Glass: Shyamalan Loses Focus, Turns A Great Idea Into An Utter Mess

Glass was born of two very big surprises - Unbreakable and Split. Unbreakable was M. Night Shyamalan's follow up to The Sixth Sense. Most people didn't know how to respond to it. It was Shyamalan. It was Bruce Willis. It had a twist ending. But it wasn't scary. It wasn't horror. It wasn't The Sixth Sense so it was easily dismissed. However, Unbreakable has aged far better than The Sixth Sense ever has, now becoming heralded as Shyamalan's best movie. Split was a surprise that Shyamalan was still allowed to continue making movies. He put out one atrocity after another until most fans swore him off completely. The Village, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth all pretty much solidified his demise from Hollywood. But then a tiny, little, independent, found-footage movie called The Visit came out showcasing that Shyamalan may still have a little left in the tank. He hadn't earned our trust back yet, but it was a step in the right direction. Then came Split. It was classic Shyamalan. It was creepy, it had a slow build, it was very character-based, and it was damn good. M. Night was back, baby! And when we found out this was in the same universe as Unbreakable - holy shit! It wasn't long after that he announced a sequel to both films that would be the culmination of a trilogy - this time focusing on villain Mr. Glass. And unfortunately, while it looked like The Visit and Split were two very positive steps forward, Glass is the regrettable one step back.

There's a lot of potential and a lot going for Glass that Shyamalan missteps several times over. It begins several months, maybe even years after the events of Split. Kevin, also known as The Horde, (James McAvoy) is still on the loose kidnapping teenage girls and killing them. He's got four cheerleaders chained to a pipe in an abandoned warehouse with everyone looking for them. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is still the silent vigilante, out punishing assholes for misdeeds, with the help of his son, Joseph. When David tracks down The Horde and frees the girls, he and "The Beast" have their fight before they're interrupted by police and Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) and taken to a psychiatric hospital where Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass, (Samuel L. Jackson) has been for the past few years. Ellie's job is to convince these men that their superpowers are nothing but delusions of grandeur. She has three days to get them to realize they don't have powers at all, but are men who have experienced some luck along the way and the very phenomena that convinced them they were "special" can all be explained away. However, while she's enacting her plan, Elijah is silently planning one of his own. He wants to recruit The Beast to get them out of the hospital, fight David in a very public setting, and show the world that Superheroes (and villains) do exist.

That right there is a pretty solid idea for a third movie. I'm not sure I would've gone the route of locking these three wonderful characters up in a single building for most of the movie, unable to interact and roam free, but it's still not a bad IDEA for a third film. But it's just a complete mess. There's so much going on, Shyamalan loses track of all of it and it becomes a weird slushie of ideas, most of which should've been scrapped after the first draft of the script. There's too much going on in the movie and none of it makes much sense. And the stuff that does make sense is too underwhelming. The description of the plot above does and does not actually portray the actual plot of the movie. While all of the events above DO occur... they're, again... underwhelming. Most of the movie the three are separated, only interacting with Ellie as she explains to each of them why they've come to the hospital. Then, her "convincing them" session is one scene long. Maybe ten minutes of the entire two plus hour runtime. In one session... ten minutes... she manages to make both Kevin and David believe they might not actually be superheroes. Then, in an even shorter scene, Elijah is able to convince Kevin and The Beast to join his side. Elijah, as we've seen in Unbreakable, is a master at manipulation, and yet it takes him (by his own admission in the movie) about three to four minutes of convincing and manipulating Kevin to take his side. Shyamalan, in his best movies, does a lot of things right, and one of which includes never rushing his stories and his characters. He builds and builds and builds slowly until it culminates into something brilliant and jaw-dropping. Here, everything is rushed. He's trying to do too much. And it winds up being a big mess.

