*If you haven’t seen the movie and are planning to, you probably want to stop here. Come back after you’ve seen it.
Now…
Full disclosure: I’m a fan of UNBREAKABLE. I liked it better than THE SIXTH SENSE. I’ve watched it probably six or seven times. And every time I’ve watched it, I manage to pick up something new I missed the previous times.
No, it’s not a perfect movie. I wouldn’t even label it “great.” But it’s good. And for a comic book fan like me, it’s a lot of fun to watch.
Yeah, many of the scenes go on too long. Writer/Director M. Night Shyamalan also has an annoying habit of moving the camera too much and filming from strange angles. Whatever. I liked it. Honestly, it was the last M. Night Shyamalan I liked up until SPLIT. (Yes, that’s a long gap of M. Night Shyamalan movies I didn’t enjoy.)
SPLIT is good mostly because of James McAvoy’s performance. The plot is paper thin, but who cares when you have McAvoy turning in a tour de force that, quite honestly, should have gotten him an Oscar. But I digress…
I liked SPLIT, and liked it even more when it’s revealed at the very end of the film that it ties into UNBREAKABLE. If you didn’t like either of those movies, you won’t like this GLASS. Even so, even liking them, it’s still not guaranteed you’ll like GLASS. But you should.
Yes, yes, yes… You expected a big Marvel superhero-style fight at the end. Lots of CGI. Gritted teeth. Maybe one character to don a traditional superhero costume. M. Night throws in lots of bits that make you think one or more of those things will happen. Then, in typical M. Night Shyamalan fashion, he goes down a different path.
Maybe you didn’t like it because one character doesn’t get as much to do in this film as the others. Maybe it was because the ending was, well, not what you wanted. Not what most of us wanted who had been waiting for the continuation of the story since UNBREAKABLE. Maybe you didn’t like the plot twist, the unexpected turn the film takes in the finale. But here’s the thing:
Everything that happens is set up throughout the movie. The clues are all there. Maybe you didn’t like the ending, but it’s still an ending. It’s an ending M. Night Shyamalan wanted for the movie, and for the trilogy.
It wasn’t what you wanted. Hell, it wasn’t what I wanted. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s what M. Night Shyamalan wanted, and he delivered the story he wanted to tell and ended it the way he wanted.
It wasn’t the stereotypical ending of a superhero movie. But UNBREAKABLE wasn’t a stereotypical superhero origin story. (In fact, it really isn’t a superhero origin story at all. It’s a supervillain origin story.)
GLASS ties up everything set out in the previous two movies. One criticism I have of the movie is that it attempts to touch on too much from the past, even to the point of M. Night reprising the same cameo he made in UNBREAKABLE. Again, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. Not being the movie you wanted doesn’t make it bad.
GLASS is a good movie. You might not agree with that statement. In response, I’m going to borrow a quote from Henry Rollins:
If you disagree with me, it’s okay. You’re wrong.