Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard
Released: January 18, 2019
So who knew M. Night Shyamalan directed a trilogy? I didn't until
Glass came out and I heard it was Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson reuniting as their characters from
Unbreakable (nineteen years later!) I also knew that James McAvoy's character(s!) from
Split was in it, but I didn't realize there was an
Unbreakable connection in
Split; rather I just assumed Shyamalan thought that character would work well with the
Glass storyline; but as we find out, there is a connection between all three movies.
In
Unbreakable, we are introduced to a seemingly average man named David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who lives with his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright) and tween son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) in Philadelphia where he works as a security guard at a stadium. However, we soon learn that David is not that average as he is the only survivor of a train derailment. Not only did he survive it, but he didn't even break his bones or get a scratch on him. The way the scene is shot where the doctor (played by Michael Kelly) is telling David all of this is very Shyamlanian. It reminded me of the famous "I see dead people" scene in
The Sixth Sense (just no iconic lines!)
Not surprisingly, his story makes the news and one man in particular is intrigued by David. He is Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) who has a genetic disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta which means his bones are very low in density and are easily broken. He mentions he's broken fifty-four bones in his life, but during a scene in
Glass, he will mention he's had ninety-four breaks in his life, so that means he's broken bones forty more times in the nineteen years (or seventeen years....I'm a little confused by the timeline, but I'll explain why later) since the year 2000. Despite all the breaks, he has Type 1, which is the "tamest" version. There are four types and Type 4 is the most severe and, therefore, most deadly.
Elijah owns a comic book art gallery called Limited Edition and writes a note to David on his business card asking him, "How many days of your life have you been sick?" David finds the note under his windshield wiper and he and Joseph visit Elijah at his store. David can't remember the last time he was sick, but figures there must have been a point sometime in his life he's been ill. Maybe the guy gets flu shots. I get flu shots every year and I've been really lucky that I never get really sick where I just want to stay in bed and sleep all day because I'm so miserable. Sure, I have days I may feel sluggish, but nothing severe or anything. The last time I was really sick, like had to call in to work because I was legitimately contagious and go to a doctor was in 2014.
Elijah, being a comic book nerd, proposes the theory that if there's somebody like him in the world who can easily have his bones broken, then maybe there's an opposite of him in the world, somebody who never gets sick and whose bones never break. David tells him that as a child he did almost drown so he did have a near death experience, but Elijah believes that means that water is his kryptonite (just like with the aliens in
Signs...oops, hope I didn't spoil that for anyone!) I have to say this movie is ahead of its time as you see Sam Jackson in a comic book store where there are a lot of Marvel comics and posters and cutouts of
Avengers characters (I remember seeing one of Spider-Man).
We see Elijah's love for comic books started when he was a child when his mother (Charlayne Woodard) gives him a comic book titled
The Battle with Jugaro and tells him, "They say this one has a surprise ending" (haha, Shyamalan, I see what you did there). It is a little messed up how she makes him get the comic book, though. She has it wrapped in a box that's sitting on a bench in the park that's across the street from their apartment where they can see it from their window. She wants to make him work for it to prove he can do anything despite having brittle bone disease. There are a lot of kids playing on the playground and one kid literally runs right in front of the bench with the present that has a big shiny bow on it. I am really surprised no one took it. If this happened in the real world, no way that gift is staying there longer than five minutes! Perhaps he also took a penchant to comic books because kids called him "Mr. Glass" because he breaks like glass and if that doesn't sound like a :::coughcough::: villain from a comic book, I don't know what does.
Joseph tries to test a few theories that his dad may be a superhero. When David is lifting weights in their basement, he asks Joseph to remove a few of them and after he lifts them again, he asks his son how much weight he removed and Joseph tells him he added more. They both want to see how much more he can lift and after using 350 pounds of weights, they add two (full) paint cans to each side. Now that he has proven his dad has super strength, he also wants to prove that he's invincible so in a very tense scene, Joseph, who has found his dad's gun, has it pointed at David and plans to shoot him to prove to him that nothing will happen to him. Both of his parents are rightfully freaking out and telling him to put down the gun. I had to laugh a little when he said "I'll only shoot once." David threatens to leave if Joseph shoots him. So either Joseph shoots and kills him and loses him forever or Joseph shoots and injures him and David leaves. Joseph is hurt by this and says he thought they were friends to which David replies, "Friends don't shoot each other." True dat! To Joseph's parents' relief, he puts the gun down.
Elijah pays David a visit at the university stadium where he works. As they're both standing next to a line of people waiting to get into the stadium, David points out a man to Elijah who thinks may have a weapon because he's wearing a large coat. He says it's just an intuition, but in a scene earlier we saw David brush up against the man and this is how he knows the man is dangerous. Well, he doesn't know he has this ability yet. Of course, the dude just looks straight up shady so I don't think you need to have any premonitions that he has a weapon. As David correctly predicts, the man turns and leaves the line once he sees David start patting down random people. Elijah follows the man down the subway stairs to see if David was right about him. The guy is walking too fast for him and as Elijah is trying to keep up with him, he slips and takes a nasty fall down the stairs and I'm just like, OUCH. For some reason, his cane is made of glass (terrible idea) and just shatters everywhere. Yeah, it looks cool in the movie, but don't use a cane made out of glass. Just not a good idea.
When David realizes he has a gift of being able to see the past crimes of people who he comes in physical contact with, he decides to hang out at the train station where he comes in contact with a whole bunch of folks who have done some terrible, terrible things. It seems every time he comes in contact with someone, the crimes they've committed just get worse and worse. We see a woman who has stolen expensive jewelry, then we see a man who has raped a passed out woman, then we see a janitor who broke into a home and killed the father. Writes note to self: never go to the Philly train station. In this scenario, the wife and two daughters are bound and gagged in their own home and David goes to rescue them. I didn't really understand why this janitor/home intruder/evil man was doing what he was doing: did he have a history with this family? Was he there to steal something and wanted the people out of his way? Obviously for the movie they needed David to be a hero because after he rescues the two girls (the wife does not make it) a sketch of him in his now trademark green poncho is in the paper and when he shows it to Joseph, he immediately knows it's his father and now knows what he knew all along: that his father is a superhero.
So as with any M. Night Shyamalan movie, you know there is a twist coming up. It had been nearly two decades since I last saw the movie and while I remembered the comic book aspect of the movie, I couldn't remember what exactly the twist was. When I re-watched it again, I was like, Wait, that's the twist? That's not a twist. That's so obvious! Maybe back in 2000 it would have been considered a big reveal. David shakes Elijah's hand and we see that Elijah has been involved in some terroristic events including starting a fire at an apartment building, a plane crash, and the very train crash that David survived. We see a security video of him leaving the unattended and unlocked front car of the train. Um, no way this would be plausible post 9/11! Good thing this movie came out a year before when security was a lot more lax! Elijah tells David, "We are connected, you and I" and that he had to make "so many sacrifices" just to find him. He did all these horrific acts because he needed to find the one person out there who was his antithesis and to do this he had to kill a lot of people along the way to find the one person who he wasn't able to kill. Yikes!
You know when you're watching a movie based on a true event and there's usually text on the screen giving you an update on where these people are now? Well, that happens in this movie which makes it super cheesy, especially since this is not based on true events (duh). Why don't we see a scene of Elijah at an institution for the criminally insane instead of being told it with text on the screen? Just feels super unnecessary to me.
So now we jump sixteen years ahead to the next movie. The way
Split begins is a little contrived. We need three girls -two of who are very close friends and one an outsider - to be in the same place at the same time. Claire is having a birthday party at a restaurant and invites everyone from her class, including Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), the weird loner girl who has no friends. At the end of the party, Casey's ride is late and she tells Claire's father she can take the bus home, but he insists on driving her home along with Marcia, Claire's best friend.
The movie starts immediately once Claire's father is incapacitated offscreen by a man (James McAvoy) who gets in the car. Claire and Marcia are in the back, talking and don't realize the man in the driver's seat is not Claire's dad until a full minute in. Casey, is too scared to say anything and is wondering if she should bolt. When Claire confronts the man, telling him he's in the wrong car, he sprays them with something to make them unconscious and the three of them wake up in some cellar-type room. They can peep through a keyhole where they see another room with a locked door, so they know escaping isn't going to be easy. When they hear a woman's voice talking to the man and see someone wearing a skirt and high heels through the keyhole, they start yelling to be rescued. They are all shocked when it is revealed it is their captor talking in that voice and wearing the skirt and high heels. They just stare at him (her) in disbelief when he (she) tells them: "Don't worry, I'll talk to him. He listens to me. He's not well."
It doesn't take long before they realize they are being held captive by someone with DID - dissociative identity disorder, probably more well known as having multiple personalities. I imagine this has to be a dream come true for an actor to play. James McAvoy plays a character with 23 - soon to be 24 - identities. I believe he only plays eight of them in this movie, but we will see even more of these personalities in the next movie. Aside from the big one we will see at the end, there are really only four personalties that get to come "out into the light". These include a nine-year-old boy named Hedwig who loves rap music and dancing and saying "etcetera" at the end of his sentences; a religious woman named Patricia who has a slight Scottish accent (might as well since McAvoy is Scottish); Dennis, who is the one who kidnapped the girls and always wants to make sure everything is clean and makes the girls take off their clothes if they get dirty (plus he's kind of a perv...); and Barry who is into fashion and is usually the one who contacts and talks to their therapist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley) who is an expert in DID. Not only do they each have their own wardrobe, McAvoy gives them each their own distinct personality in the way he talks, his mannerisms, and the way he carries himself. It is very impressive acting.
I don't know much about DID - in fact, I didn't even know it was referred to as DID; I just always called it multiple personalities - but there is something fascinating and creepy about it. It's just unfathomable that someone can have a completely different personality from their own, or several, as is the case here. I assume doctors have ways of diagnosing it and being able to tell a person really has DID instead of just pretending to. We see a scene of Dr. Fletcher giving a seminar where she says there are moments when two identities can take "the light", or the conscience at the same time and talks about a time when it happened with somebody she was working with who was taking notes at the same time with both hands and each hand was writing something different with a different handwriting. The different identities in
Split are able to communicate with each other, as when the girls heard Dennis and Patricia talking to each other. There's also a scene towards the end of the film when McAvoy is looking into a mirror and all the personalties are communicating with each other and the camera pans from McAvoy to his reflection. It's very reminiscent of the Gollum/Smeagol scene in
The Two Towers.
I'm sure Hollywood movies and shows about DID over exaggerates it greatly and I'm sure
Split is no different. I read that people with DID were most likely abused as children or suffered some great trauma as a child which is what we see happen to Kevin Crumb, who is the person played by McAvoy with all the personalties. While we don't get too much of his backstory, we see flashbacks of his mother getting furious with him for not cleaning his room and coming after him with a hot iron in her hand. He most likely created all these personalities as a coping mechanism. Dennis, the personality who is a neat freak, was one of the first to appear and he protected Kevin by making sure everything was clean because if anything was dirty, it would set his mom off. We'll explore more about his parents in the next movie, but I still have a lot of questions.
The two non-entity girls (don't get too attached to them) think if all three of them take him on at once, they can fight him and escape, but Casey doesn't agree to the idea because she knows it won't work. The girls really want to escape because they were told by Dennis that they are "sacred food" and one of the girls think he has a dog he wants to feed them to. She's not totally off-base. When they get a clue from Hedwig that there may be a way out, Claire finds a way through the ceiling and ends up running through a long hallway and in a locker room. I was very confused where they were until it's revealed at the end (I guess what was a bit of a twist too). Dennis fixes the ceiling and keeps all the girls separated, especially after Marcia also tries to escape when Patricia is making a sandwich for her and Casey and she hits Patricia with a chair, but since the door is locked, she doesn't get too far.
