The first poster for M. Night Shyamalan‘s Glass is now out, and as you can see below, the image is already teasing some pretty big twists for the characters of Unbreakable and Split:
Shyamalan released the poster on Twitter, with the following announcement:
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“I’m so excited to tell you that @GlassMovie will be at #ComicCon. I will be in Hall H on July 20th with the cast! You can expect a surprise as well…
But if you need your #GlassMovie fix before July 20th, here’s the world premiere of our teaser poster.“
The poster features the principal three characters of this trilogy: Bruce Willis’ superpowered David Dunn from Unbreakable; Samuel L. Jackson’s as David’s frail-bodied evil mastermind nemesis, Elijah Price; and James McAvoy as the serial killer with an extraordinary case of personality disorder, Horde. There are two sets of reflective images for the three men – one as their “true” superhero / supervillain personas, and the other (more intriuging) image of where they are when the film seemingly begins.
The first curious thing of note is the appearance of each man in his respective “civilian” image. All three are wearing garb that suggests some level of institutionalization: Price and Kevin Wendell Crumb/Horde look to both be wearing clothing of some kind of hospital or asylum; Dunn could be said to be wearing hospital clothes as well, but the chains around him suggest that there’s been a much darker turn in his life.
If David is indeed locked up, then that’s a big twist on the storyline that was suggested in the post-credits reveal of Split. In that scene, we see Dunn inside a diner located on some remote stretch of road, watching the report about Horde’s violent abduction and attack of three young girls. The implication was that Dunn would be taking up the mission of stopping the killer, with many fans expecting a superhero detective story, with Jackson’s Elijah Price pulling strings and manipulating both Dunn and Horde. Not that we couldn’t still get something like that; this teaser poster just suggests that the cat-and-mouse hunt could be something much different in design.
Some first footage has already been screened for fans at CinemaCon, where Shyamalan and Glass star Sarah Paulson teased the following:
“In Spilt, I created the origin story for an anarchist that could be good or could be bad,” Shyamalan said. “The worlds of Unbreakable and Split finally collide in Glass.”
“What if these real life superheroes and supervillains are somehow locked up together?” Paulson asked. “What could go wrong?”
Containing all three men to the same mental facility is an interesting concept. Violent people proclaiming to be, or acting as if, they are superhuman beings would probably land them in a psychiatric hospital for observation (led by Paulson’s Dr. Ellie Staple). It gives the film a more contained and manageable single-setting, and definitely reflects the tagline of the poster: “Contain” could be a double entendre, meant to suggest both the physical incarceration of these men (and the powder keg that creates), and the emotional repression, as both David and Kevin have previously fought hard to deny their gifts/curses.
Glass will be released in theaters on January 18, 2019. The trailer is expected to debut at San Diego Comic Con next month.
