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Review: "Unbreakable"
Shyamalan puts on quite a cinematic show and trots out all kinds of neat director's tricks, a la Hitchcock. There are long and odd close-ups, elaborate circling shots, dark and dreary skies, loving and lavish Philadelphia street and interior scenes.
No wonder many of the critics are befuddled by this inventive and deliciously creepy film. This movie doesn't have a cellphone, computer, or explosion in it.
Willis plays a security guard named David Dunn, who miraculously survives a disastrous train wreck. It belatedly occurs to him and to others that there might be something special about him, since he has survived some earlier catastrophes in his life, and has never been sick a day in his life. Enter Elijah Price (Jackson), a comic book student and collector who has been searching all of his life for people who miraculously survive things. This is great acting from Willis, perhaps his best. His character is a man lost and out of kilter, almost in hiding. He knows there's something very off about his life, that he has a different destiny, but he can't get a grip on what it is. So he spends his days frisking drunks and weirdos at football games.
Dunn, a former football hero, is having marital troubles, and isn't quite sure why he's drawn to working security in a Philadelphia college sports stadium. He wakes up every morning sad and frightened. It's Price who stuns him by suggesting what his real destiny might be.
The movie is a bit dawdly in parts, but the story-telling really is astonishingly faithful to the comic-book genre: simple, improbable, fantastic. Shyamalan's cinematic style is painstaking and very simple. This movie is a feast for people who pay attention to things like pace, direction and camera angles (there is actually a 15-minute sequence without a word of dialogue, one of the longest in years), and it captures the poignant ambivalence of the tortured superhero perfectly.
We are pulled along as Price badgers Dunn along with Dunn's son (Spencer Treat Clark) to come to terms with who and what he might be. Dunn's son worships him, and as a kid, is perhaps able to see him more clearly than Dunn can see himself.The boy has a certainty about his father that is both funny and powerful -- at one point even frightening -- and it becomes a key element in the movie.
The Superhero stories are among the great and most enduring American myths, an often unacknowledged part of this country's original and unique folklore. One of the distinctive traits of the Superhero genre in comics is the ambivalence of many of the characters. Heroes (Batman, Spiderman, the literal Superheroes themselves) are often innocents. They are ambivalent, reluctant. They are far from indestructible, in fact they are all oddly vulnerable. They never asked for their gifts or reveled in their powers. They have no ambition, other than to lead more normal lives than they are permitted -- just like the Willis character. They are ruled by their destiny, and crippled by their mortality. If their deeds are heroic, their sense of themselves is complex. They are almost all broody and strange. They have gifts they didn't ask for and don't really want, a part of them always wishing they could go about their lives just like everyone else.
What drew many of us to comics in the first place was that this strange assortment of distinctive heroes were both superhuman and all too human. They are different from us, yet just like us. This understanding is at the heart of Unbreakable, and one of the many reasons it works so well.
You know, This is part of a Trilogy
Maybe I was watching different previews, but I didn't know a lot of that stuff coming in to watch the movie.
garc
I feel the movie left a lot to be disired. The previews made it out to be a lot better tahn it actually was. I wouldn't see it again
Reminded me of the last Bruce Willis hit, "6th sense".
Both great movies with lousy endings.
You mean a Slashdot reviewer actually liked a movie? Incredible!!
========
Stephen C. VanDahm
But then he doesn't like anything...
Here
I heard somewhere that the Wachowski brothers did the Matrix because they wanted to do a movie about superheroes that the viewing public would not consider silly. Real superheroes. Shyamalan succeeded fantastically at this objective, and he didn't even need to use technology as magic. His reasoning is not perfect, but I wanted to believe.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Here's the Filthy Critic's review. (GIVES AWAY PLOT)
I think Bruce Willis is a great actor in movies such as the Sixth Sense and Die Hard, but to see him running around in blue and red spandex would make me sick to my stomach.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I decided to go out on a limb this week, and click some of Slashdot's infamous front page links. You might want to try The Filthy Critic; he's reviewed it too!
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
And those are my six cents.
humor for the clinically insane
great comedy company.
I thought this movie was a yawn and was missing out on something, namely a plot. if the rumors that there is more to this movie coming out in the future are true, then tehre is hope. But as a stand-alone effort, lets face it, this movie sucks. Perhaps I'm jaded after seeing the 6th sense (about 100000 times and loving it each time) and hoping he could meet or exceed that.
I quack therefore I am.
I saw Unbreakable on Thanksgiving night... I got my tickets online from Cinemark. By the time we got there, there was only seats avalible in the very first row, so my neck was a little sore by the end of the movie. For a while it seemed like I was watching the Sixth Sense again... it's quite scarey when the *spoiler* kid took the gun and was going to kill the father... I guess those with kids could really feel my pain. Anyways, the movie was actually pretty good, except for not having shooting and killing terrorists :)
------- What exactly is real?
