Bruce Willis already wasn't usable in Glass

Spoilers for Split and Glass.

I watched the first two movies of my informal M. Night Shyamalan weekend, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, to examine Shyamalan's filmmaking choices in two of his most highly regarded films.

I ended up thinking about a different one of his choices in my Sunday night film, Glass -- the choice to use Bruce Willis. And yes, my own choice of the word "use" has two meanings there. 

Glass was the only post-Sixth Sense Shyamalan movie I hadn't seen, and by seeing it now instead of 2019, I have an entirely different perspective on it than its initial viewers would have had.

It was less than a year ago that we learned that Willis has aphasia, a language disorder that affects people's ability to speak, read, listen and write -- which also provided a sad explanation for the Willis we were getting in a dozen cheap-o genre movies a year. This news was immediately followed by concerns that an obviously compromised Willis had been exploited by filmmakers eager to cash in on his name, though I think it's more complicated than that as it was revealed that Willis himself also wanted to keep earning money while he still could, to provide for those who depended on him.

Was M. Night Shyamalan one of those filmmakers?

Given Willis' usage in Glass, you'd have to think so.

I wasn't counting, but I don't think Willis' David Dunn has more than ten lines of dialogue in the whole movie. Given that his was the character who launched the whole eventual surprise trilogy that started with Unbreakable and includes Split as a middle film, you'd really expect him to factor in to the final movie more than he does. I'm only exaggerating a little bit when I say he almost has more screen time in his cameo at the end of Split than he does here.

You don't do that with a star of Willis' caliber unless you know something is wrong. And it seems Shyamalan had to have known. 

Now, this is not me accusing Shyamalan of anything, except possibly entering into an agreement with his friend Bruce to appear in the movie even though he couldn't remember more dialogue than about seven words in a row. I do think it's interesting to have this perspective on Glass, though, because it reveals a lot about what Willis was dealing with even back then.

For example -- and here comes the spoiler I warned you about -- his death scene. In fact, in the film's climax, all three of the characters you see on the poster above die within about a minute of each other outside the institution where they were being held for scientific study and/or simple detention. 

Pointedly, James McAvoy's Horde (is that the right character name?) and Samuel L. Jackson's Mr. Glass both get sentimental, old school Hollywood death scenes, where they are closely attended by a loved one and they speak poignant words, through tears, that put a bow on their characters as they are expiring.

David Dunn? He gets unceremoniously drowned in a small puddle in a pothole.

In addition to that being a rather ridiculous way to kill a character that the audience presumably loves, it points up the limitations that Shyamlan may have felt he was dealing with. He may not have felt it was possible for Willis to deliver anything approaching a dramatic death speech.

Then again, when you drown, you don't get to give a death speech. So it worked out that the manner of his death did not require a speech, which I suppose was always going to be the manner of his death since it was revealed that water is David Dunn's weakness.

But really, Willis is barely in this film otherwise. There are a couple fight scenes but it is obviously someone else doing the fighting, another detail made logistically easier by the fact that Dunn wears a black rain slicker that shrouds his face. Though maybe a fight scene was something Willis would have been capable of doing.

I started this long movie too late, after two beers, so I wouldn't say I had the most uninterrupted viewing of Glass. But I could swear there was a good half hour in there when Willis doesn't appear on screen at all, which is strange indeed -- unless you know what was happening with him.

Again there is a potential justification for this. It's certainly arguable that Willis is the least essential of the three characters, at least as far as this particular film is concerned. It's an immediate continuation of the story of the Horde, who we just spent an entire film with two years earlier. But it's also named after its other main character. David Dunn -- who I guess is called the Overseer (who knew?) -- is a distant third in terms of importance, especially as Glass is executed.

Overall, with my maybe eight (!) short naps during the movie and finishing at 1:42 a.m., I'm probably not the most qualified person to tell you how good Glass was or was not. But I did find that it was really too long for the little amount that happens in the story, and that it didn't end up in what I considered a satisfying place.

But at least with all three characters dead, Shyamalan won't be tempted to make a fourth movie directly in this universe ... another element related to this film that Willis' condition has rendered fairly convenient.

Okay, back to non-Shyamalan movies. 

Excessively explanatory from the start

In my review for Knock at the Cabin I said that "Shyamalan characters have become excessive explainers recently."

It would appear that "recently" was the wrong adverb to use there, as was the verb "become."

