GLASS (From The Theatre)

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. Lots and lots of spoilers. You have been warned!

Glass Movie Review

The post credits scene of Split teased that film meeting Unbreakable, and Glass is the result. In this film, we find David Dunn (Bruce Willis) from Unbreakable tracking down Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy) from Split. When both are captured, they are taken to an institution that also houses Dunn’s nemesis, Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Leading up to what we all suspect will be a battle for the ages, we see Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson) trying to convince all three that Super Heroes and Villains do not exist, and the three of them are just normal people with strong delusions.

A meeting of at least 26

M. Night Shyamalan’s third film in the trilogy does a wonderful job building suspense, and moves at a lightning fast pace, something quite unusual for the director’s films—the run time is 129 minutes, but it seems to only last an hour. The acting is impressive pretty much across the board—our four main actors all bring their A-game, and the supporting cast, lead by Anya Taylor-Joy (returning from Split), and Charlayne Woodard and Spender Treat Clark, both reprising the roles they had in Unbreakable. When I reviewed Split, I said McAvoy deserved an Oscar nod for his performance, and he is just as wonderful in this film...he still won't be nominated though. While most of the directing is wonderful, some shots will leave you scratching your head—the body mounted Steadicam second person shots during the fight scenes will leave you feeling dizzy, and the extreme close ups of the characters’ faces will leave you feeling your personal space is being invaded—these shots also bothered my girlfriend, who was critical of how Paulson’s lips were painted on...

In case you're wondering

Other than these very minor complaints, this film is rolling along nicely, and you begin to think this could end up being a classic—then the wheels fall completely off. I am about to go full spoiler, so if you chose to ignore the warning above, have not seen this movie, and intend on watching it at some point, click somewhere else on this site now.......if you are still with me, here goes—our main characters finally escape capture and do battle in front of the building. This starts off really intense, and the excitement level grows...until somebody shoots Crumb, killing him. Then some other people grab a struggling Dunn and drown him to death in a puddle. Mr. Glass gets punched in the chest, falls out of his wheelchair, and dies. Who could be doing these things? Super, super villains? Aliens? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? NO! It's some random, faceless, know nothing about them group headed up by Dr. Staple. Let me say this again—David Dunn, Kevin Crumb, and Mr. Glass are all killed by random, faceless, regular people who are a part of some secret society that is trying to rid the world of superheroes!!! Good grief!!! I almost left the theater when this was revealed. I won't even go into the fact that this notion was lifted from X-Men movies—SHYAMALAN JUST KILLED OFF THE THREE MOST POWERFUL CHARACTERS HE EVER CREATED,  AND DID SO IN THE STUPIDEST WAY HE COULD THINK OF!!!! My blood pressure still has not leveled out from this. After this twist we get another one--this would redeems what we just saw to a small extent, but it doesn't come close to saving the film. Look, I did not expect Dunn or Glass to live through this movie; I did, however, expect them to be killed off in a more glorious fashion! Dunn should have killed Glass--we waited almost 20 years for that! I don't think Staple having a hand in the deaths of the three characters was a surprise, but I would have been MUCH more comfortable with this idea if she was a powerful, super villain type herself. My girlfriend asked me how I would have ended the film, and I told her this: Dunn kills Glass, an ultra-powerful Staple reveals who she really is in true super villain form and shocks everybody by killing Dunn, and Crumb manages to escape to fight Staple in the next movie. WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN WRONG WITH THAT ENDING?!

Sorry Dennis. I'll relax

Though no follow up film has been announced, such a film would not surprise me as 1) Staple is still alive, 2) before dying, Glass makes reference to this being an origins story, and 3) this movie has already made a ton of money. One has to wonder, however, what the interest level would be after killing off three such amazing characters. Granted, we still have the side characters each was attached to, and we did see them team up in the end, but none of those characters exactly scream "main character". Maybe Shaymalan is following X-Men's lead there too? Anyway, Glass is still a good movie, and certainly one worth checking out, but it ultimately falls well short of reaching the level of awesome it should have.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

Glass Movie Trailer