I didn't. Then again, I haven't seen the movie yet.
Thanks.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
While I don't agree with everything that the Filthy Critic says, when it comes to "Unbreakable" he seems to have a much better grip on the movie. The Filthy Critic says "It's like a funeral we once had for a squirrel, way more somber, long and expensive than it needed to be."
http://metamuscle.com - Better Bodies Through Hypertext
The sad fact is its just "ok" ... the cinematography was excellent, the director did a fabulous job ... but the plot just wasn't strong enough. This is more of a movie to rent then to pay 20$ for ...
OffTopic: I got my moneys worth though, there was this 15 year old girl who wouldn't shut up during the movie, kept giggling and laughing and her friends were bothering her ... 5 minutes didn't go by that we didnt hear "stop it man!!" A couple people walked up to her and told her to shut up and she still didn't get the message ... so I took one of my g/f's starburst candies and threw it and hit the 15yo square in the head (very hard to, I threw it overhand) ... all ya heard was this "OUUUUUUUUUU! hit me in the back of the head man, thats not cool!!"
I was very proud of myself :) Delivering a candy ordinance to a non orifice in a dark movie theature at high velocity :P ... needless to say after all of this I became the disruption cuz I couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes :) ...
To summarize, with the right combination of people you can still have agood time at an exceptionally medicore movie.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
When I went in to see this friday night, I had no idea I was in for a superhero movie. Man was I astounded. I'm not old skool into comic books, but I read the best thats being made today (The Authority, Planetary & Battle Chasers) and I play White Wolf's Aberrant RPG, which is super heroes and x-files rolled together. This movie was one of the coolest I have seen. I know its a great piece of film-making, but what matters is thats its a great piece of film making about super heroes and comics. Throughout the movie, I kept looking over at my friend gary when major things happened and we had these matching grins on. The guy above wonders why this is on slashdot... This review is on slashdot because comics are something a good many of us have loved and the movie is one of the most enjoyable I have ever seen.
-jeff
ps. To those who've seen it, can you imagine a director's commentary track on the DVD? Ahhhhh...
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
occurred in this movie as the same as "The Sixth Sense" ie: The color Red... Which kinda gave away half the plot before anything happened. But still I also liked it
The movie was excellent, but what really tied it all together and made the suspense potent was the incredible soundtrack. It is all composed specifically for the movie (a definite sign of quality) and gives emotion to everything that happens. Download it from an 18 year old on a cable modem near you! PS: I am an 18 year old on a cable modem so the forementioned stereotype applies to me too.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
btw, I am a HUGE comic book, fan and I loved the Sixth Sense.
The Sixth Sense was a friend of mine:
"Unwatchable" is no Sixth Sense.
(This of course all assumes that yall can actually read this story, and that your filters aren't all set to save all Jon Katz material to /dev/null )
peace
I'm sorry. This is possibly one of the best super-hero flicks out in YEARS. More than just "I'll defeat you! Lemme have my super-gizmo drop a house on you!"
This is the kind of gritty realism that made Batman so popular before it was spoiled by all these bizarro super-criminals. I'm not saying the Batman movie (at least the first two) weren't good. They were great fun.
The character is basically the Everyman, save that for a slight bit of empathy and the odd little fact that he's almost incapable of being hurt.
Heck. Even the character's name is straight out of comic-bookdom. The simple aliterative (David Dun). Like Peter Parker, or Clark Kent.
The care and attention to detail in this movie stunned the hell out of me. I'm so used to seeing movies where things either:
- Explode
- Implode
- Splatter
- Shatter
- get run over
- slammed into
- get so bullet-riddled it's not even funny
- or otherwise hyper-mangled
That I've had my fill for the next several lifetimes. Movies like this that actually have SUBSTANCE, not just stuff to tide you over till the bullets fly once more, is a pleasure.Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Posts like this made me think today about Howard Rheingold's writing in "Virtual Community" about hostile articulate people who take up so much time and energy and space online..Odd
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I, too saw this movie on Thanksgiving night, figuring if it had Bruce Willis AND Samuel L Jackson in it, it had to be good. When I came out I was confused - I thought, well, this would have been a lot better if I had an appreciation for comic books. Which I guess I don't. Perhaps that is because I am not as old as the author of this review??
I was disappointed because I was looking forward to looking at the psychological ramifications of being "unbreakable". Everyone I saw it with said it moved too slow and I thought it really left a lot hanging at the end (his relationship with his wife, his kid, his job, himself even!)
