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OT: M. Night's "Glass" -- The Sequel to "Unbreakable" AND "Split" (NO SPOILERS)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Back in the day (1999) when "The Sixth Sense" was a bona fide sleeper hit, its writer-director M. Night Shamalyan (sp?) got a lot of ink for awhile. He was possibly "the next Spielberg" or even "the next Hitchcock." Possibly the next Rod Serling.

"The Sixth Sense" joined "Psycho" and "The Sting" and a few other movies in delivering a lollapalooza of a twist ending, one which(I noted in the theater at the time), turned a sometimes gruesome ghost story into a tearjerker(as the theater suddenly filled with sniffling and tears were shed copiously.)

Bruce Willis got a "star career saver" with "The Sixth Sense," and so gladly signed up for M. Night's next movie "Unbreakable" (2000.) I'm among those who like "Unbreakable" the best among M. Night's films -- though I've only seen about half of them (the good half.) And "Unbreakable" had a pretty good twist ending too -- though it had to be talked through and explained...M. Night's narrative powers weakened quickly.

"The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" established M. Night's style -- slow, moody, "not much happens" until suddenly, it does -- and the guy seemed well on his way. So much so in fact , that for his next film ("Signs") , M. Night could attract ANOTHER superstar of the time(Mel Gibson) and "do it again."

Except: "Signs" showed signs of weakness, as M. Night(always his own writer in the beginning) started to have to push and pull and stretch to get his movie to deliver the requisite twist ending. Hitchcock made his films from novels and plays with track records; and hired writers to write them for the screen. M. Night did it all himself(ala QT with dialogue) but in his case, the strain showed. The Village...Lady in the Water....the arrogant M. Night suddenly found himself out of favor(as happens to a lot of "hot ones") and I personally lost track of his career for the almost two decades since. I read that "The Happening" with Mark Wahlberg was especially bad.

But Hollywood loves a comeback, and in the past years, M. Night got two. The first was "The Visit," which I have rented and I can attest is pretty creepy: a single mom sends her two teens to stay in the distant woods with their grandparents for a week. And slowly but surely , grandma and grandpa reveal themselves to be creepy, nuts....murderous. The "Why?" is that film's twist ending. And: the concept of a lethal grandma carries remnants of Psycho, yes?

But the bigger comeback came next: "Split," about a man with 24(!) splits (people) to his personality. The roots to Psycho were certainly there, but also to The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil and other more comprehensive looks at split personalities(without hiding it, as Psycho does for most of the film.) James McAvoy zipped all over the place in voice and facial expressions(one of whom was a prim old lady, one of whom was a precocious little boy, one of whom was a muscular monster) and while you could applaud his versimillitude, I for one found this act rather boring after awhile. Plus the plot had McAvoy holding teen girls prisoner in dungeon-like quarters and I found that claustrophobic, no fun (Psycho IS fun, a gold standard for such even as it stays grim around the edges.)

What M. Night has now done is to combine his most recent hit(Split) with his most sequel-ready "Golden Oldie" ("Unbreakable") and created a movie that sequels two different stories and sets of characters, and brings them all together (sort of in the Family Plot tradition.)

"Unbreakable" was 19 years ago -- I still find it amazing to speak of "the year 2000" in the past tense...now almost 20 years! So this is ALMOST the distance from Psycho to Psycho II(well, not really, that was a 23 year gap)...but at the same time, "Unspeakable" stars Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, are thrown together with very recent star James McAvoy and the effect is rather weird. Its like throwing James Taylor together with a rapper.

I'll give nothing away but the premise: a female psychiatrist(Sarah Paulson, she of the adorable heavy lisp) has incarcerated together McAvoy's "split" psycho; Jackson's villainous "Mr. Glass"(every bone in his body is" super-breakable") and Willis' heroic "Overseer"(every bone in HIS body is unbreakable) and breaks the news to all three of them: "None of you have the superpowers you think you have. Its all in your mind."