I did keep my informal and unpremeditated M. Night Shyamalan weekend going last night by rewatching Unbreakable for the first time since I saw it in the theater in 2000, and I couldn't help notice about how Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) is constantly spelling out every single one of his thoughts on a) who he is, b) who Bruce Willis' David Dunn is, and c) what their relationship might be to one another.

The thing I found particularly funny about this is that in another bout of excessive explanation of their respective roles vis-a-vis comic book characters, Elijah tells us -- or is it his mother? -- how there are two sorts of villains, the one who can physically fight the hero and the one who can mentally fight him. Elijah would obviously not be a case of the former given his brittle bone density, but I'm not sure how he could even be a case of the latter given that he's always telling David exactly what he thinks and rarely committing anything that feels like a subterfuge emanating from superior intellect. 

And I didn't realize until this viewing that this movie, which I'd always assumed didn't have a twist, does sort of have one when it reveals that Elijah Price was responsible for all sorts of different mass murder events in trying to find the man who was his opposite. Maybe it didn't register as a twist at the time because it seemed so dumb to me. And dumb is, again, not what Elijah Price is supposed to be.

Okay so Price (I guess I prefer a last name for a villain?) has decided that there must be someone out there who is his opposite, and he needs to find him. Fine. But I don't get why he a) has this certainty, and b) thinks that by crashing random planes and derailing random trains he will uncover this person in any reasonably short amount of time. First off, this unknown person needs to be living somewhere within his own sphere of easy access or influence, as in either the greater Philadelphia area or somewhere close by that a physically limited person can reach fairly easily. Secondly, Price has to believe that he'll be lucky enough to choose just the right plane to crash or just the right train to derail that will happen to be carrying this person at that time. The odds against this are astronomical, of course -- unless the future Mr. Glass believes that people like David Dunn are actually prevalent enough in society that if he doesn't uncover one, he'll uncover another.

The whole thing just doesn't make a lot of sense and it indicates to me that Shyamlan was in decline a lot earlier than we might have originally thought.

I do think there are some cool moments and camera tricks in Unbreakable, but I was reminded why I didn't glom onto this film at the time it came out, which is that there isn't a lot there. The plot is notably slack and there is indeed way too much talk of comic books and superheroes. 

In fact I certainly had a false memory that this movie was a lot more subtle than it is. I had a memory that only finally by the end of the movie, when he tracks the janitor to the house where he's keeping two children hostage (having already killed their parents), do we even get the idea that this is a superhero origin movie. In fact, the movie has an opening text that thinks it's really profound, about comic books and how many gets sold in each year (um, who cares about that?). This movie is way more on the nose than I originally remembered. 

Also, I found it a bit strange that the movie starts out being about David Dunn's imperviousness to illness and physical damage -- it's all there in the title -- but then ultimately shifts to the fact that he has extra sensory perception that helps him figure out who in the general public is committing crimes just by touching them. For one, I thought about how that same thing was already done much better in the Stephen King novel The Dead Zone and its excellent movie adaptation starring Christopher Walken. But I was also critical of how it needlessly moves off of the core thing about David that makes him interesting, which is his heretofore undiagnosed physical attributes. Sure, no superhero usually only has one thing about them that makes them distinctive, but having both an unusual physical gift and an unusual mental gift seems to be going a bit too far, and confusing the themes Shyamalan labors to unveil to us through copious amounts of thuddingly expository dialogue.

Lastly, why did both the parents of the kids David saves have to die? Sure it's good that the kids didn't also die, but it makes it a pretty downbeat act of heroism. I'd have thought that only the father dying -- which was necessary since it helped identify this janitor for him -- would have been enough. 

Both times I've watched Unbreakable I've watched it too late at night for its slow and deliberate pacing. I still retain the memory of struggling with it in the theater that night in late 2000. And last night I also did have to take a nap during the movie, though that's increasingly common these days with any movie that I start watching after 10 p.m.

But I don't think a third viewing of Unbreakable one day in the middle of the afternoon after a ten-hour night's sleep will make me appreciate it significantly more. I still consider it one of Shyamalan's best three films -- those being the first three that most of us saw, excluding the first two he made -- but that's more an indication of just how weak the rest of his output has really been. 

