. Think about the movies we were watching. There were some really fucking fantastic films around that. It's a sneaky, impressive little run around that time.

You know what I mean? We're talking about movies. The Dark Knight's going to be in theaters. You're going to have what I call the fucking greatest double whammy of all time for me of no country and uh and uh there will be blood i think just before then maybe the year before oh seven yeah yeah so like we're we're we don't think about 2007 2008 as being a but it is a fucking fantastic time in movies uh and even the marvel stuff is just getting iron man yeah it's just getting started up so every time you're going to the theater around this time like you're getting

your fucking socks knocked off especially if you're me um and so going in and you know even christopher nolan we talked about inception we talked about you know this it's not the same time time but it's like around that same time and Yeah, sure. All of that shit. Yeah. And we're watching a lot of great movies, and this just wasn't on those level of films. And it probably suffered a little bit more because of that, too. I think you're right. I think it also kind of signals the end of a very specific phase of his where that hearing voices that Bamberger uses as the title title of his book the voice that he's hearing is almost like the magazine cover that indicates him as the next spielberg it's like the really the the feeding into his own sense of self mythology kind of comes to a conclusion after those three

movies and then we go into this weird franchise pivot that he makes that is incredibly unsuccessful and it's fascinating and is the inspiration for this podcast because i heard you talking about the last airbender i i didn't have any familiarity with avatar the last airbender i didn't know that you know the animated series i've not i had not engaged with anything i still have not really engaged with anything beyond the shamalan movie but you could tell from watching this movie that is's not the right filmmaker. It's not the right tone. But why specifically for you does this movie not work? Oh, man.

You know what I wish I could do? I wish I could find the review that I wrote for it at the time. Shout out to everybody over there at Flicksided. Wow. Flicksided. Are they still going these days? They might be. Look at you shaded flick-sided uh you got to get your archives from there collected into into a book man like i gotta

get because i i wrote the midnight boy speaks that's what i wrote uh i wrote uh a review where i called this would never this would never fly now i wrote a review where i called tyler perry's movie fried fish cinema i was going crazy um anyway uh no that movie was the first movie where i was like okay he's completely broken it was the carson wince movie for him yeah because like it was what happens with carson wince is like like the the carson wince you guys if you guys are sports fans then you know carson wince comes out he has an mvp caliber season right and then he comes back and it's like he plays okay but their injuries there's always a narrative as to why carson wince is not performing then also from philadelphia interesting uh then there's a season to where you go he's just broken none of it's working like he's broke he doesn't remember who he is

he doesn't have the same confidence anymore he doesn't have even the decision to direct the last airbender itself uh which was a cartoon that i watched for a little while shout out to joey who loves the air the the last the last airbender even like that to decision to do that is something of a hell mary in and of itself. It's, hey, I need something that I know everybody loves. I'm going to do this. I'm going to put my name on it. I just need a hit. All the kids that love Nickelodeon, they're going to come out and they're going to see this. This is a surefire hit. And me directing it lends some sort of credibility to the movie that's also going to make a 30-year-old Van Lathan go out and see the

movie as well because I had watched The Last Airbender a little bit when it was on Nickelodeon because everybody was talking about it but I'm not going to sit down and watch a whole fucking season of The Last Airbender it's just not going to happen you know I mean I got to go to work in the morning but watching the movie the movie just did nothing. The movie, and once again, it's another film that butchers up against the promise of this big animated series that everyone loved and the big hype that was around it, that he just completely failed. And I wrote a piece that basically said, hey, he's completely lost it i was like you know a director's lost it when he can no longer get competent performances out of his actors when his movies no longer have anything to say when they're just sort of uh uh digital moving pictures with no voice or soul i just i thought he's broke it's over i i really i really was driving a stake in the heart of it. And they were like, hey, you really want to write this? And I felt betrayed in a way.

I didn't feel like he was trying anymore. And it's going to be weird, the movie that gets me back on the side, because it's not going to be one that anybody thinks, that anybody likes except for me and Kalika. It's going to be weird. We're going to get to it. It's going to be weird, the movie that gets me back on the side. But I definitely, definitely in no way like this movie.

I just thought it didn't work. It didn't have any of the whimsy or the promise or the life of the animated series. It was drab, dour, and once again, felt a little self-indulgent. It's an interesting time to look at the film as well too because as you point out 06 07 08 that was a very exciting time in hollywood but also 08 portends the dark knight and iron man which then essentially resets hollywood on a new course and the kinds of movies that are at the front of the line getting made by filmmakers like shamalan are movies like the last airbender movies that are based on intellectual, movies that have a built-in fan base,

a lot of expectation. And he takes on one of these projects and he's just not the right person to tell a story like this. He's not a very gifted action filmmaker. He, I think, has miscast the movie. The storytelling is so inert and it's almost like stripped of his twist power.

