Theme Song of the Week: Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990 - 1996)

Movie Trailer: Hook (1991)

Robots of the 1990s: A Gallery

Pound for pound, it seems like 1990s cinema and TV series did not feature many robots, at least in comparison to the seventies and eighties. 

Robots guest starred on episodes of the ascendant Star Trek franchise infrequently, and old designs, like the Lost in Space robot, or Mecha-Godzilla, were re-booted for a new age.

Still, some amazing robots appeared for the first time in the 1990s, including the (animated) Iron Giant, and the new droids of the Old Republic Age, in The Phantom Menace (1999).

Identified by David: Hardware (Mark 13)

Identified by Hugh: Robocop 2

Not Identified: Robot Jox

Identified by Hugh: Star Trek: The Next Generation "Quality of Life" (Exocomps)

Identified by SGB: Alien 3 (Bishop)

Identified by David: MechaGodzilla.

Identified by Hugh: Earth 2

Identified by Hugh: Space Precinct

Identified by Hugh: Star Trek Voyager: "Prototype."

Identified by Hugh: Alien Resurrection (Call)

Identified by Hugh: Lost in Space (1998)

Identified by Hugh: The Iron Giant

Identified by Hugh: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999)/Battle Droids

From the Archive: SeaQuest DSV: Season One (1993 - 1994)

"It's because we all came from the sea, and it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears.  We are tied to the ocean.  And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or watch it -- we are going back from whence we came."

The stirring and passionate words printed above come from our late, great Commander-in-Chief, President John F. Kennedy, and they open the inaugural episode of Rockne S. O'Bannon's genre series, SeaQuest DSV (1993 - 1996) on a pitch perfect note.

These poetic words hint at a few of the reasons why many sci-fi fans fell in love with the 1990s TV program, or at least wanted to fall in love with the TV program. 

Like outer space -- the final frontier -- the sea is a realm of seemingly infinite mystery, beauty and excitement.   Personally, I've been obsessed with undersea adventures of submarines and submarine crews since I first read Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a child.

The weekly opening narration of Sea Quest DSV also described the mission in satisfactory terms: "The 21st century: mankind has colonized the last unexplored region on Earth; the ocean. As captain of the seaQuest and its crew, we are its guardians, for beneath the surface lies the future..."

I admire and appreciate how that passage is assembled.  It notes that the ocean is not just our past (per the Kennedy quote), but our destiny, our future.  And it marks us, along with the crew of the SeaQuest, as "guardians" of a realm that is constantly in danger because of human pollution and mismanagement.  Again, this is a promising prologue to adventure.

Produced by Steven Spielberg, SeaQuest DSV aired for fifty-seven hour-long episodes over two-and-a-half seasons on NBC, and ultimately sailed through some very choppy waters.  In broad terms, the series is a kind of update and re-imagining of Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964 - 1968) concerning a state-of-the-art submarine on missions of scientific exploration, political intrigue and even, from time-to-time, the fantastic. 

Whereas Voyage relied heavily on detailed miniature effects, SeaQuest is truly a product of the early 1990s, overly-dependent on computer-generated images and digital vistas for its special effects.  On this front, Voyage beats out SeaQuest, alas.  I watched the pilot episode of Voyage recently, and the miniature effects and model work featured there were far more impressive than SeaQuest's early CGI efforts, which are murky, occasionally cartoony, and lacking in the requisite detail fans of high-tech subs might hope for.

The SeaQuest DSV pilot, "To Be or Not To Be" lays the groundwork for the series proper.  Directed by Irvin Kershner, it is set in the year 2019, as the newly-formed UEO (United Earth Oceans) attempts to police the seas, which -- because of resource scarcity on dry land -- have become a kind of underwater wild west.   Farmers, settlers and miners have set up facilities all over the ocean floor, but are menaced by "non-aligned" countries and "warrior subs."