I haven't decided if I am concluding this weekend with a third movie tonight. If I do, it'll probably be either the third of those three best films -- Signs, which has always been my second favorite of his after The Sixth Sense, and which I have already seen multiple times -- or it will be picking up after Unbreakable with Glass, which I have not yet seen. I know Split fits into that chronology as well, but I don't feel the need to revisit that one before Glass, though I did like it. 

I guess I was disenchanted enough with Unbreakable that I now have to consider if I might like something like The Visit or the aforementioned Split -- or even something like The Village, which is when I thought Shyamalan really turned the corner toward becoming a hack -- better than it. But I may not put that question to the test, because I really have no intention of going down some Shyamalan rabbit hole at the exclusion of all the other projects I've already started in 2023. 

I once was Night, but now I'm Found

Found footage, that is.

Some people may be willing to go with the "once lost, now found" narrative for M. Night Shyamalan's career in terms of The Visit, but I'll only go as far as "found" in terms of found footage.

The Visit is almost certainly Shyamalan's best movie since Signs, but given the string of turkeys on his resume, that's pretty faint praise.

Still, it looks good and is genuinely creepy in parts, which means that it has already surpassed two-thirds of his filmography. (Most of those others looked good, but most of them made us laugh at the times they were supposed to be creeping us out.)

The "looks good" part is one of the causes for concern, though, because this is supposed to be a found footage movie. I mean, it is a found footage movie -- the "supposed to be" part relates to the fact that it's meant to look like it was shot by an amateur. Or two amateurs, in this case a teenage brother and sister. That it does not, and that's part of the problem.

Another problem is that there's something basically depressing about someone like Shyamalan having to try to find his groove in a genre as dessicated as found footage. There have actually been a number of found footage movies I've really liked in the past few years, such as Ti West's The Sacrament and Adam Robitel's The Taking of Deborah Logan, which actually covers thematically similar territory to The Visit. Still, it feels like a desperate refuge for someone like Shyamalan, who made his initial reputation on a tightly controlled type of compositional formalism. Then again, if there was anyone more desperate for something new than Shyamalan, I don't know who it would be.

Only the subgenre of found footage is new, though, really. There's a getting back to his basics element of The Visit that is surely causing those who are praising the movie to praise it. (I am not one of those who praises it, though I do marginally recommend it.)

In fact, it's kind of funny how many of Shyamalan's previous concerns are represented here in one way or another. And I'll be including a couple Visit spoilers here, so if that's a concern for you, you can stop reading now.

One of the most effective moments in The Sixth Sense, the one that still gives me a chill as I'm typing it now, is when that sick girl, the one whose mother is poisoning her, emerges vomiting from under that blanket. Well wouldn't you know it, vomiting factors prominently into the first night the kids detect there's anything wrong with their grandmother. The girl sees her walking straight forward downstairs and spewing up her dinner. The impact is significantly less in this film.

When the boy rises up and attacks his "grandfather" (not really his grandfather) at the end, it's very reminiscent of the "swing away" ending to Signs. Both involve a character who had been stunted in an athletic competition in their past, which had been eating away at them. Both moments involve that character taking action and atoning for their previous inaction, in order to save the day. This moment actually even has a bit of the ending of After Earth in it, as that also involved a boy who had to rise up and conquer his fears in a kill or be killed scenario.

Then there are little things that call back to his other films. The general affect of these grandparents is reminiscent of how the people in The Happening behave before they kill themselves. The stark appearance of the trees and other environment reminds a person a bit of The Village. And that part where the boy magically conjures a wall of ice to defeat an army of soldiers arriving by sea is straight out of The Last Airbender.

Wait, scratch that last one.

But despite the fact that he has made a blatantly unbelievable version of a found footage movie, and also is blatantly ripping off his own filmography, and also is blatantly ripping off other tired horror tropes (some of the way the grandmother is visualized owes a lot to Ringu and other Asian horror in which the hair obscures the character's eyes), The Visit is still quite watchable and has some enjoyable moments.

It also has likely bought Shyamalan, who already seemed to owe the longevity of his career to a deal with the devil, another couple movies.

Perhaps enough time to truly be found.

Famous Flops: After Earth

 
This is the final installment of my 2013 series Famous Flops, in which I have been watching one known turkey per month and writing about it.

The trick when assessing the quality of an M. Night Shyamalan movie is not to hate on it just because it's M. Night Shyamalan. Unfortunately, the man has reached a point in his career where it's almost impossible to go into one of his movies with an open mind. You tend to jump on any little thing that strikes you as ridiculous, when you'd give the benefit of the doubt to many other films.

