Glass Recap

Jamie

It’s a Glass attack! You must take every M. Night Shyamalan that qualifies for BMT as a gift in today’s world. He still has his quirks, he still makes weird choices, he still delivers some twists. He is who we thought he was, essentially, but just isn’t swinging so hard that we are laughing when he pops out. The Visit was a bunt single that we celebrated like a home run and Split was a double that turned the baseball (read: film) world on its head. Here’s a guy we thought was washed. He’s batting .107 and we are begging the team to send him to the minors and now suddenly he’s a solid contributor in the fifth spot in the lineup. So Glass, wellllll, let’s just say if you’re batting .250 that means you’re out ¾ of the time. Was that enough baseball metaphors for you?

To recap, Mr. Glass is back, Jack! And boy is he kind of boring. He’s essentially mute now and snoozing away in an insane asylum. The very asylum where Bruce Willis and The Beast are sent to after a confrontation in a local warehouse. There they meet the very annoying Dr. Staple who basically says they are all fakers and delusions, even though everyone knows it isn’t true because we saw the previous films. So she seems useless (or is she? (twist much?)). Mr. Glass meets with The Beast and basically is like “Let’s team up like the evil dream team,” and The Beast is down. It appears like Mr. Glass is caught, but uses his intelligence to outsmart the guards and get The Beast out of the asylum. He’s ready to unleash The Beast on the soon to be opened Largest Building in Philadelphia. But as they head that way they are confronted in the parking lot by Bruce. Bruce is like “stop” and The Beast is like “no.” Mr. Glass reveals Bruce’s weakness to water, while Bruce’s son reveals that The Beast’s dad, who protected him from his abusive mom, was killed in the train wreck Mr. Glass caused while trying to find Bruce. The Beast is pissed and kills Mr. Glass and throws Bruce into a water tank. Bruce manages to escape, but is too weak to fight, so it’s up to Casey from the first film to swoop in and bring Kevin, The Beast’s true form, into the light. At that point a sniper kills Kevin and police officers kill Bruce. Dr. Staple is revealed not to be a doubter, but instead part of a group tasked with putting down superhumans. Unfortunately for her, Mr. Glass was too smart and was able to stream the security footage of the event to a private server from which it’s released to the public. THE END.

I can certainly see why this qualified for BMT. Not just that it’s a huge step down from Unbreakable and Split, but even without the direct comparison it feels pretty meh. Long stretches of the film are just people being like “I’m not sure I have powers. Do I have powers?” or totally catatonic. It feels like it was done on the cheap or something. They decided to place what should be a fun conclusion entirely within the confines of a hospital without much of a plan on how to make that interesting. Cause it really wasn’t all that interesting I agree with Patrick that the ending is a nice subversion of a comic book film. A twist on a classic villain’s plan. It seems to go awry as it ends with a whimper in the parking lot of a hospital, but it turns out to go exactly as planned in every way. That’s fun… you know… if it actually was any fun. So it’s meh. The high 30’s RT score fits it to a tee.

Hot Take Clam Bake! That video would not impress anyone, let alone destabilize the world by inspiring people to become super. It’s a lame fight in a parking lot. One of the “superhumans” crushes a man… who has a disease that makes him easily crushable. The other is drowned in a puddle by a police officer. This is all assuming they even believe the video is real. It’s the age of AI, people. A computer could make that for me just by reading my mind or whatever. Hot Take Temperature: Philly Cheesesteak.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Glass? Well this movie just got shattered. Let’s go!

Right before watching this I watched Split. That movie is pretty enjoyable. I think a lot of the later M. Night has gotten a tiny bit overrated by people who like the formula he’s going for, which in a way is basically just The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits on film. The Visit? Genuinely quite bad, and yet a lot of people seem to like it. Split? Solid, but still with a variety of bizarre choices which dropped it from an A to a B at best. I started watching Old … woooooooooooooooooooooooooof. I really don’t like that movie at all.

Glass seems to be the one that caught up on him. Just a shade under 40% seems to be properly rated.

The use of Samuel L. Jackson is terrible. He basically doesn’t do anything the entire film. The old lady makeup for his mother is also terrible. The actress playing his mother is younger than him (ha!).

McAvoy is still okay, but they continue to overuse the child character who is the worst of the bunch, and for all the bluster about 20-some-odd personalities they still only managed to show off a few.

Bruce Willis sleepwalks through the film as usual for that era.

All of the young characters have perplexing arcs.

The ultimate twist is pretty terrible.

And the ending is a bait-and-switch.

Out of all of those issues, the most interesting is the bait-and-switch ending, which upon reflection actually is kind of an excellent idea. Everyone in the movie keeps talking about this big tower being built. And everything is driving towards a big confrontation at that building. And then just as they are leaving for the building, they instead have a pretty lackluster battle in the parking lot of the insane asylum they are being housed at. In a way it is like … what are we doing here? But on another the idea of setting up this big event for it to just fall through (and that being part of the plan as well) seems kind of beautifully understated.

I’m glad they finished the trilogy, but there is very little likelihood I’ll watch anything but Unbreakable again in my life.

The best Product Placement (What?) in the film was a very conspicuous placement of the Apple logo on a computer at one point. Love the traditional Setting as a Character (Where?) for Philadelphia with a newly minted giant glass tower. And a definite Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that all of this has been orchestrated by an Illuminati-like conspiracy to take down superheroes/villains before they gain power. Closest to Bad I think.

Read about the fourth film in the saga in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs