Two titanic egos. One movie title. Who will win this battle of the Hollywood
kaiju? Yesterday proved an odd one in Hollywood, as Twentieth Century Fox announced its $200 million dollar deal with James Cameron for his movie "Avatar" the same day that Warner Brothers announced their deal with M. Night Shyamalan to direct the Nickelodeon movie called "Avatar." The two movies have nothing to do with each other, I assure you. Cameron's "Avatar" concerns a war between humans and aliens in the far distant future, and it promises special effects and motion capture technology previously unseen in support of an epic drama. Shyamalan's "Avatar" is about some idiotic twist that tricked his five year old, so it must be a mind-bender. Man, I despise Shyamalan. No doubt that Cameron will get the upper hand here. Despite taking a ten year absence from feature films, Cameron is widely and rightfully considered a genius filmmaker. While the storyline for "Avatar" leaves me a bit flat, I feel confident in saying that the film will probably feature several breathtaking sequences. Cameron is a master of the sequence; remember the first alien attack, or the Ripley/Queen battle, from "Aliens?" Or the the semi chase through Los Angeles in "Terminator 2?" Or the drowning sequence from "The Abyss?" Or the sinking of the Titanic in "Titanic?" Indelible images and moments. Shyamalan, on the other hand, has let his stock fall in Hollywood. He jumped out of the gate with "The Sixth Sense," only to show repeatedly that, while he is a gifted visualist, his boundless ego prevents him from seeing how his writing fails. Shyamalan initially won his last battle, when he successfully threw a tantrum over Disney's reluctance to finance "Lady in the Water" and moved his production to Warner Brothers. Then Shyamalan wrote a book disparaging Disney for not understanding his "vision." Unfortunately, nobody except Shyamalan's (apparently retarded) children understood his vision, because the movie flopped utterly. Shyamalan = loser. Shyamalan will not win this battle, either. Cameron has been gestating his "Avatar" for eleven years, and is one of the great directors of our time, a man who has proven himself commercially and artistically over many years. Shyamalan is a lucky hack, the directorial equivalent of a snake oil salesman. So it was with confidence that Fox, as Matt reported, announced later yesterday: "We own the movie title 'Avatar.' There won't be another film called 'Avatar' coming from anyplace." Yet another humiliation for Shyamalan, the one man incapable of learning from his mistakes. I wonder what bedtime story he'll tell his kids when this one fails. source -
Variety