M. Night's premise here is very unwieldy: the shrink is speaking , for instance, ONLY to the "Split" guy's superstrong Beast personality; and Mr. Glass' easily-broken bones aren't a superpower -- his supervillain mind is, etc. As for Willis, he provably IS strong, CAN bend steel bars so....how to convince him otherwise?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I linger on this premise because I think it is "cuckoo from the get-go" and M. Night's film uses it as the basis for the whole thing. The female psychiatrist is meant to be quite the villainess in her quest to disprove that the three characters have superpowers, and things get murky from there. What DOES become clear is that of our three characters, two are villains, and one is a hero and so....what's that entail for the climax? (Except one of the villains -- the "Split" guy -- has multiple "good guys and girls" within him as well.)

One of the problems I have with "Glass" is that it takes the emotion and power of "Unbreakable" and its main characters and..rather throws them away in the service of this new inferior plotline. I rented "Unbreakable" before seeing "Glass" and I was moved again by how the film used a particular musical theme to impart heavy emotion(even during scenes of violence.) That musical theme reappears but briefly in "Glass" and -- I savored it. Then lost it. Then missed it.

Some star observations: 19 years later, Samuel L. Jackson is arguably a bigger star than Bruce Willis. Jackson is Nick Fury in all those Marvel things, and gets good roles otherwise. Willis is struggling with a "straight to video" career that smacks of the End of Burt Reynolds. Time to get Bruce Willis into a Marvel Movie(Sly Stallone's done one, but just in a cameo.) Meanwhile, James McAvoy so totally inhabits the "channel changing" 24-personalities guy that he doesn't register as a star at all. He's a stunt. And thus, Jackson, Willis, and McAvoy seemed ill-suited together for this movie. The dynamic has changed for Willis and Jackson; McAvoy isn't really a star. They aren't very fun to watch together.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And this: elsewhere on this board in an OT manner, I've detailed another movie I saw recently: Liam Neeson's latest revenge picture, "Cold Pursuit." Well, THAT one was a lot more entertaining, and funny, and intelligent, than THIS one. Poor M. Night has rather painted himself into a corner as an "over-serious philosophical auteur," and "Glass" simply doesn't play as well, or sound as well(dialogue), as "Cold Pursuit."

I must get around to those Oscar movies....

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

M. Night's premise here is very unwieldy: the shrink is speaking , for instance, ONLY to the "Split" guy's superstrong Beast personality; and Mr. Glass' easily-broken bones aren't a superpower -- his supervillain mind is, etc. As for Willis, he provably IS strong, CAN bend steel bars so....how to convince him otherwise?

[–] jay440 (107) 5 years ago

I remember years ago reading about a TV series that was pitched, but never produced, about a struggling rock band that somehow find themselves in an alternate universe where none of the classic rock they know exists, and they become huge playing all those great 60s and 70s FM radio hits.

The movie you link to narrows this premise down to one musician and one group, The Beatles. Since they are my all-time favorite band, it's a gratifying notion that unheard Beatles songs would wow the world today just like they did in the 60s.

I recently found a version of Help gorgeously played on grand piano by Rick Wakeman of Yes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojQaOejYkhE), and it confirms again that their music will stand the test of time and inspire other musicians (YouTube is full of music gurus with incredibly detailed song analysis of many of their songs, as well as that excellent Howard Goodall doc you linked to once).

I wonder, will Sir Paul be at the premiere?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Moreover, hype is building that, given the surprise worldwide success of Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018, the Elton John biopic "Rocketman" may be even bigger in 2019.

Elton John was certainly the musical backdrop of the 70's to a lot of us. More pop than hard rock, but "major." (Though he petered out surprisingly quickly in the late 70's, and rather came back in a diminished but hit-making state in the 80's.)

I remember talking, as a teenager, with a teenage friend who read Rolling Stone and a lot of other rock magazines. This was about 1970. This friend told me, "Someone's coming from England who is going to be as big as the Beatles." I said, a group? And he said "no, just one man." I forgot all about that conversation until some years later when Elton John sold out Dodger Stadium for a few nights, wearing all those outlandish costumes. And then I realized who my friend had been talking about "way back" in 1970.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I remember years ago reading about a TV series that was pitched, but never produced, about a struggling rock band that somehow find themselves in an alternate universe where none of the classic rock they know exists, and they become huge playing all those great 60s and 70s FM radio hits.

---

On a somewhat related note, in the 70's some promotion was given over to a "satiric novel"(written before John Lennon's death) about "what if the Beatles reunited in the 70's...and nobody cared?"

