Whatever Happened To M. Night Shyamalan? (Part 1 of 4)

I remember sitting in the movie theater with my dad, when I was just eleven years old, watching Signs on the big screen. It was August of 2002, and this was a movie that I had been anticipating for some time, ever since it had been featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly's Summer Movie Preview for that year. I had convinced my mom to let me rent both The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable from Blockbuster, so this was my first time seeing an M. Night Shyamalan film in an actual theater -- and it did not disappoint. I was on the edge of my seat, and a chill ran down my spine when I saw the news footage of the alien emerging from its camouflaged hiding place at a child's birthday party in Brazil. I turned to see if my dad was as horrified as I was, but he was asleep in his seat, so I nudged him, incredulous that he could be nodding off at a time like this.

I remember excitedly whispering to him: "Are you seeing this?"

From then on, if it involved M. Night Shyamalan, I had to see it, and I had to see it now. I can't quite explain what it was about his films that captured my imagination -- back then I had no inclinations for themes, performance or style -- but I was hooked, nonetheless. Following the well-deserved critical acclaim he garnered for The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan was considered a rising star in Hollywood, with some heralding him as the next Steven Spielberg or Alfred Hitchcock. For a while, I cited his first films as some of the chief influences on my desire to pursue a career as a screenwriter. Everyone, myself included, waited with bated breath to find out what supernatural thriller he would come out with next -- that is, until his next film turned out to be The Village.

With Signs, Shyamalan started to fall out of favor with critics, as if the grace period he had earned with the sheer brilliance of The Sixth Sense had come to an unceremonious end. Unbreakable was no critical darling either, but it still has its ardent fans and, at the time, received a bit of a free pass from more than a few people, given that the enormous expectations for Shyamalan after The Sixth Sense were near insurmountable. Signs was dismissed by several critics as hokey, uninspired, and dull, but that criticism was nothing compared to the onslaught that Shyamalan was about to endure after the release of The Village. If Signs represented the first few cracks in his armor, then The Village saw him stripped of it. Even some of his most loyal fans stepped aside and allowed him to take the critics' beating, they themselves feeling slighted by a disappointing film with a letdown ending that was considered ludicrous. It seemed as if his trademark twist ending had run its course and the magic had finally run out for Shyamalan.

So, Shyamalan went a different route. And the result was the end of his business partnership with Walt Disney Studios, a fruitful relationship tarnished by a dispute over creative differences concerning his next proposed film, Lady In The Water. And with the release of that film, which he was able to secure through Warner Bros., the dissenting voices only grew louder. The problems with the film were myriad. It was structured around a fairy tale, not a pre-existing tale but one that he created himself for his own children, with some aspects of the film's bedtime story leaving audiences bewildered and confused. Not to mention the not-so-passive-aggressive inclusion of a clueless, condescending movie critic as a supporting character, no doubt a slight at the very critics who seem to have been using his films for target practice. Worst of all, he made the damning decision to cast himself as Vick Ran, an author in the film who is told that his work will end up changing the world. This bizarre casting move did nothing to dispel the rumors of his over inflated ego that ran rampant during his public falling-out with Disney, which was well documented in Michael Bamberger's revealing book, The Man Who Heard Voices.

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Believe it or not, his films proceeded to get worse from there. The Happening, a laughable paranormal thriller about a rash of nature-induced suicides, and The Last Airbender, a movie so thoroughly awful that even the fans of the popular cartoon on which it was based couldn't bear to give it a passing grade, sunk Shyamalan to new lows, leaving most people wondering how he could have fallen so far after the undeniable talent he showed with The Sixth Sense.

But now, three years later, Shyamalan has returned with After Earth, which hits theaters on Friday and strands the real-life father-son duo of Will Smith and Jaden Smith as a fictional father-son duo on a future version of Earth where mankind has been forced into exile after their own planet and its natural inhabitants turned against them. With the impending release of his new film, my interest in M. Night Shyamalan has been renewed, and I've decided to launch my own personal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his meteoric rise and disastrous fall by revisiting each of his previous films. My goal? See how well each of them holds up -- for better or for worse -- and determine, if possible, the source of how and where it all went wrong.