The SeaQuest (Deep Submergence Vehicle 4600), a newly-built 1,000 ft. long submarine, is the UEO's ambassador to the underwater world.  It is designed to function "not as a warship" but as "a peace keeper."  The vessel is "the largest deep sea exploration vehicle ever," and outfitted with  a crew of 124 scientists and 88 military personnel. 

Buttressed by state-of-the-art research equipment such as "hyper-reality" probes (think virtual reality) and WSKRs systems (Wireless Sea Knowledge Retrieval Satellites), the SeaQuest also features a hydroponics lab, and even a holographic advisor for the commanding officer.  That advisor, the Professor (William Morgan Sheppard) is designed to serve as a captain's "moral" barometer in times of crisis and tough decisions.   

The only problem, as the series begins, is that SeaQuest's former captain, Marilyn Stark (Shelley Hack) has been removed from command for attempting to start a nuclear conflict over a minor territorial issue.  Admiral Noyce (Richard Herd) wants to recruit the designer of SeaQuest, Nathan Bridger (Roy Scheider) as the new captain, because he believes a "cool head" is required to balance the military and scientific factions on board ship (think: Maquis and Starfleet personnel on Voyager, a few years later). 

At first, Bridger is reluctant to assume command of the SeaQuest, because he wants to honor a promise to his dead wife, Carol, never to return to the military.

But, once aboard the magnificent SeaQuest, Bridger finds himself involved in the mission to stop Captain Stark, who has gone rogue and is now captaining a renegade warrior sub.

After success on this initial outing, Bridger accepts command of the "boat," and leads a top-flight crew into missions of jeopardy and wonder. 

Among the other crew members on SeaQuest are the headstrong executive officer, Jonathan Ford (Don Franklin), the acerbic but brilliant head of science and medicine, Dr. Kristin Westphalen (Stephanie Beacham), Chief Engineer Katherine Hitchcock (Stacy Haiduk) and communications officer Tim O'Neill (Ted Raimi), who is fluent in six languages.

Other notable crew members and passengers on the first season of SeaQuest DSV include the shifty morale officer and con man, Krieg (John D'Aquin), teenage genius and computer wiz, Lucas Wolenczak (Jonathan Brandis) and Darwin, a dolphin who can communicate verbally with Bridger and the others using a new universal-translator-styled device called a "vocorder."  The ship's security chief is a traditional navy man, Chief Croker (Royce D. Applegate).

The highest rated new program of its premiere week (with 16.9 million viewers watching), SeaQuest DSV started off very strong, and attempted a very delicate alchemy that, eventually, became unbalanced with the second season.

In the first season episodes, by and large, there was a dedicated attempt every week on SeaQuest to marry a hard-science concept or mission, with some small but more fantastical aspect of the sci-fi genre. 

In "Treasure of the Mind," for instance, the SeaQuest discovers the lost Great Library of Alexandria intact at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, and Bridger must mediate a world summit in which several Middle East nations, including a hostile Libya, seek to gain ownership of the library's treasures.  This "A" plot is coupled with a sci-fi element, however, when several "mediators" with light ESP skills come aboard SeaQuest to help Bridger negotiate from a position of strength. One of them, played by Lindsay Frost, attempts to reads Bridger's mind.

Another episode, "Hide and Seek," brings original Star Trek star William Shatner aboard SeaQuest as a former brutal dictator from Eastern Europe. SeaQuest's mission is to transport him to the authorities for trial, but something strange ultimately draws Bridger, the SeaQuest crew and Shatner's character together: they are all sharing the same, slightly unsettling dream about Darwin.  And that dream also concerns Shatner's autistic son...

It wasn't until relatively late in the first season, episode 21, "Such Great Patience," that SeaQuest DSV left behind pedestrian stories of rescues at sea ("Bad Water") and high-tech intrigue ("Photon Bullet) for more overt or "far out" genre story telling. 

In this segment the SeaQuest encounters a 900,000 year old spaceship on the ocean floor, and attempts to salvage it.  Kent McCord guest stars as a UEO officer who leads the first Earth team aboard an alien craft.