He has like no idea what to do. Like he has no idea how to structure a movie and it's such like stripped of his twist power. He has like no idea what to do. Like he has no idea how to structure a movie and it's such a strange thing. I mean, there are a lot of movies like this that are sensibly like fantasy stories for kids that are made around this time. You know, there's the Chronicles of Narnia movies. There's all the sort of like post Lord of the Rings

fantasy action filmmaking that I don't think will be looked upon that fondly with the exception of like the Harry Potter movies. This one I think is really one of the worst. I mean, it's really just not effective at all, but it sounds like After Earth brought you back. Is that true? It did. It did. I have no idea what you're talking about. Explain that to me. After Earth is, of course, the Will Smith and Jaden Smith science fiction 2013 drama that sean malone directs after the you know widely considered to be a mediocre failure of the last airbender so you like this movie i love it i can always count on you for

one of these in every every pod that we do where i'm like what the hell are you talking about i love it okay so all right let me get a little personal here okay i don't know if you guys know but van lathan myself me third person uh very recently lost his father okay and um i'm very sorry for your loss man thank you very much uh even during the time that my father was alive and this is as an aside this is what great movies or not even great movies this is what movies have the opportunity to do this is why i fell in love with this everybody else watched the clockwork origin was like oh look at them weird ass white boys and i was like what are them weird ass white boys doing it's like it's the wonder because i would see myself in a lot of things for me it was

a cheat code for the movie because even while my father was here we had a very difficult time understanding one another we had a very difficult time um sort of uh getting on the same page there was a space between us because much like jayden in that movie i viewed my father as an example of manhood that i could not approach you know uh it was my dad i you know i got something in here from right now when i took from his from from from baton rouge i got a bone handled rope a bone handled knife a rope and a 30 30-30 that he was a cowboy. He needed a knife. He's the kind of guy that needed a knife.

My father would carry a knife on him, and every day would find a different reason to use the knife. Like, what do you need? Come over here. Let me cut that hitch for you. What the fuck are you talking about? Like, what do you need? Like, I need this knife to do something.

Let me pry something open with the knife. I'm like, okay. He's that type of man. So what I see in After Earth is Jaden in search of his father. let me pry something open with a knife. I'm like, okay. He's like, he's that type of man. So what I see about in After Earth is Jaden in search of his father. It's that character going through a series of trials

to prove to his father that he's not the guy that his father might think that he is. And I wish I had had those trials. Like I wish that I had had that there was something that I had had, that there was something that I could have done or, uh,

and my father loved me and I'm sure we'd have these conversations and he'd be like, boy, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? But I wished watching him go through a vision quest really, and a journey to save himself and save his father, uh, in a hostile

crazy place like south baton rouge often is um and come out on the other side of it and at the end of the movie watch his dad stand up and salute him i lost it and for that very personal reason for that very personal reason i love the movie like i i it it's not like you know it's not like uh i'm not acting like it's the godfather or mo better blues but i just thought the movie told a story that was easy to tell um and i thought it did it pretty well i wasn't i think it nailed exactly what i thought it was going to nail. Now, once again, all the stuff that they did,

it's like, they did a lot of fucking shit that they didn't have to do. But at the end, when he successfully ghosts and he conquers his fear, because really he has, the fear is not about the world. He's not really that scared of the world. He's scared of disappointing his dad.

And I just, I related to it. Everybody has a movie like that there there are a lot of directions we could go once thank you for sharing that story two you and i could probably do a compelling uh podcast about the masculinity gap from our generation to the previous generation and oh yeah the example that our father set and the way that we have failed to live up to those examples. I relate deeply to you on that level and my father,

the handiest man who also carried a weapon every day of his life. Right, right. But I wonder if one of the things that clicked for you is something that held

the movie back for me in a big way, which is I have no idea why Jaden and Will have Southern accents throughout this movie and maybe being surrounded by a Southern accent

your entire life if it made it feel more safe to you. But the movie i was like why the fuck are they talking this way right there was it was people do stuff like that people people try to reinvent the wheel that's why i love robin hood men and thieves costner said fuck it just yeah he's straight boston he was like i'm from i'm from an exurb of massachusetts uh costner said you fuck it. Yeah, he just went straight Boston. He was like, I'm from an exurb of Massachusetts. Costner said, you don't want to hear me interpret a fucking English accent. You want to see me shoot a bow and arrow. And I'll do that.

