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I’m not saying extensive mythology can’t be done. And eventually the audience checked out because they couldn’t keep up with it all.
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There were narfs and scrats and water people and tree people and eagles and madame narfs and rules upon rules upon rules of how this universe was supposed to work.
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This was the downfall of Lady In The Water. If you try and make your mythology too extensive, it will become bigger than the story, and begin to drown it. But if you’re hearing the same thing over and over again, get away from the script (maybe not for a whole year, but for a little bit) come back, and try to see that critique through fresh eyes.Ĥ) Don’t drown your story in mythology – Mythology is the world and rules behind that story you’ve created. I’m not saying that every critique will be right. So I changed it from him going to the future to save himself to him going to the future to save his wife. I eventually put the script down, picked it back up a year later, and saw exactly what everyone was talking about. So I stubbornly wrote a few more drafts MY WAY, but that same criticism kept coming back. I’d built this character from the ground up and there was no way in my mind I could see him as someone other than what I created. A producer eventually suggested, “Instead of him trying to save himself, why not have him try to save someone else?” I immediately dismissed his suggestion. Almost everyone who read the script felt that the hero was too selfish. There’s a lot of chasing around – double-crossing – that kind of thing. Things don’t go cleanly when he gets there. A long time ago, I wrote a script about a guy who was dying of brain cancer who had to jump into the future to get it fixed. So always listen to criticism and even if you don’t agree with the critic, try to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying.ģ) Criticism Example – Let me give you an example. It may be that you didn’t present the information in a way that allowed them to get it. Too many young writers blow this off, believing the reader “didn’t get it.” It may not be that they didn’t get it. As a writer, it’s your job to LISTEN to what somebody is saying when they critique your screenplay. Write a good story, and then have theme and symbolism SUPPLEMENT that.Ģ) Listen to criticism – For some odd reason, Night continues to make the same mistakes over and over again (prioritizing theme and symbolism being one of those mistakes), despite nobody going to see his films anymore. You may impress your old English professor. Let me make something clear to you: If you ever write something where theme or symbolism is more important than story, you will never sell your script. He’s said in the past that a story must meet something like 7 criteria for him to make it, and most of that criteria involves theme and symbolism. It’s really bad! Let’s dig in.ġ) Never place symbolism or theme above story – This is Night’s Achilles heal. In order to get her back to her world (the “Blue World”), Cleveland will need to learn about her strange universe and enlist the help of all the tenants in the building. I remember watching it and just thinking, “What WAS that?” For those who didn’t see the film, it’s about a middle-aged sclumpy apartment building manager (“Cleveland,” played by Paul Giamatti) who’s visited by a strange girl (named “Story” – no, I’m not kidding) who seems to have arrived via the pool in the middle of the complex.
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But I think this one represents a lot of what’s wrong with Night as a writer. Sure, his next film (The Happening), was worse. I picked “Lady In The Water” to analyze because I believe it’s the moment audiences first began to realize that M. Night had some humility and took himself a little less seriously, he’d endear a lot of those fans to come back to his side (or at least not spend half their day pounding him on message boards). after a flop is to insinuate that critics and audiences don’t “get it.” Maybe if M. While he never comes out and says it, his m.o. Night haters is that he’s so defiant about his script’s problems. But I think the real reason there are so many M. That’s resulted in a huge backlash against him. He’s since directed six films that the majority of people consider to be really bad (with the exception of maybe Signs). He came out of the gate with two hit movies and everyone was anointing him the next Steven Spielberg. I don’t think there are five directors in history who have had as unusual of a career as M.