I almost used "Butt" in the title, but it just didn't seem strong enough.

I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  It wasn't the first time, and likely won't be the last.  It's a really good read.  It also led me to ponder what became the subject for this blog entry.

If you haven't seen the Harry Potter films, stop whatever you are doing, take a step back, and walk calmly into the 21st century.  If you haven't read the books, well, that's OK if you've seen the films.  And that's the point; there isn't a whole lot of difference.  Granted, if you loved the films then it's worth your time to read the books.  There are a quite a few choice moments that didn't make it into video, such as at the very beginning when Dursley is on his way to work before Hagrid drops off Harry, and sees a bunch of unsavory weird people in robes and pointed hats celebrating, a rash of owls flying around in the daylight, and shooting stars over London.  That much is to be expected, you can't really put every little detail in a book into the movie.

But over all, they're almost the same.  I don't think that the Quirrel's mountain troll and Snape's potion obstacles in the dungeon were in the movie, and some of the scenes were a trifle more dramatic than in the book, but by and large, if you know one you know the other.  The plot was the same.  Hermione was Hermione, and Draco was just as despicable either way.  (That they had Harry meet Moaning Myrtle in the girls' bathroom instead of at Nearly Headless Nick's deadday party is a bit annoying, though.) When Kloves wrote the screenplay, and when Columbus directed they knew something important: Harry Potter had a fan base.

People loved the story.  They loved the characters.  Well, except for the Malfoys, Crabbe and Goyle, Voldemort, Peter Pettigrew, Bellatrix LeStrange and some others, but you're supposed to hate them.  Kloves and Columbus understood that in that fan base there was gold.  They are the ones who would watch the very first film before others, and they would be the ones to pass on the information whether it was great or if it sucked.

You really don't want to piss off the fan base.

Peter Jackson had the same understanding when he embarked on his ambitious Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Tolkien also has his fan base.  If you doubt that in any way look at the effort that went into The Encyclopedia of Arda. When I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring, it was with a gang from work, funded by our boss, who was a big fan himself.  I was apprehensive, because I had seen so many disappointing screw-ups before.  But when I left the theater, I was thrilled.  "They didn't screw it up! They didn't screw it up!"  It was the first film I'd seen that did Tolkien justice.  OK, I missed Tom Bombadil and the barrow wights, but again, you can't put in everything.  The plot was true, and Boromir was definitely Boromir.

They didn't piss off the fan base.

Which brings us to M. Night Shyamalan.  He blew me away with some of his earlier stuff. The Sixth Sense: I didn't see it coming.  The Village: I didn't see it coming.  Unbreakable, Signs, and The Happening were all pretty good.  Not quite Hitchcock, but he knows how to do suspense.  I keep thinking that he should have done The Others, because I didn't see that one coming, either, but that was Alejandro Amenábar.

Then Shyamalan did The Last Airbender, and that was where he screwed up.

The story was ... sort of ... like the original.  He spent half the movie dancing around a fairly minor moment in the original plot, but that much is OK, isn't it?  Katara was fairly true, Aang and Zuko sort of familiar, but Sokka was unrecognizable, even if he did have the same name.

What the hell was Shyamalan thinking?  I don't know the man personally, so I can't accuse him of being arrogant, thinking his ideas are better than anyone else's.  They're not, necessarily.  Maybe he had some bad advisers, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe The Sixth Sense had gone to his had and stayed there.  I don't know.

I am guessing (and it is just a guess) that Avatar did not have as huge a fan base as Harry Potter, but it was rabid, and Shyamalan  pissed it off.

Being more flexible than many of my anime-addicted friends, I could probably have lived with it and gone on to see the second movie.  But most of them were explosively irate.  Some would never go to see another Shyamalan film ever again, and certainly would not go see Book Two of The Last Airbender.  And that's what leads to my major point of aggravation.  The business end of the concern recognized what had happened, and although the first film did gross a respectable $320 million, much of that was from fans who wouldn't come back.  They worry if they completed the other two films, both would lose money as the fans would drive by the theater just to flip the films the bird.  Toph is my favorite character and I was eager to see what they did with her.  Now I'll never know.

Darn you, M. Night Shyamalan!  You probably sat there thinking the audience failed to see your artistic input.  That's not it at all.  If you want to be successful, your "artistic" input matters not.  You have to make the audience happy.

But you didn't.  You pissed off the fan base.  I could have warned you about that had I known what you intended, but then so could about 100 million other fans.

And that's how Steve Kloves, Chris Columbus, and Peter Jackson kicked your ass.  They didn't.

/caption]

Being more flexible than many of my anime-addicted friends, I could probably have lived with it and gone on to see the second movie.  But most of them were explosively irate.  Some would never go to see another Shyamalan film ever again, and certainly would not go see Book Two of The Last Airbender.  And that's what leads to my major point of aggravation.  The business end of the concern recognized what had happened, and although the first film did gross a respectable $320 million, much of that was from fans who wouldn't come back.  They worry if they completed the other two films, both would lose money as the fans would drive by the theater just to flip the films the bird.  Toph is my favorite character and I was eager to see what they did with her.  Now I'll never know.

Darn you, M. Night Shyamalan!  You probably sat there thinking the audience failed to see your artistic input.  That's not it at all.  If you want to be successful, your "artistic" input matters not.  You have to make the audience happy.

But you didn't.  You pissed off the fan base.  I could have warned you about that had I known what you intended, but then so could about 100 million other fans.

And that's how Steve Kloves, Chris Columbus, and Peter Jackson kicked your ass.  They didn't.