Silver wrote:Firstly, he does not treat him like a "complete idiot". Rather, he honestly assumes that Cole is making things up, as children often do. Now you can argue whether that's "malicious" or not, but his OWN MOTHER reacts the same way later on in the film when he tells her what he sees.Willis and Collette treat him with more respect either because they love him or try to give the illusion of that. Inwardly, they still think he's nuts/lying/disturbed for a good part of the film, and are often as obvious about it as you claim Stanley was. (No he wasn't)
Unbelievable. You really can't see the reactions of the teacher and Cole's mother are COMPLETELY different. For Stanley Cole is just another kid, Tony Collette cries when she finally understands what troubles his son.
Yes, AFTER the fact. This doesn't change the fact that patronizing glances are a part of life for weird, precocious little kids, which makes Cole's freak-out in that situation very poorly motivated.
There are specific lines of dialogue between them, which concern this: Cole - "You think I am a freak", Collette - "Cole, look at me! I would never, NEVER think that about you".
So if Cole thought she took him for a freak, why didn't he freak out on her?
Now what? You'll tell me that the central theme of the movie - the relationships between the kid and his mother are also fake? Without actually getting to that pivotal scene? And if you say a good psychologist would think even for a moment that his patient is nuts/lying, especially a patient like Cole, then you know nothing about psychology.
Are you really having problem understanding what I am saying to you with the Unbreakable example? Sure, you missed Unbreakable, but you have said this:Where did I EVER say a word about "Unbreakable"? Are you getting confused?
I still don't understand what the fuck "Unbreakable" has to do with any part of this discussion.
You have said that MANY Shyamalan movies are worse than Transformers. When you have actually watched one and a half of them (which is not MANY) and you have no idea whether you'll like or dislike Signs, The Village, The Happening, TLA, Wide Awake or Unbreakable.
You admitted YOURSELF that TLA sucks. I don't have to see it, when the person I'm arguing with already conceded that it was garbage. And I never said "worse than Transformers", but "every bit as crappy". There's a difference.
By the way, there were a lot of things you didn't respond to in your last post, among them this;
"HAHAHA. Wow, he got picked to play King Arthur in the school play when he was an outcast, a freak, and routinely bullied by all his classmates? What bullshit! Maybe it was a good thing I left the theater 30 minutes before the end of the movie, huh?"
You can not argue the bold part. It is just logically impossible. Even if you can show me a great movie done under the influence of the studio, that doesn't prove that without this influence the movie would be worse. Of course, cinema is a complex art and requires input from professionals in different areas (cinematography, music, sound design...), but the director ultimately is the one who decides what cinematography, music and sound design wants for his movie. And when Bruckheimer goes to Verbinski and says - "Look, let's fire Alan Silvestri, because I want the Pirates franchise to sound like Armageddon" this is a compromise which ruins everything.No one argued in favor of "compromising one's vision". (although I would argue this isn't ALWAYS a bad thing either, even if in most cases it is) Rather, the discussion was about whether to take certain critical comments in mind, instead of blindly ignoring all of them, as you suggested.
Again, the part in brackets wasn't what I was strictly arguing, but if you want an example of "compromising one's vision" being a GOOD thing, the classic example is Michael Cimino.
When he had free reign, he made a monstrously overpriced, overly long failure like "Heaven's Gate". With the yolk of studio control, he made "The Deer Hunter", "Magnum Force", and "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot".
Not everyone benefits from unlimited control. Perhaps most directors do, but there are exceptions.
As for the second part - the critical comments... In this particular case - with Shyamalan's hexalogy - the best part is exactly that he never listen to the critical comments and made his six movies as he would like them, without giving a shit who will be pissed that "omfgroflmao the aliens which are scared of water go to a planed full of water!!!!!".
Uh yeah, I would say that last point is quite significant.
Also, tuning out any criticism is completely different than making a typical studio-produced piece like TLA. In fact, I would argue the former is a major problem for a director; once he considers himself God and believes he can do no wrong, his movies suffer as a result.