Did the makers of the film/trailer hope it would get some success coming so soon after The Sixth Sense? Because that is how it seemed they played the marketing. Worked on me, but I don't recommend it until it hits video.
The Train Wreck never had an explosion, just a before and after look, that is it. I heard explosion all over (airport), but certainly did not see any
..and always will. But what about the movie?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I have a theory about Unbreakable that seems to be at odds with what everyone else thinks about the ending. That probably means I'm just wrong, but I'd like to get some feedback on the theory:
The Jackson character never says he is the opposite of the Willis character. Oh, he implies it a lot, and the screenplay leads us in that rather obvious direction. But even at the end, Jackson never directly says he is the opposite of Willis. My theory, then, is that Jackson is not the villain that everyone assumes is the lame ending.
Oh sure, he's insane all right. And he does evil things in setting up the disasters. But he's not the villain because he does those things for good reasons -- insane reasons, but with a good motive: To find a hero that can help humankind. If he were truly evil, and not just insane, the last thing he would want is to find a hero, for it would interfere with his evil actions (as actually does happen at the end when he goes to prison). Talk about stupid actions for a villain! But then, as I said, he never does come out and call himself a villain, or say that he is Willis' opposite. We just assume this from the carefully crafted writing and the way the characters dress and act.
Since I heard Unbreakable is supposed to be part one of a trilogy, I think the real villain is yet to be revealed. My theory is that the wife is the real villain. Consider, she is the one who contstantly tries to stop Willis from acting on his hero tendencies. She is the one who holds him back. When Willis survives the train wreck miraculously, she rushes back into his life to hold him down again. And, most significantly, in the screenplay, she is the only one who explicitly says she is the direct opposite of Willis' personality!
My theory is that the Jackson character is well-meaning but insane, while the wife is seemingly benign but actually the one doing the most to stand in Willis' way, preventing him from acting as a hero. Far-fetched, yeah, but maybe the next movie will reveal this. In any case, it seems a less obvious (and lame) ending than the movie actually had. It seems unlikely such a good writer who is so good at misdirecting an audience would settle for such an obvious choice of villain.
Those of you who have seen this movie, what do you think? Viable theory, or have I overlooked something in the screenplay?
________________
________________
Private Essayist
Actually I can't really not liking a movie I've reviewed for slashdot, cept for that John Travolta nightmare..I love most movies, I have to confess..hope to be writing a regular Sunday column about them.. Called Tech Culture..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
But can you say more? Don't you think seriousness and comic books can mix? They sure did to me... Movies are subjective..everybody has a different reaction..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I think this is very smart. The movie is shockingly low tech, and definitely not silly, IMHO. Not even a cell fone..I though this was very creative and particularly effective...Very smart observation by Elwood, I thought..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Never been able to do it..there are times when I would have love to figure out how...
jonkatz@slashdot.org
An awful lot of people are liking and not liking the movie..makes it interesting..I think it's far from a terrible movie, though, for all that one can criticize it...
jonkatz@slashdot.org
C'mon, JK, you know better than that. Please leave spoilers out of the front page view.
It's particularly relevant in the case of Unbreakable, because part of what makes the movie work is the slow revelation of the film's true themes.
People for whom the label "Superhero Movie" is a turnoff... you might consider seeing it nevertheless. It's certainly not like any other Superhero Movie I've ever seen.
Is it my imagination, or are people doing this more and more? It seems to me to be epidemic..I had a man translating the movie in Spanish to his girlfriend at the top of his voice..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
This movie definitely belongs on /. Many /ers started out on comics, and still are into them. Maybe the line between people who loved this movie and people who didn't are that people who loved comics really got the way it was put together..people who didn't wouldn't, of course.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I also love the idea of people shrieking and screaming when their Katz blocking software doesn't work..nothing is more fun that watching them go nuts..maybe it means I'm perverse..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
This is on slashdot because, as the discussion clearly shows, there's a huge comic following here as well as an enormous movie following. Comics are a form of sci-fi, specially in the superhero genre..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Comics are bigger now that when I was a kid..you can see from the posts that age isn't the common denominator, but I do think loving comics might be connected to responses to the movie..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The "game" in this film was fairly obvious to the person with whom I saw the film. I wasn't looking for a "game", so I didn't bother to try to guess the trick ending. When it unfolded, I found myself shrugging. Fortunately, Shyamalan didn't do the "told-ya-so" montage like in The Sixth Sense where he showed all the scenes in a rush that should have led the audience to the conclusion.
The "game" was there, it was a surprise, but it just wasn't a big deal.
Okay, so if the movie doesn't have a lot of plot, had cinematography issues (personal opinion) and the trick ending wasn't a big deal, then what was left?
The acting was good. I don't think there were any Academy Award level performances here, though Samuel L. Jackson's part was very well played.
