As you know Wednesday’s are our Comic Round-Up days. Well, today we are going for a bit of a curveball, I have a post about a movie! Yayyy, boooo! I don’t care. It’s my day and I do what I want.
So let’s talk about the M. Night Shyamalan movie Glass which comes out Friday the 18th. Well first off, even though there is no comic of Glass, it’s described by Shyamalan as a comic book thriller. So it does kinda still fit for this post. Secondly, Shyamalan directed, wrote, and had part in producing the film which is quite amazing… or insane. I guess that all depends on how you liked his other two films in this trilogy.
In 2000 was the first film of the trilogy, Unbreakable. A security guard (David Dunn, played by Bruce Willis), having been the sole survivor of a high-fatality train crash, finds himself at the center of a mysterious theory that explains his consistent physical good fortune. When news of his survival is made public, a man whose own body is excessively weak (Elijah Prince, played by Samuel L. Jackson), tracks him down in an attempt to explain his unique unbreakable nature. Elijah Price is born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease that renders sufferers’ bones extremely fragile and prone to fracture. As revealed later in flashbacks, Elijah—who grows up to become a comic-book art dealer—develops a theory, based on the comics he has read during his many hospital stays, that if he represents extreme human frailty, there must be someone “unbreakable” at the opposite extreme.
To add to the comic book theme of this movie, Shyamalan organized the narrative of Unbreakable to parallel a comic book’s traditional three-part story structure. The film has subsequently gained a strong cult following. A deconstruction of the superhero genre, many regard it as one of Shyamalan’s best films, and one of the best superhero films. In 2011, Time listed it as one of the top ten superhero films of all time. See… it does fit in as a comic post!
The second movie in this trilogy, which is a standalone sequel to Unbreakable, is the 2016 film Split. Which was also written, directed, and partially produced by M. Night Shyamalan (he also has a small appearance in the movie). Kevin Wendell Crumb (played by James McAvoy) has 23 different personalities who kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls in an isolated underground facility. One of his darker personalities manifests within his psyche and results in his eventual transformation into a merciless and cannibalistic sociopath with superhuman abilities. Casey Cooke (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), is the only captive to survive an encounter with The Beast.
The final movie in the trilogy, Glass, follows the conclusion of Split. Mr. Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.
Shyamalan has stated that the films are origin stories, of people with unique gifts, with the intent being to acknowledge that every person has something special about them. Writers and fans also referred to the series as the “Eastrail 177 trilogy”, because, as noted, all three main characters were connected to the train in Unbreakable in some important way. The series has been noted for its differences to more traditional superhero movies, with Shyamalan’s work referred to as “the first auteur shared superhero universe”. It is the first superhero franchise that is written and directed by one person, in comparison to other popular films in the genre. Shyamalan has noted that while it is based on comic book superheroes, and refers to comic books, it is not actually derived from comic book material itself. In contrast to most superhero films, the series is also generally grounded in reality, and is seen as a deconstruction of the superhero genre. The series is thus considered to be a unique take on the superhero genre.
So what do you think of this super hero, not super hero, movie trilogy? Have you seen the first two? Will you see Glass? Let us know what you think.
Thanks for the excellent post