The Superhero Genre Needed ‘Glass’
a necessary antithesis to both Marvel and DC
(Note: spoilers for Glass will be discussed within.)
Last year at the movies, Spider-Man saved Brooklyn. Aquaman saved the world. The Avengers fought to save half of all life in existence. Movies from February to December climaxed with giant battles between men and women in colorful spandex. And not just in those three movies mentioned — no, there were seven superhero films released last year, all of them ending in dramatic fisticuffs between heroes and villains.
That might all sound highly critical, but I promise I poke and prod out of love. I’ve grown up with superheroes, with comic books, and my adoration of them has never diminished. You can find me at the theater seeing all of them, often more than once (my fiancée is assuredly sick of me dragging her to see Aquaman at this point).
I’m in no desire to see the output of superhero films from Hollywood stop. What I want instead is to see them grow. If we’re going to continue to see superhero movies release this frequently, they need to take larger, bolder risks moving forward.
This is where Glass — the first of many superhero films of 2019 — comes in. The finale to a trilogy begun nineteen years ago, Glass has the distinction of being the extraordinarily rare superhero movie not based on an existing property. These characters, and this story, is wholly from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. What Shyamalan has done could fairly be compared to the creation of Image Comics — Image Comics is a created owned comic book publisher, created to combat the institutional ownership of characters that remains a cornerstone over at DC and Marvel.
In 2000, Shyamalan gave us Unbreakable, a superhero origin story for Bruce Willis’s David Dunn. While typical superhero origin films cover the origin in the first act, moving on to a giant climactic battle with the supervillain by the third act, Unbreakable stretched its origin story out across its whole film. David slowly comes to terms with his powers at the urging of Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price. The film’s twist ending reveals Price to be a supervillain, Mr. Glass, but there is no physical confrontation.
Seventeen years later, Split came. Split was seemingly just a low budget horror story about the Horde, a group of 23 personalities living inside one deeply disturbed man (James McAvoy, in a career-best performance). The Horde worships one of its personalities, the Beast, who has miraculous powers. The film’s surprise ending revealed that it was a stealth sequel to Unbreakable, re-contextualizing it as an origin film for a supervillain.
Glass, then, would be the culmination of these two films. David Dunn would clash with the Beast, and this trilogy would finally give in to its comic book influences with a true, epic showdown.
Surely, the movie telegraphs such a thing within ten minutes, as a radio station David is listening to announces the opening of the tallest building in Philadelphia. TV stations and magazines prominently featured throughout the background of the film similarly discuss the grand opening of the tower. Anyone who has ever seen a superhero film ever can intuit what’s coming.
And then Glass all but promises this battle atop the tower to its audience: Mr. Glass manipulates everything and everyone around him to get David and the Beast to meet there to do their battle, to show the world in a public forum exactly what they are. Mr. Glass tells David that the Beast will require David’s full strength, something neither he nor the audience has ever witnessed.
Shyamalan perfectly sets up a climactic battle to rival any other superhero movie, and then he casually tosses it aside. David, the Beast, and Price never make it to the tower. In fact, they don’t make it any further than the lawn of the psychiatric hospital they’ve spent the film inside. They are all three murdered, unceremoniously, by a secret society whose job it is to cover up the existence of superheroes.
The ending is bleak as all hell, a true gut punch. Nothing like it has ever been done in a superhero film — all three main characters dead? Not just the villains, but the hero? Unheard of.
This decision transcends Glass from something new and novel for the genre into something absolutely necessary. It’s game changing. Quite frankly, no one else making superhero movies right now simply has the courage to even attempt something like this, and it shows. (Before you bring up Infinity War, I have to remind you that not a single person on this planet believes that ending is going to stick.) As creative as these movies are getting with tone, cinematography, and characterization, they are all still giving in to the same reskinned final act. Glass boldly bucks that trend and establishes itself as the antithesis to Marvel and DC films.
In truth, I’m surprised this innovation hasn’t found better reception among critics. The film has been savaged by reviewers, with its ending being a highlight of criticism. At the time of this writing, Glass sits at a 36% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes.
And yet.
The movie has a 77% fresh audience score on the same site, with the average audience score a stellar 4/5. Why the great divide between critics and audiences? I think it could be that audiences are growing tired of the patterned superhero plots quicker than critics are — not enough to kill the genre, of course, but enough to really appreciate the novelty of Glass. Like me, no one wants to see these movies come to an end. They just don’t want to see them stagnate.
Another thought: Unbreakable was poorly received by critics at the time of its release. Part of this was poor marketing, but a larger part of it was timing. Unbreakable came a full eight years before Hollywood began thinking of superhero movies in any serious kind of way; the movie was dramatically ahead of its time. Nowadays, Unbreakable is critically lauded. Many consider it to be Shyamalan’s best film.
I suspect as time passes and superhero fatigue creeps in, the same critical re-evaluation will happen to Glass. At the very least, it will probably be remembered as a catalyst for larger risks within the genre, as well as starting the trend of wholly original superhero movies not based on comic books — assuming these kinds of risks and stories do, in fact, escalate.
It’s a safe assumption. Glass represents a transition necessary for the superhero genre. Hollywood can not afford for this kind of originality and restructuring to be a one-off if it wants to sustain its success with superheroes. As Mister Glass says as he dies, “This isn’t a special limited edition. This is an origin story.” Hopefully he’s right.
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