Glass

*WARNING SPOILERS*

Seen 2/1/19

I’ve been pretty curious and excited for this movie ever since it was announced. 

Here’s a little background as to why. Glass is the 3rd movie connecting M. Night Shyamalan’s previous movies, Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2017). I had heard good things about Unbreakable for a long time but never watched it until after I saw Split in theaters. I came out of Split very underwhelmed. The movie didn’t grab me like I thought it was going to. From the trailer for Split I was expecting this super intense thriller. It wasn’t that and I walked out of that theater saying “eh that was ok I guess”. I remember my friend Drew, who I had saw the movie with, asked when we were walking out if I had seen Unbreakable (as a response to the last shot of Split where you see Bruce Willis’ character) and I said no I haven’t and his response was something like “you should watch it they could be setting up for something really cool”. Within the next few weeks I had found Unbreakable on some streaming service. Loved it. Unbreakable is this unique take on superpowers, heroes and villains, and what it would look like in a real world setting. There is so much good stuff in Unbreakable. It helped me understand the world Split was playing in. It didn’t change my mostly negative thoughts on the movie but now understanding the world, I agreed with my friend Drew, what comes next could be great. 

Walking in to this movie I had the hopes it would be as great as Unbreakable but also had the fear that it wouldn’t meet my expectations just like Split. 

Unfortunately, my fears were met instead of my hopes by the end of this movie.

There were a lot of moments in this that showed promise. If only they had expanded on some of the characters and their relationships between one another. For example, right in the beginning we see David Dunn (Bruce Willis) getting “justice” on some people who have just assaulted some random guy on the street. Cut to David going in to his own store and he’s walking in to the back and we see David’s son. He is now David’s “guy in a chair”, he has a couple of monitors set up with a map, some news articles, etc. David and his son’s relationship is so important to the story of Unbreakable, I thought this was setting up to be promising. It then cuts to David going home, he takes a seat at his kitchen table and starts hearing a voice he turns to see his wife standing in front of the stove and then she flashes away, again David’s relationship with his wife in Unbreakable is pretty key to that story. But for the rest of the movie, David’s son has very little to do with everything going on, except to put his “guy in a chair” skills to uses for one thing that was predictable and very poorly delivered. The wife gets a mention in one sentence of dialogue, at a really random point, as to what happened with her. David himself doesn’t have much going on with his character, his whole point in the movie is to stop “The Beast” and that’s really it. It all just falls so short for something that had a lot of promise. 

Then this movie includes Anya Taylor-Joy’s character from Split and a woman who is supposed to be Elijah’s (Samuel L Jackson) mother. Some how this woman looks like she would be the same age as Elijah. If this movie is taking place 19 years after the events of Unbreakable this woman would not be as young as she appears. Anya Taylor-Joy’s character feels super forced in to the movie. I felt like they added her because she was a protagonist in Split so she needs to be a part of this movie. When in reality if they cut her whole story out it wouldn’t change much. The parts she does affect in the movie could have been done in different ways that didn’t include her. Or leave her character in the movie and just give her more to do, make her feel important.   

The ending of this movie was just so poor. Shyamalan tries to give his signature twist at the end and it was super predictable. But wait there’s another twist! Only this twist makes no sense and is just really dumb. It brings together David’s son, Elijah’s mother and Anya Taylor-Joy’s character like they all have this bond now. Again all of these characters are pretty much wasted in the movie but by the end I’m supposed to feel a connection with them? Nope, doesn’t work. 

I will give some positives thoughts. I think James McAvoy does a great job, as he did in Split. To be able to flip between characters like he does is pretty impressive. Once Samuel L Jackson finally gets to play his character he too does a great job. I also really enjoyed the musical score through out the movie.

While I had my problems with the movie I didn’t hate it. I walked out of this one thinking “eh that was ok” just as I did with Split.  Again I wish it had met my hopes, I really wanted this to be as good or even better than Unbreakable, but instead I was just kind of bummed that this didn’t meet expectations. Honestly I could do without this Shyamalan trilogy, just give me Unbreakable the only movie that matters out of these 3.