I take some of it back

First, wow I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted this year, so sorry if it’s weird that I start here.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with M. Night Shyamalan and his movies. My first movie I saw of his was Sixth Sense, and absolutely loved it, was surprised, etc. My second movie was Unbreakable and it was a second hit for me, great surprise, at the time the only real “superhero” movie I liked (long before MCU).

Then it was a series of movies that just got worse and worse, each time trying to have that “surprise”. I absolutely hated his surprises, and I hated even more his interpretation of other people’s works such as Avatar, The Last Air Bender. So basically I have ignored his stuff for years and years.

This means I ignored Split and Glass because I didn’t want him to fuck up my feelings about Unbreakable.

For whatever reason though, this weekend I decided to give Split a try. I like James McAvoy (even if I don’t really like him the best as Professor X). I knew the basic plot line already, I knew that it was set in the Unbreakable universe and I figured it couldn’t damage my feelings of Unbreakable too badly.

Turns out I was surprised, but not in the surprise way I had assumed. I found I liked Split. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think its a high piece of cinema, but it was enjoyable, written well enough for me to forget my anxiety for a couple hours and after watching the little twists and stuff I felt like he made up for some of his other bad movies.

So this morning I took a hard gamble and watched Glass. Supposedly the second sequel to Unbreakable, and it got rid of any sort of misdirection attempts about what it was. Turns out I liked Glass a lot too. It was entertaining, it was nice to see superhero type movie that was gritty and was not just a set piece of destruction. The way he filmed to reduce the amount of special effects I was pretty fond of.

I thought the acting went well, all of the actors brought their A game, and it was really nice to see Bruce Willis in what appears to be the final movie in his career that didn’t have the changed feeling of his acting style.

I don’t want to spoil it, but I did like the ending and the little bit of surprise that Shyamalan always needs to put in. I felt he wrapped up the current storylines and I was even a little emotional. Better yet I liked the world he set up better than I like Marvel right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I suspect if he put out 10 movies in that universe they would start degrading and not be worth it, but he left it open. It felt more like a superhero world that I might run as a game for my table top. It left me more interested about new stories in his superhero world then in Marvel itself (full disclosure I have never been a huge superhero buff, not even as a kid in the 70s/80s).

Kudos to him for wrapping up the trilogy, and I just had to say I take back some of what I have said about his filmmaking. It just shows me that people can be good at a niche part of their profession, but that doesn’t mean they are good for all of it, and sometimes its best to stick to your lane.