I'll do that. But a lot of times in these future movies, they go, they do that a little bit in Cloud Atlas, where it's all in the future. And they're trying to figure out how people are going to sound. And it does nothing. bit in Cloud Atlas, where it's all in the future, and they're trying to figure out how people are going to sound. And it does nothing. I like Cloud Atlas. But it does nothing but just throw me the fuck off when they're doing it. And they're probably right. But the same thing, I feel like they're trying after Earth.

What are people going to sound like? I like the Cloud Atlas comp, too. I feel like we could have a very similar conversation about the Wachowskis films. Very similar arc as M. Night Shyamalan. Very up and down. Lots of original storytelling. Lots of fascinating highs and lows. Similarly, a comeback. Lana

directing Matrix 4 later this year the same way M. Night is coming back. But let's just go through the final phase. So Last Airbender and After Earth, despite your appreciation for After Earth, not really considered successful movies. It really feels like he's officially lost his way. And he is adrift,

still able to get movies made, but by this time, he's now made a movie with Warner Brothers, then Fox, then Paramount Pictures, then Sony. He's been passed around the American studio system, and there's only one studio he's not yet made a movie with, and that studio is Universal. And then he starts making movies with

Universal, and he teams up with Jason Blumum and he makes a little horror movie a found footage horror movie jason one of jason blum's specialties in the visit and this is the movie that re-introduces him i think in a lot of ways to the american movie going public this movie is a hit and it was well well reviewed did you like the visit i did i did and i think i i like the visit i also think i also thought that i don't think that he could make a I think I like the visit. I also think I also thought that I don't think that he can make a movie as good as the visit at the point that he made. Yes. That's what I think brought him back. Exactly.

People were like, I had written him off. Yeah. So I was looking. Think about it. I told you that I liked After Earth. I thought that was actually going to be the ceiling of him for whatever. And there are plenty of directors who had a good four or five movie run and then they just stay around, know doing shit for whatever and i thought that that's kind of what he was going to be i watched the visit and i go no no the visit is weird the visit is uh compelling uh the visit is all of those things and it's got a it's got some wonder to it um that i that i that

i also did and i was around the time also that i I was just going all in on Jason Blum as well. Same. Going all in on him as well. So it was a close time. But it's not one of my favorites, but it was a movie that reaffirmed that I thought this guy was a good filmmaker. Yeah, it's really well made. And it's very unnerving in a way that a couple of those early movies even the village at its best is very unnerving you know like when when bryce dallas

howard's character is walking through the forest and then you know adrian brody in the costume sort of comes up behind her and you're like oh shit actually it is real the twist i thought was coming is not coming we're actually in this world the visit has a very similar sense of unease throughout it the movie was a big hit he's back he starts to get bigger budgets for his movies in 2016 he makes split which at the time i think the way that he was being written about and discussed was like he is fully back he is fully back to like unbreakable level of success in part because the movie is was ultimately tied to unbreakable and considered a kind of like quasi sequel to that movie now at the time this

split came out i loved it i thought it was brilliant i thought matt james mcavoy was unbelievable in the movie and then when i re-watched it this week i was not that into it if i'm being honest with you what was your what was your take on Split? Absolutely owned me. Yeah. I thought it was great at the time. Because I wasn't... First of all, I put the twist at the end of Split up there with the Sixth Sense in terms of, oh, shit! It was so fun in theaters. Remember that in theaters, that moment? Yeah.

I'm like, oh! People are like, what, what, what? I'm like, yeah, this fucking David Depp. Oh, shit! I was so hyped. You know one of those movies where you go home and you're punching in the air like, oh! I was so hyped.

No, I just thought the movie was M. Night at its finest. It was a film that you thought was about something that ended up being about something else. It's about a guy with split personalities and you're thinking, hey, I've seen movies about people with split personalities before, but I've never seen one about a guy

with a split personality where he turns into an unstoppable lion beast at the end of it. It's something really, really terrifying. And I still joke with Kalika about it because she hates the scene she is so scared of the scene where he starts crawling up the side of the walls yeah she's so scared of it and i'll be i'll be coming back home like you know if i go out and i stay

out with the fellas i always call her on my way back home and uh she would be like uh hey baby you're on your way stop Stop and give me a snack. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm like, but don't look at the walls because the guy from Split is probably, she'll just hang the phone up. You know, like the guy from Split, I call him Split.

Split is probably crawling up the side of the walls, the beast. But no, it was a movie that, one where I was legitimately off balance. I didn't understand what was happening. It's classic M. Night, and it had a great performance from James McAvoy.

And I think the fact that James McAvoy was in it at that time was another thing that just drug me to the theater to see it because that was him during the time that he was really building himself as a true, real-deal Hollywood leading man. Played all the different characters great.