The other thing that happens constantly in the film is that Shyamalan gives the viewer a lot of promises that he fails to deliver on. Glass was promised to be Mr. Glass's movie. If Unbreakable was David's movie and Split was Kevin's movie, this one was to be devoted to the inner workings of evil genius Mr. Glass. And yet... the dude doesn't speak until over an hour in! He's faking being in a comatose state and we get nothing but little face twitches and blinks. Then, all of a sudden, he's up and ready to control Kevin. That entire hour could've (and should've) been Mr. Glass slowly manipulating the many personalities of Kevin. Earning their trust. Putting their distrust on Ellie or David or the world in general. We should've been able to watch the evil and the genius of Mr. Glass over that hour. Not over three minutes and a bunch of quick, confusing explanations of how he's faked being over-drugged. The scene with Ellie convincing them they're not special should've been the other part of that hour. These men have lived most of their lives knowing they've got these "powers", but one single sit-down with a doctor telling them they're crazy shouldn't immediately put doubt in their minds. It would take several sessions, slowly breaking them down little by little to the point where they actually wonder if they've got these abilities or not. But that's what happens and it strains credulity to the point of utter frustration for the viewer. Another promise Shyamalan doesn't deliver is a climax. Elijah's plan after escape involves getting to the grand unveiling of the largest skyscraper in Philadelphia. He's going to plant a bomb and release The Beast. David is to fight The Beast and stop Elijah and the bomb so the whole world can see what they're made of. Yet, it never gets to the big, epic showdown. The entire climax of the movie happens on the front lawn of the hospital and it's, once again... severely underwhelming.

For those of you who know Shyamalan's work... I'm not upset because there wasn't a big Marvel-esque showdown at the end. That's not his style. And I never expected it. I wasn't expecting a bloated CGI superpower climax... but I was expecting SOMETHING. I expected the equivalent of a showdown, but in Shyamalan's own quiet, reserved, but clever way. And it wasn't delivered. Then, in true Shyamalan fashion, a couple of twists are revealed. One of them is pretty clever, but the other was kind of eye-rolling, and a bit predictable. But it didn't have to be. If Shyamalan had delivered on his other promises, it would've felt earned and it would've made Glass feel like the previous films - an instant classic. But it's all just too messy. I haven't even gotten to the part where Anya Taylor-Joy, the abducted girl who escaped at the end of Split, keeps showing up because she's got some weird Stockholm Syndrome thing happening and she wants to destroy The Beast, but help Kevin... I dunno. It's like Shyamalan couldn't focus on a singular idea for each of these guys, so he threw them all together hoping they'd all work instead of work together to produce a cohesive and brilliant narrative instead of actively working against the film. Shyamalan works so much better when he's got a singular central focus for a movie. Movies like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable and Signs and Split. When he starts to get too convoluted and try to do too much are when his movies ultimately fail (The Village, Lady in the Water, The Last Airbender, After Earth, Glass).

The shining light on the movie, however, is its stellar cast. Bruce Willis, while not given hardly anything to do in the movie, is great as the stoic David. Samuel L. Jackson, who should've been given much more to do as well, shows us why he's still one of the greatest actors of our time. He IS Elijah, and if there's anyone who can convince me it only takes three to four minutes to turn someone to his side it's going to be Sam J. McAvoy steals the show once again as Kevin and his Horde. He's so good, Shyamalan gives us even more of his identities and allows McAvoy to transition from one to another to another seamlessly in a single shot. Each of these identities has their own voice, their own quirk, their own facial tick and even though we're just looking and McAvoy, each time he switches he makes it feel as if a brand new actor came in to portray the character. Willis, Jackson, and McAvoy all look like they're having a blast playing these characters again, but are just a little too subdued because they don't have enough to do. The meeting of David and The Beast should've been epic (again, not Marvel epic... Shyamalan epic), but it wasn't. It's some pushing... some shoving... some groaning... some grunting... and that's about it. The ending-ending of the film actually really upset me, but I'll save that for another discussion because I don't want to get into spoiler area just yet.

Glass is the movie equivalent of me building a piece of furniture I have to put together myself. It's got all the right components to come together and make something beautiful. But, because there's so many pieces and so much going on (and I'm an inept human being), I put something on backwards, something in the wrong place, and punched a hole through it... it became something much lesser than it should've been and disappointed everyone who has to look at it.

C-