So I need to be honest and say that After Earth is a bit boring and bland, more than it is outright wrongheaded. In fact, Mr. Shyamalan can be said to be treading water, creatively, as far as I'm concerned. Despite some laugh-out-loud moments in its first half, I actually felt that the critically reviled The Last Airbender had some value in it. After Earth may have about the same amount of value. Which is to say, not a lot, but some.

Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room: Jaden Smith. (I don't know why he's the elephant in the room. Forget I said that.) He's not really a good actor. The temptation is to call him a chip off the old block, but he's really not. He's okay. I was most convinced by him in The Pursuit of Happyness, when he was just a little kid, then not at all in The Day the Earth Stood Still. I haven't seen The Karate Kid, or any other movies he's made. He doesn't bring it here. He tries, and it's a really sweet kind of trying, but he just doesn't bring it. And the movie relies on his acting chops quite a bit. 

You see, he's sent off to find a rescue beacon that's in the other half of the ship his father and he crashed in, some 100 kilometers off on a planet called Earth, where humans used to live. They've long since vacated, as the planet (beautiful looking though it still is) has become toxic to human life. In fact, Smith Jr. needs special breathing capsules to help him breathe, and there's a question whether he'll make it the full 100 kilometers on the few remaining breathing capsules he has, let alone get back to the other half of the ship's wreckage, where his father (Smith Sr.) is in really bad shape with two broken legs.

In every Shyamalan movie you're looking for the high concept hook that attracted him to the project, and here it's more of a backdrop: Humans aren't safe in the other places they live, either. There they are being picked off by ferocious aliens who can't see them, but can track where they are by smelling their fear. The only way to beat them is to cultivate an absolute mastery over your fear, which is what Smith Sr. has done -- at this point you can walk right up next to them and slit their throats. This makes Smith Sr. an expert in the act of what's called "ghosting," and his son a trainee.

I do like that concept, but it's really not used in an interesting enough way. In fact, much of the movie is spent on set pieces where Smith Jr. has to face a certain obstacle between himself and the rescue beacon on Earth -- few if any of which involve the whole "mastery of fear" theme. I couldn't help but think of Shyamalan's The Happening during some of these scenes, because that movie involved the deadly threat embodied in ... trees. The earth is fighting back in a similar way here, but at least most of the threats are a little less inert, and ridiculous, than they were in that film.

That's the problem with where we find Shyamalan in his career right now. He seems to have gotten over the speed bump of really ridiculous fare, which I would argue started with The Village and carried on through Lady in the Water and The Happening. The first half of The Last Airbender is pretty ridiculous, but then it gets a bit better, and I would argue that this is where we find him with After Earth: no longer ridiculous, just boring. Which might be worse.

One aspect of his craft that's definitely still suffering is his direction of actors, which could be part of the explanation for Jaden Smith's less-than-stellar performance. Shyamalan and Will Smith have made the curious decision to excise any of the cheekiness and jovial spirit of a typical Will Smith character, leaving him totally humorless and almost robotic. While I wouldn't necessarily want a reprise of Smith saying "Welcome to Earth" from Independence Day -- though it would be thematically appropriate in this film -- I do think that they have managed to eradicate one of the main reasons people want to see Will Smith in a movie. A sci fi summer release wants the movie star Will Smith, not the actor Will Smith.

The film looks decent and is made competently enough. It's just sluggish and unremarkable.

Which brings us to the rather unremarkable ending of a rather unremarkable series. That's okay. Maybe this series about flops was destined to be something of a flop itself.

Up next: Twenty fourteen will bring us a new series that's appropriate to where I now live. That's the only tease I'll give you for now, with more to follow in January.

Making Jaden Smith happen

Will Smith has spent the better part of the past decade more interested in whether his son has a career than whether he has one.

And because he is such a Hollywood heavyweight with so much muscle -- both financial, and the more abstract power of his reputation -- it's hard to say whether Jaden Smith is "happening" organically, or merely through the force of Will Smith's ... well, Will Smith's will.

Put more simply: Is Jaden Smith really a star, or is Will Smith just succeeding in telling us he's a star?

What got me thinking about this was a billboard I saw recently for After Earth, which opens today, in which neither the senior Smith's name nor his face appears. It's kind of like the one you're seeing in this picture here, except it was horizontal rather than vertical, and there was no companion billboard feature only Will's name and face. (You'd be wise to ask, however, which is the elder and which is the younger. Starting with the Seven Pounds billboard a few years back, I swear they are doing some kind of reverse aging thing on Will Smith.)

