M. Night

by Adam Reger

For reasons relating to my being unsure of how various parts of this blog work, for an early post I ended up creating a Category called “M. Night Shyamalan.” Thus giving the casual reader the impression that I blog about that dude, like, all the time. (I blogged about him once, in the context of planning to go see The Last Airbender, which my brother had been a production assistant on. Astute readers will note that I never again mentioned that movie, and if those readers are really astute they’ll be able to guess why.)

Also because of my lack of technical skill at this whole blog thing, I’ve decided it would be easier to write more about M. Night than deleting that category. Which I’m sure would only mean that that earlier post would belong to one fewer category, but in my mind WordPress itself would somehow be structurally damaged by the removal of this crucial category tag.

Anyway, the AV Club posted this item about Shyamalan possibly doing an Unbreakable sequel. It is an interesting possibility mainly because Unbreakable led all the way up to the exact point where you would typically be interested in a superhero movie, and then stopped; it makes sense as part of a multi-part narrative, but as a third or fourth installment, or, better yet, a straight-to-DVD prequel-type thing that completists would go nuts for. It’s a pretty silly movie that, in my opinion, “worked” only in the warm glow of goodwill from Shyamalan’s success with The Sixth Sense. So a sequel that picked up on the promise of a superhero showdown might actually be interesting.

It’s not to be, the AV Club item reports. But what made me think I ought to post this (other than having that annoying M. Night category to populate; seriously, I wish I could just get rid of it) was this transitional line from Sean O’Neal (whose writing on that site is kind of a surprise pleasure; I’m such a fan of Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin, and Scott Tobias, it’s a bonus to enjoy stuff from other contributors, the moreso when it’s material like this item that would seem to be mere toss-offs): “Showing his usual acumen for giving the public exactly what he wants . . .”

Yes. Exactly. Thank you, Sean O’Neal.