GLASS. Glass is the third installment in M. Night Shyamalan’s trilogy, which began with Unbreakable and was followed by Split. Can we expect a fourth film?
[Mis à jour le 12 janvier 2023 à 20h44] Glass is broadcast on M6 this Thursday, January 12, 2023 from 9:10 p.m. The opportunity, for those who missed it when it was released in 2019 or those who liked it, to (re)discover the third episode of M. Night Shyamalan’s trilogy, initiated with Unbreakable then Split. We thus find in Glass the characters of David Dunn (Bruce Willis), Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) and Kevin Crumb/The Beast (James McAvoy).
Can we nevertheless hope for a sequel to Glass, who would expand the plot around these characters? For the director, this possibility was not possible when the film was released in January 2019. He had thus declared to the British site Digital Spy: “I don’t want to relive things and I don’t want to be opportunistic, this is not the relationship that I have with the public, nor the one that I aspire to. My aspiration is to know that they are going to have an original thriller through and through. That’s what I like, so I’m going to say no for now.” With Vulture, at the same time, he said that a “cinematic universe does not [l’]not interested”. “There will be no more danger, or rather not enough […] So no, we’re not doing a new sequel.”
The impressive physical transformation of James McAvoy for Glass
In Glass, James McAvoy lends his features to Kevin Crumb, the man with 24 personalities, for the second time. For this, the actor underwent a rather impressive transformation. He regularly went to the gym. The actor admitted to 20 Minutes that playing the beast (overpowered creature seen in Split) was the most difficult: “We see her a lot in the film and she is supposed to represent a brutal force which does not really correspond to me […] There is such a tension that you have to be careful not to overplay, at the risk of making your appearances ridiculous.”
Moreover, in order to bring out the best in each of Kevin’s personalities, he applied himself to the art of self-control: “It takes a lot of concentration, discipline and total physical self-control, because you can stop the tears, stop the emotion, but your face will still be flushed […] So you have to try to master yourself as quickly as possible.” His investment won over director M. Night Shyamalan. According to him, James McAvoy was the only one who could play Kevin Crumb. “He has such an agile way of to go from one character to another, to jump from one identity to another. He is an actor with great physical mastery, and it is an immense gift” can we read in Paris Match. An enthusiasm shared by Samuel L. Jackson who here takes up the character of Elijah Price, seen in Unbreakable.
James McAvoy was “fascinating” to Samuel L. Jackson
On the occasion of the release of Glass at the cinema, the editorial staff of Linternaute had the chance to interview Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Mr. Glass again. The actor explained to us that it wasn’t difficult for him to put on the costume of the insanely smart villain. “I created this character, M. Night Shyamalan wrote it and I’ve been waiting for this moment. I think I watch Unbreakable at least once a year. So I remembered pretty well what was going on in my head of Elijah. I just had to put the pieces together, figure out where I was and what I had been able to do in all that time. In the end it was pretty easy.”
He also told us that comedian James McAvoy, who plays Kevin from Split, was amazing on the set of Glass. “It’s really fascinating. To be in the same room someone talking to three or four different, distinct people, you know they’re not the same, but at the same time are very interesting individually and feel all that , it’s really amazing. James is really great.”
Glass was also an opportunity for Samuel L. Jackson to once again play opposite Bruce Willis, his playing partner in Unbreakable twenty years ago. This opportunity, the actor appreciated seizing it: “It’s a real pleasure! M. Night Shyamalan always challenges us and Bruce is always funny. I shot a lot of films with him and we found a working pattern that works great. But ultimately our characters don’t intersect that much in the movie. Everyone was kind of on their own, except when we all face the character played by Sarah Paulson.”
Synopsis – David Dunn – the unbreakable man – is the pursuit of The Beast, pseudonym given to Kevin Crumb. At the same time, Elijah Price (a mysterious man with glass bone syndrome) arouses the interest of the authorities by claiming to have vital information on the two men. They will then find themselves in a hospital but their confrontation will soon be exported to the outside world…
“Glass” is an American thriller which has the distinction of being the sequel to two feature films by filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, known for having signed “Sixth Sense”. In 2000, he released “Unbreakable”, the adventures of David Dunn, a kind of superhero who finds himself confronted by Elijah Price, a super villain suffering from brittle bone disease. In 2017, Shyamalan directed “Split” which tells the story of Kevin Crumb, a man with identity disorder who kidnaps two young women.