#the conclusion of this arc with his dad and bruce is so sympathetic??? I LOVE them your honor

[righteousruin]

This whole arc in Gotham Knights is my absolute beloved.  I wish DC was brave enough to let Bane be a person

[thesffcorner]

Glass

Glass is written and directed by M Night Shyamalan. It’s the third film in a series that started 19 years ago with Unbreakable and takes place 3 weeks after the events of Split. It follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who after the death of his wife, has become a vigilante, dubbed the Overseer by the public. He has been trying to find the Beast (James McAvoy), who has in the intervening time kidnapped 2 more sets of girls. However, during their confrontation they get ambushed by the police and admitted into a sanatorium, under the eye of Dr Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who has three days to ‘cure’ both of them from their delusion that they are superheroes.

I really enjoyed this film. It still suffers from some pacing and dialogues issues, as do most of Shyamalan’s films, but a lot of the problems I had with Split, are fixed here. It’s a clever examination of our culture’s perception of superheroes and extraordinary humans, and I think it’s a fitting conclusion to David, Kevin and Elijah’s story-lines.

I think the best way to talk about this film, would be to go over the characters, because much like Fantastic Beasts, the positives and negatives are tied to the various character story-lines. So, in descending order let’s start with the positives.

Kevin Wendell Crumb:

Kevin’s character, I feel has both the strongest arc, and gets most of the screen times, so it’s only fitting we start with him. In the intervening time between Split and Glass, the Horde, we find out has kidnapped two more sets of girls, a group of cheerleaders being the last one. All of the personalities we saw in Split make a comeback, and while I still maintain that Hedwig is the MVP, and best character, I was surprised at how much I both liked and looked forward to seeing Dennis, Patricia and Kevin himself.

I really do have to comment MacAvoy; he is genuinely the reason this character works at all. He has such a good grasp on all these different characters, that me and my friends just had fun guessing which personality had the light in different scenes, and we all guessed first try, often without even McAvoy having any dialogue. He is so good at creating different mannerisms and body language for each character, and they are all (especially the main 5) are recognizable and distinguished from each other.

I was also happy to see a ton of the other personalities. I didn’t count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did see all 24 of them; there are two scenes where the asylum uses hypnotic lights to cycle between the different characters in Kevin’s body, and we get a taste of most if not all of them. None of the other personalities get any real weight to the story, but I did like the subtle hints that the Horde was disintegrating, with some people joining Patricia and Dennis, and some maintaining to fight against them.

Speaking of Dennis, I was SHOCKED that I actually liked him in this film. I think the smaller role actually helped establish what was meant to be his conflict in Split, which was his desire to protect Kevin, and Patricia’s indoctrination that only the Beast can truly do that, with his hesitance to kill any of the girls. He is faced with Casey, and her being amicable and caring about Kevin are what really push him over the edge into realizing the Beast is wrong, and I really liked that.

Patricia was the weakest of the mains in Split, but here she gets some interesting scenes with Elijah. She is the Beast's priestess and first disciple, but even her faith and commitment waver in the face of someone like David Dunn who is capable of all the things the Beast is, and maybe even stronger. She was the one that was the most susceptible to Dr. Staple’s ‘therapy’ because she’s the most committed to the idea that the Beast is superhuman; if he isn’t and he is just a mad monster, than Patricia has to come to terms with the fact that all the people she killed for him were innocent and for nothing.

Hedwig doesn’t really get an arc, but he is still the most entertaining and funniest character. He gets several scenes to shine with Elijah and David, but the stand out was definitely his ‘relationship’ with Casey, which brought some much needed levity to this otherwise bleak film.

Kevin, who didn’t get much time to shine in Split, gets a bigger role here. I thought the idea of him more or less imprinting on Casey because she was the one to show him kindness and their shared trauma was fine as a character turn. What I didn’t really like or understand were the weird romantic undertones between them, and also Casey's speech to him about what happened to her uncle after the Beast let her go, should have made no sense to Kevin, since he didn’t know about her scars; it felt like it was directed at the audience, as Shyamalan realized Casey didn’t get any conclusion in the last film.

As for the Beast, I really liked the way Elijah essentially manipulates him to fall perfectly in his plan, and I think the film does a decent job at presenting the duality of him being at once, there to protect Kevin from the world, and at the same time a destructive and evil force in the world.

Elijah Pierce:

Speaking of Elijah, he was by far my favorite character in the film. Samuel L Jackson is great in any role, but here he brings a real joy to this character that’s at the same time appalling, and sympathetic and pitiable. He makes terrible decisions, hurts people and has no concern for anyone other than as to how they fit in his grand scheme, and yet you can’t help but root for him. He’s incredibly clever, and his medical condition makes it near impossible for me to hate him, mostly because there are plenty of characters who treat him poorly in the film.

This entire plot hinges on his plan, and while I won’t spoil it, I will say that I DID NOT see either of the twists coming, and I was pleasantly surprised with the direction the film took. Jackson got some great interactions with both Willis and McAvoy, and I really liked that he not once is tempted to believe that what Dr Staple tells him is true; that’s why she decides to perform the ‘procedure’ on him immediately. I also really liked the scenes he gets with his mother, especially at the end; I thought that was a very touching moment, and humanized a rather monstrous character.

