Half Full of Missed Opportunity (Glass)
M. Night Shymalan has made the best superhero film of all time. It was 19 years ago and called Unbreakable.
Glass is a sequel to two much better movies, the aforementioned Unbreakable and Split. It’s not that Glass is a bad film. It just has all the trappings of a bad film combined with the disappointment of a much desired film that just misses the mark.
We have to point out Split, because it isn’t obvious. The only connection between it and Unbreakable was an incredibly forced-feeling end credits scene. According to interviews Shymalan intended The Horde (James McAvoy’s multiple-personality kidnapping cannibal) to appear in the third act of Unbreakable. This is the first mark of a bad movie: in order to understand some major aspect of the film, you have to have information which is not in the movie. Sequels can get away with that to some extent because they can assume you saw the previous film. Glass requires a recent re-watch of both Unbreakable and Split.
Unbreakable was going to be a trilogy – except it really wasn’t. People wanted a sequel, except they really didn’t. Indecision is the second mark of a bad movie. Glass doesn’t seem to know what it is. It spends the first half of the film trying to convince the audience that the previous two films were an unreliable narrator – the events of those films didn’t happen as we saw them. It tries to be a commentary on superhero films, a self-referential deep conspiracy, and a heist style misdirection, before clobbering the audience with a twist that no one saw coming because it was pulled out of the writer’s ass at the last moment. Shymalan is known for his seemingly out of nowhere twists, but this one required introducing new characters in the fourth act.
Then there is the end of the ending after the end – the third mark of a bad film. Glass is so caught up in not knowing what sort of film it is, that it forgets how to end and rambles for a half hour. It would have been better had it took a cue from The Sopranos, and just cut to black with the reveal (in the puddle). Or full-on jumping the shark and having the doctor sprout wings after she realizes Mr. Glass’s plan (this idea will make more sense when you see this film – her in the hallway).
And here’s the thing: You will see this movie because you loved Unbreakable. Samuel L. Jackson as Mr. Glass is a great character. With his tenure as Nick Fury under his belt, Jackson is really good at his secretly manipulative leader role. There are some great feelings in the first act, seeing what David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and his son (Spencer Treat Clark 19 years older) are doing now. The story is largely told with close-ups of the characters’ faces, so Glass doesn’t require the big screen.
Just because Glass doesn’t live up to its potential, doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it.