Casey has formed somewhat of a bond with Hedwig, the personality who is stuck at the age of nine. After Hedwig mentions he likes to dance to music in his room and has a CD player next to his window, she gets him to trust her by telling him that she gets in trouble at school on purpose so she can get away from everyone and be alone. We see flashbacks of her as a young girl who would often go on hunting trips with her dad and uncle (Brad William Henke). Through each of these flashbacks we learn something about her backstory each time, like the fact that her uncle started sexually abusing her at a very young age and that he is currently her guardian because her father had a heart attack when she was still quite young. Casey doesn't share all of that with Hedwig, but with what she does tell him, he sneaks her into his room and starts dancing to Kanye West. Watching a man in his late 30s dancing to rap music while pretending to be a nine-year-old is both super weird and oddly endearing at the same time. However, Casey can't appreciate his dancing because all she sees is the CD player by a drawing of a window on the wall. There are no actual windows to be found. When she asks Hedwig about this, he gets mad and accuses her of trying to escape. He shows her a Walkie-Talkie that one of the other personalties stole from someone and she takes it and when she finds out she can get in communication with someone on another line she tells them who she is and that she's been abducted. The person thinks she is joking and pretending to be someone else. Hedwig becomes Dennis and is strong enough to overpower her and take the Walkie-Talkie. I thought there was going to be a payoff with this scene later on, but there never was.
Dr. Fletcher knows that Kevin has twenty-three personalties and knows all of them quite well. She usually talks to Barry, who used to be the dominant personality until Dennis and Patricia started taking over and limiting Barry's time in the light. (Not really quite sure how it all works). Barry told Dr. Fletcher about the other personalties and when Dennis is talking to her, pretending to be Barry, she knows it is not him and correctly guesses that she's really talking to Dennis. She also knows the only way to talk to Kevin is to say his full name, but she doesn't want to do that because it would be chaos for the other identities and she doesn't want to hurt them. She is dismissive that Dennis insists that there is a twenty-fourth personality getting ready to emerge. When she receives many urgent e-mails from Barry she visits his place and this is when she discovers the three girls. He turns into the Beast, which is this animalistic being who becomes very large in stature and has thick skin (literally) and can crawl up walls and all these unnatural traits that no human should have. Before he crushes the doctor to death, she has written a note with his name on it, with the instructions, "Say his name." The two non-entity girls are trying to escape by trying to hook a wire hanger and catching a slide bolt and the movie almost makes you think they're going to escape, but no. They are chow for the beast. Dennis had kidnapped the girls as an offering to the Beast who apparently will only eat the "impure young". But, hey, if anyone was wondering, at least Claire's dad turned out to be okay.
Now Casey is the only one left alive and running for her life from the Beast. She finds the paper from Dr. Fletcher and screams, "Kevin Wendell Crumb" and the man that is the host body for all these personalties appears and is very confused. He asks Casey if it is September 18, 2014, as that is the last day he remembers. When he realizes he's done terrible things, he tells her where his gun and bullets are and instructs her to kill him. That would be utterly terrifying to realize you haven't been yourself in over two years; it would be like be in a walking coma. The other personalties start to come out and once again the Beast emerges. By that time, Casey has found the gun and bullets and has barricaded herself into a cage, but the Beast easily bends the bars after Casey has shot him, but the bullets just ricochet off him. When the Beast sees cut marks on Casey's body, he realizes that she has been hurt just like he has in the past and runs off, sparing her life.
She is rescued by someone who finds her and helps her. This is when it is revealed that she was at an old building at the zoo the whole time where Kevin worked. I thought maybe this was the big twist and while it was a surprise, it wasn't THE twist. We see her in a cop car and when the (female) cop tells her that her uncle is there to pick her up, Casey just looks at her and you know she's going to tell her about her uncle. She does because in the next movie she's living with a foster family and mentions her uncle is in jail.
Okay, now for the big twist. Hot take:
Split has the best Shyamalan twist. If only because you didn't see it coming at all (as long as you weren't spoiled!) I've already put my spoiler disclaimer at the top. So obviously I knew about the
Unbreakable connection so the big reveal at the end wasn't a big shock to me, but it was something I wasn't expecting to see, because, as I mentioned earlier, I assumed Shyamalan made
Unbreakable, then sixteen years later makes
Split as a totally different entity, then makes
Glass as a sequel to
Unbreakable and decided he could incorporate the
Split characters into that one. It would have been super fun to watch the movie in the theater and see that reveal without being spoiled. I have to wonder if I would have even gotten it. I think I would have, but not right away. First we hear the music the was prominent in
Unbreakable, which I definitely wouldn't have remembered. As I literally saw
Unbreakable a few days before I watched
Split, I instantly recognized it. Then we see Bruce Willis sitting at the end of the diner wearing a uniform with his character's name on it. I know I wouldn't have recognized his character's name, but being that he's only been in two (at the time) Shyamalan films, it pretty much narrows it down to
Unbreakable, well, because, you know. And the woman next to him acknowledges him so she can see/hear him, ha! On the news, they are talking about Kevin and mention he is being referred to as "The Horde" because of his multiple personalties. When the woman mentions how he reminds her of "that crazy guy in the wheel chair that they put away 15 years ago" and is trying to remember his name, Bruce Willis is revealed as he says "Mr. Glass." I bet audiences (the ones old enough to remember
Unbreakable!) were freaking out when they realized this movie had a connection to
Unbreakable and there would undoubtedly be a sequel. Pretty cool.
