Aug 5: Why The Sixth Sense Twist Can Never Be Matched
Plus the Road House reboot, Winamp is back, GatorGum, and more
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
August 5th, 2022 • Issue 111
Why The Sixth Sense Twist Can Never Be Matched
23 years ago, on August 6th, 1999, The Sixth Sense hit theaters.
The common summation of M. Night Shyamalan’s career is: He peaked with his first movie, The Sixth Sense, and has never been able to hit that peak again.
To get more specific: Every movie he makes ends with a twist (it’s his signature) — and no twist has touched the one from The Sixth Sense.
He’s been chasing that dragon ever since. And that is a more apt metaphor than it might seem.
On August 6th, 1999, The Sixth Sense hit theaters. Like most early August movies, the studio had mid-to-low-level expectations. August isn’t the movie dumping ground like some other months (January, September, October), but it’s outside of the traditional May through July summer blockbuster window.
The Sixth Sense blew away those expectations. It wound up becoming the second-highest grossing movie of the year — only behind Star Wars: Episode I. It outdrew Toy Story 2, The Matrix, The Mummy, Tarzan, and quite a few other huge-name films.
The Sixth Sense hit those heights thanks to word-of-mouth buzz — specifically about its twist. Because it’s not hyperbolic to say The Sixth Sense has one of the greatest twists in movie history.
For audiences who saw the movie early (I was in one of those audiences) and didn’t know a twist was coming, The Sixth Sense was a unique and unforgettable movie experience. For the later audiences, the one who knew there was a twist but didn’t know what it was, it was essentially un-guessable. It really was that well done.
But a movie moment that seminal has a long-term, industry-wide ripple effect. It changed both twist endings for good — and set M. Night Shyamalan on his Sisyphean career path.
First, the effect on twist endings.
There were other great movie twists before The Sixth Sense — most recent was The Usual Suspects a few years earlier.
But The Sixth Sense changed expectations. After that, the moviegoing audience now expected and was on high alert for twists.
Case-in-point: When Fight Club came out a few months later, my twist radar started firing about halfway through the movie. While I didn’t call the specifics of the twist, I knew some twist was coming once I realized they never said Ed Norton’s character’s name. Then I spent the rest of the movie trying to figure out the twist. This continues to happen to this day — the same thing happened as I was watching Squid Game and noticed they kept having intentional moments where they cut off a certain character as he was about to tell his back story. Again, I didn’t call the twist exactly, but I realized a twist was coming with that character.
And in the 2+ decades that have followed The Sixth Sense, movies have tried twist after twist. But without The Sixth Sense’s element of surprise, no twist lands quite the same.
Shutter Island. The Prestige. Identity. The Departed. Twists couldn’t catch us off guard anymore, even ones that were logical.
So the twists turned illogical. In 2010’s Remember Me, the twist was the entire movie was secretly taking place in 2001 and the Robert Pattinson character dies on 9/11. That’s how desperate the quest for the elusive twist became in the post-Sixth Sense world.
As for Shyamalan, his reward for the Sixth Sense twist was a permanent career as a director — a deal anyone in Hollywood would take — but with, well, a twist. And the twist was he became “the twist” guy.
He could never match The Sixth Sense, no matter what he tried. Some of his twists (and films) were better than others. His twists in movies like Unbreakable and The Village weren’t bad. The twist in Split — 17 years after The Sixth Sense — finally got a bit of satisfied buzz. (Even though it was a cameo twist, not an earned twist like The Sixth Sense that completely reshapes how you view the entire film.)
But none of those twists resonated like The Sixth Sense twist. They couldn’t. It wasn’t just one of the best-crafted twists ever, it caught audiences before they could comprehend that type of a twist. Essentially, The Sixth Sense twist could work because it existed in a pre-The Sixth Sense landscape.
Now we go into Shyamalan’s movies expecting a twist. We can’t fully immerse in the movies because we’re looking for and waiting for the twist. Trying to figure out what it is. It’s a different viewing experience.
M. Night Shyamalan continues chasing the dragon on twists because it’s impossible for him to recapture the intangibles that made the first twist’s impact possible. Although with the career he’s had, twist albatross or not, I’m not sure he warrants nor desires much sympathy.
And ultimately, M. Night Shyamalan has still managed to catch us off guard here and there. Perhaps the biggest twist he’s pulled off in the 23 years since The Sixth Sense was when he revealed he was an uncredited writer of She’s All That.
No one saw that twist coming.
Other momentous moments from this week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
August 5th
1986 - Lionel Richie’s album Dancing on the Ceiling was released.
1989 - Prince’s single Batdance hit number one.
1994 - Clear and Present Danger hit theaters.
1994 - Airheads hit theaters.
1994 - The Little Rascals movie hit theaters.
1998 - Whose Line Is It Anyway? premiered.
1998 - Halloween H20 hit theaters.
August 6th
1986 - Timothy Dalton was named the new James Bond.
1988 - Yo! MTV Raps premiered.
1991 - Tim Berners-Lee released his files describing the World Wide Web.
1993 - The Fugitive hit theaters.
1994 - The Offspring’s Come Out and Play peaked at #38 on the Billboard chart.
1994 - Lisa Loeb’s single Stay (I Missed You) hit number one.
1996 - The Ramones played their final show.
1998 - The final episode of Magic Johnson’s talk show, The Magic Hour, aired.
1999 - Mystery Men hit theaters.
August 7th
1987 - Rad Racer was released for NES.
1990 - The U.S. deployed the first troops in Operation Desert Shield.
1992 - Unforgiven hit theaters.
1992 - 3 Ninjas hit theaters.