The effects were good. Actually, the best part about the effects was the restraint with which they were used. Rather than show the effect, they often instead alluded to it, increasing the suspense and tension.
The music was very good. I'm going to buy the soundtrack next chance I get.
The relationship with his wife was renewed... "I had a scary dream..." after he came to terms with the injury/non-injury. He never had a problem with his son, his son had a problem with his parents splitting, and his job is to protect people... he will continue do that, and you can find out more about his adventures in comic #2.
It was a rather intreaging movie. You never were really sure what was going on... with 6th sense I knew a lot of people that declared -"he is dead man," 15 min into the movie. This one I nearly figured the good/evil conflict but got thrown a bit.
I love endings that leave you thinking.
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
Theres no ad or trailer or story that doesn't mention the Superhero connection..anybody who hasn't heard about it lives in a tunnel..the whole promo campaign of the movie was based on it..that doesn't give away a thing..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
sGreenHornet asks: So Mr. Willis do you have any other films in line with M. Night Shyamalan? (or you rather not say)
And Willis' reply...
bruce_willis_live: Unbreakable is the first part of a trilogy of films.
bruce_willis_live: I can't tell you about the others ...
bruce_willis_live: But we're supposed to do two more.
bruce_willis_live: you'll understand how it lends itself to a continuing story.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Interesting question..But I thought the reasons for the Jackson character contacting Dunn were always made clear..he said he had been waiting his whole life for a newscast that had a particular set of words..and he heard that early on..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Fucking myself... Never been able to do it..there are times when I would have love to figure out how...
Jon, I gotta say... I'm not a huge fan of yours (but I still read your articles), but this is your best comment all year! A combination of wit and honesty ;-) That's assuming, of course, this is indeed the really Jon Katz...
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I paid $9 ..i want to live where you live..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Um, thats the point. They are having problems, there is no chemistry between two people that are haveing problems. DUH
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
elijah was introduced 3 times. as a baby, as a kid and as an adult. all 3 times the first scene of the sequence showed elijah reflecting from "glass" of one sort or another.
1. reflection off big round mirror behind couch
2. reflection off tv screen
3. reflection off "art" in the store
Made me chuckle... :)
J.
Another annoying shot was when he would have something real close to the camera, but out of focus, and then have the main subject of the scene about 10 feet away, like in the comic book store scene (the comic book store not owned by Elijah, that is). The left third of the screen is filled by a giant, out-of-focus comic book rack and you keep wanting to focus your eyes on it, but can't. Drove me freakin' nuts.
Just when you think the action is going to begin, the film ends.
--
Tomek
P.S. I would recommend The sixth day instead.
btw, I am a HUGE comic book, fan and I loved the Sixth Sense.
You're a huge comic book? Whoa, which one?
And who is fan?
My other
Reading the comics of Carl Barks, Robert Crumb, Chester Brown, Dan Clowes, Dave Sim, or Eddie Campbell paints a slightly different picture of this most maligned of American 'genres' (sic). There *is* valid and vital work being done in this field. It's not exactly a new development either; comics have thrived as Real Literature in European and Asian countries for decades. A lot of good work has been produced to deaf ears in this country as well.
Comics, not unlike jazz in the 1950's, get no respect. How long will it be before poney-tailed drivers of SUVs decide it's an artform too?
Apparantly not. I came out thinking Unbreakable was more like Animal House than the supernatural thriller it had been up until that point.
Can't find a single other use of the phrase ever, in any book review movie review or column..if anybody else has, let me know, not that it's a bad term..Somebody has been looking at screens too long..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
But somebody just e-mailed me the Entertainment Weekly review
jonkatz@slashdot.org
"I liked this movie a lot, but I came out thinking it stunk.." at least you're consistent..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Then what do you call those 3 Apple G4s in the enemy's lair?
Reinforcement to the fact that Sam Jackson's character is insane. You have to be a little bit off center to want a Mac. Especially three...
Execute? [Y/N] _
Warning: don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet.
I saw Unbreakable yesterday, I was impressed with it and I'm no comic books fan. It's a great beginning for a Saga, we've had enough of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and X-Men we're looking for a new hero.
And unlike others I loved the ending. Elijah Price is the bad guy, is it because he wants to be one? It's more because he was born to be a bad guy and Dunn is a hero for the same reasons. It goes to show that each one of us is born to be something, a criminal, a doctor, a computer scientist, a novellist, whatever. You'll feel an emptiness if you're not doing what you were meant to do, what you were meant to be, somehow you'll know that something is not right until you follow your destiny.
