"Glass" Review: This is not perfect, but it says a lot about heroism

There is a big question at the heart of the new film by author-director Mr. Night Shyamalan Glbad: Who becomes a hero? In the real world, a hero can be anyone. Someone who does the maneuver of Heimlich in a restaurant, a firefighter, Colin Kaepernick. In movies (and television, books and comics), however, people who call the heroes tend to wear capes and have supernatural abilities. They may have started as average citizens, but thanks to a power or scientific experience from another world, they have become more than just humans. Their heroism comes from their abilities. But in the world of Shyamalan, these two types of heroes – or villains, or both – are indistinguishable. And that is what makes them great.

It all started with UnbreakableShyamalan, a cartoon-inspired film, almost had to beg the studios to produce it in 2000. In this film, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) discovered that he had the strange ability to survive almost everything, while Elijah Price / Mr. Glbad (Samuel L. Jackson) suffered from an illness where almost everyone could break it. So he used his brain to become a bad brain. Fans loved it at the time, but Shyamalan moved on to movies like The village and Lady in the waterand it seemed like he could never come back into this world.

Then, in 2016, he published Split, a film about a man (James McAvoy, who does as much as possible) who has more than 20 personalities, one of which has superhuman strength and abilities. It has not been announced as a Unbreakable following, but in the end was David Dunn, setting up Glbad, a film that would complete the trilogy of the most unlikely "superheroes" of all time. Unlikely because it comes from Shyamalan and not from Marvel or DC, and unlikely because its protagonists and antagonists are real people who live in Philadelphia rather than in Gotham, and there is no stone of infinity in sight.

"It goes with my attempt in my films to melt everything," said Shyamalan. "To base the supernatural, and in this case the world of comics – or at least the concepts of this world – in a way that begins to make us wonder if a percentage of what I'm describing is actually true . "

Glbad exists in percentages that may well be real. Nearly two decades after the events of Unbreakable and soon after those of Split, he discovers that Dunn works in a shop that sells security systems and wiggles like a vigilante known as a supervisor. McAvoy's Kevin Wendell Crumb / the Beast haunts Philadelphia and kidnaps and murders young women, and Mr. Glbad has been institutionalized under the supervision of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who seeks to treat people with an illusion of grandeur that makes they believe that they have superhuman powers. When Dunn and Crumb are also entrusted to her, she finds herself confronted with three very different topics to watch – and Mr Glbad is two potential accomplices in his ploy to show the world just how true self-manifest superpowers are.

But here's the thing: are they real? Moreover, what is "real" really? If someone believes to have super powers that do not exist, is it important if you can always bend steel and climb walls? Or, to use the badogy that Shyamalan gave me, is it important that the pill be a placebo if it helps you feel better? Patients supported by Staple are treated because it seems foolish to think that anyone could stand up to himself to resist a train crash, as Dunn did in Unbreakable. Shyamalan explains that what they do is "haggle from something ordinary additional"But if they are still able to do good – or wrong – in the world, is their implausibility important – is it mentally ill or all the others who do not see their minds?" abilities Who can call themselves a hero?

This question seems particularly relevant now, even more so than when Shyamalan first posed it in 2000. Comic book heroes, like the ones that Mr. Glbad is obsessed with, have often been responses to it. when they were created, from Captain America during the Second World War to Black Panther in the 1960s civil rights era. When these heroes appear in the movies, they fight mainly against aliens or mega-stars. wicked from another world, not against Nazis or racists. But in the real world, the one Shyamalan describes, these evils are the ones that need to fight the most.

"I think we are looking for heroes because we are ruled by a madman," said Paulson. "There is something very powerful going back to the root of how these [comic book] stories were probably born anyway, what was, what are we capable of as human beings? And if we were to release something secret and long held inside us, what would we do with it? How many of us would run towards goodwill, and how much would run towards selfish enterprises? "

Glbadis then positioned as a kind of super-anti-hero movie, a movie that asks why anyone hopes to be saved when he could save himself. Or at least that's what he seems to be trying to do. As often happens when a Shyamalan movie falters, it presents a stellar concept that is not necessarily a good story. Nearly two decades since Unbreakable have raised the public's awareness of the narrative language of comic films, leaving Shyamalan with a lot of space, but his film is often trapped by trying to explain his arguments rather than producing them. (Did this film need multiple scenes where someone went to a comic book store and finally figured it out? Or, Mr. Glbad shouted, "This is not the case. not a confrontation, it's an original story! "the big twist of the final act – it's a Shyamalan movie, there is always a twist-he spends a lot of time telling his audience what's going on, rather than showing them.

Narrative problems aside, Glbad, in the same way Unbreakable and Split, creates something that few movies have in front of them: an original trilogy of superheroes. Other films (Hanbad and Great come to mind) have tried to riff the formula, but virtually none of them has deconstructed the meaning of the superheroes while also presenting them. His good and bad guys could teach the Hollywood Crusaders a thing or two to save the world – even if they can not be saved from the movie they are in.

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