re: M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" is actually a solid movie

The part I hated about it the most is when he put himself in the damn movie at the end... he always does it, but still annoying

Night did a great job with this movie as far as the ambiance and feel of it (but he's always been good at that). The story itself is kinda silly but unique, but whatever.

Still not a terrible movie for early 2000s terror standards.

quote:

---

I could not get past the HUGE plot hole (water as weakness leftover from "Unbreakable" apparently). The worst part of it was the aliens being out in a corn field at night when corn gets covered with dew. Other than that, it was a decent SciFi pic with good acting.

---

This will sound like I'm being a dick, but I'm not...but you are one of the people I always talk about when I discuss the hatred of Signs. You completely missed the point of the entire movie.

Signs isn't a movie about aliens. It's a movie about faith. More specifically, it's about a religious man (priest) who has lost his faith and him rediscovering it. And the water being there, the son having an asthma atrack right as the alien sprays the toxin, Merrill being a baseball player/"swing away" with the bat right there, etc. All of it fell into place perfectly on purpose, and it all helped Mel Gibson find his faith again.

And as far as the water thing, there are any number of explanations that could suffice for that. First off, this planet is 2/3 water, but there is a shite pile of land around. So them coming here isn't stupid. Secondly, things like dew or moisture in the air...clearly those small amounts of water don't affect them. They sent scouts and later attacked (this was directly mentioned in the movie actually), so clearly that moisture wasn't an issue. For example, I'm highly allergic to poison ivy, but can walk through a field of it and be fine as long as I don't touch it and whatnot. Even though the earth is littered with water, it's pretty easy to avoid.

Finally. People with sense on this board.

quote:

---

My biggest complaint about The Village was that I read this book in 5th grade

---

thats how I felt when I realized my GF at the time had taken me to a Pride and Prejudice adaptation w/Bridget Jones Diary. About 20 minutes in I was like "Damn, this dude is just like Darcy in P&P. He's even played by Colin Firth like the BBC version... wait... aww frick I know exactly what's happening the rest of the way! "

Back to The Village, I ask again:


SPOILER


Why were people speaking in old English dialects (Sigourney's dialogue was especially silly) if these were modern people?

The way I see it, M. Night cheated badly.

quote:

---

speaking in old English dialects

---

They couldn't have been speaking in Old English. I understood what they were saying.

No that was actually one of the clues to the plot. It was a group of modern people trying to sound like an old dialect. This is why the accents and phrases were sometimes odd and inconsistent. I remember saying early on that the accents were terrible. Then I began to wonder if it was on purpose. I liked the movie.

that was actually quite genius to have the accents sound bad and inconsistent...the characters themselves are not classically trained actors. if they all had perfect victorian accents it would be fake...they were just normal people...not actors so them affecting an accent would sound bad for the most part.

quote:

---

that was actually quite genius to have the accents sound bad and inconsistent...the characters themselves are not classically trained actors. if they all had perfect victorian accents it would be fake...they were just normal people...not actors so them affecting an accent would sound bad for the most part.

---

This is a good point. I think the accent matter serves as an overall theme of the movie. Namely, they had retreated to this village to try and recreate an idealistic time in history that they think was real. In actuality, that idealistic time is illusory, just like their inability to recreate the way people spoke during that time.

I'm grateful for this thread. The more I think about this movie the more I think that it is not only underrated, but it is also pretty visionary.

quote:

---

this movie was released before he started getting too much flack

---

Actually this was the movie that began causing the flack for him. I remember coming out of the theater 11 years ago and hating this movie. I have not seen a single scene of this film since that time. Ever since The Village, M. Night has been on a critical losing streak the likes of which I have never seen from an Oscar-nominated writer/director:

The Village: 43%
Lady in the Water: 24%
The Happening: 17%
The Last Airbender: 6%
After Earth: 11%