By investigating the craft, the team accidentally activates an alien anti-tamper system and hologram sentinel, which then threatens SeaQuest.  Although this story features a splendidly-designed spaceship and alien creation, it still plays as relatively realistic.  Such would not always be the case in Season Two, when monsters like giant crocodiles and the like were often encountered.

The critical factor about virtually all of the season one stories -- and this is a difficult balance -- is that they all tried (and yes, sometimes failed) to convey an authentic sense of wonder about the ocean, and life in the ocean. 

An illustrative point of comparison might be Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There, the crew of the Enterprise D would often encounter a weird space anomaly or phenomenon, but the mystery would quickly prove dangerous and imperil the ship, leading very directly to a sci-fi story of adventure and peril. The element of space science was just an introduction to a sci-fi story, not necessarily something to be explored in and of itself.

On SeaQuest DSV, Bridger's ship would study the polar ice caps (Games") or hydro-thermal vents -- mother nature's "birth canal" ("The Devil's Window") -- at length, and the narrative was always pretty much about the science and wonder of such mechanisms and locations. 

There was usually some jeopardy too, of course, but it never seemed the whole or primary focus of the drama.  Rather, SeaQuest DSV seemed legitimately jazzed by scientific discovery for the point of, simply, scientific discovery. 

To further support this aspect of the series, each and every episode ended with a brief epilogue and lecture from the show's science advisor, oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard.  His monologues would frequently point out how elements of the preceding episode were based on fact; and then encourage viewers to learn more about the subject.

For some viewers, this focus on hard science and a sense of wonder may prove grating.  Others may find the novel approach rewarding if they apply a little bit of patience.  One thing I truly miss in some recent sci-fi TV (the re-made BSG and Enterprise, for instance) is just this very sense of wonder and curiosity about the universe and how it works.  For all the mistakes SeaQuest DSV undeniably makes, at least it doesn't make that one.

Also making every hour more tolerable, SeaQuest DSV was notable for featuring terrific genre guest stars, from the aforementioned Shatner and McCord to Charlton Heston ("Abalon"), to David McCallum ("SeaWest") to Topol ("Treasure of the Mind.")

In terms of continuing characters, SeaQuest's first season really only was able to focus on a few of the main characters in the severely over-populated cast.  Roy Scheider presents very strongly as Nathan Bridger, a good man with a real sense of heart and bravery.  At first blush, Bridge might seem like a Captain Picard knock-off because of his age and intellectual demeanor, but Scheider is tremendously powerful in the role in the first year, and boasts a self-effacing, easy quality that the more pretentious and prickly Picard lacked.   Bridger is no military martinet in SeaQuest, and no egg-head scientist cliche, either.  He's a well-rounded individual who fights for the causes he believes in.  All in all, a model leading man and model captain.

Darwin the dolphin is probably SeaQuest's Mr. Spock...the resident alien.  In the first season, Darwin nearly dies from a mysterious disease ("The Devil's Window"), plays tag with a warrior sub ("To Be or Not to Be") and finds a way to inhabit the dreams of his crew-mates ("Hide and Seek").  

In "Such Great Patience," he is also the object of the alien creatures at the ocean floor.  They came to Earth all those years ago...to talk to dolphins.

Though he was widely mocked at the time of the show's airing, Darwin is actually a pretty strong character in an unconventional sort of way, and the series perpetually makes the point that Darwin -- as a non-human -- can't really "talk" with the human crew.  The vocoder can transmit simple ideas, but when Darwin discusses death ("the dark") and loneliness, for instance, such concepts are harder to translate accurately.  This idea of inter-species communication (often ignored in sci-fi TV...) actually makes Darwin something of a genuine alien and story wild-card: a crew member who doesn't always respond as expected to, or as ordered.