For the sake of length, I'll be dividing  my findings into three different posts. I'll discuss The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable in Part 1; Signs, The Village, and Lady In The Water in Part 2; and The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth (if I get around to seeing it, that is) in Part 3. To get things started, I've compiled a list of the elements that I consider to be near essential to the works of M. Night Shyamalan. Take a gander below and then check back soon for the first post:

• Ordinary people, extraordinary circumstances. A former preacher finds crop circles in his backyard in Signs. The superintendent of an apartment building finds a fairy tale creature living under the swimming pool in Lady In The Water.
• The supernatural or the fantastical. Visions of dead people in The Sixth Sense. Superhuman abilities in Unbreakable. Extraterrestrial invaders in Signs. The fairy tale brought to life in Lady In The Water. And so on and so forth.
• The cameo. Similar to Alfred Hitchcock, Shyamalan likes to make at least a cameo appearance in each of his films, the significance of his role varying from film to film.
• The location. All of his films (with the exception of The Last Airbender and the upcoming post-apocalyptic After Earth) take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where he grew up after being born in India.
• The twist ending. You could call this his Achilles' Heel. Others might refer to it as his fatal flaw. But after The Sixth Sense and up until Lady In The Water, Shyamalan's signature was a twist ending that often forced the audience to re-consider everything that had come before. This is his most well-known trademark.

Top 5 TV Shows of 2012-13

I love television. I know it is common practice for some parents to tell their kids that too much time spent in front of the television will rot their brain, but I can't help but disagree. I've held the belief for a while now that the best storytelling was taking place on the big screen, but in recent years, my enthusiasm for Hollywood has waned as I've started to realize the creative boom that the small screen has been experiencing. Television has long been considered an inferior medium to film, but the gap has been closing since the emergence of original programming on cable channels like HBO, and the sheer amount of talent both in front and behind the camera that have migrated to television work is clear evidence of that power shift. But even as the number of quality television shows has increased, the amount of time in one day has not, so unfortunately I haven't been able to catch up popular shows like Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Homeland, and countless others. Of the shows that I've been able to watch, I've assembled a list of five that I believe stand out above the rest. Other shows that I've watched this past season, outside of the ones listed below, are American Horror Story, Bates Motel, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, and The Walking Dead.

Without further ado, here is the list:

5. Fringe (FOX, Fridays, 8 p.m.) Fringe was the little show that could, debuting on FOX back in the fall of 2009 as one of the highest rated new dramas on television before ratings began to dwindle and the series' increasing serialization made it difficult for the show to attract new viewers. But FOX kept the show alive, against all odds, almost as an act of contrition for canceling Joss Whedon's Firefly after eleven episodes in 2002, another sci-fi show that had a devoted fan base but was the victim of low ratings. Four seasons later, FOX renewed Fringe for a fifth and final season, allotting the writers 13 episodes to give the show the proper swan song its fans deserved. Season 5 saw the core members of Fringe Division, after encasing themselves in amber, being awakened in a dystopian future where mankind lives under the tyrannic rule of the Observers, evolved human beings from the future who have traveled back in time to install a totalitarian regime after their own version of Earth became uninhabitable. Our heroes' mission? Take back control of the planet. And while much of this last season at times felt like a different show than the one I've been watching for the past four years, the writers were able to bring the series full circle by the time the finale rolled around, servicing the familial relationships that have stabilized Fringe from the beginning. But if I do have one qualm, it is that John Noble never received the awards recognition that he deserved for his performance as the brilliant but debilitated genius Walter Bishop.

4. The Americans (FX, Wednesdays, 9 p.m.) On one side of the street in this suburban neighborhood lives Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, a married couple who, in addition to owning their own travel agency and raising their two children, are both deep cover operatives working for the KGB, sent to America over 15 years ago with new identities. On the other side of the street lives Stan Beeman, a dedicated Counter-Intelligence Agent for the FBI whose strained marriage is falling apart and who has a non-existent relationship with his teenage son. The Americans is asking you to root for (or at least empathize with) the Jennings, a request that, on paper, might seem dubious at first, but credit the superb writing and the nuanced performances of Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell for making it seem like there was never even a doubt where your allegiances should lie. Set during the Cold War era of the early 1980's, The Americans is as much a show about the institution of marriage as it is about the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. When we first meet Philip and Elizabeth, the two of them are beginning to consider if their marriage has become more than a charade, 15 years after being paired up and shipped off without ever having met each other before. Their struggles to find balance in their marriage, while also staying true to their original mission as spies for the KGB, are the heart and soul of the show, even when they're wearing disguises, planting bugs, and hunting down rogue assassins.

