Superheroes are over, done with, dead. There, I said it. If I see one more lustrous cape, magic doodad, or chiseled hunk of a Chris, I’m gonna beg Thanos to keep snapping. Look, I love Black Panther, and Captain Marvel totally deserves her own movie. But, man, the story is played out. Some misunderstood dweeb realizes he’s special; an extraterrestrial plunks down on Earth to solve our problems. Enough!
Of all people, M. Night Shyamalan realized the need to break form years ago when he made Unbreakable. Bruce Willis played an average dad with an above-average ability to withstand a beating. He wasn’t a Batmanesque vigilante or otherworldly avenger. He wasn’t an antihero. He wasn’t even that great of a person. He was real. Back in 2000, the movie bombed. Would it in 2019? Audiences seem more suspicious of traditional saviors these days. (One reason: people in real life using their great power with great irresponsibility.) Shyamalan followed Unbreakable with 2016’s Split, featuring a bald James McAvoy with 20-odd personalities that semi-cohere into a frightening super-crazy. Now the director is attempting his most ambitious feat yet, merging those two movies with a third, Glass, that adds Samuel L. Jackson’s titular villain to the mix.
The premise is that all three of these dude-lusions of grandeur are institutionalized in a mental hospital, much as anyone claiming to be a superhero (or supervillain) in the modern era would be. Do they really have powers? Maybe. In Shyamalan’s universe, abilities are self-manifested. Perhaps that’s his message: No one will rescue this godforsaken planet except our deranged, unheroic selves.
This article appears in the January issue. Subscribe now.