M. Night Shyamalan provided an explanation in defense of David Dunn’s controversial death scene in action-thriller Glass. Released in 2019, Glass is the final film in the Unbreakable trilogy and stars Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy, Sarah Paulson, and Bruce Willis. Unbreakable follows David Dunn, who becomes the lone survivor of a horrific train crash, which brings Elijah Price to believe that he’s a real-life superhero. After its release in 2000, Unbreakable was followed with a surprise sequel in 2017 called Split, which chronicles a man with 23 distinct personalities. This universe concludes with Glass, which brings together the characters from Split and Unbreakable to provide a much-needed end to the trilogy.
To M. Night Shyamalan’s disappointment, Glass was not a critical success and did not receive the attention he expected. However, due to the film’s production budget of $20 million, globally in theaters, the film made $241 million, making a terrific profit margin. Glass is Shyamalan’s most recent endeavor, but he has been making movies since the 90s. Shyamalan got his first critical attention with the 1999 classic The Sixth Sense and has since had a successful career. That being said, Glass is not Shyamalan’s first experience with negative attention since he is also responsible for The Last Airbender and After Earth, which were also critical and financial flops.
In a recent interview with UPROXX, when asked about Glass’s controversial conclusion, Shyamalan defended how David Dunn died. Shyamalan justifies drowning Bruce Willis’s character in a puddle by saying, “in the end, that the simplest thing can take the strongest person down.” For Shyamalan, this ending, “it’s like more of Achilles’ heel that, in the mythos of it, you don’t need an army to take down the strongest man if you know their weakness.”
With this explanation, it appears audiences’ dissatisfaction with the ending of Glass was in-line with Shyamalan’s intentions. After David Dunn was manipulated and struggled through the entire movie, dying in a puddle left viewers wanting a better fate for the hero. Many found the conclusion unsatisfying and questioned what Shyamalan was trying to say by killing Bruce Willis’s character off in such an anti-climactic way.
Shyamalan is known for playing with the tradition of the twist in comic book conventions, but this ending did not sit well with audiences. Although there was still a silver lining to the tragic death of David Dunn, given how audiences responded, it appears Shyamalan miscalculated how the conclusion would resonate with audiences. Considering he personally financed the project, Glass may not have been the critical success Shyamalan wished for. But this response will hopefully expand his understanding of audience expectations. With his upcoming projects like mystery-thriller Old, to be released in 2021, Shyamalan can hopefully learn from this experience and create the iconic thriller he craves.
Source: UPROXX