Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for the film Glass.

M. Night Shyamalan is quite the interesting filmmaker. He is known for putting out crowd-pleasing films every now and then, but more often than not, he’s also good at putting out movies that only he could put out. Even the failures fail spectacularly in a way only he could. Going into Glass, some fans (myself included) were worried the success of Split could ultimately result in him kind of going a safe direction with it — giving us a generic superhero tale in the a Golden Age of Superhero Movies.

What we got instead was Glass. Obviously, critics have since had their way with this one, resulting in a 37% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences didn’t seem to like it much better, with it getting a B on CinemaScore (which is a rating system where if you’re not B+ or better, you’re kind of in trouble). Clearly, this wasn’t quite the crowd-pleaser come had hoped it would be, and while there are a myriad of reasons why it could be, I’m sure the ending was at least partially responsible in some way. Again, if you haven’t seen the film, don’t read ahead.

RELATED – Was The Glass Ending Always Planned? [SPOILERS]

The end of the film sees David, Elijah, and Kevin all killed off by a secret organization intent on suppressing superhero beings, fearing it would lead to an “outbreak” of people with superhero abilities in the world (apparently the idea of even believing that abilities are possible is crucial to developing abilities). However, in the climax, that final fight between the three supers was inadvertently filmed by Elijah and sent to the three supporting characters, who then leak the footage online potentially opening the floodgates for more supers in the world.

Given that this film sees our three leads all die somewhat anti-climactic deaths, you could imagine the studios involved would be a bit worried about killing off a potential cash cow. Speaking with Coming Soon, writer and director M. Night Shyamalan was asked if the studios pushed back on his script. Here’s what he said.

“You know, not a ton. Like, a hope that we could keep going, if we wanted to keep going. But that was never the intention. The intention was to have the format of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, where the main character seemingly is vanquished, and yet the spirit is unleashed. You feel the bittersweetness of it all, but yet their contribution to the world, to the story and to the members in the story is profound and goes on. So that format of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was earth shattering to me. To me, that’s a paradigm shift. That’s a surprise.”

I’ll admit, the ending is ultimately what made it for me. Sure, the film has its problems — such as the overexplaining of the narrative and the stupid actions of a few characters (though that’s an M. Night staple) — but my main beef of the film was fixed by that twist ending of the secret organization. And, over the past couple of days since I’ve seen the movie, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, flaws and all.

When all said and done, this is very much an M. Night conclusion for better or worse, and I’m incredibly happy the studios let it happen. My greatest fear was that this would be a generic “third act” climax of a superhero movie, and while that may have ultimately made an objectively stronger movie, it wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting to me.

But what did you think of the ending? Let us know your thoughts down below!

Don’t forget to share this post on your Facebook wall and with your Twitter followers! Just hit the buttons on the top of this page.

SOURCES: Coming Soon