In the last few days the new film by M.Night Shyamalan, the director of the sixth sense, has been out in theatres for years between ups and downs, cheering us with strange films that alternate flops with great successes.
This time, the operation carried out had something enormous and sensational as well as completely unexpected.
To understand the scope of the project that culminates with "Glass", the title of the film just released, you have to go back almost 20 years to the year 2000 when in theaters, closely following the resounding success of "The Sixth Sense" was released "Unbreakable - The Predestined", a film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis.
The film was a success and a failure at the same time since many people appreciated it warmly while others were burned by the hype generated by what "The Sixth Sense" had represented.
For years there was talk of sequels or a continuation of the story told but nothing was done about it.
It was 2017 when "Split", a semiparanormal thriller with a spectacular and histrionic James McAvoy called to play a character with a dissociative personality disorder that led him to be both voice and body of dozens of characters. A really intense and chameleonic effort and performance for the Scottish actor.
At the end of the film, in the very last scene there was a leap from the chair for all the unsuspecting spectators.
Bruce Willis appears. Boom.
Split and Unbreakable belong to the same universe.
Just like that, out of the blue. A few days later Shamaylan announces that there will be a third film that will bring together in the same universe and in the same story the protagonists of Unbreakable and Split.
McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis reunite in "Glass", playing respectively "The Beast", "The Man of Glass" and the vigilante with a thousand names and pasts that we saw unharmed in a train accident in the first film.
"Glass" is therefore in itself a sensational experiment, in the era of sequels and prequels announced years before and projects that last years but are well planned.
Coming to the film, one cannot fail to notice a great effort in trying to reread and rewrite the superhero theme.
The 3 protagonists have in common to be forces of nature, to possess superhuman abilities that make them special beings but also marginalized.