David Dunn:

David was the only character I feel like was rather wasted in this film. He has a lot of screen time especially at the start of the film, while he’s still trying to find the Beast, and I really liked the Batman/Oracle dynamic he has with his son Joseph throughout the film. Unfortunately, once the characters are in the asylum, he sort of gets lost in the shuffle, and doesn’t really have a proper arc like Kevin or Elijah. He basically goes through the same arc he had in Unbreakable, except less well executed, and faster.

and he’s the one that really puts a wrench in the ‘therapy’ Dr Staple has, which is hard to explain without talking about Dr. Staple.

Dr. Ellie Staple:

Dr Staple specialized in people who have delusions that they are superhumans, so she spends most of the film trying to convince the three, especially Kevin and David, that they don’t. Except this isn’t really convincing as a potential twist, because we KNOW that David and the Beast are capable of doing superhuman things. With David, he’s never been sick, he’s never broken a bone, he survived a train crash that killed everyone else, he can lift more than weightlifters in their prime, he can sustain heavy blows and injuries in his body, and he looks amazing for someone who at that point is probably around 60. Even the explanation of his visions felt too contrived; the movie doesn’t make an effort to disguise the way he figures out Hedwig is the Beast by showing us the ‘clues’ that he supposedly picked up on to make that judgement; it’s very clearly some form of superpower, and I don’t see how anyone in the audience would believe even for a second that David isn’t superhuman.

The same goes for the Beast; I don’t care how good at parkour and rock climbing you are, you can NOT walk on ceilings, stick to flat surfaces or throw metal tables like they weigh nothing as a human, you just simple can not. Getting shot at point blank even via a malfunctioning shotgun would KILL YOU. This whole section felt like wasted time, because I as an audience member at no point believed any of it was true, and really disliked that out of all people the one that it worked best on was David.

There is much more I can say about Staple, but I won’t because of spoilers. The one thing I will say, is that it makes sense that she would try to dissuade the trio from believing they are gifted first, and I understand why that part was in the film, I just feel like maybe it would have worked better, if we didn’t already have two previous films where we establish their powers already.

The other thing was that she was just a horrible psychiatrist. Letting Casey talk to Kevin, but not letting Joseph see his dad, claiming that David attacked one of the cheerleaders when there are witnesses that he didn’t, using water to subdue David in what is essentially torture, while at the same time telling him his fear of drowning and isn’t actually his kryptonite because he’s a regular man… look it makes sense at the end, but without that twist, you begin wondering WHO RUNS THIS SHOW? How is this legal?

Casey, Mrs. Pierce and Joseph:

Joseph was the one who had the least amount of screen-time and least to do. I liked his role as a tech wizard, Oracle-style figure to David, and I enjoyed the scene where he writes a speech to convince Dr Staple that his dad is just a senile old man who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but other than that he doesn’t have much to do.

I liked Mrs. Pierce the most, because I really like her relationship with Elijah. I appreciate that she acknowledges that he is not a good man, and has done horrible things, while also loving and caring about him deeply, and being proud of his intelligence and strength. She was a really good character.

Casey I liked better here, because she was a little more proactive, but I still don’t really understand why she cared about Kevin to the extent that she does. First, he did hold her hostage and try to eat her, ate two of her classmates, and then ‘let her go’ in the sense that he left her locked in a cage at the zoo. Why was she so touched by that so much that she was willing to get involved with him again? I don’t think the film really does a good job at distinguishing between her relationship to the Beast vs Kevin (I’d even throw in Dennis in there, since their interactions are also creepy), and even if we say that her attachment is purely to Kevin, the film doesn’t really explain why she would want to do anything to do with him!

Some Miscellaneous Thoughts:

I did like the breakdown of the superhero genre, and the play with tropes and conventions like the Villain Team Up, the Former Villain Joins Forces With the Hero To Defeat a Bigger Threat, the Twist in the Third Act, Secret Plan All Along, etc. I liked how the secondary characters filled out a roles in each of the heroes’ lives like the Sidekick, the Emotional core, the Mentor. I even liked the self sacrifice to bring light to truth aspect of the story.

However, I think that there were definitely things that needed improvement. Like I said, the middle part does drag, and the ‘therapy’ angle didn’t really work and felt like a waste of time until we get to the climax. I also thought that the idea of superhero books being a fictionalized history lesson on real things was interesting, but the way the movie presents it, it’s both not a convincing case and not very interesting, because it does sound crazy. The other thing that tied into this was the idea that Staple’s therapy and similar measures have worked so well for centuries, until specifically Elijah came along; that seemed a little unreasonable as well.

Conclusion:

I liked this film. If you like Shyamalan, slow, character driven explorations of the superhero genre and or any of the actors, go see it. If you don’t, then skip this film; don’t go into it thinking you’ll get Watchmen, because you won’t; the closest would be season 1 of Heroes.