I remember reading excerpts and laughing , like:

"The Beatles new album...on Columbia Records and Tapes."

And the ignominy of them being relegated to the smallest print and the lowest position on a rock concert poster, like

December 12

THE WHO
ELTON JOHN
PETER FRAMPTON
and The Beatles ("I Want to Hold Your Hand")

...a funny idea. Not much of a bestseller, though.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The premise seems a bit dopey if it lasts beyond the first act: we think we know the Psychologist is wrong (and Split's final girl played by Anja Taylor-Joy is still out there to confirm that she is....along with lots of other evidence you'd think) hence that it's just time-wasting to have to deal with the P's illusions. And if MNS adds a twist so that the shrink is basically right, the audience will go berserk/feel cheated.

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I certainly won't tell, but the problem with the movie is that M. Night creates this premise and then seems to lose control of it, its as if he is making stuff up out of his head as he goes along, and it doesn't add up. Someone else should have helped with the writing.

Here's a thought: In the movie, Bruce Willis is still maybe "the strongest man alive"(or one of them) but the actor is now 63, and is starting to look it. So being a strongman with superpowers lasts into your 60's? Rockin' good news!

Here's another thought: I've now read that M. Night was inspired here by Cuckoo's Nest, and the female psychiatrist is meant to be a Nurse Ratched variation. That didn't really come out for me, but in any event, this is not the decade for another Nurse Ratched.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

I certainly won't tell, but the problem with the movie is that M. Night creates this premise and then seems to lose control of it, its as if he is making stuff up out of his head as he goes along, and it doesn't add up. Someone else should have helped with the writing.

It does sound like M. Night blew this one a bit: he had the world's attention again after Split... and Glass has made money but nothing like it would have made if reviews and word of mouth had been good. He won't be in movie jail after this disappointment but his good will from the public has been reset to zero.

A slightly related story I want to relate: one of the (non-final) captive girls from Split was played by Haley Lu Richardson. Richardson was 2nd lead/principal support in a quite good indie film last year called 'Support the Girls' starring Regina Hall (who's likely to win supporting actress this weekend for Beale St). StG is Hall's film and she's very good but Richardson's character, whom we initially peg as a bit of ditz, sneaks up on us (and on the characters in the film), as we realize how great a gift to the world her buoyant positivity and good-ness really is. We fall in love with her basically - it's an early '70s Goldie Hawn role! - and it's a pre-star-making performance by Richardson. She's been snapped up for leads in her next two films so now she gets her chance(s). First up: in a couple of weeks she plays the young Louise Brooks in The Chaperone, which has a script by the guy who wrote Gosford Park and Downton Abbey. Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STwiLcUMibE
Possible problem: Richardson isn't much of a physical match for Brooks.
Second up: also in March she's in a 'teenage lovers with diseases' flick, Five Feet Apart. Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24YrEAGF32M
Could be a surprise hit.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It does sound like M. Night blew this one a bit: he had the world's attention again after Split... and Glass has made money but nothing like it would have made if reviews and word of mouth had been good. He won't be in movie jail after this disappointment but his good will from the public has been reset to zero.

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Yes, it would seem that "Glass" did pretty good mainly because "Split" did great..people showed up for this sequel AS a sequel to Split, not Unbreakable. I sort of felt like Willis and Jackson were forced to take "second and third chairs" to McAvoy, as if M. Night couldn't bring himself to honor the earlier, better film with much clarity. Though this was nifty: the little boy child actor who played Willis' son in Unbreakable is back playing his son as a young MAN actor, and for once, you can see an entirely life having been led. A young life, though..

"Unbreakable" was, frankly, from an earlier, better time in M. Night's career -- almost 20 years ago! He was fresh, "something new," committed to his vision. But as we all know, the movie business is very, very tough for longevity, and especially when you "go it alone" in writing your own scripts.