Also registering strongly in the first season are Stephanie Beacham's wonderful Dr. Westphalen and Brandis's enthusiastic Lucas.  Unfortunately, fine actors such as second-billed Haiduk, Franklin, Applegate, and D'Aquino are given only scraps from the table, and have precious little time to build strong characterizations.  It's not for lack of trying when an opportunity arises.  Haiduk's Hitchcock goes undercover in "SeaWest" as a nightclub singer at an underwater mining town, to free a family in jeopardy.  And Raimi has some good moments in both "Such Great Patience" (in which O'Neill confronts his religious upbringing and how it clashes with belief in extra-terrestrials) and "The Devil's Window."

Probably the finest episode of the first season is indeed the two-hour pilot, which looks and sounds almost like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan underwater, with a rusty Bridger assuming command of SeaQuest and being forced to battle his ex-student, Stark, for domination of the seas.  This episode hums along at a nice clip, includes some jaunty, spirited dialogue and  features a tense undersea confrontation between two evenly-matched subs armed for war. Kerhsner's direction is pretty strong.  With a tweak here or there, it's not hard to imagine this as a SeaQuest movie.

In Season Two, much of the good, if incredibly uneven work of SeaQuest Season One is undercut.  Half the cast left the show (Stacy Haiduk, John D'Aquino, Stephanie Beacham) and their replacements were resident aliens, Counselor Troi-like empaths and other rejects from Starfleet.  And the focus on science -- along with Dr. Ballard -- was gone, replaced by giant monsters and more aliens from the bottom of the sea.

In a notorious interview during the second season, Roy Scheider lambasted the new direction of Sea Quest.  He said he was "ashamed" of the series, and noted that the new stories were "junk."  He also said that the series was "not even good fantasy. I mean Star Trek does this stuff much better than we can do it. To me the show is now 21 Jump Street meets Star Dreck.''

You know you're on a sinking boat, when the lead actor is loudly telling the press he's ashamed of his own series. 

Still, in its first and best incarnation, the engaged viewer can readily detect that SeaQuest DSV is trying to carve out a unique identity and approach for itself.  If the series had stayed on its promising original trajectory, it might have lasted several more years, and garnered an even larger and more passionate following.   Instead, SeaQuest features three seasons, three formats, and three approaches to storytelling.  Not a single season is perfect, but season one gets closest to the spirit of that great John F. Kennedy quotation.

The Spaceships of the: 1990s

Our newest catalog of spaceship designs (from film and TV) comes from the nineties. 

This was the era when, except for a few exceptions like ID4 (1996), MST-3K, and Starship Troopers (1997), CGI took over!

Although I don't find these nineties models by-and-large as intriguing as the spaceships of the 1970s and 1980s, there are still some lovely vessels here.

Which do you recall?

Not Identified: Total Recall (1990)

Identified by Pierre Fontaine: Space Precinct.

Identified by William Mercado: ID4

Identified by William Mercado: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine runabout.

Identified by William Mercado: Babylon 5.

Identified by SGB: Space Rangers.

Identified by William Mercado: Star Trek: Voyager.

Identified by Wiliam Mercado: Mystery Science Theater 3000 Satellite of Love.

Identified by William Mercado: Space: Above and Beyond (Hammerheads)

Identified by SGB: Mars Attacks.

Identified by William Mercado: The X-Files.

Identified by William Mercado: Star Trek: First Contact (Phoenix)

Identified by William Mercado: Event Horizon

Identified by William Mercado: Starship Troopers (Rodger Young)

Identified by SGB: Alien Resurrection (Aurig)

Identified by William Mercado: The Fifth Element.

Identified by William Mercado: Star Trek: Insurrection.

Identified by William Mercado: Lost in Space

Identified by William Mercado: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Identified by SGB: Galaxy Quest.

Identified by William Mercado: Farscape (Moya)

007 Week: Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) Movie Trailer

Trading Card Close-up: Freddy Krueger/A Nightmare on Elm Street (Impel; 1991)

Action Figures of the Week: The Last Action Hero (1993; Mattel)

Movie Trailer: The Last Action Hero

Theme Song of the Week: Space Precinct (1994)

The Shyamalan Series: The Sixth Sense (1999)

One thread that weaves consistently through the films of director M. Night Shyamalan is very simple, but simultaneously spiritually and morally uplifting. In the vast majority of his cinematic works, audiences encounter characters who, after seeing the world in a new way, finally understand their place in it. 

