The first two movies I directed failed, when I was 21 and 23, and that was the greatest thing that could have happened.

Shyamalan frames early failure as a formative advantage rather than a setback. By emphasizing that his first directing efforts “failed” when he was very young, he suggests that disappointment arrived early enough to be instructive, before fame or large budgets could insulate him from consequences. The remark implies that failure can clarify craft, discipline, and self-knowledge—forcing a creator to confront weaknesses, recalibrate ambition, and develop resilience. It also challenges the myth of uninterrupted genius: artistic careers often depend on iterative learning, and early missteps can become the groundwork for later breakthroughs by toughening one’s standards and deepening one’s understanding of audience, storytelling, and execution.