I flat-out lost track of M. Night after "Lady in the Water." That's the one where I lost interest in him. I do recall reading that "The Happening" was beyond bad, bad. I was actually rather surprised to hear of his "coming back" with The Visit and Split. But he's not BACK back. Not all the way back.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A slightly related story I want to relate: one of the (non-final) captive girls from Split was played by Haley Lu Richardson. Richardson was 2nd lead/principal support in a quite good indie film last year called 'Support the Girls'

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Ah, swanstep...you are playing my game(of sorts)...finding the nifty connections that zing from film to film to film...an actress. An actor. A director. Actually you play "my game" a lot better than I do...because you know a lot more modern films than I do.

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starring Regina Hall (who's likely to win supporting actress this weekend for Beale St).

---

OK. The one "lock" at the Oscars looks to be Glenn Close for Best Actress. It feels like when Helen Mirren was preordained for "The Queen" or Cate Blanchett for that Woody Allen movie.

I was also intrigued to learn that none of the "pre-Oscar" award groups named the same Best Picture. None of them!

--- StG is Hall's film and she's very good but Richardson's character, whom we initially peg as a bit of ditz, sneaks up on us (and on the characters in the film), as we realize how great a gift to the world her buoyant positivity and good-ness really is. We fall in love with her basically - it's an early '70s Goldie Hawn role! -

---

A salute to late 60s/early 70's Goldie Hawn -- she WAS a star on Laugh-In -- it was an incredible "character performance" and she kept it going for a few years in the 70's before getting too serious(her acting is good but her character in godawful in Spielberg's "The Sugarland Express") and then too "regular"(yes, Foul Play and especially Private Benjamin were hits, but Goldie was at half-speed in them.) Still, she was a star, which, I'm sorry to say, her daughter is not.

Note in passing: I do believe that Hitchcock gave some consideration to Goldie Hawn as Madame Blanche in Family Plot -- hell, he gave consideration to EVERY American star for that movie, getting none of them. Hawn would have been good, I think.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

She's been snapped up for leads in her next two films so now she gets her chance(s). First up: in a couple of weeks she plays the young Louise Brooks in The Chaperone, which has a script by the guy who wrote Gosford Park and Downton Abbey.
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I shall be watching for her -- thanks for the heads up for us all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

OTOH Richard Curtis (with Danny Boyle directing)

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Mr. "Love Actually" at the keyboard...but not directing...well. Mr. Boyle has his own reputation..

Y'know, I stand by my liking of Love Actually as my favorite of 2003 and ultimately the 2000's(versus my other favorites of that decade, like Sideways in 2004 and Charlie Wilson's War in 2007 and The Dark Knight in 2008), but Curtis had a weird capacity for writing lines I couldn't stand, and characters I could barely stand, in "Love Actually" and STILL winning me over with the entire film. I think his "irritating" quality both marks him as a "mini-auteur"(at least that one time) and reflects the British quality of his work. When American studios with American casts tried the same all-star formula in Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, despite all the stars in them(Julia Roberts, Robert DeNiro), the writing was too flat to make a difference.

And this: Love Actually was a favorite film, of a favorite person in my life, who is no longer with us. So "extra personal points."

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seems to have hit on one of the great high-concept premises of all time. This trailer dropped last week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-jkkdhxx4o

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That's pretty fascinating, interesting to read from jay up-thread that the idea was tired elsewhere with many bands/songs. Lawsuits?

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[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

The premise seems a bit dopey if it lasts beyond the first act: we think we know the Psychologist is wrong (and Split's final girl played by Anja Taylor-Joy is still out there to confirm that she is....along with lots of other evidence you'd think) hence that it's just time-wasting to have to deal with the P's illusions. And if MNS adds a twist so that the shrink is basically right, the audience will go berserk/feel cheated.

OK, having finally seen Glass, I can report that the dopey premise of an apparently blind and uninterested in physical evidence doctor does in my view (along with other premise elements - an apparently catatonic Sam Jackson, a barely verbal Willis for at least the first hour) weigh down well over half the movie. [spoiler]And when the twist about the doctor hits... it's so much baloney - a 10,000 year old secret society of super-motivated anti-talent individuals! - and seems to undermine itself - such a secret society would kill any supers it came across as quickly as possible not take all the risks involved in housing a whole bunch of supers together and trying to fool them for decades, etc.. So the twist is preposterous *and* it doesn't work.[/spoiler]

Beyond these mechanical issues, I'm probably not interested enough in comics and superheroes to be quite as enthrawled with Mr Glass's theories & the use of the son, the girl and the mom as further articulations of those theories as the ideal audience for Glass would be I think. For me Glass was pretty bad and it retroactively makes me think less of both Split and Unbreakable (shades of the Matrix & Pirates sequels damaging their originals).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Since I can't really "match" your spoiler block, I will simply say that now that you've seen it, you seem to have the problems with it I had. M. Night surely overdid the overthinking on this one.

