Before I get started, I'm not trying to tear down what M. Night did with the Unbreakable trilogy. I liked Glass. It was okay. The acting was excellent, and so was the cinematography. The moment to moment writing was brilliant, sometimes. Unfortunately, the movie as a whole was also not great. Unbreakable and Split were excellent. Some of my favorite movies of all time. Unfortunately I don't think lightning struck a third time with Glass.
Glass suffered from two things in my view. 1. Lack of a strong central tension and 2. a general lack of direction. Some thing that I have noticed with M. Nights work is that he does best with 2-3 main characters, and 2-4 secondary characters. I'll use Unbreakable and Split as my references here. Unbreakable had 2 main characters: Elijah Price and David Dunn. The Son was arguably a third but I'm going to put him in the same position Elijah's mother, and David's wife (Secondary Characters). Split likewise had Crumb and Casey as the main characters, the two other girls and the Dr. as side characters.
Glass in contrast had 7 main characters: David, his son, Elijah, his mother, Crumb, Casey and Evil Psychologist TM. No real side characters here other than the nurses/orderlies who just didn't really rate. This is a problem. Now we are focusing way to much on to many people and the movie does suffer for it. Because ultimately, Glass was about Ideology NOT People and it tries to be about ideology at the expense of the people.
So. What in my opinion would have made the movie better? Well as in the title all of the problems with Glass could have been solved by tightening the film down to two main characters. First is Elijah, second is Evil Psychologist TM. Here is my reasoning: First by tightening it down you allow more for the character arc that Shamilan has proven himself to be great at. Secondly, 75% of the movie, could have been left as is. Restructure the movie. Here is my screen edit.
The movie opens up with our Psychologist Dr. Ellie Staple. Show us her in that meeting being sent to Philadelphia. Show us her resolve for her cause. Keep her as the focus. DO NOT show Dunn's store, or his nightly enthusiastic walks. DO show us a brief moment of Dunn realizing that he just found horde. have it be in a general conversation with his son. Have her find out that David Dunn has been found fighting Horde. Show us her getting there, and setting up. Show us a brief glimpse of the fight between David and Horde, and then let the movie proceed from there, until she finds out Mr. Glass escaped his cell for the first time. DO NOT show the crisis of faith David's son has, or Casey has.
Then have her confront Glass. Have her bare the truth to him. DO NOT have him play sedated. Let their ideologies clash mind to mind Mono E Mono. 5 minutes and let us be convinced by both of their arguments. We should agree with her, that the world isn't ready for superpowers. "We Are not Ready for Gods. We've worked for 10,000 years this way. It isn't fair to us to let you have power over us!" let her rail. Then let Glass have his turn let us agree with him. "We are to be caged, lied to? Abandoned and left to rot in cells? How is that fair to us? How is it right that we should be told that we don't fit into the world?" The argument ends Glass gets taken for the surgery. The Dr. believes that she has successfully persuaded Horde and Overseer into believing that they are merely men, and Glass will be losing his powers during the surgery anyways when his own powers won't work how is he to convince the two of them before he is locked away for the rest of his life?. What harm does it do her to tell him?" Glass escapes after his surgery, and the hunt for him begins. KEEP the scene between Elijah and David. DO NOT KEEP the scenes where David goes and gets his things MOVE the scene where Glass streams the video footage to right before he dies, have it be a flash back.
Drop the lines about comic-books and "Limited editions and Showdowns." Or keep them and let the audience think that they know what Glass is doing, how the movie will end. The fight happens. It plays out normally but this time the Dr. watches getting closer to Glass as the fight goes on. show the fight from her perspective as an outsider with brief cuts to the security cameras when the fight moves out of view. Both sides again state their arguments using the two fighters as an example. Elijah is revealed to have created Horde, and lets himself be killed as he was. The scene plays out cutting the explanation that she gives David. The Dr. believes that she has won. Horde dies, so does Overseer. She reports in and finds out later that she was tricked. Glass won. Glass revealed superheroes to the world. All of her plans, and secrets fall apart in an Instant (you could say they shatter like Glass) and it breaks her. The Last scene of the movie is her realizing that you can't keep living behind a lie. Throw in some Mr. Glass recording his victory to her in an email. (Arguably you could lend credence to Horde's philosophy that the broken are the ones who gain powers and have the windows shatter when she screams her rage and pain at the end). Roll Credits.
Submitted February 16, 2019 at 10:25AM by ChickenDragon123 http://bit.ly/2SBeXg0
