There’s an interesting moment in Glass you might’ve missed. M. Night does one of his obligatory cameos revisiting the cameo in he made in Unbreakable. In that movie, he played a possible drug dealer that David was too late to stop selling his stuff or was mistaken.

In Glass, he reappears, recognizes David from those days, and comments on how he was with a bad crowd and in a bad place. Turned it around with the power of positive thinking. From a meta standpoint, I’d like to think this is M. Night apologizing to audiences for The Lady In The WaterThe Happening, and The Village.

I’ll never get a pass for The Last Airbender, will I?

Point is, we’ve been pretty hard on Shmalamadingdong and he knows it. He seems to have taken failure well and is learning to make stories again, rather than self-aggrandizing garbage. Give him credit, he doesn’t seem to be an SJW, or at least it doesn’t really figure into his movie making. It may be crap, but at least it’s non-political crap. 

That gets us to Glass. Once again, we have a pretty big disparity between critics and audiences, just like The Last Jedi

For the record, I loved Glass. It was a great example of subverting expectations and still having something satisfying to say. But look at that? What’s going on here? 

I went through a few reviews and man, these guys seem to have it out personally for M. Night. For instance:

Why was Shyamalan, who has directed at least four objective failures over the course of his career, allowed yet another chance to prove what a disappointment he can be? Why has the industry constantly given him passes, when he’s done everything – Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth – he can to prove his detractors right? The same “Why, god, why?” question applies to Reitman, who has now been given the keys to the Ghosbusters kingdom despite having also produced four flops – all in a row, and two of which came out just last year.

That was from Barry Hertz of the Toronto Globe and Mail. Pretty harsh and stupid. Did he not see the box office of Split? Made for only 6 million, it pulled down 138 million. Barry, take an economics course. Not to mention the profitability of his past movies. He hasn’t just had one hit, he’s had many. Of COURSE, they are going to take a chance on him. This one was only 20 million and it’s already hit profitability. 

Tell me that again, I dare you.

It’s not just his economic stupidity, it’s the vitriol. I’d argue Zach Snyder has had less commercial hits and is still riding 300‘s success to completely raping some really beloved properties and people are still clamoring for the Zach Snyder cut of Justice League. So why the Shyamalan hate? 

Later on, he tells us:

with Glass, Shyamalan seals his fate as being forever aligned with ineptitude 

Really? Ineptitude? Physician, heal thyself. I offer up as proof of your ineptitude in understanding tone:

as with Split, it’s gross to watch dissociative identity disorder played for horror and laughs

For Laughs? Is that what was happening here? He was making light of multiple identities? That’s what you saw? He and I clearly didn’t see the same movie. They are all like this. Really harsh, really grating, and really personal. 

Glass has issues like any other movie. For instance *SPOILERS* how the antagonist just happened to be in a comic shop when she overhears a customer making a point about comics that was relevant to the story. It was not exactly subtle. But to call M. Night incompetent is just weird. 

Audiences seem to agree with me. Personally, I kinda a like a filmmaker who always swings for the fences. He strikes out a lot, but when he hits, MAN HE HITS. 

This director makes you still care about me.

The critics seem to have something personal against M. Night. Perhaps because they are sheep who all wrote the same articles in the early 2000s about how M. Night was the next Spielberg. When he wasn’t, they all took it personally. Perhaps? 

If you liked Unbreakable, you’ll like Glass. It’s a decent movie and wraps up a story pretty well. I also think the “twists” were almost M. Night saying “yeah yeah reviewers. All you talk about are twists so here you go. Choke on em.” They aren’t that important. Or perhaps the real twist is the entire plot. 

These reviewers have it in for him now. Was he an arrogant douche for a while? Yeah. Do you think these columnists had a hand in making him that way? YEAH! At least he seemed to learn from it. They are the same arrogant assholes they’ve always been. 

These reviews are either missing the story or they are biased because they were burned by M. Night in the past. Don’t listen to them. From the disparity I see, it looks like fewer people are listening to them. 

We remember The Last Jedi. Fool us twice? Nah.