It was hard to watch at times, kidnapping of young girls and what have you and things of that nature, especially in light of some of the things that we've been talking about and going through and all of that. But at the end, the movie lent itself to part of a mythology that he had already established.

And that really took it over the top for me. It's one of my favorite ones that he had already established. And that really took it over the top for me. It's one of my favorite ones that he ever did. I really, really enjoyed it. And the fact that there were so many things that we didn't know, right? We didn't know that they're under in there in the zoo and all of that stuff. He's able to put so much between the fat of the movie, so much meat there between the big, huge, scary, fatty things. I thought, okay, he's found his way again. Maybe he just was in a slump. This is not an original observation. I was reading some reviews of the movie

before recording, but something that somebody pointed out was, in The Visit and in this movie especially, it feels like he is actively acknowledging that he is not Spielberg, that he's a genre filmmaker, and that there's nothing wrong with that and also this is even more so like an exploitation movie i mean like you said the idea

of kidnapping young girls the level of violence the sort of unease it does have it's not it's not a trauma style movie it's like a mid-70s gnarly 42nd street kind of movie with the the level of intensity that it has the kind of ridiculousness but groundedness of the plot the way that it feels all very handmade you know this is not a big action CGI fest it's a very successful movie I just thought it dragged a little bit the second time I watched it I was it's a full two-hour film most of his films are somewhere between 110 and 120 minutes and it it didn't it didn't full two-hour film most of his films are somewhere between 110 and 120 minutes and it it didn't it didn't work as well because of everything that i knew and also because

i thought it was a little weighted down by having seen glass which is the movie that he released a couple of years ago that is a follow-up that feels like him getting a little bit lost in the sauce again of his own mythology happened again yeah happened it happened again it the same shit happened again it's a it's a personality tick yeah it's a it's a it made a perfectly good movie two perfectly good movies combine those perfectly two two good movies and it's weird there's like there's like no one standing around and i couldn't have been more excited for a film i was like there's no one standing around to edit or to keep him on the straight road. Just like the people that fucking Touchstone or Disney or Buda Vista had tried with Lady of the Water.

Like, hey, pump the brakes. We don't get it. All right. We're not saying that you're not the best guy in the world. All right. We're not Zack Snyder, David Ayer in you and taking your movie and doing all of it. We're not saying that. We're saying we don't get it.

Can we talk about it? No, fuck you. I'm going to another studio you know what i mean and like and in this one i'm watching it i'm like this is obviously not well put together like you're like you're doing what i would love to do in life and i'm looking at you and going you're better than this you know i mean i i think part of what happened here and this is kind of an interesting aspect of his comeback is this is the visit was very low budget split was pretty low budget as well split is a reported nine million dollar movie and even glass is only reportedly only a 20 million dollar movie and all of these movies made 150 200 250 million dollars at the box office which is glass made how much glass made 247 million dollars worldwide which is pretty wow pretty damn good shit good they go they go

fucking crazy over returns like that who does that anymore well nowadays it would be insane but yeah so he and you know part of that is because he did build this world and it was considered sort of like the conclusion of this trilogy that he had created. Just as a movie, it suffers from some of the same flaws of his worst films. But that takes us to old. And I see Glass as the end of one phase. And I'm wondering if old is the beginning of another phase. I was fascinated by this movie. I was very much anticipating it.

As you know know i had a child uh and so i couldn't see it right away so i was like desperately trying to avoid learning about the twist of this movie but i knew that there was going to be a twist and i somehow avoided it somehow and this is something that i feel like has changed because you and i both had the sixth for us and now i feel like there is a weird kind of grace with spoiler culture where most people on the internet are actually not like no one tweeted at me that the ending of this movie i feel like 10 years ago someone would have tweeted at me the ending of of old am i am i am i being too generous no hell no it's not not that you're being generous you're understating it. I do a podcast with Charles Holmes,

the Midnight Boys. It's a rewatch podcast. So listen, hold on. I want everyone to listen to my voice right now. Tell you how fucking out of control this has gotten. I do a rewatch podcast

where the whole purpose of the podcast is to talk about something that we just watched. An instant recap podcast. Think about that. A recap podcast. And we have to give a spoiler warning.