Especially Batman, it seems, (now I watched the cartoon more than read the comics but the universe is the same) is always facing villians that have been wronged in some way where you actually feel some sympathy for them. What makes a villian different from a hero in a traditional comic is that the good guy has a ROCK-SOLID sense of right and wrong, and has to look past his emotions to do what's right. Batman feels sorry for the villian, but still sends them to jail, making them more bitter and more of a villian once they break out.
As for the wife being the villian of the story, the movie never hinted anything in that direction. And this movie explains it's hints. I just can't see the homely wife who just wants to love her husband becoming the bad guy instead of the eccentric rich person in a wheelchair who dresses in purple and black.
I didn't like this movie, It moved way to slow (I'm not opposed to slow movies, I love 2001) and the camera angles were a bit over the top and pretentious. The scene where David Dunn discovers his superhuman strength is a good example. THis movie had great potential, but continually frustrated the viewer up until the ending. The ending was a cool turn in the plot, but man what a dissapointment. Earlier someone tells Dunn about what an arch villian does as opposed to a street-villian, he fights with his mind. TO bad we never got to see that happening.
I did like the david dunn character, and Elijah was an awesome character to. I like Dunn's "costume" of just a green poncho, THAT was cool. But all in all, this movie went nowhere...
When Bruce Willis goes to the comic book place to see Samuel L. Jackson, above the doors there are letters that say "Black &" and as they pan into view the camera stops at "&" and Bruce Willis walks in from the left. Intentional? I have no idea!
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
After all, you have a "comic book" story about a hero who does two heroic things in the whole movie. I understand that the movie would have been too rushed if Shyamalan had tried to put too much into the first film, but this film fealt entirely way too slow. 1-and-a-half hours of moody shots of Dunn skulking around trying to decide what he wants to do. Followed by one really disturbing "rescue" where Dunn really comes too late. I say too late because I just didn't get a very satisfied feeling from someone busting up the bad guy after the bad guy already kills and terrorizes his victims.
One thing I did decide after watching this movie was I'm glad I don't have Dunn's other ability, that is the ability too see whatever bad things a person has done recently, whenever he touched them. On a related note, I was rather disgusted at the way Shyamalan decided to have Dunn see a whole bunch of people's crap, but only decide that one was worth following up on. I guess it must be okay to smash Malt Liquor bottles on people's heads and rape girls who've passed out at parties. Or steal jewelery from jewelery stores. I say that because Dunn's character didn't decide to do anything about the guys that did that when he saw those memories. Why bother showing the audience that stuff unless Dunn is going to do something about it?
Anyhow, it was rather obvious to me that this movie was meant to be the first in a series (assuming it did well enough at the box office to keep the studios interested). After, the whole movie is about the creation, or discover, if you prefer, of a hero. But he hasn't particularly "fulfilled his destiny" yet, in this movie anyhow.
It seems odd to have reviews posted on Slashdot 2 weeks after the movie was released. Even more odd to give such a good review to something that floated in a strange purgatory between laughable and dreadfully boring. I consider it a bad sign when the audience laughs at mooments when the filmakers were trying to build tension, not humor. Katz is the first person I have seen having so much positive to say about this movie as a viewing experience.
The action is so slow you feel the director and all actors are "dead".
Ah, but in the world of superheroes and supervillians, the bad guy always seems to go out of his way to make his (the villian's) life more difficult.
For example: Just when the villian has the hero in the grips of "certain death" (with only one possible means of escape), the hero asks the villian what the villian's evil plans are. The villian, realizing that there is "no way to escape now" (except for the aforementioned single method), relents and reveals everything. Then, before the hero actually dies, the villian leaves to go do his evil things. The hero naturally exploits the sole method of escape, and goes on to spoil the villians evil plans.
So no, villians do seek out heros. They seem to take pleasure in terrorizing innocents, but the ultimate goal for a villian is to show off in front of a hero.
(For all of you aspiring evil-doers out there, the Evil Overlord List is required reading.)
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
http://www.tcj.com
I watched Star Wars, Episode 1 sitting next to some little kid who couldn't read yet. His dad read EVERY FUCKING SUBTITLE in the WHOLE MOVIE. I knew it was going to be bad when they had the star wars scrolling text and he was reading it.
It was worse, than this. Every time there was a subtitle, the little kid would start complaining saying "What did he say, daddy? What did he say?!" If they didn't tell him right away he would start crying. Brat.
Argh..
Maybe that's why I didn't like that movie too much..
-- Thrakkerzog
http://www.eddiecampbellcomics.come x. html
http://www.topshelfcomics.com
http://www.paulpope.com
http://www.eddiecampbellcomics.com/fromhell/ind
http://www.tcj.com
http://www.indymagazine.com
in the voice of that bloke from the Simpsons...
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
All clear, wail the sirens!
