The dramatic question behind M. Night Shyamalan’s cult favourite Unbreakable was “what if someone in the real world discovered they are a superhero?” For Glass – a 19-years-in-the-making follow-up to both Unbreakable and 2017 stealth sequel Split – the question seems to be “what if someone in the real world thinks they’re a superhero?” They’d be quite rightly locked up for everyone’s safety, of course.
Glass review
Which is what happens to indestructible security man David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and multi-personality loon Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy) after their first meeting. Under the care of Dr Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), David and Kevin find themselves sharing a psychiatric ward with Unbreakable’s brittle-boned evil genius Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson).
But despite carrying over some visual motifs, Glass loses the sense of reality that grounded Unbreakable. This is more colourful and more cartoonish – a vision of what the Unbreakable sequel might look like if it were in actually in the pages of a comic book. David’s simpering son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) is now his sort-of sidekick, though more Alfred than Robin; Mr Glass gets to do some proper criminal masterminding; and it’s all leading to a good vs evil showdown that would be probably more at home in a Marvel film than the slow, melancholic universe of Shyamalan’s original.
Related: Split review
That in itself hints at an interesting point about the nature of comic book characters: they are reinterpreted and reimagined all the time, from story arc to story arc, from TV spin-off to mega-franchise movie. Glass is a sequel, but easy to separate from Unbreakable. Which is handy, because being an M. Night Shyamalan film, things are not what they seem.
The film is surprisingly Bruce Willis-lite, while McAvoy takes centre stage with his highlight reel of rapid-fire personality changes (as in Split, 9-year-old Hedwig is the star). There’s a prolonged, ponderous therapy session analysing not just the characters but also comic book culture, while attempting to reestablish some narrative mystery (are they really super-powered or just nutcases?) but otherwise the plot rattles along at a decent pace for the inevitable bad guy team-up and breakout.
But all momentum is crushed under the weight of the film’s own meta-heavy self-awareness before falling off a cliff – and not the kind of cliff where there’s a caped superhero flying around to catch and save you.
The brilliance of Unbreakable is its subtle deconstruction of the superhero genre. It is essentially just the first act of an origin story. And while Shyamalan is aiming for a similarly smart commentary with Glass, by now he’s said enough – and said it better, quite frankly – that spelling out the rules with one loopy ending after another borders on pomposity. In other words, too much talking about the big showdown and not enough actually doing it. After 19 years of waiting, all we really needed was the final act.
Glass review by Tom Fordy, January 2019.
Glass is released in cinemas on 18th January 2019.