Obviously, if you're listening to the podcast that's a recap podcast about the episode of television or movie that just came out, we're going to talk about it. So the spoiler, it bothers me. If you guys listen to the Ringerverse, listen to the spoiler warning

that they play and listen to how fucking pissed that I am. So now people get, bruh, it's like I fought this battle with Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, we live

to the Game of Thrones the whole time Game of Thrones was on. Yep. The last episode of Game of Thrones comes on, guess what we're gonna do, baby? We're gonna get these takes off on Twitter. Stop spoiling it. Why don't you take your ass to the crib, get off Twitter, because we're talking about Game of Thrones and you're getting on my nerves. So now

it's totally different. Now you could go your whole life and nobody would spoiler for you. I think he gets some credit for that, Shyamalan. I feel like the success of his movies and then the fundamental necessity of the twist to most of his movies shepherded this moment. Now you and I are having this conversation, and now every fucking movie that comes out, people are going to send me the spoilers so you know I we're tempting the

fates by talking about this at all nevertheless so old um and and it's it's such a classic Shyamalan movie in its construction and its execution the first 70 to 75 minutes I was like this is one of the best thrillers I've seen in the last five years and then it kind of just falls apart under the weight of its own construction and so i would say it was like a solid b for me ultimately what did what did you think of old it's a good movie uh you know i just recently saw it um i actually uh crawled out to movie theaters and saw it it's a good movie uh the twist here in in old it wasn't as central to me as it is to some of his other movies i think you're right i think i think old asks a lot more questions uh i think the central question being asked in old is what is a life well lived and is it about time or is it about

connection and i think the twist doesn't do very much i mean it's good to know why that i'm not going to ruin anything for anyone it's good to know what's happening to these people um mean it's good to know why that i'm not gonna ruin anything for anyone it's good to know what's happening to these people um and it's good to know why it's happening and it asks a good question in terms of uh do the ends justify the means for something like that in the end you know who's the villain who's not the villain whatever whatever uh but in terms of why i thought the movie worked i thought the movie worked uh you know in light of some things that have happened to me recently more i just asking the question what what does it mean to be with the people that you love uh do you want to be with them for a long time or do you want to

be with them for a good time and uh what are we really fighting for as human beings and he out and he's he's at his best when he's asking these questions, right? He's just a tremendous filmmaker about parents and their children. It's crazy. That is his comfort zone so clearly. The surrogate father-son relationship in The Sixth Sense, Mel Gibson being a father in signs, you know, all of these, the village with the relationship between Bryce Dallas, Howard and William hurt over and over again.

He does. And in this movie, he does a really good job of it. You've got Gail Garcia, Bernal and Vicky crepes are the parents of these two young children who, of course, if you know anything about old, you know,

when they visit this tropical locale and this private beach, they start to age more rapidly. I don't, we don't need to spoil the movie for anybody who hasn't seen it because a lot of people are not able to go to movie theaters right now so that's really the only place to see it sorry i'm sorry if i didn't you know you haven't spoiled anything no no um but it is a really interesting movie that i think hits on some of his key themes it's also i think to my point about an exploitation movie you know this is like a body horror movie it's a pretty pretty gnarly film in the way that it depicts

some of the things that happen to the people on this beach. It does hit on some of those concepts of sort of mortal fear and a life well-lived. It also, it's kind of goofy and features some of those jokes that you were talking about that like, you know, mid-sized sedan, the famed rapper who we find on the beach. That's like, that pisses me off. Come on, man. I don't know why he did that why do you think i like wait i like i texted you last night i texted you while i was actually in the movie i think and i said i'm like mid-sized

sedan come on man it's a bad joke it's it's not just a bad joke but i feel i kind of feel like he dissing us a little bit. It's a lot of stupid names out there. Don't get me wrong. It's guys now that have the whole alphabet before their name. But we're not going for mid-size sedan. As a culture, Sean, you know hip-hop culture. You wrote for fucking vibe.

As a culture, we're not going for mid-size sedan what if i know it seems like we would but i don't think we are what if we was just ski mask the slump god you know would you have been good with that see that's different like see ski mask the slump god is a name that makes you okay that's a good one yeah that's one that makes you go who is ski mask the slump godump God? First of all, why is he Ski Mask? And then why is he the Slump God? It makes you ask two very fundamental questions. Mid-sized sedan, we all know what that is.

It's like you've taken the kids to a fucking soccer game, whatever. And then the guy who played mid-sized sedan is from Central Casting for a guy that would play mid-sized sedan. But no, I enjoyed the movie even i enjoyed the one thing i enjoy about him is people at the trauma between the characters like uh between the the the two leads what they had been through as a couple that was as much something that they were trying to get over as anything that was going on on the island he does that so well he he he positions the metaphysical versus the human as good as any filmmaker that i've seen it's like what really is uh the real central theme of this movie is it man against this incredible force or is it man against himself and almost any good chamelon movie uh makes you ask that question i like how you put that i'm hopeful that like i said this is

a new phase for him and that he basically becomes a kind of rod serling-esque figure where every two to three years we get another high concept um i, moral fable of a kind. You know, that really seems to be where he feels most comfortable. I love movies like that. I love original movies like that. Even when The Village's ending disappoints me, I love going on that journey with a writer-director. And so I'm really hopeful.

