I think a lot of movie goers felt slightly disappointed in Glass, whereas some really loved it. I guess it depends on your own expectations and the style of movies you like to watch. I must say I found myself on the fence a little with Glass, I didn’t hate it nor did I love it, it was just ok.

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan should be no stranger to the fickle nature of movie goers, he was hailed as a prodigy with his first few movies and then came Lady in the Water, which was simply put, a bad story and a bad movie for me and many others. Shyamalan’s stock seemed to keep falling further and my least favourite of his movies was The Happening, for me the concept didn’t work, before you even start with page 1 of the script.

But lately Shyamalan’s stock had risen again after The Visit which was a low budget but well crafted movie and then Split which we all discovered was a really a sequel to Unbreakable, one of Shyamalan’s most lauded movies. Then we discovered that he was writing another sequel called Glass which would conclude the stories of both split and Unbreakable and feature both Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. The hype train went into overdrive and perhaps that hype train is the reason Glass was not well received by critics?

Shyamalan recently spoke at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where he delivered the 2019 Ashok C. Sani Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence lecture. We picked up the transcription from Indie Wire and Shyamalan told the audience about his reaction to negative Glass reviews.

“I was in London when I heard the U.S. reviews for Glass were poor, I was in a makeup chair for a TV show, and I cried. We’d just come back from the London screenings, which were through the roof, we had only great screenings of the movie around the world. So essentially I wasn’t prepared. I had this false sense of being a part of the group in a safe way. But boy, did I feel distraught that day.”

“Honestly, I was feeling like, ‘Will they never let me be different without throwing me on the garbage pile?’” Shyamalan said. “The feeling of worthlessness rushed me, and to be honest, it doesn’t ever really leave. But anyway, the film went on, right? It became number one in every country in the world, and it represents my beliefs.”

It’s interesting because in many ways anyone who has seen a Shyamalan film should have had an idea of what to expect from Glass. It was a typical M. Night Shyamalan movie, but perhaps that’s also part of his problem too?

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There are certain directors who I think consistently make the same kind of movie, so much that you can hang your hat on what to expect. I personally find this to be a limiting factor more than a defining artistic piece of genius. I feel a director should be able to move through different genres and styles. I don’t think anyone expected Shyamalan’s version of The Avengers in Glass, but at the same time I kind did except the stakes to be raised a little more and I felt the whole secret conspiracy against superheroes ands villains was a little late in the day for a trilogy.

Perhaps just a bit more spectacle would have helped with some of that hype? But at the end of the day audiences didn’t seem to hate it that much and the critics did. So maybe he made the film he wanted and it made money, so I guess he has to call that success?

What did you think of Glass, was it as bad as dome critics made out or an underappreciated gem? Sound off in the usual spot below.

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SOURCE: Indie Wire

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