>Praying with Anger was a fine debut film. And Wide Awake was
>decent, much better than Lady in the Water. Regardless of
>whether you or anyone else you know saw them, they exist.

True. But in my original post, I said this:
"every movie M. Night has made since Sixth Sense was inferior to the ones before it.

I think most people would agree that Sixth Sense was his best movie, and the one that "made" him."

Note that I said "since Sixth Sense" because I knew he had done previous movies, but that they weren't relevant to the point I was making.

And I said that Sixth Sense "made him" - not that it was his first movie. So my starting point in the discussion is when he became a popular mainstream director, not when his career actually began.

It would be hard to discuss his early movies considering so few people have seen them and can weigh in.


>Nobody talks about them because once he did Sixth Sense,
>people only wanted to talk about twist endings.

This post isn't really about twist endings; it's about the quality of the films as a whole. (and as I've come to realize, it's more about the writing than the directing, which I didn't make clear originally because I hadn't thought it through)


>That, and because people lazily repeat that Sixth Sense was
>his first film. Whether people talk about them or not, Sixth
>Sense was not his first film. Perpetuating that falsehood only
>contributed, initially, to this wunderkind mythology that
>people had built up around him, and now only feeds the hate
>because he'll never again achieve the level of Sixth Sense.

Fair points I suppose. But we often ignore the beginnings of someone's career in the "pre-stardom" period. It's not unique to M. Night, though I don't have other examples off-hand.

And my claim that his career has been on a downard slope since Sixth Sense is not debunked by the fact that he made two relatively obscure movies before that point.


>I've always remained a fan of his, even though I really,
>really hated The Village and Lady in the Water and was mildly
>disappointed with Signs,

Agreed on Lady and Signs, but I really liked The Village.


>because I knew based on his earliest
>work that he was capable of doing a lot more than just twist
>endings and overblown hype.

Not sure if you're addressing me, but I never said or implied that. He has sort of developed the rep of the "twist ending" guy, and it can't be totally on accident. At some point he embraced that notion, because he kept making them that way...


>People who discount his earliest
>work are more likely to think he was just a one-trick pony who
>is deserving of "downward trajectory" discussion threads.

I don't think he's a one trick pony at all, and I certainly hope he can reverse the downward trajectory that unfortunately describes his current career pretty well.