There are a couple of other things that he's done in his career that we didn't really hit on because it's a movie podcast. But, you know, he's participated in two big TV shows. I didn't watch Wayward Pines, and I've only seen like a few episodes of servant have you kept up with either of those things that he's done kalika watches servant okay what does she think of it she can't get enough of it really i can't do i can't do crazy doll babies can't do it there's a limit no dolls you just talked you talked about ross early second go, who I believe is the greatest writer of all time. You're after my heart with that one.

That's my guy. Yeah, I think he's the best. The best. I love him. But certain things, he fucked up dolls for me. When I was a kid. You know the episode. Yes, I do.

Yeah, he fucked up dolls. No dolls. No dolls. People talk about child's play. Don't want to have anything to do with it no interesting so you're not watching what we do in the shadows then no okay there's a big doll character in season three just putting that out there what was the annabelle the movie wasn't that a doll conjuring universe yeah you're out nope uh anything that has to do with dolls going nuts what about the 1986 stewart gordon horror movie dolls would you watch that no okay no get out of here i'm not watching

nothing we could we could we could have a whole podcast about things that i just straight up will not watch because i i know myself i have vivid dreams and dreams. And I'm not watching. I come in there in the living room. She should be in there looking at the thing with the dolls, right? She'd be in there looking at it, watching it. And I'm like, what is this shit? And she's like, it's M. Night. I'm like, OK, cut this off.

She's like, why can't you just go in another room? And I'm like, because I don't want to be in the house while it's playing. No dolls. Maybe when you're not watching doll content you can read m night shamalan's book i got schooled the unlikely story of how a moonlighting film movie maker learned the five keys to closing america's education gap were you familiar with the fact that shamalan wrote this book in 2013 i had heard of it but i never really gave it much of a thought i had heard of it.

I kind of want to read it. I kind of want to get his take. I'm a curious person, but I do want to know, he's just got his takes off about the education system in America in a book in between making After Earth and The Visit. Pretty impressive.

I'll tell you what though, I bet he has a very interesting take. I bet. You think there's a twist at the end? Probably so. Twist at the end? Probably so. Twist at the end. We should all go to socialism. But no, he's an interesting guy.

He is. Let me tell you something else for people who don't know. Around the time that he really started to blow up, there was a cult of Shyamalan. There was like my aunt, my great aunt, my grandmother's sister. I remember he was on 60 Minutes

or something or other or something. We came over to my grandmother's house and they're all sitting around. This is my mom and them. They're all sitting around watching him and talking about him

as if he's some otherworldly type of deal i'm like yo this is a film director guys and my my aunt my great aunt is telling all of these stories about where he's actually from what he really believes what he puts in his music who he really is all this i'm like it's this serious that baton rouge like they were like there were people who were looking at his movies as like this sounds so crazy but, but like little mini ministries and really took him seriously as a real top flight, a number one cultural figure. I mean, he is though. If you look at the last 25 years of filmmakers, there are not very many who have put a bigger imprint on the culture than he has. He consistently makes successful films, but also he has a clear point of view.

He has philosophy and an ethos. Sometimes his movies are absolutely ridiculous. But when you see him in interviews, this is an incredibly self-possessed, charismatic man who knows how to talk, who maintains that level of, and you know this as somebody who understands fame and celebrity so well, this unbreakable positivity in his communication. He is like, you will believe. It's almost like a pastor. You will believe the way that I believe about the wonder and power of story.

And he believes his own shit to his credit. He is, and he also fully understood the power of brand building. He was kind of ahead of the curve in that way. You mentioned Tarantino earlier, the same way that Quentin has always had such a savvy sense of how to build his own identity in the world. M. Night Shyamalan is a genius at this. He's a genius at when you see an M. Night Shyamalan film, you know you're getting something very specific. And I got to give him credit for that, even though I think it can be hit and miss at times. Before we go, let's rank

these movies, okay? We didn't talk about his first two films, and there's a very specific reason for that, but I don't want them to go unsighted. In 1992, I've only seen one of the two. I've never seen Praying with Anger, which is his student film that he made at NYU,

which is, again, a film about faith, as most of his films are. And then in 1998, he makes this kind of funny, kind of strange, not ultimately successful sort of dramedy called Wide Awake

that was shot in 95 and not released until 98 by Miramax. Some people have seen it, but neither of those movies really got a wide release, and they're not really widely available. You can rent them on Amazon and whatnot,

but let's stick to the core 12. So we've got 12 movies here, from the sixth sense to old. Why don't we start at number 12? What is by far the worst movie in the M. Night Shyamalan world? The Lady in the Water. Are we sure it's not The Last Airbender?

