From ”Invincible” to ”Glass”: Shyamalan's Secret Weapon
A few years ago, no one would have believed that the audience would wait for the next film by M. Night Shyamalan with the impatience that superhero blockbusters would envy. Firstly, most of the films filmed by the director in the new millennium do not even deserve the epithet“not bad”. Secondly, few people suspected that "Invincible" would receive a sequel after so many years. Everything changed with the release of Split, which, much to the surprise of moviegoers, took place in the same universe where David Dunn played by Bruce Willis lives. Moreover, the thriller made the public again believe that Shyamalan can make good films.Most modern sequels stumble upon the audience misunderstanding even at the entrance to the cinemas. This is especially true for projects that have been in development for an unacceptably long time. "Glass" is lucky in this regard, and the film that closes the Shyamalan trilogy will still empty the pockets of the audience. 19 years have passed since the release of "Invincible", and therefore we can talk for a long time about the director's secret weapon, who managed to create his own superhero universe without Batman and Superman. Today LostFilm.INFO presents a selection of interesting facts about the filming of all three projects - from "Invincible" to "Glass".  By the time The Invincible was released, Shyamalan's career had developed so rapidly that some saw him as the second Steven Spielberg. Prior to The Sixth Sense, his track record included a couple of independent films. It would seem that a relatively inexperienced filmmaker should devote all his time to such a large project as The Sixth Sense, but it was during post-production that Shyamalan began writing the script for Invincible. After two decades, not all advances given to Shyamalan have been justified, but the director has achieved a lot. For example, an impressive check for filming "Invincible." It was only the second major film in Shyamalan's career, but the filmmaker received $ 10 million for it, and this is in 2000.  The finished script is only part of the story, and difficulties may arise already during the filming process. On the one hand, cinema is art, but for producers it is also a business. To minimize costs, studios often shoot scenes from one movie at random rather than plot. Then the actors even laugh about this, they say, they started with the final shots. "Invincible" distinguished himself here too: the filming of the tape took place in chronological sequence - a technique that is rare today, but it allows the actors to live events together with the characters. The heroes of the universe are another story. Viewers can adore David Dunn, sympathize with Kevin Crumb and admire Elijah Price, also known as Mr. Glass. Now it is difficult to imagine someone else in the place of Samuel L. Jackson, and there is an explanation for that: the image of Price, as Shyamalan later admitted, he painted specifically for Jackson, hoping to get the actor's consent to shoot in "Invincible.  As for Kevin Crumb, the audience could get to know him 19 years ago. Shyamalan claims that Split's protagonist was present in the original Draft of Invincible. In it, Price tells his protege David Dunn:"You're a comic book character, so go and try your hand". And now the inspired Dunn, instead of the villain in orange, played by Chance Kelly in Invincible, meets one of Crumb's personalities and sets out to rescue the girls he has kidnapped. As in the case of Mr. Glass and Jackson, viewers no longer represent in the image of Kevin Crumb anyone other than James McAvoy. However, initially Shyamalan turned his gaze to the owner of the Golden Globe Joaquin Phoenix. Film fans, of course, are always happy with the actor's new project, but we must admit that McAvoy played amazingly a man in whom more than twenty personalities coexist.  Sterling K. Brown, the star of American Crime Story and This Is Us, could have appeared in Split, but fate decreed otherwise. The fault was the too long timing of the first version of "Split": the film ran for three hours. To reduce the time to a normal by modern standards of a couple of hours, many scenes were cut during post-production, and all the footage with Brown remained on the floor in the editing room. Shyamalan has always been famous for unexpected plot twists, and he saved one of them for the final of Split. What was the surprise of the audience when in the last scene they saw Bruce Willis himself. It is clear from the dialogue in the diner that he is again playing David Dunn. The hero of "Invincible" looms on the screen for some ten seconds, but they were the ones who tied together the two films of Shyamalan. Such a move would not have been a surprise if at least one of the audience knew about it, so the director wisely did not include the scene in the version of the film shown to the focus groups. Anyway, Shyamalan, filming his variation on the theme of superheroics, seriously considered sending Dunn into the scene after the credits, but the scales tipped towards a more classic ending.  Another interesting fact is connected with the appearance of Willis in Split. Few remember that the rights to "Invincible" and all the characters of the tape belong to Walt Disney. Since Split was a completely different studio, Shyamalan needed permission for David Dunn's cameo. House of Mouse turned out to be very generous and allowed the director to fulfill his idea completely free of charge, with only one condition: if the sequel to "Invincible" and "Split" is released, then the major will receive his share of the profit. Given the good start of Glass at the box office, Disney bosses can count on a tidbit of the pie. Prior to Split, Shyamalan had produced quite a tolerable horror film The Visit, but before him, the director's career was in total ruin. His previous films fell into disgrace one after another, and if not for the success of Split, the director would hardly have lured a Hollywood star of the caliber of Sarah Paulson into his networks. She, like Willis, signed up to take part in the filming of "Glass" without reading the script. Paulson even got emotional when Shyamalan called her and said that he wanted to see her in his new project."As far as I knew then, I was crying because of the film, in which I will appear in just one scene", - the actress admitted. At least she was more fortunate than her American Crime Story colleague Sterling K. Brown.  Fans of "Invincible" have been waiting for a sequel to the tape for a long time, and journalists constantly bombarded Shyamalan, Willis and Jackson with questions about when Dunn and Price will return to the screens. There were always reasons for the postponement of the project, among the main ones were called the weak rental fees of "Invincible". However, Shyamalan always knew that he wanted to shoot a trilogy, but after so many years, viewers have already forgotten about a sequel, and the connection between “Invincible” and “Split” really came as a surprise to many. The director, however, had to reveal the secret to several people. Firstly, Willis, but this is already clear, because it is his cameo that is the first link in the universe. Another person dedicated to the Shyamalan mystery was James McAvoy, overjoyed at the opportunity to work with Bruce Willis. But Samuel L. Jackson did not enter the circle of proxies, and his reaction to David Dunn's appearance in the Split finale is anyone's guess. Surely we only know how the actor found out the truth. He received clear instructions from Shyamalan to organize a private screening of the film for himself alone and to call the director after the credits. Just imagine how this conversation turned out.  No matter how critics criticize "Glass" and Shyamalan's love for plot twists, the final part of the trilogy is worth watching, if only to find out how the two decades-long filmmaking ended. Source: Screen Rant The Topic of Article: From ”Invincible” to ”Glass”: Shyamalan's Secret Weapon. |