This takes us to
Glass. I'm a little confused by the timeline because it is mentioned that Casey's classmates were killed only three weeks ago, but it is also mentioned that the events of
Unbreakable happened nineteen years ago, which would be "real" time. (Although, technically, it really should have been eighteen years since
Unbreakable came out in very late 2000 and
Glass opened the first month of 2019...but who's paying attention to minute details like that?) So does that mean that Split took place in 2019 as well? Then why does the woman at the end of the movie mention Mr. Glass being put away 15 years ago? Ahh, who really cares that much, right? I guess Shyamalan just didn't catch that. He did catch something else that made me laugh just because it really wasn't that important. So you know how he always has a cameo in all his films, like he was the doctor in
The Sixth Sense? In
Unbreakable he plays one of the people who David comes into contact with at the stadium and it is revealed he is a drug dealer and/or user. In
Split he plays a security guard who works at the building where Dr. Fletcher lived and she uses his help to track Kevin. In
Glass, David owns a home security store (his cover when he's not fighting crime) and Shyamalan as the security guard is seen purchasing some extra cameras for the building. He is obviously the same character he was in
Split, but then he asks David if he used to work at the football stadium and when David confirmed he did, Shyamalan's character is like, "Oh, I thought I recognized you. I used to hang out there with a bunch of shady people when I was younger, then I turned my life around." Okay, first of all, you KNOW someone tweeted @MNightShyamalan right after they saw
Split and asked him if that was supposed to be the same character from
Unbreakable and Shyamalan figured he better make that clear in
Glass, so he threw that throwaway line in. Second of all, how the hell would he remember a security guard at a crowded stadium from nineteen (or fifteen depending on what timeline you're going on) years ago?? I call B.S.! Nonetheless, it was a super amusing scene.
Since Elijah goes by Mr. Glass and Kevin now goes by The Horde, David also has his own superhero name and he is referred to as The Overseer. His son, now grown, is the only one who still knows his father's true identity and helps him track the Horde where he now has four cheerleaders held hostage in an abandoned factory.
I heard an interview Spencer Treat Clark gave on a movie review podcast and he said after some of his friends saw
Split, they were telling him he had to see it and he just assumed it was because he worked with Shyamalan in his youth; he had no idea about the
Unbreakable connection until he saw it. Luckily for Shyamalan he was still acting as a young adult, but I wonder if he still would have taken the role if he retired as a child actor? Obviously Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson are back, too (well, duh, the movie IS called Glass) and so is Charlayne Woodward in old age make-up as Elijah's mother. The only person from the original movie who isn't back is Robin Wright as Audrey David's wife. She is mentioned as having died from leukemia five years ago. It's possible that they tried to get her, but she had other projects that didn't allow her, but honestly, they didn't really need her.
David is able to find The Horde and rescue the four girls before the Beast is about to maim them. While doing this, he was tracked by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) who apprehends both of them (with the help of some armed men) and takes them to Raven Hill Memorial Mental Institution for psychiatric treatment. She tells the two men, who are kept in separate rooms that she specializes in a "particular type of delusions of grandeur: those who believe they are superheroes." David is kept in a room where the walls are equipped with 46 high pressured nozzles which are all connected to a 15,000 gallon water tank right outside which will only be triggered if he tries to escape and Kevin is kept in a room that has strobe lights that go off and change his personalties if he gets too close to the door and ends up confusing him. If Dr. Staple is telling them they're not really who they think they are, then why do they need all these safety precautions to make sure they don't escape?