Are we sure? It's a coin flip i think to me that's 12 and 11 to me damn hold on let me give me give me i know we gotta go give me five seconds to think about this yeah take your time for man uh i'll rock with you whichever way you go i i i i would say that the lady in the water is less angering than The Last Airbender. The Last Airbender sucked. And The Last Airbender was the nail in the coffin. But just as a movie, as a film itself, Lady in the Water is worse to me.

Okay, number 12, Lady in the Water. Yeah. I like your point of view on that. So that means The Last Airbender's got to be 11. Very, very, very bad movie. Number 10 is interesting. It's very interesting. I think there are probably a number of different candidates here.

I think most people would put The Happening here. Okay. I certainly wouldn't. And if they didn't put The Happening, they would put After Earth, which I don't think you would want to do. Right. But I understand After Earth's sappy bias. they would put after earth which i don't think you would want to do right but understand i i i understand after earth sappy bias so don't so so i'm not trying to i get my thing with after earth

so we're making a list that's objective here it's well i mean no because there's no such thing as objectivity but yes because we are all seeing omnipotent purveyors of culture. Right. Exactly. So, by that rationale, it's almost going to have to be After Earth, right? I think it is. I think it's After Earth. Let me ask you this. Is The Happening...

So, we'll go After Earth at 10 and I appreciate you letting me do that because I really don't like that movie. Is Glass worse than The Happening? Is Glass worse than The Happening? No. So then The Happening goes to nine. Glass is

far more entertaining than The Happening. Glass sucks, but it's better than The Happening. The Happening is terrible. Is Glass eight? We're getting into a weird spot here now. Because, yeah, Glass would have to be 8. Because what else would be 8? Like, there's nothing else even here to, like... Well, it depends on...

How do you feel about Old? Do you like Old more than Glass? Oh, Old is clearly better than Glass. So all of these movies are clearly... I liked Old. So all of these movies are clearly better than Glass that we have left. Okay.

Let's do... old number seven so because you have old and then yeah because then you have old you have the village still village which i don't really mind as much split yeah oldest seven this is actually easier it is not that hard actually so let's So let's just recap what we have so far. We've got number 12, Lady in the Water. Number 11, The Last Airbender. Number 10, After Earth. Number 9, The Happening. Number 8, Glass.

Number 7, Old. And that leaves us with six films. Those six films are The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, The Visit, and Split. Now, do you think that the first four are still his four best movies? That's the big question. Or is Split in the top four? Or is The Visit in the top four? The Visit is not in the top four.

The top four to me are very clearly The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and I'm going to go Split. Okay. I'll take it. Are very clearly the top four. So these other two is basically

what's left after that? So then that leaves The Visit and The Village. The two Vs. The Visit and The Village. Okay, so The Visit and The Village. So then The Visit is better than The Village.

I disagree. You disagree that The Visit is better than The Village? Yeah, I You disagree that the visit is better than the village? Yeah, I think the village, from a pure movie-making perspective, is more impressive. Give me 30 seconds on that. If we're talking about creating a world,

making a found footage movie with Jason Blum in 2015 is not nearly the creative venture that building out this entire sort of colonial era environment, crafting the story of, uh, this, these creatures that terrorize these people.

And then also having a film that while Catherine Hahn is wonderful in the, in the visit. And I like the kids. I think they're well cast. This is a movie with Joaquin Phoenix, Adrian Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver,

Bryce Dallas Howard, Jesse Eisenberg up and down the list great performances great actors arguably his best cast even though it doesn't always pay off oh without a doubt his best cast it's a fucking great cast one of the best casts of the decade so to me i would go the village over the visit you'll go the village over the visit so, The Village is not as bad as we remember it. It's a decent movie. I like the movie. I just think as a film that The Visit is better. But you gave me, what did you give me?

You gave me Early On. Did you give me After Earth? No, you gave me, anyway, you gave me one. I'll give you this one. I'll give you this one. Okay, okay. So then that means we're going to get down to the final four. So that means the visit goes to six.

The village goes to five. Right. And that leaves us with the big four. Now, I still think his first three are his best three. Do you think Split cracks the top three? No. Okay. So Split goes to number four.

Now, here's... This is interesting because I think me and you are going to align on this. Okay. But I'm not sure. We have three films left. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. Okay.

