﻿Hello, everyone, I’m Andrew,
but they call me MISTER GLASS!
M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Unbreakable’ was part of the opening salvo in the cinematic superhero revolution,
and fans have been fiending for a follow-up for years.
As a groundbreaking, serious look at superheroics,
‘Unbreakable’ was ahead of its time,
but is it still relevant in a world where the Avengers have assembled,
and we’ve stopped being so serious?
After 2017’s surprise hit ‘Split’ brought the series back after nearly two decades of dormancy,
and with ‘Glass’ about to tie the whole thing together,
today, I want to look at how ‘Unbreakable’ has aged,
see where it stands in a 2019 that’s absolutely crammed with comic book movies,
and ask the burning question:
Is Glass Relevant?
But first, a brief overview of the world of ‘Glass,’ and
What It’s All About
‘Unbreakable,’ ‘Split,’ and ‘Glass’ compose what fans call the ‘Eastrail 177 Trilogy,’
god, that's a mouthful,
named after the deadly train crash that kicked off the saga.
A security guard named David Dunn finds himself the only survivor of a wreck that claimed 131 lives,
in fact, he walks away completely unscathed.
Why are you looking me like that?
Because you didn't break one bone. You don't have a scratch on you.
Turns out he’s never been injured, never been sick,
and despite the clearly visible scars and ear piercing on Bruce Willis,
David Dunn is indeed unbreakable.
Toss in some super strength, mild ESP,
and his own personal Kryptonite in the form of drowning,
which, I feel like, is everybody's Kryptonite,
and you’ve got all the makings of a superhero.
He’s even got a costume!
The only thing missing is a villain.
Enter Elijah Price,
a dealer in comic art who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta,
a rare disease that makes his bones as fragile as, well, glass.
I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my leg, and every afternoon I break my arms.
Price, obsessed with the archetypes and mythology of superhero fiction,
has spent his life convinced that his opposite must be out there,
a nemesis who could finally give meaning to his tortured existence,
Unfortunately, as Shyamalan reveals in a genuinely shocking twist,
Price has conducted his search through the process of elimination,
orchestrating accidents and catastrophes that cost hundreds of lives,
all towards finding his invulnerable arch-enemy.
Can you imagine killing thousands of people to find Bruce Willis?
Like a true supervillain,
when his plot is exposed, price unleashes a monologue that would make Lex Luthor jealous,
Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you're here. That's just an awful feeling.
and reclaims a former childhood insult as his new nom-de-guerre.
It'd be like if I started going by "Buck-tooth Beaver." That's what they called me in first grade. I haven't forgotten.
Coming hot off the heels of Shyamalan’s breakout hit ‘The Sixth Sense,’
‘Unbreakable’ was seen as a disappointment at the box office,
but it was appreciated as a somber, in-depth look at the birth of a superhero in a world not unlike our own.
17 years later, Shyamalan shocked the world by:
A. Releasing a movie that’s not a total crapshoot, and
B. Returning to the same world.
‘Split’ introduces us to Kevin Wendell Crumb,
NEEERD! Sorry, it's just a really nerdy name.
a mild-mannered man suffering from dissociative identity disorder.
23 personalities, or “alters” are battling for control of his brain,
each one born from his past trauma.
There’s Barry, the flamboyant fashion plate,
Orwell, the overly verbose nerd,
the naive nine-year-old Hedwig,
and so on.
Each alter doesn’t just change Kevin’s personality,
he undergoes a physical transformation as well,
especially when ‘The Best’ is finally unleashed.
The 24th persona is a ruthless, deranged killer with an arsenal of superpowers,
and a taste for human flesh.
For most of the film, ‘Split’ feels like a well-made but not particularly noteworthy horror flick,
it’s only in the last seconds, where we realize that Shyamalan has a trick up his sleeve.
Oh, that Shyamalan!
First, Kevin gets his own supervillain name, “The Horde,”
which reminds a certain someone of a villain he once tangled with.
What was it?
Mr. Glass...
Shyamalan claims that he originally planned to include the Horde in the first film,
and some fans have pointed to dialogue that hints at Kevin’s existence long before.
Still, the twist ending of ‘Split’ was a huge shock,
And the revelation that it takes place in the same universe as ‘Unbreakable’ got fans salivating for a third entry that tied both stories together,
but in a post ‘Infinity War’ world,
three guys sitting in a mental hospital isn’t exactly the most epic crossover of the century.
Times have changed!
And that’s one of the reasons
Why We’re Skeptical
Let’s get this out of the way first:
M. Night Shyamalan’s track record is… Mixed at best.
Do you remember 'Devil?'
Jeez, bro, take it easy, okay?
There’s no doubt the man is capable of making effective, scary, and surprising movies,
but after ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘Unbreakable,’
Shyamalan spiralled into self-indulgence.
‘The Village,’ ‘Lady in the Water,’ ‘After Earth,’ and ‘The Happening,’
arguably the greatest movie ever where Mark Wahlberg runs in terror from a light breeze,
Here it comes!
all exhibit the telltale signs of a director who’s drinking way too much of his own Kool-Aid,
but at least those were entertaining trainwrecks.
And none of them orchestrated by Elijah! Amirite?