The clouds -- their previous assumptions about life -- suddenly part, and the sunshine of understanding, of destiny, shines through.

Shyamalan’s protagonists, whether Dr. Malcolm Crowe (The Sixth Sense) David Dunn (Unbreakable), Father Graham (Signs), or Cleveland Heep (Lady in the Water) all conform to this particular pattern.

Throughout their respective narratives, these men are depicted as carrying around sadness or discontent because their destinies -- their very purpose in life -- is unclear to them.  Through the (often harrowing…) events in their narratives, however, these characters come to discern their place, and their role, and thus achieve their rightful destiny.   

In short, the films of M. Night Shyamalan are all about discovering yourself, and your purpose here on this mortal coil.

Not knowing your purpose is a source of not merely unhappiness, but the greatest soul-sucking pain. These men feel empty, alone and isolated because they no longer believe in themselves. They no longer know who they are, or where they fit in.

Sometimes, in Shyamalan’s films, we actually meet two characters who achieve this critical understanding about destiny. And sometimes, those characters take parallel or opposite-styled journeys. They act as mirrors for one another.

Certainly, that’s the case with the director’s first feature film, the Academy-Award nominated The Sixth Sense (1999). 

The film involves a psychologist, Crowe, and his patient, Cole Sear, coming to terms with their respective trajectories and destinies in this life. Crowe learns that he can correct two great wrongs in his life (one personal; one professional), but that this is his last opportunity to do so. 

Meanwhile, Cole learns that he needn’t be scared of what he sees, and that his strange vision is a mechanism not for inspiring terror, but for him to help people; spirits who still have something significant to tell the living.

It is not revealing anything, at this late date, to report on the 1999’s film’s final revelation, that Malcolm himself is one of those spirits that Cole can see and help. 

Cole “sees dead people,” and so Crowe, we learn, is dead himself. This is the nature of the film’s twist ending, but as is often the case in the works of Shyamalan, there are various and numerous bread crumbs leading viewers to this conclusion, from the very start of the film; following Crowe’s tragic shooting.

Of course, we can question if this ending is actually a surprise at all given the assiduous preparation for it. After all, another common factor in many of M. Night Shyamalan’s films is that they don’t merely tell stories; they comment on storytelling, on writing in general.  For example, Unbreakable muses about comic books as a kind of sacred text, one that reveals man’s true nature and history.  Similarly, Lady in the Water features an acerbic movie critic (Bob Balaban), and the various ways that people read or analyze stories. 

And The Sixth Sense involves, quite explicitly, how stories are structured or organized so as to galvanize the audience’s attention. 

Specifically, stories can’t play all their cards at once.  As Cole informs Crow, “you have to add some twists and stuff,” or they are boring. 

This is Shyamalan’s tell, another breadcrumb, so-to-speak, that prepares us for the denouement. From the film’s dialogue about “twists and stuff,” we understand we should expect something that will shift our perception of what might be seen as a linear or straight-forward story.  And that’s precisely what Shyamalan delivers in the movie’s climactic scenes.

What is the story we think we are experiencing in The Sixth Sense? It goes something like this: Traumatized adult psychologist helps disturbed, possibly psychic kid.

But in fact, the story is not that.  Rather, it is this: Psychic kids helps a disturbed ghost make peace with his life, and his mistakes in life.

Cole and Crowe (like Elijah and David Dunn in Unbreakable) switch places; switch roles in terms of our understanding of them, as the film ends.  Actually “switch roles” may not be the right choice of phrases here.  They are who they have always been, we simply begin to perceive their roles differently in light of the revelation that Crowe is dead.

