USA TODAY International Edition
M. Night Shyamalan decodes ‘Glass’
Spoiler alert! We’re discussing the ending of “Glass,” so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
M. Night Shyamalan went all in on comic books for his “Unbreakable” trilogy, so a superpowered throwdown was all but certain in the final chapter “Glass” (in theaters now).
However, it did not exactly turn out that great for the good guy (Bruce Willis’ invulnerable dude David Dunn) and bad guys (Samuel L. Jackson’s mastermind Mr. Glass and James McAvoy’s multifaceted Kevin Wendell Crumb) before turning itself around for a hopeful ending.
Shyamalan discusses three reveals in “Glass” that are key to concluding the saga, including one that puts the filmmaker onscreen.
Let’s pour a few out for our main characters.
Shyamalan doesn’t mess around: The ending of the climactic fight scene finds Dunn, Mr. Glass and Kevin all dead.
Psychiatrist Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) has brought them to a mental hospital to talk them out of thinking they’re comic-book characters. Mr. Glass breaks out of the place with Kevin (in super-duper Beast mode), and they’re heading for a very public showdown with Dunn and Crumb at a newly opened Philadelphia high-rise, which would show the world that these powerful figures were among them.
Dunn, who has also escaped, encounters Beast in the parking lot. Kevin finds out his father (who he thought had abandoned him) died in the famous train wreck caused by Mr. Glass that Dunn survived. The truth makes Kevin turn on Mr. Glass and deliver a few fatal blows to his breakable body. Meanwhile, Staple – who has been revealed as part of a secret group that hunts superpowered people – and her SWAT unit attack Dunn, drowning him in a puddle (since water is his Kryptonite), and shoot Kevin, who cycles through several identities before dying.
“It’s really hard to pick villains and heroes at the end of the movie,” Shyamalan says. “Obviously, some of the characters did some really bad things, but you really are rooting for all three, which is highly unusual to feel that way.”
Screening the movie for early crowds, Shyamalan wondered how an audience would handle this swerve, “where you really do extinguish everyone in the movie.” But crowds were into the gut punch and supported it. “They felt like it was inevitable and needed to happen and had a certain kind of importance and weight to it, (with) nobody saying, ‘I wish it went the other way.’ They’re so not used to that: It’s always a sense of the story is going to continue and it’s all going to be fine, or we’re going to undo this in the future. And yet this doesn’t have that quality.”
But Mr. Glass (posthumously) has the last laugh.
Jackson’s genius character secretly had a Plan B, which isn’t apparent until Dunn’s son (Spencer Treat Clark) and Glass’ mom (Charlayne Woodard) check their email. The villain turns out to be kind of a hero by programming the hospital cameras to tape the entire brutal episode and send it to the surviving family members – plus Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), Kevin’s victim from “Split” – who release the video virally, so the public can know the truth about these exceptional people. “We give each other permission to be survivors,” Glass says in his note (and through voiceover).
This “operatic” coda was the one Shyamalan had in mind filming “Unbreakable” and never changed, he says. “The way the trilogy concludes was always kind of bittersweet and beautiful.” He also borrowed the idea from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” where “the main character seems to have been beaten by the villain and yet they won by their spirit, and a side character takes on that journey and continues it and fulfills it.”
Shyalaman himself plays a connective ‘Unbreakable’ role.
Not only did he direct all three films, but Shyamalan also plays the same character in each of his cameos. The stadium drug dealer that Dunn runs into in “Unbreakable” also happens to be Jai, who loves Hooters hot wings and is tech support for Kevin’s therapist (Betty Buckley) in “Split,” and he meets Dunn again in “Glass” when visiting the hero’s security store.
“It’s the same dude,” Shyamalan says. “He was a teenager in ‘Unbreakable,’ and then he kind of grew up and now got a legitimate job. And he likes Hooters.”
The filmmaker includes a line for himself in “Glass” that connects his role to “Unbreakable”: “I used to hang out with some shady types in my youth,” Jai tells Dunn. “I actually had that line originally in ‘Split’ and then I just felt like the savvy viewer was going to catch it and then would be distracted the whole movie.”