New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Titanic
The issue is that we don’t learn. There was no good reason to think that Titanic would fail. Yes, it was a big movie, but it was hearkening back to the days when epic romances were the norm, not the outliers. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet weren’t wildly famous, but they were young, pretty, and good enough actors for the material. And also, the film’s writer and director, James Cameron, didn’t make unsuccessful films. His two Terminator films were both hits, the second one being one of the biggest and most influential action films ever. Aliens, True Lies…we’re talking about some big, big movies here. And Titanic, at the time, was the biggest of them all. A movie making anywhere more than $500 million was unheard of in 1997, and is still pretty rare these days, as only three movies have gotten that much money.

One of the others is, of course, The Dark Knight. The final one is yet another movie that came from James Cameron, yet another movie that people were incredibly skeptical about: Avatar. Avatar is now the highest-grossing film of all time, making $750 million domestically, and nearly $2 billion more everywhere else in the world. And it was made possible, doubting and all, thanks to the wild success of Titanic, the movie that made Cameron the self-proclaimed king of the world. Yes, he waited 12 years between movies, but when you’re working on a movie so full of groundbreaking technology as Avatar, can you blame him? We may not think Avatar is an amazing movie (I’m curious to see how it plays as a Blu-ray without 3D enhancement), but it is a movie that only happens when you have carte blanche in Hollywood.

The Sixth Sense

Yeah, yeah, I know. M. Night Shyamalan? How could he have carte blanche status? Certainly, you think, after The Sixth Sense, it’s not a crazy idea. That movie was written, produced, and directed by a young Indian-American who was hailed as the next Steven Spielberg. It lead to a couple of solidly performing films, one that did well but is disliked, and two out-and-out failures. Oh, and he also directed The Last Airbender, which most people have seen and hated (I wouldn’t know, but word-of-mouth is what it is). Though most people aren’t fans of that movie, it’s still likely going to become Shyamalan’s third highest-grossing film. So the question is: what does M. Night Shyamalan need to do to never make a movie ever again? He’s made the horror film about wind attacking people. He’s made the movie about the mermaid in the apartment. What does he need to do?

There’s no question that Shyamalan is considered something of a joke to fanboys (and it’s really hard to argue that status; just watch his most recent films). That aside, however, he’s attracted a wide swath of actors in his films, from Bruce Willis to Samuel L. Jackson to Sigourney Weaver to Joaquin Phoenix to Paul Giamatti. Someone thinks he’s doing something right. The Last Airbender may end up with an impressive-sounding number (as you read this, it’s probably made about $100 million), but the budget was massive, 3D prices helped the box office, and again, most people who saw the movie hate it. What does Shyamalan need to do to lose his carte blanche status? This one’s a baffling question, but nothing seems to do the trick. This is one carte blanche director who should be working a lot harder to get movies made.

Continued:       1       2       3