The Sixth Sense thrives as a brilliant work of art because Shyamalan knows precisely where best to place the camera, and when to move it so that -- on first viewing -- the audience can reasonably fail to notice or observe some important things. But on the second viewing, finally, we understand clearly the significance of things we ignored, or overlooked, the first time.  Ambiguity gives way to clarity; uncertainty to order.  To create this kind of “dawning” truth, Shyamalan himself made be said to possess a sixth sense about understanding how our eyes and minds process information.

What things to our eyes gloss over?  What things do they focus on? 

Shymalan’s approach encompasses both guileless and guileful misdirection, one might conclude.

And he makes the switch over in perception seem as clear as day.  On second viewing of The Sixth Sense, we can’t understand how we failed to miss the importance or relevance of the bread crumbs at all.

In this way, The Sixth Sense is actually two distinct experiences.

In the first, we proceed upon mistaken assumptions, until we learn the truth.  Importantly, this way of “seeing” (a view consisting of mistaken assumptions) is a deliberate reflection of how Malcolm proceeds through life and the narrative.  His eyes are only half-open. He misses important details. He is trapped in his belief about that world, namely that he has gone on living as a mortal human being.

On the second-go through, however, we see the story as Cole might, with a clear of understanding of who Malcolm is, and who/what he signifies in Cole’s learning. He’s not a trouble kid that’s deluded or hallucinating. He’s the one individual who sees the whole world as it is.  And “Sear,” of course, is our bread-crumb or signifier. Sear = Seer.

The mirroring of protagonist roles as well as the parting-of-the-clouds, ambiguity-into-clarity visual symbolism together represent a complex and cerebral way to tell a story -- with more than the requisite “twists and stuff” -- and yet even his haters should acknowledge the truth. 

Shyamalan makes it look virtually effortless.

There are only a few “cheats” in The Sixth Sense, and these moments don’t subtract from the picture’s overall success, or the sheer emotional resonance of the tale.

In short, The Sixth Sense is a beautiful and complex genre film that holds up to scrutiny, and has something ital. and true to tell us about humanity or at least the way humanity perceives itself.

We must have a purpose, and we must understand that purpose, or we are but lost souls.

“I’m ready to communicate with you now.”

On the very evening that night he receives an award from the City of Philadelphia for his long, dedicated service to the community, married psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is gunned down in his home by an old client whom he failed to help, Vincent Gray (Donnie Wahlberg). 

The following autumn, Crowe is estranged from his wife, Abby (Olivia Williams) and devotes himself to a case involving a troubled little boy like Vincent, this one named Cole (Haley Joel Osment).

Cole claims to see and communicate with “dead people.” 

Crowe must first confirm this boy’s “gift” and then help Cole learn how to live with it, and utilize it to help others, and himself.

“I feel like I’ve been given a second chance. I don’t want it to slip away.”

“They don’t see each other,” Cole Sear declares of the dead in The Sixth Sense. “They just see what they want to see.  They don’t know that they’re dead. They’re everywhere.”

This dialogue excerpt, however, is also very much about the movie’s audience; you and me. 

Remember, Shyamalan’s film works on two tracks simultaneously, as a literal narrative about its characters and their journey but also as a reflexive narrative about the nature of storytelling, and the things that audiences require from storytellers (“twists and stuff,” again.)

The most significant thing one must understand about the film is that, structurally, it plays delicately on character and audience assumptions.  And assumptions are often wrong.  The entirety of The Sixth Sense rests on the writer/director’s capability to make audiences feel a certain way in certain scenes, without getting at what is truly happening in those scenes, until the final revelation lands like a hammer. 

In other words, the film visually implies certain assumptions and perceptions, and then, in the last scenes, reveal a different perspective.  Like Cole’s ghosts, the audience, going in, largely sees what it wants to see, not what actually exists.

Apart from some notable but relatively slight inconsistencies in this approach, The Sixth Sense largely accomplishes the goal of playing on audience assumptions, of encouraging perceptions and then pulling the carpet out from under them. 

