What do we call you, sir?
First name Mister.
Last name Glass.
We live in an era of supervillains,
with new Marvel and DC projects popping up
what seems like monthly, we have no shortage of world
destroying threats.
But over 20 years ago, we were introduced
to one of film's most terrifying villains.
Physically fragile and unassuming,
Mr. Glass was an operatic villain
ripped straight from the comics pages who showed us
the danger of faith in ideas.
But before we get too far, please
make sure to subscribe in order to stay up to date on all
of our Nerdstalgic videos.
And bear in mind, there will be spoilers for Unbreakable,
Split, and Glass.
Released in 2000, Unbreakable, written and directed
by M. Night Shyamalan, told the story
of the sole survivor of a train wreck
who escaped completely unharmed.
He's then approached by an art dealer who believes
the man has superpowers.
Back then, that was a unique proposition,
released just five months after Bryan Singer's X-Men
and a few years post Blade.
Unbreakable featured a brooding hero and an original villain
with all the pageantry of Magneto or Deacon Frost's
monologues.
How you doing, chief?
And this was a time when muttering the words comic book
was not the selling point it is now.
Shyamalan has said marketing told him
we can't mention the word comic books or superheroes
because it's too fringe.
It's those people who go to the conventions.
In their eyes, the supervillain trope
was a detriment to the film, something to be hidden.
But Shyamalan knew he had something special
in Elijah Price a.k.a.
Mr. Glass played by Samuel Jackson.
When we meet glass, he's a respectable art gallery owner
who specializes in original comic book pages.
He even refuses to sell a page to someone
he believes won't appreciate the work.
This is an art gallery, my friend.
And this is a piece of art.
Which is our first indicator the man
is fanatical about his beliefs.
Part of what makes Glass' obsessive nature so terrifying
is Jackson's performance.
His gaze smolders through every one he looks at, almost never
blinking.
There's an idea that holding eye contact is a sign of dominance.
Even his initial contact with Bruce Willis' David Dunn
is a statement that this story is about what this man wants.
During a memorial of the victims who died on the train,
Glass leaves a note for Dunn on his windshield, which already
shows this is about his plan.
With complete disregard for the emotional weight
an event like this has or the impact
it bears on the community, he genuinely
thinks this is the opportune moment to reach out to Dunn.
I got a card from this store.
Congratulations, you have a mailbox.
The exhibition isn't for two weeks.
This one was under the windshield wiper of my car.
As the movie carries on, Glass presents himself as a mentor,
not unlike Stick to Daredevil.
But every move he makes leads to-- what for better or worse
would become a Shyamalan staple--
the reveal.
In the film's last act, Glass is shown
to be the mastermind behind the film's entire plot.
It's shown that he was responsible
not just for the train crash and the deaths of hundreds
but many other terrorist attacks,
all in an attempt to find another superpowered human.
What's most horrifying here is the justification.
He genuinely sees the acts of terrorism
he's committed as a victory, because in his eyes, it worked.
It's a cold reasoning that hits especially
hard for comic readers who have seen this behavior before.
Back in 1986, Alan Moore and David Gibbons
released the limited series Watchmen under DC Comics.
In that story, another hyper-intelligent man,
Ozymandias, did a cold calculation of his own.
He decided that the deaths of innocents
were worth what he saw was the greater good.
The idea of a greater good is a common trope for villains,
but Glass' sense of joy, jubilation, and accomplishment
is harrowing, simply because a greater good is subjective.
None of the friends, orphans, or widows
would argue the loss of their loved ones
is worth someone not being mugged thanks to a man
in a poncho.
But for him, it's not about saving the world,
it's about proving he's right.
And being right is not new to Glass.
He isn't just looking for a superpowered human.
He's looking for his counterpoint.
The power he argues he possesses is his super intellect.
He manipulates circumstances into a Rube Goldberg puzzle,
each piece interacting with the next,
and always managing to stay one step ahead.
Just the idea that whatever you do, wherever you go,
this man has a contingency plan, and that's terrifying.
As people, we often think our adaptability is our greatest
strength-- the idea that we are all on a level playing field
and left to skill alone is like a comforting blanket.
But with Glass, that blanket has probably
been laced with some sort of poison
that only someone as smart as he could pronounce.