Some cinematic sins are truly unforgivable, though,
and I’ll never get over how badly Shyamalan botched ‘The Last Airbender.’
It wasn't even an 'Avatar' movie, it was a disgrace.
I was the first person to trust you, remember? And you turned around and betrayed me! Betrayed all of us!
Still, even if Scorcese was sitting in the director’s chair,
I’d still be a little skeptical about an ‘Unbreakable’ sequel in 2019.
When it first released in November of 2000,
cinema was in a very different place when it comes to superheroes.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You wanna get out of my way?
The game-changing ‘X-Men’ had only debuted a few months earlier,
and we were still eight years away from ‘Iron Man’ skyrocketing superheroes into the mainstream,
which leaves ‘Unbreakable’ in kind of a weird spot.
Even after ‘Blade’ and ‘X-Men,’
Hollywood was still kind of embarrassed to fully embrace the corniness at the heart of comic books.
The bad taste of ‘Batman and Robin’ still lingered,
which means bright colors, silliness, and temperature-based puns were off the table.
On the other hand, ‘Batman Begins’ hadn’t yet taught us how to do a grounded superhero story without sacrificing the costumes and spectacle.
Nice!
‘Unbreakable’ doesn’t really find that balance, and to be fair, it doesn’t try to.
It’s “realistic” all right, but in this case, that’s kind of a synonym for “boring.”
There are a LOT of scenes where Bruce Willis makes a pouty face and stares at his son for what seems like hours,
Now, I can appreciate a slow pace in service of a story,
but only if the story has something compelling to say.
‘Unbreakable’ is a fairly shallow exploration of comic book tropes.
It gets the very broad strokes right,
but it doesn’t bring anything new or exciting to the table.
Did you know that villains tend to wear secondary colors?
Or that heroes usually have big strapping jaws?
Gosh, if you think about it, Hercules and Gilgamesh were basically superheroes!
Young man, we need a professional hero, not an amateur!
It’s surface-level insight that doesn’t take into account how nuanced and complex comics actually are,
and these days,
"the hero is the oppsite of the villain” is almost as tired as
“what if Superman but Jesus?”
But that’s only because the landscape has drastically changed over the last 19 years.
That’s probably the biggest reason
Why We’re Intrigued
Good for you!
You guys remember ‘Venom,’ right?
Yeah!
Hey, Jesus!
This is dead. Dead!
Sony’s bastard stepchild of the Spidey franchise that somehow managed to make more money than ‘Into the Spider-Verse?’
Wow, can't believe that.
It felt like a throwback to the pre-MCU era,
to the days of ‘Ghost Rider’
You wanna kill me? [UNITELLIGIBLE]
and Ben Affleck's ‘Daredevil,’
not that new hotness 'Daredevil,' not that cancelled stuff.
before things like tactical spandex and post-credit stingers had become rote and standardized.
Nobody knew what to make of it, or what to expect,
and that’s what made it so great.
I get those same vibes from ‘Glass,’
It’s like we’ve just defrosted a caveman who was frozen in the days before cinematic universes,
before bizarre heroes like Ant-Man and Groot could rake in billions at the box office.
By the way, this is a friend of mine, a tree.
I am Groot!
I am Steve Rogers.
Imagine if Tobey Maguire slipped on the Spidey suit one last time,
a decade after his last dance?
Or if Michael Keaton donned the cowl again,
27 years after he last returned?
If you need a less hypothetical example,
‘Blade Runner: 2049’ did an amazing job exploring both how society has changed since the original’s far off future setting of 2019,
and how technology has changed our IRL lives in the 35 years between the films.
‘Glass’ is reportedly incorporating unused footage Shyamalan shot during ‘Unbreakable,’
which just drives the point home even further.
David Dunn is a relic from a time where it wasn’t cool to like superheroes,
and nows he’s returned to a world where your grandma knows who Ego the Living Planet is.
And not just because it's Kurt Russel.
I got a penis.
Hah! Thank you!
There have been a ton of movies deconstructing superheroes since the first ‘Unbreakable,’
‘Watchmen,’ ‘Chronicle,’ ‘Super,’ ‘Kick-Ass,’
Drake Bell’s magnum opus ‘Superhero Movie…’
the list goes on.
But none of them have really dealt with how saturated superheroes have become in our pop culture,
They love me!
and how they’ve broken the bounds of nerd-dom and conquered the mainstream.
As a series that began in one era and,
releasing just four scant months before ‘Endgame,’
ends at the close of another,
the ‘Unbreakable’ trilogy is uniquely situated to address the massive shift in our relationship with comic book movies.
I doubt the film will overtly tackle the superhero boom that took place since its prequel,
but I really hope M. Night has something to say about how costumed crimefighters have captured our imaginations in the intervening years.
‘Split’ was widely seen as a return to form for the director,
he hung up his delusions of being the next Spielberg,
and embraced the shlock and shocks that made him a star in the first place.
With ‘Glass,’ Shyamalan has the opportunity to explore how the pop culture landscape has changed in the wake of an industry-shaking paradigm shift,
finally finish a story he began nearly twenty years ago,
and a cement a legacy that’s truly ‘Unbreakable.’