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
Think about it: Matrix II, The first part of Lord of the Rings, Starwars II, Unbreakable II (or whatever they are going to call it). Hollywood seems to have fallen in love with trilogies.
Man, If I hadn't gone to the bathroom while writing this post It would have been the first reply and gotten moderated up. :P
Moderation is such a ficcle friend *sigh*
It wasn't the hero aspect that drew me to the movie, it was the actors and the director.
What made me like the movie was that this one has heros, is about cool things, AND has character development. Real development. I felt like I knew the characters, and felt the pain and the joy that they went through.
I don't think you should compare this to the sixth sense, they are different movies. An author can write books about different things, and can try out different writing styles--directors/script writers can too.
If you want to compare this to something, at least choose something that was similar--compare it to X-Men.
The biggest difference, or the one that is most important to me, is that X-Men tries to hit the ground running at the beginning of the movie. Yeah, they try to give you a little feel for the characters, but it is a pretty lame attempt. It seems when a script writer, or whatever, isn't sure how to start and develop a plot, they don't. They start in the middle and have little hints dropped everynow and then as to what the beginning could have been.
shyamalan (I hope I spelt that right) took the task of creating a 'super' hero, and added into that the idea of 'believability'.
Oh, and Katz, I think you gave away more than I've seen in any previews--but maybe it couldn't be helped.
--Scott
Anyone posting with a positive karma gets automatic +1 (look at this post). Certain people who've attained high karma get automatic +2.
Well, I am glad someone liked the movie. However, I used to collect comic books many years ago and like to think I still appreciate comic books, but this movie didn't exactly thrill me.
With a more solid ending (a la Sixth Sense), it could have been a good movie, but the movie was so slow (right from the beginning with long boring facial shot of Bruce Willis in a train for no great reason) and ill-paced that I'd say it was anemic. Plus, the ending was just pain --- pure disappointment (and not just relative to Sixth Sense, relative to an average ending). I won't ruin it but the "Filthy" Man(?) review linked to in another follow-up can spoil it for you if you wish. I totally agree with the review.
When I walked out of the movie, I suggested to my friends that if the movie ending had been the halfway mark of the movie, the pace were double, and the 2nd half picked up with some serious thrills, action, suspense, it would have been an interesting movie. Instead, it just has a great (yes, comic-booky) premise that was ill-developed and goofy disappointing for a full production movie.
O well.
= Joe =
From what I remember of reading Stan Lee interviews, heroes were most definitely NOT innocents before Spiderman. That was one of the main reasons for Lee doing Spiderman--awkward teenager who doesn't really want the powers and not even sure he will do anything with them(causing him to let a villain escape who then murders the hero's uncle.) Even Lee's other characters, at the time, were of the "we have powers, let's fight evil" role. And it wasn't the teenager aspect either as there were other gung-ho teenager heroes before Spiderman.
Batman(listed as an innocent) was an anti-hero, who didn't want to be a hero but did it anyway with a somewhat villainous intent. Batman came from a long line of "justice served by the bullet" heroes but had to be changed due to the pressures that would lead to the Kefauver Committee. It's actually a recent event, within the past 7 years, that most of the original characters had their histories rewritten to show them as being "innocents" including many of Lee's original characters. It's never been the norm!
The only movie I've forgiven for having text explaining what happens at the end is Animal House. It's a copout, the rest of Unbreakable tells the story visually, you could watch it without the sound and still know what's going on (for the most part). I don't understand why the director ruined what was otherwise a great film.
The thing that I found the most interesting was that Samuel L. Jackson's character makes himself the "super villain" rather then see himself as a victim.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
Well, an absolutely horrible ending ruined an otherwise good movie for me.
I mean, what the hell were those captions about?
They felt so tacked on, rushed, and out of place, all I could think about was the "Poochie" Episode of the simpsons...
"Note: Poochie died on the way back to his home planet"
I can think of 10 other ways to end the movie that would have been more satisfying then that crap.
Do yourself a favor, go see the movie, and leave in the last five minutes.
But that's the way I was left after seeing Sixth Sense. The moment we "flash back" at the end, I saw the whole middle of the movie as nothing more than a hallucination on his death bed, beginning when Dr Crowe was shot in the first reel. And I kept screaming to my friends "THERE IS NO BOY!", because we don't see or hear about the boy until after the shooting. Unfortunately, none of my friends "get it", probably because most of them hadn't seen Jacob's Ladder.
Now comes along a movie for which we don't have a "Dallas dream season" possible interpretation. Yes, I suppose if I had paid closer attention to the clues, I'd have figured out Elijah's "secret identity" before the last reel, but I didn't, and I was wonderfully shocked, right along with David Dunn. That was good cinema. As was the unusual cinematography that just kept pulling me in. I also felt David's frustration at not knowing his own power or strength, and the tension during the gun scene. Marvellous stuff (pun intended).
