This is not the superhero reunion critics were hoping for.
First reviews are cutting for director M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass,” meant to be a super-sized mashup of the three main characters from his two previous hits, 2017’s “Split” and 2000’s “Unbreakable.”
“Glass” reunites the brittle-boned evil mastermind Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) and indestructible hero David Dunn (Bruce Willis), while adding to the mix the multiple personalities of Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy).
But the “Glass” seems to have left critics rather injured.
Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty called first seeing the three characters together in the same room “thrilling.” But, he says, “Shyamalan doesn’t seem to know what to do with his dense mythology once he’s convened his long-awaited superhero loony-bin summit meeting. Instead of having his two earlier movies dovetail to create something deeper and richer, it quickly begins to feel like subtraction by addition.”
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich went in on Shyamalan personally, calling “Glass” the “biggest disappointment of his career,” adding that his film is “as clever in its design as it is joyless in its execution.”
Then there was Mashable’s Angie Han, who summed up the film experience this way: “Watching ‘Glass’ is like going to the movies with that one friend who cannot help leaning over to whisper one banal observation after another into your ear, and then leaning back satisfied that he’s just blown your mind.”
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman gave a more even review, writing that “the movie, watchable as it is, is still a disappointment, because it extends and belabors the conceits of ‘Unbreakable’ without the sensation of mystical dark discovery that made that film indelible. ‘Glass’ is a sequel that feels more dutiful than necessary. It turns the earlier film’s ominous pop poetry into overexplicit blockbuster prose.”
Forbes’ Scott Mendelson wasn’t having it. He called “Glass” “a shattering disappointment and a monumental artistic misfire from one of my favorite filmmakers.”
Still, Collider’s Vinnie Mancuso gave “Glass” begrudging respect, calling the film “a spectacle, but in a singularly un-Marvel manner. It’s not gods dropping from the sky, it’s gods toiling in the Earth. Think The Flash getting caught in a traffic jam or The Hulk filing a W-2.”
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