The same main alter egos that we saw in
Split - Dennis, Patricia, Hedwig, the Beast - are mainly used in this one, but we do see even more of Kevin's other personalties in this movie, especially with the use of the strobe lights. These include a Spanish-speaking woman and probably my favorite, a man who specializes in Japanese cinema from the 1950s-80s. Can you get any more specific than that?
The big scene in the movie is when David, Elijah, and Kevin are all together in the same room, but it was a bit of a disappointment because the characters don't interact with each other, rather they are speaking with Dr. Staple. Well, not Elijah as he doesn't speak until an hour into the movie. David had an MRI taken and Dr. Staple tells him that his front lobe has a "questionable cloud" and that it could mean it's damage from the train accident. She seems to have an explanation for everything that could prove these men are akin to comic book characters. She tells Kevin (well, he wasn't technically Kevin, but I forget which personality he was in this scene...) that he probably learned how to rock climb through videos. When he challenges her and asks how the Beast was able to pull apart the iron bars on the cage she tells him due to the cage's old age, she was able to pull them apart by putting a wrench between them and leaning back and said it was, "difficult, but possible" (yeah, but the Beast didn't use a wrench!) and when he challenges her even further and asks how the Beast survived being hit by bullets, she tells him the gun and bullets were old and the cartridges were compromised from the moisture in the room.
So, yada, yada, yada, we learn that Elijah has been pretending to be catatonic this whole time and his first line of dialogue comes about an hour into the movie when he sneaks out of his room and into Kevin's room where he talks to a few of his personalties and wants to meet the Beast as he has big plans. Earlier in the film we had seen him looking at a local magazine with a picture of a gaudy building called the Osaka Tower, claiming to be the tallest building in Philadelphia. The headline read "The Osaka Tower - A True Marvel" which is obviously a nod to the comic book franchise, though there is obviously a nod to
Die Hard and the Nakatomi Plaza, and you know, Bruce Willis.
He tells David that they are going to Osaka Tower where the Horde will be revealed. There are three floors that house a chemical company and Glass is planning to blow up the building with those chemicals. Well, he certainly is telling the right person about this because if there's anyone who can stop a terrorist at a skyscraper, it's John McClane! The movie takes a bit of a detour when the characters never actually go to Osaka Tower, which turned out to be a red herring, and instead have their big showdown in the parking lot of the hospital.
During this time, the Beast has been somewhat of a sidekick for Glass, killing anyone who might get in their way and treating him like a God. However, when Joseph lets it drop that Kevin's father was on Eastrail #177, the exact same train that was derailed because of Mr. Glass and everyone died except for David Dunn, the Beast quickly turns on him. Yes, that's right. It all ties together. So apparently there's a scene in
Split where one of Kevin's personalties (again, I can't remember who) is at the train station where he buys flowers and places them on the track in remembrance of his dad. While I remember this scene, I just never made the connection. Now it's like, duh.
So we get a few more details about Kevin's upbringing, but I'm still confused. When we see Kevin's dad on the train, he is reading a book about DID therapy and treatment and it is mentioned he was on his way to see a doctor. A couple questions: first of all, why is he leaving his son with his wife (I assume they were still married, but I don't know for sure because why would he want to be married to such a horrible, horrible woman)? He knew she was abusing him, right? I mean, I don't know how you miss a mark from a hot iron and God knows what other signs of abuse he had. Why in the hell is he leaving his son alone with this woman?? Also, why didn't he just take Kevin with him? If he's seeing a doctor about his son, then why isn't Kevin going with him so he can be diagnosed? Yes, I realize that if Kevin went with him, he would have died in the train crash and therefore there would have been no movie so it defeats the whole purpose, but, c'mon. Glass tells a seething Beast that if the crash hadn't happened, Kevin would never have been left alone with his mother and if she never continued to abuse him, then the Beast would never have been born. Before the Beast dropkicks Glass, he tells him that his main priority is to protect Kevin and he cannot trust him to keep him safe.
So more yada, yada, yada, to my surprise, all three of the main characters end up being killed by Dr. Staple and her group of armed men. It turns out all along she was part of a secret society who do believe that super heroes and villains exist, but don't want them being known to the public because "there just can't be gods amongst us". But, unfortunately for her, she is unable to keep it secret because she finds out that Glass had streamed the live security feed (it was alluded to several times that the entire hospital inside and out was covered in cameras so their whereabouts would be known at all times) to a private site and the videos showing the three of them doing extraordinary things like lifting a car over or bending steel or crawling across a wall are sent to his mother, David's son, and Casey. The three of them upload the videos that this society didn't want anybody to see and soon everyone in the world is able to see that super heroes and villains do and can exist.
