Glass (Split/Unbreakable sequel)

The first trailer for Glass, the upcoming crossover between Unbreakable and Split from M. Night Shyamalan, is upon us.

Looks pretty damn good. I love the atmosphere.

Edited by comicwriter on Jul 20th 2018 at 5:34:44 AM

Guess I need to watch Split sometime.

The team-up between Glass and Mcavoy's character is going to be scary.

Has Mr. What a twist got his groove back?

His last few projects have been pretty solid. Split in particular was excellent.

Yeah. I didn't catch all of it, but what I did see I liked.

Would it be weird if I said he's upward climb started all the way back with Devil.

I always thought that movie, while not as good as his earlier works, wasn't as bad as the stuff that came later. It obviously still took him a while to get back to his previous quality, but he seems to be there.

I've been a fan of Shyamalan since The Sixth Sense, but I credit Unbreakable as one of those films that inspired me to go to film school. I don't defend missteps like the twist in The Village (which I really enjoyed up until that point) or all of The Last Airbender (which is common with many directors handed a big budget blockbuster), but if you listen to how he writes and tells a story you can learn a lot about the actual craft of filmmaking^note Malcolm in Sixth Sense only interacts with the scenery once (the broken window when his wife was with another man, something isolated as an odd event), that attention to detail is what separates great directors from mediocrity. At his best, his films are expertly assembled capsules showing a very clear vision.

One thing that caught my attention with the trailers for Split was telling the premise without outlining the basic narrative. It felt like a character study, and that's ultimately what it was. That's the same thing I feel about this trailer, I can maybe see a little of how it starts ( they are all imprisoned and some scenes indicate them being apprehended), but the overall story is a mystery. It definitely doesn't feel like a generic "hero vs. villain," which was my biggest fear.

Best line: "I would like to meet the beast." "I hope for your sake that he likes you."

Shivers, man.

Split has one of the best performances I have ever seen in any film; Mc Avoy's ability to shift gears and portray all the different personalities, each with their own posture, body language, speech pattern, and transition effortlessly between them all has to be seen to be believed. Not only that, but the handling of Casey's backstory as a victim of sexual abuse by her uncle could have easily been exploitative, but it was handled a lot more sensitively than you would expect. There was obviously a lot of care and insight put into making that aspect of her backstory believable, so I have to give Shyamalan a lot of credit as a writer for that alone.

It was easily one of my favorite films of 2016, so I've really been looking forward to this movie. I have faith in Shyamalan and his crew to deliver.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 21st 2018 at 3:55:13 PM

It's been 19 years.

I am extremely hype.

Certainly looks interesting.

^^^ That look Casey gives the police officer at the end of the film really shows how good the movie is. She says nothing, but because the entire movie was spent exploring the character we know exactly what she is thinking.

So I liked the trailer (and will have to watch Split at some point), but I'm going to need an explanation for why Bruce Willis' character doesn't just bend a steel bar with his bare hands to prove his powers. And apparently superhumans are becoming more commonplace (if I'm reading her mention that this "delusion" is becoming more common correctly), so surely someone has proven their abilities. Even if there are no super obvious powers like throwing fire, I feel like someone would have still been willing to sit down and put someone through an honest test and discover that this person really is superhuman.

As our favourite Jamaican Accountant Hermes Conrad once said...

...That's a very good question.

David does not at all strike me as the kind of person who would want his powers proven.

I'm more curious about why he was committed. I assume it's something to do with him apprehending the Beast.

That's what I was saying about there apparently being more of these people out there. David, sure, I can buy him just refusing to participate in any tests. That could make for an interesting early scene in the movie. Likewise, Glass and other-guy-who's-name-I-don't-know-because-I-haven't-seen-his-movie don't have particularly obvious powers (even in a verse with acknowledged superpowers, super intelligence tends to be hard to define, and Glass is a planner instead of a gadgeteer). But if there are enough superhumans out there that there is a growing psychological field of study for the "delusion," then surely there is someone who has moderately obvious powers like superstrength, who is actually willing to demonstrate these powers.

I suspect that there's something more going on here and the therapist is somehow brainwashing these people. Because you can't really disprove Willis' characters' strength - the therapist wasn't giving me a "I want to genuinely help these people" vibe either.

Either that, or David has been so doped up that he's actually incapable of using said strength at the moment. Maybe it's a Spider Man 2 thing and he's temporarily lost his strength.

But I really think it's just the therapist being evil.

I don't trust shrinks, ok? Couldn't watch Ant Man or Ant-Man and the Wasp for more than five minutes without getting creeped out

Edited by Soble on Jul 24th 2018 at 4:25:47 AM

I figured Glass was there because he absolutely believes himself to be a supervillain. While neither David or the Beast really consider themselves superheroes or supervillains, more or less, Elijah has completely defined himself and the world around him in comic book terms. Of the three of them, he actually belongs in a treatment like that.

I'm betting the bit where she rattles off their powers is for the trailer watcher's benefit and isn't in the actual movie. Otherwise, my guess is that David is in the therapy session to keep an eye on the two of them.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 24th 2018 at 8:28:37 AM

Is Glass necessarily wrong though? :p

Edited by Soble on Jul 24th 2018 at 10:01:10 AM

Not necessarily, but the fact that he views the world that way deliberately led him to becoming a supervillain in the first place.

The original movie was inspired by accounts of people with physical abnormalities that gave them what could be considered superpowers. Elijah's fragile bones is a real disorder, David's "unbreakable" bones is a known abnormality, Kevin's Dissociative Identity Disorder has documented similar physical changes between personalities. Stan Lee's Superhumans was dedicated to exploring these sort of things, one episode even confirmed an amateur wrestler had an extra thick skull explaining his ability to Use Your Head. And this is Real Life. Consider also how much we glorify athletes for having abilities most people don't have.

So just giving him a steel bar to bend is not enough, and David spent an entire movie trying to confirm his intuition and Touch Telepathy to himself, let alone to "non-believers." So someone walking around saying "I have superpowers" is still likely to be met with skepticism and get them committed.

Edited by KJMackley on Jul 24th 2018 at 10:29:13 AM

It wouldn't be good for the movie, but I kind of want Shyamalan to try and incorporate his other movies into this universe. Cole Sear shows up for some reason, watch the internet go nuts as an adult Aang with hair and his arrow tattoo appear hanging out on a street corner.

And the movie ends with aliens reinvading, this time with wetsuits.

What a tweest.

Second trailer:

Focused more on Elijah and shows more of the plot of the movie.

Hype.

Looks very good. The psychiatrist also looks both more and less evil. She seems to be using pseudo-torture to "cure" her subjects, but allies with David to stop Elijah and the Beast.

The first trailer was better, but this was still pretty damn good. That one shot of The Beast lifting the car was insane, as well as David knocking the door off its hinges. Especially ingenious was the doctor using specific lights to instigate Kevin's personality switches.

Edited by KJMackley on Oct 11th 2018 at 8:51:58 AM

Wow. As if we didn't already know that shit hits the fan huh?