‘Did you know that superman originally couldn’t even fly?’ exclaims a philosophical Casey trying to prove humans are capable of powered feats. Well yes, I did, but did YOU know that Unbreakable and Split go together like water and oil? Because that’s what Shamalam’s final film in his superpower trilogy tries to do and given how it can’t even mix two things written for an already-set trilogy, Glass was bound to shatter from the start.
A psychiatrist, played infuriatingly pathetically by Sarah Paulson, tries to convince three self-proclaimed superbeings: the split-personality Kevin Crumb who can transform into the superhuman ‘Beast’ from Split, the telepathic powerhouse David Dunn from Unbreakable and the mastermind Mr Glass, that all their powers are self-delusions and that seeing through their past traumas would help them come to realisation of their true selves.
After an opening that feels reminiscent of a DC crossover, involving reused elements of Unbreakable and Split, we’re taken to the film’s main setting of our protagonists being captured and held in a psychiatric jailhouse (Kevin near some auto-triggered light that force him to don a safer personality and David held behind sprinkler fountains because water is supposedly his childhood-trauma weakness). We also meet Mr Glass, David’s Doctor Doom, who’s shown in a paralysed state before shedding his disguise for a jailbreak with Kevin as well as being wheelchair bound from brittle bone disease. The majority of the film’s middle half involves Paulson’s psychiatrist character trying to crack down on our protagonists’ hidden human nature and the mental conundrums that she believes cause them to think themselves superhuman. We also get some pretty awfully-flung continuity drama with Kevin’s sympathetic post-victim Casey who does nothing but force drama and cliché frankenstein sympathy for Kevin to make it seem like Split was an actually fitting film to include in, which it still doesn’t.
As for Samuel L Jackson’s star character Mr Glass, he’s the Professor X genius trying to prove to the world that superheroes are real by using David and Kevin for an organised massive-scaled public showdown, comparing the loopholes of comic book logic to human nature for his speeches. While I do admire Samuel L Jackson’s performance, especially with the whole paralysed vegetable act in the first act, as well as proving himself memorable in scenes such as using a shard of glass to cut a warden’s throat and his plan of using security cameras for evidence, his actual ideology and plan is terrible. His speeches on humans being capable of powers through past pain is just laughable given how Bruce Willis’ past trauma of nearly drowning as an eight-year-old is shown as consuming him throughout all the film, granting him extreme aquaphobia and abilities of bending steel despite now having a good relationship with his son and other better things for the past 40 years. What doesn’t help is David Dunn’s whole character arc, with the only thing more lamentable than his absurd character and abilities being the current state of Bruce Willis’s acting, which is now so wooden you’d think you could make some good IKEA furniture out of it.
Glass’s entire plan can basically be summed up as: having a hard past life can unlock things in your mentality that surpass human nature. So you should embrace and centre yourself around your pain and see if you can physically transform yourself? That a little psychopathic even for him.
His relationship with his mother is also nowhere near as built upon to make an impact, using one typical childhood-trauma scene to try and connect with them, and doesn’t earn its sentimentality in the finale or being on level with Dunn’s son and Kevin’s Casey.
As for Kevin Crumb, who’s performance by James McAvoy is regarded by many (me included) as the one saving grace of the film, it’s baffling how he and his film can be considered fitting into this film at all. Split was an entirely standalone-feeling film. Its claustrophobic feel brought out the psychological horror of the mental loophole of Kevin Wendell Crumb in engagingly dramatic and varied ways, not to mention the perspectives of both Kevin and his victims added a tension essential to the film’s formula. I overall found its concept of multiple personalities layering over an abused monster fantastical but concluded in a solid, unspoilt way. Here, Kevin feels like a slab of concrete in a woodwork exhibition and drops all psychological horror to become a cheap X-Men bodyguard for Glass after breaking free from prison, which is woefully disappointing. How Glass feels as though it’s digging up a well-rested corpse rather than feeling like it has enough potential to make it intertwined well in its own damn trilogy shows some dodgy director skills.
Throughout the film we get some reskinned bits of Kevin, such as randomly unleashing the beast and donning a nine-year-old mentality, almost feeling like he’s just for fan service than an actual plot point. The most unique scenes we get of him for Glass’s identity as its own film are during his captivation scenes and the psychologist’s debrief with David and Glass, which are uniquely charming enough, though it tries too hard to show off his personality spectrum than moving the plot forward. I did find one scene, which tried to be intense and haunting, unintentionally hilarious when a distraught doctor repeatedly flashes the change-lights for a comedic number of times and we get at least 10 confused bluffers from Kevin’s spectrum, feeling like a comical parody of a famous scene from Split.
As for the film’s final act, it’s easy to look down upon as anticlimactic and not showing the full capabilities of Kevin and David but it’s nice to see a finale that’s not full-force explosions and jaw-sockings (a nod to physically-limited realism there), it’s just not executed well, as it tries a new pacing and scale for superhero films with clashing powers that’re more limited and restrained than you’d think, but there’s no notable camerawork and physical consequences on the characters to feel like it earns its small-scale realistically-restricted format as opposed to a cinematic skyscraper blowout, which was what was planned all along.
Not only that but the finale has one of the worst plot twists I have ever witnessed that feels like another pathetic attempt to stitch Unbreakable and Split together than actually being shocking for the film. It adds no more depth to either David nor Kevin’s story other than a stereotypical ‘I’ve had you in my hands all along’ trope, which, again, tries to show how disturbingly ‘menacing’ and ‘deceiving’ and ‘no way, he’s more genius than I thought!’ Glass is. It got me reflecting on how poorly developed this protagonist, whom we’ve been following all the way, has been (other than a few moody camera shots and sassy-supervillain one-liners) rather than seeing him in an implied new light. Just how nonsensical his character and ideologies were blocked any sort of connection to both his legacy and his bodyguard/mentor relationship with Kevin. Absolutely painful.
One notable concept the film brought up that I did find intriguing was these supposed heroes possibly being lobotomised in their accidents, therefore giving them delusional ideologies and perspectives of powers, which was potentially fascinating and even tragic, heightened by the contrasting accusation reactions with David’s stubbornness hiding insecurity and Glass’s hateful expressions behind his paralysed state. But it got dumped immediately after Glass reveals himself to be faking his brain damage (you don’t say??) and the three stooges’ powers all end up as the real thing (you don’t say??), which is sad and wasted potential as we’re now left with a reskinned X-Men skit with James McAvoy as the only saving grace.
You could say Glass ‘shattered’ its opportunity to conclude this oddly disjointed trilogy. It’s a confusing mishmash of addressing human potential with a needlessly complex theme of comic superheroes to get a picture of this awfully-written villain’s motivation. If you just want to see Kevin return with his electrifying display of unpredictable, colourful roles, there’s plenty of that same goodness here. But as the focus is moved onto a bland narrative and he’s now little more than a frankenstein-like bodyguard, the core point to just what the hell is going on here ends up with Glass being Split down the middle rather than being a solid and Unbreakable finale.