So while I loved that all these movies tied together and he made a sequel to
Unbreakable so many years after its release, I felt
Glass was a bit of a disappointment. I guess it just didn't live up to my expectations. I was expecting David and Elijah to have more screen time together since they have so much history from the first movie. This is more like a psychological thriller than an actual comic book movie which fine with me because I wasn't expecting a Marvel movie or anything. I think my favorite part of the movie is when the credits rolled and there is a list of 24 names next to James McAvoy's name. I laughed when I saw that.
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While this is going on, Viola's (very loyal and very patient) assistant, Ruby (Wanda Skyes) is observing the whole thing from a distance and is muttering under her breath for Charlie to say no because she knows Viola is not taking this news very well. But, of course, Charlie says yes. Earlier, Ruby had told Viola, who is a bit of a lush, that she had locked up all the alcohol and liquor after she returned from her four-moth hiatus, so Viola is rummaging through the bathroom medicine cabinet and finds mouth wash that has 14% alcohol and that's good enough for her. She comes to the conclusion that Charlie must be pregnant and that's why Kevin wants to marry her. When she brings this up, they tell her that Charlie is not pregnant. This still baffles Viola and she tells them, "Call me old-fashioned, marriage is a sacred union that should only be entered into with the utmost care." Charlie gets a stab back at her, asking her, "Weren't you married four times?" To which Viola replies, "Yes, which would make me an expert don't you think?" We know that her first husband is Kevin's dad, her second marriage was to a TV exec who got her her first on-air job, and her third marriage was to an actor who turned out to be gay and had an affair with her second husband. There's a bit of an on-going joke that she seems to be attracted to gay men. I don't remember any information about her fourth husband. Viola just can't get it through her head that her son, a "brilliant surgeon" is going to marry a "temp". She figures that Charlie is a gold digger and she's going to make it her "project" to create a wedge between her son and his fiancee.
It becomes Viola's mission to not only drive Charlie crazy, but also drive her away from her son as well. As she tells Ruby, "Every woman knows when you marry a man, you also marry his mother." I feel like she has very outdated (even for 2005!) views on marriage. She invites Charlie out to lunch (by the way, J-Lo has some very enviable outfits in this movie, this one included) where she just pretty much starts planning their wedding with doves and horse-drawn carriages and other things Charlie isn't into. She also presents her with a frilly pink wedding planner book. Charlie puts her foot down and firmly tells her thanks, but no thanks, that they don't want any of her input. This causes Viola to faint on the outside patio where they're eating lunch, causing a scene. A woman nearby asks if she's dead and Charlie tells her no, then under her breath, she mutters, "It can't be that easy." Okay. That was funny. This movie isn't that great, but there were a few funny moments, this one included. It turns out that Viola had an anxiety attack and Kevin tells Charlie that his mother told him that Charlie was yelling at her about not being able to plan the wedding, which Charlie admits to.
Charlie has asked Viola to be her Maid of Honor (I don't care if you even get along great with your mother-in-law; that's a weird person to ask to be your MoH!) It seems she's only doing it to embarrass her because she has this hideous peach colored (Viola's favorite color) dress for her to wear. It is the day of the wedding and these two are still going at it. There was a scene a few days earlier where they are both eating lunch and Viola makes a snide remark at Charlie, saying, "Just so you know, Kevin likes his girls thin" after Charlie tells her she wants the dress to fit her and not the other way around. Yes, Charlie is curvy, but sheesh, she's not fat. 
Viola shows up to the wedding wearing a white dress and that just about sends Charlie over the edge. When Kevin's paternal grandmother, Gertrude (Elaine Stritch) shows up, we find out that she and Viola have a relationship not unlike Viola and Charlie where they're always going back and forth and sniping at each other. I had to laugh when Gertrude exclaims, "My grandson is marrying an exotic Latina!", because, again, she seems very American and non-exotic to me.