Despite James McAvoy's tour de force of personalities, I can't say that I liked Split much. But I DID like Unbreakable very much and this new one rather insults that movie (rendering Sam Jackson one of the great SPEAKERS in movies, mute for much of this one). But it doesn't ruin it for me.

Funny, though: The Matrix and Pirates sequels DID retroactively mess with things. The Matrix, Part One, was brilliant, imaginative and self-contained. The two seconds ones lurched into redundancy and incoherency. As for Pirates, My Man Johnny Depp (how come he ain't in Dumbo?) was delightful in the rather overplotted but still entertaining first one, and it was fun.(Geoffrey Rush was fun , too, turning into a living skeleton while barking at Kiera Knightly something like.."You'd better be likin' ghost stories, me pretty...YOU"RE IN ONE!) But the Pirates sequels? Literal "anti-entertainment." Whatever makes a movie entertain, those sequels were missing...

I can't say that Glass wreaked that kind of damage on Unbreakable, and Split doesn't matter that much to me...

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

The Matrix, Part One, was brilliant, imaginative and self-contained.

========

ecarle, most of the time I agree with you, but it seems with The Matrix, I don't agree with ANYBODY. I've never met anyone who didn't like it. As a matter of fact, when I saw it upon release, I saw it with a friend who was seeing it for the THIRD time. He kept telling me how amazing it was.

I thought it was one of the top five WORST movies I've ever seen in my life.

So I'll just slink back into my corner...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

ecarle, most of the time I agree with you, but it seems with The Matrix, I don't agree with ANYBODY. I've never met anyone who didn't like it. As a matter of fact, when I saw it upon release, I saw it with a friend who was seeing it for the THIRD time. He kept telling me how amazing it was.

I thought it was one of the top five WORST movies I've ever seen in my life.

So I'll just slink back into my corner...

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No, no, no....we must all maintain our personal opinions about movies. Practically everything's a matter of personal taste.

I will say that, with my list of "favorite movies per year," while 1996 was easy(Fargo), 1997 was VERY easy(LA Confidential, even in a year with Jackie Brown and Face/Off), 1998 was easy(Saving Private Ryan, with Van Sant's Psycho as my personal "something" of that year -- and NOT favorite to hate, I spent most of 1998 anticipating its December release)....1999 was hard.

I think I went with Tom Hanks in The Green Mile, its quite the tearjerker(as most Hanks hits were) but with a good dose of Stephen King fantasy/horror (the electric chair execution gone horribly wrong is a horror scene with pathos and pain -- an evil guard engineers it to GO wrong).

And yet, I've been challenged on that one over the years: "But, 1999 was the year of The Matrix!" Well, I have a great deal of respect for what The Matrix was ultimately about (we're just imagining our lives; cool) , and I like the effects and the Zen stuff and the big shoot out in the lobby BUT...something was always missing to that movie, for me. A heart, I guess. So we aren't that far off, really. Well, its not a WORST movie...but its two sequels certainly are. I had the feeling that the writer-directors had no idea what to do with their own concept.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyway...MizhuB, with re: The Matrix...go ahead and don't like what others like.

In my case, with some big event movies or series, with me its not a case of "not liking" it -- its more like "can't connect to it." The internet world is going nuts for the finale episodes of Game of Thrones this year, and I never watched an episode. I'm forcibly and voluntarily dealt out of the excitement in the air, because its just not my genre. Though I may try the final six.

The other one like that for me: The Simpsons. Always so saluted for its brilliance in comedy and satire, and though I've watched a few episodes all the way through, it never really sent me (Seinfeld, perhaps for its off-kilter Larry David observations, DID.)

So anyway, we all like different things. Its great when we can come together on something(like Psycho, but with that one, I expect I'm in the high percent of superfan where others are not), but if we can't...oh, well.