- If you don't want spoilers, you better split.
Welcome to Nerdist News.
Oh my god, I just got it.
(laughs)
I just now got it!
(laughs)
(bleep) yeah.
Alright.
Of all the shocking twists director M. Night Shyamalan
has given us over the years, his new movie Split
might have given us the most shocking twist of all,
a freaking comeback, that is right, after a disappointing
decade spent Last Airbending and After Earthing,
Shyamalan has returned with a genuine hit.
Split just finished its second week in a row
at the top of the box office, putting it only a few days
away from crossing the $100 million line.
Super impressive for a thriller that cost
less than 10 million to produce,
released in the dredges of early January,
especially from a guy whose career everyone thought
was deader than Bruce Willis at the end of Sixth Sense.
Oops, spoilers for any of you watching this in 1999.
- Hey! - That's enough time, right?
Whatever, you ruined this for me by two weeks.
But as for slightly more current spoilers,
there's no denying that Split's continued stay
at the top of the box office is thanks in part
to the buzz it's been generating from its surprise ending.
And if you don't want to know about that surprise ending,
now would be a great time to turn away.
Okay, peace, bye guys.
Just kidding.
(sighs)
Alright, so now that the kids are out of the room,
as we all know from last week's lesson,
Split is actually an undercover sequel
to one of Shyamalan's most beloved films,
the working-class superhero saga, Unbreakable.
But really, how much of a secret is it?
Was Split's sequel status obvious to anyone
who was really paying attention?
Well not really, for most of the film,
Shyamalan is focused on telling the story of Kevin
Wendell Crumb and his 24 warring personalities.
He even said in interviews he didn't want
the Unbreakable allusions to overshadow the main plot,
so any hints about it were kept very very slight.
But they were still there, and going back,
they became a whole lot more obvious upon a second viewing.
Starting with the very titles of the films themselves,
Split and Unbreakable are direct opposites of each other.
Maybe it didn't stick out because no one really
had Unbreakable on the mind these days,
but if Split had been a direct follow-up to Unbreakable,
chances are the title would have raised a few more eyebrows.
Plus, the movie's titles weren't the only way
to guess the connection without actually going to see it.
Their posters also give it away.
Both the Unbreakable poster and the Split poster
feature a shattered-glass motif,
and if you put the posters side by side,
you'll see the glass cracks in each actually line up.
Holy crap.
Should we be doing this will all movie posters now?
Someone get me the A Dog's Purpose poster
and the Marley & Me poster, I have to know
if all dog movies take place in the same universe.
That would be, what if we were being trolled
this whole time by dog movies?
Oh my god.
Anyways, as for hints in the actual film,
there aren't a ton but they are there,
and one of them is actually kind of glaring.
Throughout the film, we're told that Kevin is special
because he's broken, and in the end,
that brokenness is what gives him the power
to transform into the Horde.
Now, a dude who gets his power from his brokenness
sure seems like the ideal ideological counterpoint
and maybe even arch nemesis for a dude
whose superpower is being, say it with me guys, Unbreakable.
There's even an argument to be made that Kevin
and Mr. Glass, the super villain played by Samuel L. Jackson
in Unbreakable act as a counterpoint to each other.
Glass is a man with a brilliant mind
but a physically deteriorated body,
and Kevin is a man with a shattered mind
but a physically evolved body, and together,
they're going to make a pretty formidable rogues gallery
for David Dunn when Unbreakable 2 starts shooting.
And while we're talking about David Dunn, there are also
a few parallels you can pull out between him and Kevin.
For one thing, both of their names are beholden
to old-school comic book naming cliches.
15 years ago, when Unbreakable came out,
Shyamalan said he named the character David Dunn
because so many of his favorite superheroes
had names that were alliterative.
Clark Kent, Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Scott Summers,
the list goes on and on, and sure enough,
Kevin Crumb fits into the pattern.
But even more interesting is the link between their origins.
David discovers he's unbreakable after being the sole
survivor of a horrific accident,
Kevin Wendell Crumb transforms into the Beast
at the site of a traumatic childhood experience.
The connection?
Both of them take place on trains.
Now David's origin moment was a big spectacular train wreck
while Kevin's was in an empty, unmoving car,
but the connection is clear, both of these guys
developed their super-identities by overcoming trauma.
David's was physical and Kevin's was mental,
which makes sense for each of their respective characters.
But, like all the best superhero slash villain
combos throughout history,
their origins act as reflections of each other.
Of course, these small connections
are gonna get much bigger.
Shyamalan has said he for sure wants to make a sequel
that will have Unbreakable and the Horde going toe to toe
and with Split's continued success at the box office,
it's hard to imagine it won't come to pass very soon.
But until then, let us know if there are even
more Easter eggs that we may have missed
and how excited are you guys for the unavoidable
Shyamalan-vengers Twist-finity wars?
And do A Dog's Purpose and Marley & Me
take place in the same universe.
I mean, both universes have dogs, it makes total sense.
Anyway, let's discuss.
Oh my god.