I most certainly will get this movie on DVD when it comes out.
This is a great movie! It isn't as good as The Sixth Sense but it is still good. The ending is very unexpected!
I'm not closed-minded, your just wrong!
I would have enjoyed it, had it not been from M. Night. It seemed too much like the Sixth Sense, like he was simply trying to "be cool" again, making the same sort of movie. A lot of the same suspense-building techniques were used, Willis acted pretty much exactly the same, and a fair bit of the cinematography was exactly the same as the Sixth Sense. C'mon, Night, do something different. We know you can.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
But I completely disagree..the dictionary defines an innocent (as opposed to innocence) as somebody with little experience in the weays of the world. Spiderman was absolutely an innocent, Batman in a very different way -- was ambivalent about his power, saw himself as a freak..Tim Burton captured this in the very great lst Batman movie..Superman was a total innocent..The Kefauver committee hearings (I read the transcripts for that in another context) actually took testimony from psychiatrists arguing that the early superheroes were unwholesome, and in particular, that Spiderman and Batrman and Robin promoted homosexuality..no kidding, the head of the American Psychiatric Institute testified to that. But Stan Lee would never have argued that Spiderman was worldly or sophisticated..Like the Dunn character in Unbrekablew, few of the Superheroes, including Spiderman, were polished or confident..They were all awkward, unsophisticated, thus ..innocent.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
One of things I like most about Shyamalan's
...)
style is how every scene is dense with meaning.
For example, there's color coding, which also played an important
role in the Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis's character, David Dunn, is
associated with the colors yellow and green. If you watch the
movie with this in mind, you'll see it in almost every scene. His
clothes are almost always a combination of these two colors. Even
when he's washing dishes, he has a green shirt and is using a yellow
dish towel. His house is yellow with green trim. His raincoat
and uniform are green with yellow writing (green and yellow are
the colors of the fictional Franklin State University). The
superhero in the comic young Elijah receives as a child is yellow
and green. The superhero action figure David's son Joseph plays
with is green and yellow. And so on.
Samuel Jackson's character, Elijah Price, is associated with the
color purple. In the very first scene of the movie, the baby
Elijah is coddled in a blanket with purple trim. His coat
has a purple lining. Even a casual viewer will have noticed this.
(On a side note, in Judaism, Elijah is the prophet that is expected
to announce the coming of the Messiah
The two color schemes are used together in interesting ways.
For example, in the scene in which Elijah and David's wife
Audrey are speaking at the medical clinic, the rug consists of a
checkered pattern of squares: yellow circles in green squares on
the one hand, and purple squares with blue trim on the other. It's
very striking, especially in the aerial shot.
Another color sometimes associated with David and his family
is a dark maroon. His hat at work is this color, for example.
When he tells Elijah of his near drowning as a child, he's wearing
a shirt of this color under his jacket, just showing through.
When Joseph threatens to shoot him, Joseph's shirt is yellow
and maroon, and Audrey has a maroon undershirt.
I think this color is explained by something David says during
his dinner date with Audrey: his favorite color is rust. I think
that's what this color must be -- dark rust. Why rust? It's what
happens when water damages what is otherwise strong iron and steel.
It symbolizes his vulnerability -- water is his weakness.
Another recurring theme, almost the leitmotif of the movie, is
the upside-down shot. It starts with the little girl in the
train who watches David with her head upside down. It continues
when Joseph sees the news of the accident on TV, his head dangling
upside down from the couch.
You see almost the same thing when Elijah is lying on the
staircase in the subway, and sees the man with the gun upside
down. When he receives his first comic book as a child, it's
upside down (and we're given some foreshadowing by the mother:
"They say this one has a surprise ending" ). David and Audrey's
accident leaves their car upside down. There are more examples
but I'll stop.
So what's the point? I think Shyamalan is underscoring the
nature of the plot: he's turned the classic comic book story
upside down: instead of the villain trying to destroy the
superhero, he's actually trying to *create* him.
Perhaps others noticed things I've missed. I'd like to
hear what others think.
-David
I absolutely love comic books AND movies, and I positively hated this movie. It contains all the boring and trite commericial mechanisms that made me fall asleep in The Sixth Sense. It has no sense of pacing, lame-o and contrived dialogue, and rushed and disappointing ending. The only credit I'll give to M. Knight is that some of the dolly shots and master shots in the movie looked nice, and the score suited the tone well. Now if he could just write a script that contained more than five pages of actual content, he might be worth something.