For instance, we see Crowe’s wife, Abby, crying on a bed early in the film, surrounded by crumpled Kleenex. We assume she is crying because something bad has happened involving her relationship with Crowe.

On the contrary, however, she is crying because she is still in mourning over his untimely and tragic death (or, more accurately, murder).  But we think their marriage is in trouble in a conventional sense.  He’s spending too much time at work.  He’s ignoring her.  So she’s sad.

On the contrary, he’s a corpse. She can’t move on.

Similarly, it’s noteworthy that Malcolm never meets with Cole in a professional office setting. Instead, Cole goes to the hospital to see him, or sits in an apartment foyer, or meets Cole on the street while he is walking to school. 

Why? 

Doesn’t it strike anyone as weird that this psychologist is just hanging around?  It might, but as movie-goers we brush off these feelings on first viewing.  That said, not many psychologists I know make house calls.  But given the severity of Cole’s case, and his young age (plus Crowe’s drive to make up for the mistake of Vincent Gray), we assume the psychologist is making an exception. We assume he has taken a special interest in this troubled boy.

In fact, Crowe is a ghost, seen only by Cole, but this example (no office visits) should allow you to detect fully how the movie lets us run with our own ideas and thoughts, and doesn’t attempt to correct us or our perceptions.

In another scene, set at a restaurant, Malcolm meets with his estranged wife, Abby for their wedding anniversary.  She doesn’t speak to him, and the audience assumes -- again -- that, since the shooting at the beginning of the film, they’ve become estranged.  She exits the restaurant in a flurry of emotion, and leaves Malcolm behind, and the audience assumes she’s mad.  She isn’t.  She doesn’t know he’s present at all.  She can’t see him.  Even though she says aloud, “happy anniversary” she is talking to herself; not to the ghost she has no concrete awareness of.

Commendably, The Sixth Sense does not go out of its way to unduly deceive us. It never states, for instance, that Crowe’s office is being repainted, or some such thing to lead us off the track.  I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t always the case in a Shyamalan film.  Sometimes, he tips the scales against us (like the grave stone with the erroneous dates in The Village).  But more often than not, he plays fair. He just leaves a gap in the story and lets individual imagination fill it in.

For me, this relates to one useful definition of great art, and one I learned from director Nicholas Meyer, in his discussion of the Star Trek franchise. For him, art is the act of not telling the audience everything up front; of leaving holes that allow audience imagination to supply the rest.  I find that this is the case with The Sixth Sense, and much of Shyamalan’s work.  He gives the audience enough information to rope it in, but not enough information to squelch imagination, or importantly, speculation and assumption.

Are there exceptions, or moments that might have been handled more deftly in The Sixth Sense?  Well, on this re-watch (probably my fourth or fifth viewing), I noticed that a shadow (presumably Crowe’s) passes over Cole in a meeting at a church.  A ghost wouldn’t cast a shadow, would it?  But perhaps there was another person in the church, passing by, behind Crowe, at the same time.

Similarly, we see Crowe -- a ghost, remember -- manipulate pens, tape recorders, notebooks and other elements of our reality “here” on the mortal coil.  How does that work exactly?  The Sixth Sense avoids explanation, perhaps to its detriment. As I wrote in Horror Films of the 1990s, Ghost (1990), at least, attempted to explain how ghosts move between and manipulate earthly objects.

Yet over and over again, given these few exceptions, The Sixth Sense knowingly and deftly stages scenes in a way that encourage assumptions, but can track in the opposite direction too.  When the big reveal comes, we realize our beliefs were wrong and that the movie (and movie-maker too) is still an honest, and reliable narrator. All of this is extremely clever, and it’s clear that M. Night Shyamalan is a canny student and observer of human nature, not to mention mainstream movie-going habits, since by and large, audiences do react exactly as he expects them to. He rarely loses his balance.

Has any other director, other than Alfred Hitchcock so cleverly, and for such a sustained duration manipulated the audience so expertly?  Have many movie talents so assiduously crafted a story that successfully operates in two realities, until the final fork in the road, when only one reality can be dominant?

