M. Night Shyamalan has announced Glass, a sequel to Unbreakable and Split. But what message can a story so full of suffering have?
Related: With Split, M. Night Shyamalan teases a franchise 17 years later
Earlier this year, we wondered if Shyamalan would succeed in making Split relevant enough to current audiences to deserve a sequel, but Shyamalan has just announced that Glass will be coming to screens in 2019.
Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and James McAvoy will be in this new installment, and the combination of their stellar performances makes Glass look promising. But a story that follows a white, superhumanly-able-bodied character against a Black man with debilitating Osteogenesis Imperfecta and another with extreme Dissociative Identity Disorder requires a more conscientious approach than usual.
From the very beginning, the story of Unbreakable was a strange approach to the subject of privilege and trauma that, while infused with a level of vigilante fantasy, still seemed self-aware, using Mr. Glass’ suffering as the real emotional core of the story. Split tried to follow suit, but fell short when dealing with issues of abuse and mental health.
A story that brings together these two movies runs the risk of missing the point entirely, and perhaps even doing more damage than good. Today’s world is different from the one that received Unbreakable 17 years ago: we are actively having conversations about mental health and ableism and how dangerous isolation and stigmatization can be. Glass will feature two characters who struggle with these very issues, but are framed as antagonists to a hero with more privilege than your average human.
After Split, we were left wondering how David and Kevin’s personalities might interact. The Beast is driven by the principle that those who have suffered are superior from the rest (the rest being expendable), which makes David, a man who can never suffer physically, the Beast’s ultimate opponent as he embarks on what’s presumably going to be a murderous rampage.
In the same way, Mr. Glass has already defined himself as David’s fated antagonist; the culmination of his search for purpose in Unbreakable, which wasn’t dampened by the fact that he was soon put in an institution for the criminally insane.
Both Unbreakable and Split did a good job of setting up sympathetic villains–characters we cared about, even if we feared them. We could understand what had made them the way they were, and even root for their recovery. But both Mr. Glass and Kevin failed. They are not the heroes–David is.
We now have two villains: one who represents the ultimate physical frailty, and another who represents the ultimate mental frailty. In contrast to them is David, who is literally indestructible. Glass might find a way to move all three characters together.
Is it fair, then, to pit these characters against each other? What does it mean to have a white, able-bodied man triumph over the underprivileged? Are we supposed to wish for Mr. Glass and Kevin’s destruction?
Shyamalan’s movies are never quite that simple, but the way Split dealt with Kevin’s Dissociative Identity Disorder was still questionable, and gives away sloppy writing. While it attempted to steer away from demonizing mental illness, it ended up doing it anyway. If Glass is to succeed, it needs to transcend the typical formula of the superhero genre it is consciously subverting in a drastic way. It needs to do something entirely new, and find redemption for the characters its universe has so terribly wronged.
Because in the end, audiences are more likely to find themselves in the struggles of the villains than in those of the hero. Mr. Glass’ constant battle with inadequacy and powerlessness, and Kevin’s fight to control his own mind, are issues that exist all around us. They even reflect more complex societal issues, which is what made Unbreakable a classic in the first place. Maybe David needs to realize that being the superhero doesn’t mean he has to be against the villains.
Glass can bridge the gap between the privileged and the oppressed–finding a balance between the self-righteousness born of fear and that born of pain, and maybe even dealing with David’s survivor’s guilt. Then the movie might stand on its own, perhaps even transcending Unbreakable and touching on very real, very timely topics.
There are no easy answers to the questions surrounding Glass, but Shyamalan is no stranger to complex topics. His movies are notorious for analyzing difficult subjects, from The Village’s exploration of fear and isolation to The Happening’s environmental twist. He just needs the bravery to make this one worth it, and the presence of mind to do the heavy research work like this entails.
If framed within the traditional superhero context, this story can be disastrously tone-deaf, becoming a monument to ableism no one wants to see. But if proper consideration is given to the weight each character’s struggle has in the lives of Glass’ audience, the movie could prove revolutionary.
Glass is set to be released on January 18, 2019.
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