Superhero franchises largely abide by the law of three, but it took almost two decades for the world to realize that M. Night Shyamalan had been building one of his own hidden in plain sight.
2001’s Unbreakable is still held up as an unsung modern classic, with the filmmaker deconstructing the typical tropes and trappings to pit an impervious hero against a villain who believes they’re doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and it remains as eminently watchable now as it ever was.
Fast forward 15 years to James McAvoy’s powerhouse performance in Split, and audiences were left with their jaws on the floor when Bruce Willis popped up for a surprise post-credits cameo as David Dunn to set up a crossover nobody saw coming, but everybody wanted to happen.
Unfortunately, Glass was a damp squib, and even that might be underselling it. It did make a killing at the box office, but it felt as though Shyamalan was trying so hard to subvert expectations that he forgot to deliver on the undoubted potential of the premise, leading to the trilogy-capper to be branded as both a massive disappointment and a major missed opportunity.
That sentiment hasn’t shifted, either, with a Reddit thread looking back at the trio coming to the overwhelmingly unanimous conclusion that in the most generous of senses, Glass completely and utterly sh*t the bed. It may have its supporters, but if you’re going to tease an epic showdown that’s technically been a decade in a half in the making, then it might have been worth Shyamalan’s time to actually give the people what they wanted.