I think you would be hard-pressed to name more than a handful of other talents, and that fact certainly, is one reason why Shyamalan is worth lauding or studying.  Consider that most movie lovers you encounter will concur that The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs all achieve what they set out to.  That’s three times (in a row) up at bat in which he pulled off this feat with consistent audience appreciation and buy-in.

I think it is also fair to state that Shyamalan accomplishes a great deal by focusing on small, seemingly ordinary things.  

The film possesses a strong sense of disorder, as though the world is out of whack.  If you gaze intently at some of the visuals, such as a kitchen in which all the drawers and cabinet doors are open, or a girl hiding under a bed, or even a shot of a lone character standing in the dark, shadowed in a dark basement, one begins to see how the visuals themselves seem to symbolize nature's imbalance. 

No expensive visual effects are needed to make the film frightening.  These off-kilter touches do the job magnificently. Shyamalan is one of the few directors still working in this decade who -- like Robert Wise once did --- can make a door-knob seem terrifying.

The performances in The Sixth Sense are also stellar, and add immeasurably to the success of the film.  Bruce Willis has never been better, I would assess, except perhaps in Unbreakable.  He adopts the passive, professional detachment of a clinician here, and that very-internal, very-buttoned approach explains his passivity (why few others seem to take note of him), and also raise alarm bells about his true nature…as a ghost. When Crowe learns this story has been about him needing help, not Cole, Willis opens up, and the film reaches a fever pitch of emotion. He realizes that he has been given an opportunity to fix two mistakes, and makes the most of it. Our final views of Crowe show us his separation from his wife and his sadness at leaving her, while he heads...beyond.

Osment, meanwhile, is the emotional anchor of The Sixth Sense, and expresses terror, sadness, isolation and love in an unpracticed, innocent fashion. Cole achieves the ending or destiny he deserves: a recognition of his gift and purpose in this life.  Crowe gets that too, understanding that he has made up for two failures, both in putting his wife second to his career, and correcting the mistake he made with another sensitive, Vincent.

The most difficult thing for me in terms of all the Shyamalan bashing one finds on the Net is that people seem to think that Shyamalan is trying, in films like The Sixth Sense, to prove he is better than the rest of us. 

You know, who does he think he is always trying to outsmart the rest of us paeans all the time?

Well, there’s an answer encoded right into the fabric of The Sixth Sense.  Shyamalan is not working against us, he is working for the audience.  What’s my proof?  When he has Cole say that stories need twists and stuff or they will be boring, he is specifically looking out for audiences; making certain that his story doesn’t fail to please.  Shyamalan has made the audience’s desire for a good story, well-told, paramount in his efforts. 

We all know the old saying that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling them, right?  Well, that’s sort of what Shyamalan seems to be saying in this story, too: I have a new way of telling a story, and I don’t think you’ll see it coming. 

I’m not certain why that must be perceived as vanity or ego. Aren’t we in the market for strong stories, told in ways that are fresh and innovative?  I know that’s why I’m here. That’s why I write books.  That’s why I blog. That's why I go to the movies.

But then a lot of people are like The Sixth Sense’s ghosts, aren’t they?  They don’t see the truth, they see only what they want to see. One has to wonder if in some way, Shyamalan was answering his prospective critics in the very body of his film, in the very text of The Sixth Sense.

Because what I see in The Sixth Sense is an emotional, horrific and meticulously constructed film that surprises by unexpectedly inverting the roles of its main characters. 

What I see is a film that recognizes a basic truth that stories just don’t happen magically or spontaneously, they must be constructed in such a way so that the audience remains engaged from start to finish. 

What I see is a film that recognizes the fact that our eyes don’t always tell us the whole story on first look.   Sometimes, to truly see, we need to look closer.

And what I see, finally, and perhaps most importantly, is a film that reminds us that the greatest evil in the world is not death, but the inability to know one’s self, and one’s purpose.