{"id":31297,"date":"2025-08-29T22:59:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=31297"},"modified":"2025-09-01T22:32:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:32:33","slug":"m-night-shyamalan-unbreakable-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=31297","title":{"rendered":"How I Learned to Not Hate M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s \u2018Unbreakable\u2019 After 25 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

To say that I\u2019ve had a strange relationship with filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan over the years would be an understatement, but that was especially the case earlier in his career in the years before I officially became a film critic. After making a few other movies, Shyamalan broke onto the scene with his blockbuster hit, <\/span>The Sixth Sense<\/i><\/b>, so there was probably a lot more anticipation for his follow-up film, <\/span>Unbreakable<\/i><\/b>, once that movie put the Shyamalan name on the cinema map.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the trailer started to show in front of other movies in 2000, I became particularly interested in <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i>, for a few reasons, partially because it was rumored to be the filmmaker\u2019s take on a comic book movie at a time when they weren\u2019t quite so pervasive as they\u2019ve become since. The movie also reunited Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson from <\/span>Pulp Fiction<\/i><\/b><\/a>, one of my all-time favorite movies. Due to that connection, it might not have been that surprising when Shyamalan himself picked Tarantino\u2019s <\/span>Pulp Fiction<\/span><\/i> to run as a double feature with <\/span>Unbreakable <\/span><\/i>at Film at Lincoln Center\u2019s currently-running \u201c<\/span>Night at the Movies: An M. Night Shyamalan Retrospective<\/span><\/a>,\u201d although they\u2019re very different movies. Sure, Tarantino\u2019s movie was inspired by pulp novels while Shyamalan used comic books as his inspiration, but it\u2019s an odd double feature, even if watching them back-to-back does offer opportunities for new insights and reflection.<\/span><\/p>\n

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(At this point, it might be good to throw in a <\/span>SPOILER WARNING <\/b>just in case you\u2019re a Shyamalan fan who has not yet seen <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I should also probably admit that I didn\u2019t watch all of <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i> the first time I saw it in theaters in 2000. Nope. I walked out before the big ending twist and reveal for reasons that I\u2019ll now explain. You have to understand that I\u2019ve been reading comics since the age of 10, and I definitely agree with some of the ideas Shyamalan shared in <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i> about the medium, while other ideas seemed like a general over-simplification about how comic book storytelling works. (And I probably should mention that Shyamalan has only directed one actual comic book movie based on an existing property, the poorly-received <\/span>The Last Airbender<\/i><\/b> in 2010.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bruce Willis in Unbreakable (courtesy Touchstone\/Disney)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are things that <\/span>Unbreakable <\/span><\/i>still don\u2019t work for me, just as they didn\u2019t in 2000, such as how the entire plot is based entirely on the idea of heroes or good guys and villains i.e. the bad guys. Sure, that\u2019s usually the case in some of the more primitive comic books but there have been so many examples of far richer and deeper perspectives on that idea, mostly by Frank Miller and Alan Moore. You can read or watch any incarnation of Moore\u2019s <\/span>Watchmen<\/i><\/b> to see how that is the case. One of the things that I still do fully agree upon though is that comic books are an artform and both the covers and interiors should be deemed as such. Back in the \u201890s, I would be a regular at New York\u2019s downtown Four Color Images art gallery admiring comic artwork displayed under glass, and the Society of Illustrators<\/a> also regularly has gallery showings at their museum. The fact that Jackson\u2019s character runs one such gallery might be one of the coolest things in <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the flip side, the movie is just slow as molasses with lots of dialogue scenes where Bruce Willis \u2013 who we all love, but let\u2019s face it, has never been the greatest dramatic actors \u2013 and Robin Wright Penn, would just look at each other morosely, rather than actually discussing their marital issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I also wasn\u2019t a fan of <\/span>Signs<\/span><\/i>, which followed two years later, and there are many elements of the plot for that one that makes it a companion to <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i> \u2013 there\u2019s the idea of characters having water as their main weakness (both Willis\u2019 David Dunn and the aliens in <\/span>Signs<\/span><\/i>) as well as a flashback to an auto accident that had an impact on the main character. It\u2019s doubtful that anyone would find either of those movies and screenplays as strong as <\/span>The Sixth Sense<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

More importantly, and this is someone you only notice after 25 years have passed and Shyamalan has directed dozens of other films, is that the filmmaker seemed to be afraid of instilling humor into his serious movies. Or maybe he just wasn\u2019t as confident or good at putting in moments that can get the audiences to laugh, something that could allow viewers a moment away from all the grim goings-on. <\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, there are moments in <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i> that are meant to be funny, like Jackson\u2019s Elijah Glass asking Dunn for his credit card number, referring to a comment made earlier about his thoughts on superheroes being a scam to get money. But the delivery of the line is done so seriously that it just falls flat. In another son, Dunn’s son, played by Spencer Treat Clark, is putting weight on a barbell for his father to press, just to see how strong he is. That often gets a laugh, especially as they add on cans of paint after running out of weights, but that bit doesn’t land nearly as well as some of the humor Shyamalan put in films like\u00a0The Visit<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0Split<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>— an ersatz\u00a0Unbreakable spin-off \u2013\u00a0<\/em>and his recent thriller,\u00a0Trap<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>which is hilarious at times.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Poster courtesy of Touchstone Pictures and Disney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

About a year after <\/span>Unbreakable <\/span><\/i>came out, I became a film critic and eventually, I would interview Shyamalan \u2013\u2013 a number of times, actually \u2013 including once for <\/span>Cinema Daily US<\/span><\/i><\/a> just last year. In fact, it was when I finally had a chance to be in the same room with the filmmaker and ask questions of him, when I started to appreciate his work more fully, and that was with 2007\u2019s <\/span>Lady in the Water<\/i><\/b>, a much-hated movie by critics that oddly, is still my favorite movie of Shyamalan\u2019s entire career. (Oddly, my first time watching the movie at the Sound One edit bay is also where I met two of Night\u2019s daughters, including Ishana, who <\/span>I also interviewed for <\/span>Cinema Daily US<\/span><\/i><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly 25 years later, <\/span>Unbreakable <\/span><\/i>is a far stronger effort when rewatched in the context of Shyamalan\u2019s dozens of films since then, particularly what 2019\u2019s <\/span>Glass<\/span><\/i> brought to the mix in terms of fleshing out the relationship between Dunn and Mr. Glass even further. Many people have said that <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i> is their favorite movie by Shyamalan, and surely, much of that comes down to the comic book connection after rewatching the movie with added context from all the movies from Marvel Studios and DC Entertainment. In other words, it\u2019s not nearly as painful for me to watch <\/span>Unbreakable<\/span><\/i> now as I first did while sitting in a movie theater in 2000, having only <\/span>The Sixth Sense<\/span><\/i> as a reference.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201c<\/span>Night at the Movies: An M. Night Shyamalan Retrospective<\/span><\/a>\u201d runs at Film at Lincoln Center through September 4, and you can watch the trailer for the series below:<\/span><\/p>\n