What it meant, and why it was disappointing.
Samuel L. Jackson attends the premiere of „Glass.“ (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
While M Night Shyamalan’s Glass did a great deal right, the film serves as a prime example of the importance of endings. A great film can finish on a bad note and leave the audience with nothing but a memory of feeling disappointed.
You might have been confused and/or disappointed by the twist in Glass, because it comes out of nowhere and overstuffs the viewer with information, without leaving much of an emotional impact. Worse, it sacrifices our beloved David Dunn for a practically meaningless twist.
Spoilers ahead, obviously
The tragic fate of David Dunn
First off, I just want to emphasize how strange it was to see David Dunn, the character who first started this story in Unbreakable, drowned in a puddle by an anonymous thug – that’d be like if Han Solo was shot in the head by some random Stormtrooper.
But this creative decision was clearly made for a reason, so let’s think about it. If one is to view the trilogy as three chapters of one story, it’s clear that Shyamalan doesn’t view Dunn as the protagonist, but merely the man who introduces the concept of superheroism to this world.
In retrospect, Mr. Glass was always the protagonist, and Crumb was an interesting side-character who (understandably) got a hell of a lot of screen time.
But that doesn’t seem to gel with the message of Unbreakable. I can’t figure out if Shyamalan changed his mind, or always planned Dunn’s story to end tragically, but the ending of Unbreakable seemed to firmly emphasize that Mr. Glass is delusional.
Glass is a desperately unhappy man, driven to terrorism to try and enforce his comic book-fanboy philosophy on society.
