10 Movies ONLY MADE In Response To Film Critics
9. M. Night Shyamalan Made Critics The Literal Villain - The Lady In The Water
M. Night Shyamalan has made it abundantly clear over the years that he's incredibly sensitive to critical opinion, enough that he even admitted crying when he read the negative reviews for his most recent film, Glass.
But Shyamalan's fraught relationship with critics was literalised on-screen in his 2006 film Lady in the Water, which served as the follow-up to one of the more divisive films in his filmography, The Village.
The Village marked the point at which critics began to turn on the filmmaker, feeling that he over-relied on absurd plot twists to bolster his movies.
A clearly hurt Shyamalan responded by incorporating this into the plot of Lady in the Water, with the film's human "antagonist" being caustic film critic Harry Farber (Bob Balaban), who continually pokes holes in the film's own logic as though Shyamalan wants to get there before the actual critics do.
Unsurprisingly, the snooty Farber dies by film's end, but the true nuttiness lies in Shyamalan casting himself in a major role as Vick Ran, an author whose ideas are powerful enough to change the world, and who ends up martyring himself in order for his ideas to be heard.
It all backfired spectacularly, then, when Lady in the Water tanked with audiences as well as critics, many noting the ego-centric nature of Shyamalan's story and the questionable decision to cast the rather likeable Balaban as the a**hole critic.