Full $71M breakdown for The Village by M. Night Shyamalan (2003) [pdf]

I had a girlfriend in Denmark and travelled throughout the whole of covid. In Denmark the restrictions weren’t just less they were at different times. Which is the biggest deal because if you move about and the rules are all different they don’t make any sense and hence don’t impose a sense of ordered control. I’d have coffee on the high street in Denmark and then be berated on a train in London the day after by a crazed wild eyed old lady ( who understandably ) had spent the last 6 months or so quarantined in a basement and was cross I was drinking coffee and lowering a mask ( no masks were even required in Denmark that I remember)when I mentioned I had literally been in cafe without a mask the day before it wasn’t a look of annoyance but utter confusion. Understand this was during the height where everything was closed lockdowns extending the darkest moment before the dawn type thing.

The different timing of the rules is what honestly made me not experience the restrictions - just an odd confusion.

Lastly I remember I walked to the airport , told a stewardess in the airport I was going to try fly same day to Denmark and she looked at me like I was insane ( 3 day covid testing required).

I bought a ticket from a machine walked straight into a place with a passport check landed in Denmark - no test. ( when flying to Denmark the test could be done on landing at the airport I have no idea why but it was legal - they just didn’t bother to mostly)

The airport lady wouldn’t have believed it but even to her , working in global field - changing global differences hadn’t registered.

TLDR You CAN have a The Village situation IRL I experienced it!!

I felt exactly the same about signs, and really loved the village.

I don’t really like the world we’ve built, and I fantasize about leaving it behind. That’s a major reason I lived in the Yukon for years (many people living more like the village than outside it)

These people (the village founders) had an idea and went for it. I really like that.

Signs is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The plot makes no sense and it’s not like it has good character development or dialogue so that leaves nothing.

Yep. Signs was the movie that revealed to me my irrational fear of aliens walking in the distance for uncertain purpose.

Not joking, I am a big strong man but I was holding onto my girlfriend and shaking like a leaf during that movie.

Then the water scene happens and ruined the whole movie for me.

But I still get hairs standing up on the back of my neck if I think too long and hard about 7' tall aliens walking sideways in the distance. (Actually getting creeped out just typing this out).

I love it that there is a thought that can disturb me. I don't know where it comes from and I can't exactly control it.

Anyway, same thing with the Village. Great mood. Great cinematography. Great acting. Supernatural horror ominous period piece. So much well crafted build up that ended with an unfunny rehash of the ending of Monty Python's Holy Grail. Total cop out to the rest of the story. Unforgivable.

I'm a fan of the "aliens are demons" and "the water is holy" (you know, because he's a priest) interpretation.

It's a stretch, but makes the water fit into the story better (in my opinion).

It isn't only the twist, though, it's the timing of the twist. Plenty of movies with that kind of twist are re-watchable, but you have to put that twist about ... two-thirds, three-fifths of the way through. The rest of the film is devoted to the protagonist exploring the consequences of realizing that one of their big axioms was wrong. Shyamalan's timing puts the twist at the end, the characters don't really get to react, etc.

I swear I know this twist from a short story in an English textbook I read in school. Seemingly set in the mid-19th century, a pair of young teens, maybe a group of three, were in the process of exploring outside their village (I think with the intention of leaving for good) -- knowing it’s not allowed by village authorities -- when they walked onto a modern paved road and saw the headlights from a vehicle and didn’t know what they were looking at.

I never watched the movie but from all the conversations I’ve heard about it, it sounds like that’s the twist. This 19th-century village is just a probably slightly cult-y hideaway for some people in modern times. Is that right?

> the big problem with them is how much hinges on the twist

I feel similar but different to JJ Abrams' Cloverfield universe. Cloverfield Lane and Cloverfield Paradox are just 2 movies where he attaches a random scene at the end to tie them into the Cloverfield universe. Those scenes have nothing to do with the movie, and if left off would not negatively affect the movie itself.

Your critique is totally spot on. I can’t stomach Shyamalan’s current movies. Oddly though despite the cheap plot twist and how much it got made fun of in the media at the time, I love The Sixth Sense. I still watch it to this day. The scene where Cole sees the dead biker and tells his mom they’re standing outside the car window? Goosebumps every time.

Up until Con Air, neither Nicholas Cage nor John Cusack had made a bad movie (well, -maybe- one each).

Criterion Collection material, certainly.

A lot of people confuse which one Shayamalan is.

Movie goers buy individual tickets which makes a huge difference vs radio. Unpopular movies get booted from theaters very quickly where unpopular songs can stick around on the radio indefinitely.

And it doesn’t matter how connected you are, movie flops quickly kill careers.

Yeah, sixth film credit… but the second one for which her character had a name.

And that other film appears to have had a box office under $1.4m, with a collection of basically nobody notable attached, including the director.

And then you’re stuck paying for every cast and crew for the time they are not working. If you end up having to shoot another day, you’ll have to pay that too, which may not be budgeted for. This can easily put the value of a few lost minutes of power into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It’s very similar to the discussion of self hosted vs cloud providers. Business people are willing to pay more for a predictable cost, rather than save a significant chunk of change but run the risk of having an unpredicted event that ends up with a large extra cost (such as replacing a whole rack tower

The technicians are good at configuring and fixing issues but they don’t have the ability to call up Avid and demand a new machine get overnight courier carried to replace one

Not necessarily are producers involved in any budgeting. My First Wife and I were producers on a film that was made from a stage script of her. Our role as producers gave us vetoes on screenplay changes and gave us a hand in the production, plus royalties, but we had no hand in securing the budget or spending it.

I would have thought producer is akin to a board of directors, and director is akin to CEO.

Make-up and hair seem quite critical to the atmosphere and look of a movie like The Village which is set in an ambiguous time and place. I think this was probably an interesting project for the make-up designer, and IMO he/she deserved the $105k fee.

The auteur theory at work.

Found it!

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/hollywood-n... (Feb 27, 2006)

And they do have budget documents for other films

I liked it too. There's a bit near the start where one of the characters makes some comment with slightly awkward-sounding wording; I forget what, precisely, but it was exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a modern English speaker fluffing an attempt to stay in character as a Victorian or whatever. They even sounded a bit like they were half-realising this as they were saying it.

I put it down to a mistake that they didn't have time to fix. But then, given the ending, I realised it must have been deliberate.

Sometimes new people are added to the world and it can take a while to catch up, though.

I never saw it.