Glass

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With the release of this film, we wrap up the 'Unbreakable' trilogy, with each of the three titles covering each film's particular main character. At this point, between 'Unbreakable' and 'Split', spoiler alerts need not apply, but I'll try to keep what's going on with this film spoiler-free, all the same.

​Long story short, the 'Unbreakable' twist was that a dramatic film turned into a superhero film, and with 'Split', a thriller did the same thing, but with the added twist of taking place in the 'Unbreakable' universe. So, it would make perfect sense that the third film would have three big twists, right? Well... we do pretty much get that here, but is it actually good for the film, or is it too much?

'Glass' opens up with David Dunn (Bruce Willis) taking on the role of "hero" with his abilities of super strength and extrasensory perception. He's after "The Horde", aka Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and his several personalities, after learning of a group of cheerleaders being kidnapped by him. The fight scene that ensues is actually pretty cool, but they ultimately end up being arrested and brought to a mental institution. Here, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), calling himself "Mr. Glass" is also residing, under the supervision of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson).

Once the other two arrive, Staple reveals to them that their collective superhuman abilities are in their imaginations, and everything can be simply explained away. This leads Mr. Glass to attempt to bring out The Beast (the big, bad, strong and villainous personality of Kevin's) so that he can battle David during  the public unveiling of the city's new tallest tower. This will revive Kevin's faith in his superhuman abilities as well as reveal them to the world.

That's pretty much it, with a couple of interesting but relatively weak extra twists at the end. As I mentioned before, there's pretty much three here. One reveals a piece of Kevin's history, one reveals a secret of Dr. Staple's identity, and one reveals just how much of a mastermind Elijah Price is. In truth, these twists end up being just sort of okay. Nothing really floored me here, and I think that's mostly due to a combination of predictability, and the fact that this trilogy has already kinda blown its wad with the previous two twists. Thankfully, however, I didn't leave thinking to myself that the whole thing was just dumb. It had some pretty dumb moments, sure (seriously, Shyamalan, STOP USING WATER AS A WEAKNESS!!), but all in all, it was decent for what it needed to be.

The previous two films were superior, to be sure, but it does end up being kinda neat how everyone and everything comes together here. Each character even ends up getting a sort of "sidekick" as well, David with his Son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark); Elijah with his Mother, Mrs. Price (Charlayne Woodard); and interestingly enough, Kevin with his previous kidnap victim, Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy). They each have important roles to play here, and each sort of come into their own, almost forming their own little sidekick team.

So there's some pretty neat stuff going on here, and in my opinion, the film pretty much does what it needs to do. However, the overall breakdown of everything ends up being somewhat underwhelming for an audience who came ready for a solid superhero movie, complete with action and fighting and witty one-liners. But how can we be really THAT let down, knowing that Shyamalan has his tendency to keep things relatively slow-paced, using mostly dialogue to reveal the story as it goes? Speaking for myself, I'm not really THAT let down here. It's simply the weaker of the three films to me, fulfilling the common position of "weak third film", which is really nothing new.

3/5

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