Will The Last Airbender Be M. Night’s Last Hurrah?

Forgive the title, but I’ve been waiting to use “last hurrah” for months, so I figured it’s now or never. Anyway, The Last Airbender opens today. Will I see it? Doubtful. I never watched the cartoon and really have no interest in Fire Nations waging war with Water Nations. It all reminds me of chemistry class with Mrs. Taylor: unnecessary and boring.

However, if I do decide to give it a peek it will be for one sole reason: to witness M. Night Shyamalan do another epic face plant. I’ve read the reviews. To classify them as poor would be kind. Phrases like “interminable miscalculation” and “stilted nonsense” lead me to believe we’re in for a real stinkfest. Although, the movie’s target audience (teen boys) might be able to rescue it from the land of Jonah Hex and MacGruber. We shall see.

If it does bomb, can we all finally admit M. Night Shyamalan just isn’t a very good filmmaker? Actually, with the exception of his voracious hardcore fans, most sane moviegoers reached this conclusion years ago, right around the time the atrocious Lady in the Water was unleashed on theaters like some black plague of confusion and hubris.

I mean, it’s okay to be an average director. A quality living can still be had. Hell, look at Michael Bay and Brett Ratner. No one will ever confuse them for Scorsese and Spielberg and yet they both continue to get plenty of work. M. Night’s biggest problem isn’t his visionary skills. To be fair, all his films look great. He excels at creating mood and knows where to place his camera and when to move it to achieve his desired effect.

His problem lies on the written page. To be perfectly blunt — he sucks as a storyteller. The Sixth Sense was expertly paced and beautifully written. Unbreakable was simplistic, but it had heart. However, those films are a decade old. Whatever happened between then and now, Night’s subsequent scripts have suffered from a lack of cohesion and a misguided need to be overly clever.

Perhaps we should start giving Bruce Willis some credit for the job he did in Shyamalan’s only two competent films. I watched both recently and was once again amazed by his restraint. Willis has a tendency to fall back on his natural charm and sense of humor, but his performances in both films are without question some of his best work as an actor. Night provided the inspiration. Willis brought the characters to life. He should’ve received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Sense. Sadly, he was ignored.

All the more bothersome is Shyamalan’s attitude. He comes across as an arrogant prick who can do no wrong. Demanding only top execs read his screenplays while one of his lackies looks on is evidence of an ego run amok. Especially when said screenplays are dreck like The Village and The Happening. Garbage writing like that isn’t good enough for a dentist office waiting room, let alone a high-ranking studio head’s desk.

Bottom line: M. Night is running out of whatever capital he earned from his first two flicks. Unless he can extricate himself from the creative sewer he’s been swimming in for the last ten years, his career is going to take a turn for the worse. Personally, I think he deserves to ingest a king-sized slice of humble pie. The good news is Hollywood has a history of eating its own. Staying atop the mountain takes sweat and talent. Living off past glories will only get you so far in a business of what have you done lately.

Shyamalan can regain some of his mojo with a solid opening this weekend. Despite a litany of negative reviews, a $40-$50 million gross is the ultimate cure-all. That being said, going up against a juggernaut like Twilight: Eclipse isn’t doing him any favors. I suggest he cross his fingers and toes because bad news might be lying in wait.

My parting advice to M. Night is as follows: stop trying to impress everyone with smoke and mirrors. Go back to the basics and write something compelling and plausible. Audiences don’t care about your super-secret projects. They care about seeing something worth the money they pay. Instead of telling everyone how great you are, why not go out and prove it?