3. Hannibal (NBC, Thursdays, 9 p.m.) I'm not sure how, but before last year, I had never even heard of Bryan Fuller. It wasn't until I watched his pilot for Mockingbird Lane, a modern re-imagining of The Munsters that stalled out at NBC, that I became familiar with the mad genius behind such hidden gems as Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, and Dead Like Me, all shows that were brilliant but short-lived due to the fickle nature of television ratings. Hannibal, another show from Bryan Fuller that thus far hasn't been able to translate critical acclaim into ratings success, is a prequel of sorts to the series of novels by Thomas Harris, which were made famous, of course, by their film adaptations starring Anthony Hopkins in his iconic role as the titular cannibal. While both the novels and films kept Hannibal Lecter behind bars for the most part, Hannibal is more interested in his pre-incarceration life, in particular his relationship with Will Graham, the gifted but troubled criminal profiler who will one day recognize Hannibal for the monster that he is. While some might be turned off by the gruesome crime scenes that populate each episode, the series doesn't glamorize or sensationalize the violence, because the show is more interested in the psychology of what it means to take a life and what separates the hunter from the hunted. This is no more evident than in the dynamic between Will and Hannibal, where the riveting performances of Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen, respectively, raise the show to a whole new level.

2. Justified (FX, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.) It's hard not to root for Raylan Givens. As much as his reckless behavior, impetuous attitude, and total disregard for procedure draw the ire of his more straight-laced colleagues, Raylan is a Deputy U.S. Marshal who gets results. With his personal life - which consists of sleeping in a room above a bar where he has been romancing the female bartender while his pregnant ex-wife lives with her sister - a work in progress, Raylan focuses all of his efforts into his work, even while picking up the occasional illegal side work from a bail bondswoman to pull in some extra cash. This season, in a break from the tradition of pitting Raylan against a single season-long adversary, revolved around the manhunt for Drew Thompson, an infamous criminal who was believed to have been killed 30 years ago after jumping out of an airplane with bags of cocaine and a faulty parachute. When it becomes clear that Drew faked his death and has been hiding out in Harlan under a new identity, the race is on to find him before the wrong people get a hold of him first. Justified, which has often struggled to service its supporting characters, is at its best when the storytelling centers on Raylan and his childhood friend turned criminal Boyd Crowder (played by Timothy Olyphant and the underrated Walton Goggins, respectively). With both of them on the hunt for Drew, the show continues to explore how these two men, on opposite sides of the law, are more similar than either of them is willing to admit.

1. Breaking Bad (AMC, Sundays, 8 p.m.) "I won." Those two words, from the mouth of high school science teacher turned meth manufacturer Walter White after orchestrating the death of his former employer and drug kingpin Gus Fring, were the chilling culmination of a transformation that we've been witness to for four seasons now. Now, with his most formidable competitor blown in half, Walt was free to build his empire and claim the power he felt he had been deprived of for most of his life, having been condemned to a classroom teaching disinterested adolescents when his brilliance should've led to a life of luxury. But, as the first eight episodes of the show's fifth and final season proved, the road to the top is paved with obstacles, yet none of them were capable of toppling the impenetrable hubris that has come to define Walt. Bryan Cranston, as you'd expect from the winner of three Primetime Emmys, continues to own the show with his performance, tasked this season with portraying a Walt whose last traces of a soul have been diminished by his obsessive greed. But the breakout performance of the season belongs to veteran actor Jonathan Banks as the surly fixer Mike Ehrmantraut, who has no qualms about going toe to toe with Walt when it comes to a difference of opinion. The final eight episodes of Breaking Bad will begin in August, and as much as I'll miss the show, I'm curious to find out what twisted fate awaits Walt. If that game-changing scene at the end of the midseason finale is any indication, Walt's reckoning is almost upon us.