1997 - Garth Brooks played a free concert in Central Park.
1998 - Snake Eyes hit theaters.
August 8th
1983 - Metallica’s first single, Whiplash, was released.
1986 - Stand by Me hit theaters.
1987 - U2’s single I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For hit number one.
1988 - Wrigley Field held its first night game.
1992 - Metallica’s James Hetfield was burned in a pyro explosion.
1992 - The U.S. Dream Team won the gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics.
1992 - Madonna’s single This Used to Be My Playground hit number one.
1994 - Everything But the Girl’s single Missing was released.
1995 - Coolio’s single Gangsta’s Paradise was released.
August 9th
1985 - Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure hit theaters.
1985 - Real Genius hit theaters.
1988 - Wayne Gretzky was unthinkably traded to the Los Angeles Kings.
1991 - Jean Claude Van Damme’s Double Impact hit theaters.
1994 - Notorious B.I.G.’s single Juicy was released.
1995 - Jerry Garcia passed away.
1996 - Jack hit theaters.
1996 - Escape from L.A. hit theaters.
1997 - ESPN’s only hit song (frankly, it’s weird they even have one hit song), ESPN Presents the Jock Jam, peaked at #31 on the Billboard charts.
August 10th
1980 - Michael Jackson’s album Off the Wall was released.
1984 - Cloak and Dagger hit theaters.
1984 - The U.S. men’s basketball team featuring Michael Jordan won the gold medal at the Olympics in Los Angeles.
1985 - Michael Jackson bought the Beatles’ songs, outbidding Paul McCartney.
1993 - Billy Joel’s final studio album, River of Dreams, was released.
1993 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
1996 - Arliss premiered on HBO.
August 11th
1984 - Ray Parker Jr.’s Ghostbusters theme hit number one.
1987 - Clara “Where’s the Beef” Peller passed away.
1991 - Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show all premiered on Nickelodeon.
1992 - The Mall of America opened in Minnesota.
1993 - Super Mario All-Stars for Super Nintendo was released in North America.
1995 - Dangerous Minds hit theaters.
1997 - The View premiered.
1998 - Sixpence None the Richer’s single Kiss Me was released.
5 ‘80s and ‘90s trivia facts
The phrase “My bad” comes from Manute Bol.
Manute Bol — the famous, 7’7 NBA star of the ‘80s and ‘90s — didn’t speak much English when he came to the U.S. from Sudan. After a mistake, he’d say “My bad” instead of “My fault.” His teammates liked it, started repeating it — and it worked its way into the broader lexicon.
NSYNC’s name is an acronym based on the members’ names — or at least it was supposed to be.
NSYNC didn’t just get its name because the guys were so “in sync” on their singing. Each letter in NSYNC corresponded to the last letter of a member’s first name: JustiN, ChriS, JoeY, JasoN, and JC.
But wait a sec… who’s Jason? He was replaced by Lance Bass before the group’s debut. So the whole naming acronym thing pretty much fell apart.
Macaulay Culkin was the first child actor to get $1 million for a movie.
That was his salary for My Girl, which he received after the massive success of Home Alone.
Diana and Charles didn’t know each other all that well before their 1981 wedding.
They’d only met in person 13 times before they got married.
Canada had a rap single hit number one on their charts a decade before the U.S.
Rapper’s Delight by Sugarhill Gang hit number one on the Canadian singles charts in 1980. The U.S. wouldn’t have a rap single hit number one until Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby in 1990.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
The Road House remake with Jake Gyllenhaal in the Patrick Swayze role will start production later this month. The movie will be on Amazon Prime one day. The first big changes: Gyllenhaal plays a “former UFC fighter” and takes place in the Florida Keys. My eyes narrow in suspicion after hearing both details. No word on throat rips yet.
Here’s a reboot I never saw coming: AMC is developing a Max Headroom dramatic reboot. Matt Frewer would return as the titular character. Elijah Wood is a producer, because why not.
There’s a Working Girl movie reboot in the very early stages at Hulu. Selena Gomez is involved as a producer.
The LeBron James-produced House Party reboot has been shelved as part of the chaotic evil initial fallout of the WarnerMedia - Discovery merger.
Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren both ripped apart reports of a Drago spinoff movie.
Jennifer Coolidge says playing Stifler’s mom in American Pie opened the door to “a lot of sexual action… there would be like 200 people that I would have never slept with.”
Kevin Bacon says a cameraman vomited on him during the filming of Apollo 13.
The Golden Girls pop-up restaurant has opened in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Sega’s Genesis Mini 2 will have “one-tenth” the supply of the first Genesis Mini. That’s likely a reaction to how poorly the first one sold.
A box set of the “musical highlights” of the John Hughes films (aka 74 different tracks from his ‘80s movies) is coming out in November.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
Llamas, lock up your buttocks, because Winamp — the mp3 player of record in the late ‘90s — is back. After four years in development, Winamp is now available for modern versions of Windows.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
Gatorgum. A staple of every sporting goods store checkout counter in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It didn’t promise the recuperative powers of Gatorade but did promise the same flavors and some of the hydration.
The gum was discontinued in 1989 (Fleer, the manufacturer, had a contract that Gatorade’s new owners didn’t like). But there was such a surplus it was still available in stores into the early 2000s.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
Check out this early ‘80s hype video from ABC, featuring the stars of its shows (including Tom Hanks, bearded Henry Winkler, Penny Marshall, Robert Guillaume, and many more) celebrating the network
Have a great week!
-Sam
Man what they must’ve put in the those actors contracts to get them to do that ABC dance routine. I want an interview with Tom Hanks or Henry Winkler about this!