10 Smartest Decisions In Superhero Movie History
7. Mr. Glass' Supervillain Plan Is A Massive Red Herring - Glass
M. Night Shyamalan's latest effort may have been crushingly disappointing, but it did deliver one clever subversion of narrative expectations deep in its third act.
Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) seemingly sets the stage for a totally typical final superhero showdown between The Horde (James McAvoy) and The Overseer aka David Dunn (Bruce Willis) at Osaka Tower, a giant skyscraper about to be completed and unveiled to the public.
Both the audience and Dunn are duped into believing the same lie, that Glass will use the media presence there to expose the existence of super-powered people on Earth, when in fact, he's playing 4D chess and has a whole other plan in mind.
In an attempt to head both of his fellow supers off at the pass, Dunn instead fights The Horde outside the psychiatric facility where they were being held, seemingly away from the media scrum at Osaka.
The battle ends with the deaths of not only The Horde and Dunn, but also Mr. Glass himself. Furthermore, with the reveal of a secret society seeking to suppress knowledge of supers on Earth, it seems like Glass' plan has failed spectacularly.
But this is a Shyamalan movie, so of course, there's one final twist.
As it turns out, Glass had previously hacked the mental institution's security system in order to stream the battle between The Horde and Dunn to his own network, which he has set up to forward to his own mother (Charlayne Woodard), The Horde's surviving victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Dunn's son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark).
The film consequently ends with the three releasing the footage online for the world to see, ensuring Mr. Glass' plan was carried out exactly as he intended, with a convoluted playfulness consistent with the comic books Glass himself held so dear.
Sure, he ended up dying in the end, but it's abundantly clear that this was always an expected consequence of his plan.
By toying with both characters and viewers, Mr. Glass and Shyamalan pulled off quite the brilliant sleight of hand, not to ignore the film's many creative misgivings elsewhere.