Since he was a child, Elijah Price
was bullied for his fragile body,
earning the nickname Mr. Glass.
But the young kid found solace in the comic books
his mother would give him.
Often just a means to pull the boy out
of his depression and fear of a world that would literally
break him, the comic books he read became a road map.
Comics resonate with outliers and the fringe
because there's a reflection of themselves in the four color
funny pages--
mutants and aliens whose greatest weaknesses become
their greatest strengths.
After a childhood of bullying and a staggering intelligence,
Glass sees things from an angle completely different
than our own.
To him, that angle showed a path that
gave reason to his disease.
It gave him purpose, and purpose above all else
is what he wants.
His intelligence means nothing if nobody sees it.
It's the reason characters like Sherlock Holmes even
bother with the occasional pesky mystery.
Glass wants to prove his powers because it proves himself.
It justifies his faith.
When we see him as a child, his mother tells him--
You might fall between this chair and that television.
If that's what God has planned for you,
that's what's going to happen.
This small moment shows us that his mother also
found purpose and meaning in her faith.
And that idea, that feeling cannot be swayed
for the devout.
No matter what arguments or bits of logic are put forward,
Glass knows.
And that knowing is maybe his most horrific trait,
simply because it defies all of our own preconceptions
of winning.
No matter the outcome, his being proven right or his death,
it's all circular.
For him, he's already evaluated every possibility
and come to a conclusion etched in stone and cheap pulp paper.
The murders he's committed, the lives and the damage done
is all a means to an end, so much so
that he takes the moniker of Mr. Glass.
While it was initially intended as an insult,
Mr. Glass now represents who he was supposed to be.
And there is something genuinely beautiful in that idea.
Often the words cast at us as kids become a badge of pride.
For him, the name means so much more
than the fragility of his body.
It's the clear pain he looks at the world through--
the dirt hardened by life into something
so much more powerful.
And once that name becomes set, Mr. Glass
fully wraps himself in the idea of a supervillain.
Appearing again in the titular Glass
20 years after Unbreakable's release,
he has dropped his simple purple suit and turtleneck.
Now adorned with a white shirt and neckerchief
monogrammed with his initials.
While the first movie released in a pre 9/11 world,
both Split and Glass' later dates gave a new context
to the villain's actions.
Put simply, the world had changed.
The United States didn't have the same rosy hued goggles it
had once held with privilege.
As the years moved on, pop culture wanted heroes.
They wanted to feel powerful and comfortable in a world that
said assuredly you aren't.
The consequences of the terrorist attack
on the Eastrail 177 ripple throughout Shyamalan's trilogy.
In the stealth sequel to Unbreakable,
we learn Glass created a supervillain in the Beast
in 2016's Split.
This time, we meet Kevin Wendell Crumb--
played by James McAvoy--
a man with dissociative identity disorder
whose condition worsened after the loss of his father.
One aspect of Kevin was the Beast, an uncontrollable id
with super strength, speed, and a less than tasteful
obligatory violent streak.
It's another affirmation that he's succeeding,
and the terrifying thing is, he's right.
The movie goes out of its way to shout yes, these
are superpowered humans, and Mr. Glass knew all along.
The reward for his faith is in the end martyrdom.
He wants the world to know what he
did, to awaken more superpowered humans by showing Dunn
and the Beast to the world via the very cameras that
were meant to restrain him, again outwitting his captors
and using their own weapons against them.
As Glass lies dying, his creations having served
their purpose, just before they die,
there's the knowing look of Jackson again.
It's framed by Shyamalan like a victory.
The music swells, his mother weeps,
and Jackson sells the scene so well.
We almost forget that this is a death of a terrorist.
Right or wrong, this was a villain
that killed again and again for his idea of the greater good.
And that is something truly terrifying.
Humanity is a big twisting amalgamation
of ideas and beliefs.
And one man so desperate to prove himself right
and validate his own existence at the cost of human life
truly makes Glass a villain that will
stick with us throughout time.
So what do you think?
Is the awakening of more superpowered humans
really a good idea?
If the heroes show, won't the villains?
Let us know down in the comments below, and as always,
feel free to click around the channel
to find more videos about heroes and villains.