Glass: Should we rewatch Unbreakable and Split before discovering this sequel?

19 years later, M. Night Shyamalan has completed his saga. The end of the trilogy returns this evening on W9.

Glassof M.Night Shyamalan, made a lot of noise in early 2019 when it was released in cinemas. The film will return at 9:05 p.m. on television. Can we see it without being familiar with its first two parts? Here’s what the film crew had to say about it at the time.

With Glassthe director in fact pursues both the story ofUnbreakablereleased in 2000, and Split (2016), while their concepts were quite different: the first questioned the myth of superheroes, and the second was interested in a young man with many personalities (24, like the number of frames per second in cinema) . However, despite their differences, it is better to remember the plot of the two before discovering this final episode on the big screen, because it truly makes the link between the two.

M. Night Shyamalan owns the rights to the sequels to all his films “just in case”

This requires first of all the same ambiance, visual and sound. The musical choices notably echo the themes of the first two films: they are thus repeated during key scenes with David Dunn (Bruce Willis), Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) or Kevin/Patricia/Hedwig… (James McAvoy).

An idea that was not so easy to orchestrate, the filmmaker explained to us on the cover of First : “It wasn’t easy to find the right balance between the music of each film. The new theme of Glass had to drive the story and direct the attention, but also cross and incorporate the other two. (In the introduction to the film), the only piece of music from Unbreakable that we hear comes when David returns home and sits alone in the middle of the living room. He lets himself be invaded by “Audrey’s theme”an evocation of his past love story with his ex-wife.”

The director’s cameo is also well thought out: like his model Alfred Hitchcock, Shyamalan enjoys appearing at the start of each film, except that as these three are part of the same universe, he plays the same character, who has evolved from one episode to another. Just for this clever detail, First advise you to review Unbreakable before discovering Glass.

“You don’t want to distract the viewer and throw them out of the story, comments the person concerned with mischief. Or see him whisper in his neighbor’s ear: ‘Hey pssst, it’s him! He’s the director of the film!’ It is therefore necessary to do it as soon as possible, well before the mechanics of suspense take hold. I always try to add humor and self-deprecation, so that we don’t say to ourselves: ‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’“

Not to mention that this new plot further develops several secondary but important characters, of his elders. Notably Joseph Dunn, the son of Bruce Willis’ character, played by Spencer Treat Clark, who returned to this role in his thirties. The child ofUnbreakable has grown up, he still believes in his father and their relationship is at the heart of this sequel.

Ditto for Elijah’s mother, played by Charlayne Woodard. The director also reworked shots from his 2000 thriller for Glassand he also used some cut scenes, which we will not detail here to avoid spoiling.

Let’s leave the final words to M. Night Shyamalan: “(At the time), the idea was to smuggle a superhero origin story in the form of a twisted Hitchcock thriller. Today, culturally, everything has changed. The whole world has a Ph.D. in superheroism, we can therefore integrate this new obsession into the conversation. David Dunn, Kevin and Elijah Price find themselves in a specialized hospital where all the patients believe they have superpowers. Glass speaks directly to the dominant figure of the superhero in the modern imagination. Why now ? What is going on ? And what does that say about us?”

Glass: From the great Shyamalan (Review)