Jaden Smith's solo billboard is designed to make us think that Jaden himself can open a picture, even without his daddy. But is that real, or is it just hype?

It'd help to take a little look at his career thus far. He's only 14 (for about another month), so this should be pretty quick.

Jaden of course debuted alongside his dad in the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness, which I actually thought was great. I don't have a strong memory of Jaden's performance in the film, but I suspect he seemed pretty natural -- a chip off the old block, as they say. It goes without saying that Jaden would not have appeared in this film without Will ... yet I just said it anyway.

His next feature was two years later in 2008, the awful remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And already, at not yet 10 years old, Jaden blows my theory out of the water. IMDB does not show Will Smith's name anywhere on this movie. Surely he worked his magic behind the scenes, but he wasn't so involved with the movie that he got a producer credit or anything.

Not the case for Jaden's next movie, which came out at another (parentally responsible) two-year interval: The Karate Kid in 2010. This movie probably makes the best case for Jaden being a true breakout star able to exist on his own merits, but I'll have to take other people's word for it because I still haven't seen it. And daddy definitely helped here: Both Will and Jada Pinkett Smith are credited as producers.

That brings us to After Earth, which reteams the buddy comedy duo from The Pursuit of Happyness. (That's a joke.)

Jaden got such an early start that it only feels like he's been around forever. At not even 15, Jaden probably isn't feeling desperate to get out of his father's shadow just yet. Though if I were him, I'd probably think twice about co-starring with his father again, at least not until he's in his 20s and the elder Smith is trying to make his first comeback. Time for this baby bird to spread his wings and fly.

Then and only then will we decide if this baby bird can carry his own billboard, let alone his own movie.

Of course, the elephant in the room about After Earth has nothing to do with either of the Smiths. The elephant is that After Earth is M. Night Shyamalan's latest attempt to reclaim the creative glory that has eluded him for something like six movies now. I'd say it was his last chance, but that's what I said when he made The Last Airbender, which ended up being one of his biggest flops. Yet here he is again, even though studios have long since stopped using his name to help market his movies.

So maybe Jaden catches a break here. If his movie stinks, maybe it won't be any kind of commentary on his star power after all.

M. Clint Shyamalan

I am getting a bit of a Shyamalany vibe from Hereafter.

Let's consider:

Central figure who can speak to the dead? Check.

Blue-toned, ethereal poster that suggests the possible involvement of aliens or mermaids? Check.

Bryce Dallas Howard? Check.

Five people trapped in an elevator where weird things start to happen? Well, okay, maybe not.

But I do think there's something a bit "from the man who brought you Lady in the Water" about this movie. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Actually, Hereafter vibes a couple other movies as well. It's multi-story, potentially planet-spanning narrative structure is reminiscent of Babel, while its images of flood (tidal wave, I think) remind me a bit of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Well, those were both best picture nominees, so I guess it could be worse.

Oh, and from an effects standpoint, I kind of want to see that tidal wave.

I do wonder at what point Clint Eastwood's furious pace of 1+ movies per year will finally render a true dud. His recent output has not been universally acclaimed, but people seem to generally appreciate films like Changeling, Gran Torino and Invictus. Well, if IMDB's timelines are accurate, at least he'll take 2011 off before coming back with Hoover, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, in 2012.

Even though Hereafter is only opening nationwide today, we came close to seeing it last weekend on limited release in Los Angeles. On the day my dad and his wife arrived in town last Saturday, we tried to go see The Town, but the rain had driven every single Angeleno to this one particular theater, meaning The Town was actually sold out. (Because the movie has been out for a month, that surprised us. But as we discovered the next day when we bought our tickets in advance, it was playing in one of the 30-seat couch theaters, explaining its surprise sold-out status.)

Playing in a larger theater, Hereafter was not sold out, but because it started an extra 25 minutes later and we didn't want to be gone from the baby for too long, we had to be worried about length. Seeing the massive line for the parking garage, I'd let my wife out on the curb to buy tickets. She called me with the bad news about The Town a couple minutes later. "Yeah, get tickets for Hereafter, as long as it's not like 2 hours and 20 minutes," I said.

Two minutes after that, she called back. I still hadn't entered the garage.