I think widely considered as three best movies. People might quibble who at number three is whether Signs belongs in the top three. I think it does, but I think it's number three. Okay.

Do you agree with that? Yes. Okay, so Signs is number three. Now. Do you agree with that? Yes. Okay, so signs is number three. Now, the sixth sense versus unbreakable. My gut is that we both think unbreakable is better than the sixth sense. Yes. We do. Do you think that the public at large will agree with our take?

We're going to get fucking flambéed. Like, no doubt about it. Just to let you know, this is... Come on, Sean. Woo! This is where the rubber meets the road it just let you know this is come on sean whoo this is where the rubber meets the road baby yeah this is where you remember major league two where they're hitting the home runs and they're going around they're doing like this joe boo buddha buddha joe boo yeah joe boo buddha hey the big you got the big this is where this comes in because if we actually get on this pod right now and say that Unbreakable is better than The Sixth Sense, it's going to be a rough week in movie land for us.

It's all good. I'm ready to weather the storm. I'm like M. Night Shyamalan. I got takes. I'm putting them out there. And it's not going to be a lot of people. It's going to be the casuals that see the list that go nuts. I'm ready.

Bring it on. I watch Unbreakable all the time. I don't really go back to The Sixth Sense very much. The Sixth Sense is good. It's dope. Introduced me to my favorite little guy. My little man. I love you, Haley. Haley Joel? That's my little guy.

Are you keeping up with Haley Joel these days? He's turned into a pretty good actor. He is turned into a pretty good actor. And he's turned into a pretty good actor in a way that I thought that he never would. To be honest with you. He's a pretty good actor. But no, I think that Unbreakable is his best movie. I'm with you 100%. That was actually a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Let's just recap the rankings very quickly. Number 12, Lady in the Water. Number 11, The Last Airbender. Number 10, After Earth. Number nine, The Happening. It would be hard for

me to recommend any of those four movies to a stranger, to be perfectly honest with you. Okay. Number eight, Glass. Number seven, Old. Number six, The Visit. Number five, The Village. me to recommend any of those four movies to a stranger to be perfectly honest with you okay number eight glass number seven old number six the visit number five the village and then number four split three signs to the sixth sense number one unbreakable right so and let's take a quick look here because so we talk about the up and down nature of his career but if you look at it really he's got one two three four surefire great movies right then he's got another three movies that are pretty damn good and at the bottom he's got some real real stinkers but if you look at it it's a pretty solid career overall i think he's had a great career i think but but it's if you ask people about him he's still an

incredibly polarizing filmmaker but if you look at it like right in front of your face this guy's making some good movies i'm happy he's back to making a certain kind of movie that i really appreciate i'm glad he left the Last Airbender where it belongs, which is not on his CV. The Last Airbender's terrible. Any final lingering thoughts on M. Night Shyamalan before we wrap? Yeah.

I appreciate him now more than I ever did. Same. And I think because there's not an easy way to make a movie in Hollywood. It's one of the more difficult things one can endeavor to do. But this is the thing that I enjoy about M. Night Shyamalan. A lot of people think that it's arrogance, right? When M. Night Shyamalan,

when the Disney people are talking to him and he says, no, I have to make this movie this way. What it really is, is belief. And he believes that stories are so powerful that there's a religion to it. He's not a corporate filmmaker in the sense that he's not making money thinking about what's going to do well with a certain demo. He's attached and handcuffed to the power of the story. Now, can that get a little arrogant and self-indulgent at times? Sure it can. But God damn it if we don't need somebody to still be handcuffed to story, man.

We need a purist. God damn it, this world needs a purist, man. Look, I love Marvel movies. I love them. I love them to death. You guys don't want to talk, I wish they make every character into a movie, but also I need somebody out there just being weird. Just being weird, taking chances, and writing something new, and keeping this mind going. So I appreciate him now more than I ever did, and I hope he keeps doing his thing.

He's still a relatively young filmmaker. He's 51. As a director, you're still sitting at the kids' table. So go ahead and make some movies. We got 20 more years of this guy, you're still sitting at the kids table. So go ahead, make some moves. We got 20 more years of this guy, 30 more years of this guy.

Amen. Van, thank you so much. Please listen to Higher Learning. Listen to the Ringerverse. Check out everything Van's doing with the Ringer. Thanks, of course,

to Bobby Wagner, our producer on this show. Next week, we're going to have episodes seven and eight, the conclusion of our Gene and Roger series on the feed.

I hope you've been listening to that show. It's fantastic. Then on Friday, Amanda and i are officially back together to talk about the best movies of summer 2021 and everything i missed while i was out i will see you then Thank you.