"It's 2 hours and 20 minutes," she said.

Shyamalan's Last chance - really

I can't believe I've had a blog for 18 months (almost to the day), and I have yet to write a post about M. Night Shyamalan.

His latest movie, The Last Airbender, comes out today. (I thought it was supposed to be tomorrow, but it appears to be today, so I'm moving this post up a day.) I actually think it looks like it will be, or at least could be, good. I have such faith in it, in fact, that I'm planning to see it tomorrow afternoon, assuming I get the traditional early release on the day before a three-day weekend.

But if it's not good, like the overwhelming evidence of the last six years' worth of Shyamalan movies would suggest, can we finally put this guy out to pasture?

Some people would even extend Shyamalan's streak of crapitude back further, but I happen to like Signs. I didn't much care for Unbreakable, though I did respect it. But let's say you take a person who didn't like Signs, and also didn't much care for Unbreakable -- like my wife. That person sees a writer-director who's made a career's worth of god-awful movies, on the strength of just one great one.

Because really, does anybody like The Village, Lady in the Water or The Happening?

I'm suggesting we need to pry the clapboard out of Shyamalan's hands, but if we did, we'd be deprived future instances of the sublime hilarity of these three films, each of which has contained at least one extended section that left me aghast at its ridiculousness.

In fact, so sure was I that Shyamalan was done after Lady in the Water, I was amazed to hear that someone had greenlit The Happening. Then, so sure was I that Shyamalan was done after The Happening, I was amazed to hear that someone had not only entrusted him with yet another movie, but had doubled or tripled his budget as well.

Now, one clear thing The Last Airbender has going for it is that it is based on material that did not originate in Shyamalan's head. By needing to adhere to the basic structure of a popular children's series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the man is less likely to botch a basically good idea with bursts of his trademark flaws: the overuse of twists being one, his developing God complex being another. (He cast himself as a writer who would be the savior of mankind in Lady in the Water.) What I'm hoping is that the brilliant direction that has made an appearance, however brief, in each of his films, will get a chance to shine here, and the writing won't get as much of a chance to torpedo the movie.

But if Shyamalan is being allowed to branch off in a new direction, and this also turns out to be professionally disastrous for him, how, I ask you, can Hollywood keep giving him work? The fact that he's doing something different, and still fucking it up, would certainly seem to be the Last straw, wouldn't it?

And it's not like Hollywood doesn't understand that he sucks. He's been dropped by studios and worn out his welcome on projects, and he was even the recipient of two Golden Raspberries for Lady in the Water: worst director and worst supporting actor (for the aforementioned writer-savior role). But -- at least for Shyamalan -- a hit shines more than a dud stinks, and The Sixth Sense has still been shining strong for Shyamalan some 11 years later.

IMDB does not currently have another directing project listed for Shyamalan, but I've been fooled by that one before. It does mention the first of three movies that Shyamalan is going to be writing and producing (but not directing) called The Night Chronicles. (For another sign of the man's ego, I invite you to look no further than here.) The first one, subtitled Devil, is about a group of people trapped in an elevator with the devil. Like most of his movies, it sounds interesting. But like most of his movies, it comes with a cloud over its head, symbolizing the high likelihood of its suckiness.

And even though the footage from The Last Airbender looks good, the guy just can't seem to escape controversy. The movie was criticized for using a predominantly white cast in an Asian-themed film. To be fair to Shyamalan, I'll have to reserve comment here until seeing the movie. At a glance, I don't necessarily see what the fuss is about, as the film features Indian actors Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi and Dev Patel (from Slumdog Millionaire), and Maori actor Cliff Curtis. And while those may not be Asian Asians, at least they are not white, per se. Then again, if all the heroes are white and all the villains are non-white, I guess the critics have a point. Besides, you can't really call it "branching out" for an Indian-born director to cast Indian actors in his films.

At least we can say one thing for sure about The Last Airbender -- if it's incompetent, it won't be incompetent in the same ways his other recent films have been incompetent. I think we all need a break from that particular brand of incompetence.

Because as much as I've laughed at Shyamalan's recent work, it's not like I've stopped watching. I too continue to be drawn in by the long-ago promise of The Sixth Sense, and to a lesser extent, Signs. As much as I blame Hollywood for forever giving M. Night Shyamalan one last chance, I've been doing the exact same thing myself.

Then again, I'll see anything, so I don't really count.