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
..to have read them all.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Sorry, accidentally hit submit: my
post has lots of spoilers!
but don't invoke the Simpsons, my heroes, to come after me..I just named my new dog Homer in his honor..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
also,
Anytime there was purple, elijah was around. And he had a glass cane. I wonder if Willis had any similar traits.
-andy
I'd love some other feedback on the ending..Some people thought it was abrupt..I thought it was much in keeping with comic book narrative..I'd love other opinions..somebody just e-mailing me objecting to the linking between technology and computing and evil at the end..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Oh, so you didn't notice the three Macs on Elijah's desk, with flat-panel displays, shown multiple times.
I loved the movie. I'm actually glad I saw it before The Sixth Sense. I went in with a clean slate and was blown away.
I see a lot of people saying, "It's no Sixth Sense," etc. I saw it after Unbreakable and thought, "very cool, but Unbreakable was better."
It goes to show that you shouldn't have watched it with another movie in mind. That's what ruined it for you. It's not called, "The Sixth Sense: Part 2."
This is the clarification of the puzzling I was hoping for. Thanks, WB..I think you captured it for me perfectly, and better than I did.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Neat observation..also in the car window outside the stadium when he chased the weird guy.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Haven't you heard..There was a secret meeting of Slashdot moguls deep in the heartland and they agreed that benign posts are in this week..Very hush-hush, but you rooted it out, you devil..I'm not sure I've ever been call benign before, but it's a step up from much of what I've called.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm not sure what you mean by "bunk," but I think the pacing was very deliberate, and very inventive. I the age of the slam-bang, explosion a minute movie, he chose to go another, very deliberately slow placed way. I think it resulted in great character development and an eerie sense of Dunn, but I guess you didn't. It was very unusual.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The highlight of the film for me was during one of the several dozen quiet and non-eventful moments when someone about halfway back in the theatre let loose a healtht and hearty belch which was greeted by applause from young and old alike. After about the first 30 minutes, it turned into one of the largest MST3K events I've seen. It sorta felt like being at the Rocky Horror Picture Show....did I mention that I saw this in the same town that hosts Purdue University?
During the rescue scene at the end, there is 15 minutes with no dialogue at all, one of the longest such stretches in recent movie history.
Another reason why I think this was an inventive movie..it may be in this era people simply can't stand a movie that's that reflective and deliberate...maybe for good reasons.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Also some blatant Apple product placements as well. The 3 G4 towers at the end. And I think I saw a G3 Powerbook somewhere too. Overall I really liked the movie though.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
except for the ----spoiler---- GODDAMN KID POINTING THE GUN AT HIS DAD! what the sweet fuck was that? a completely preposterous scene, and its completely disjointed to the rest of the movie. no foreshadowing up to it, and no consequences after. i know if my kid pointed a gun at me id be forced to freak out.
Unbreakable was like a comic-book movie told as a story for adults. That's what I loved about it... it was a pretty complex drama, full of totally human charcters. But with a twist of the supernatural, it turned into the most unbelievably realistic movie about the whole superhero/archvillan theme I've ever seen. Plus I love the way zillions of lame people who would never go near anythign with a "comic book"-type theme are going to see this movie. Nice piece of trojan-horse filmmaking.
Trojan-horse aspects aside, it was a damn fine movie. Awesome story, plenty of creeping and uplifting moments. The movie did drag in places, and I thought it was unecessarily dreary in parts. However... I loved the ending so much, it made the entire rest of the movie worthwhile. It's one of those movies I'm still thinking about, 24 hours after seeing it. :)
http://www.bootyproject.org
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Here's an interview where Willis talks a bit about his take on the movie. He was, apparently, surprised by the ending when he read the script. And he talks about hero theories a little bit, parenting, etc.
He claims to be a daily web surfer and refers to News of the Weird, which he says he consults every day for his dose of "paranormal" news.
You see what I did there, though...
Comic book... comic book seller from the Simpsons... everyone slags off katz...
But instead, Katz trolls me... DOH!
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
is up with THIS?
You're trolling too much. Please stop before I cry.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Trolling for JESUS?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
You only make yourself look even more stupid Jon. The trolls will EAT YOUR LUNCH.. (if it wasn't such shit.)
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Fuck you! Buwaahahahahahahaahahahaaahaa!!!! Bitchass!! Fucker!! Piss bitch!!!
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I can not believe what I read.. that was the worst movie I have ever seen. there were so many holes in the whole movie. I kept waiting for something to happen, and when it did happen, it just didn't belong. you want to see a comic book movie go watch superman. if you want to waste $10 go see this shit.
http://www.1053.org -=We use big words=-
The movie is a bit dawdly in parts, but the story-telling really is astonishingly faithful to the comic-book genre: simple, improbable, fantastic.
Wrong.
Comics are a medium, just like film or television or a book. Within that medium there are different genres. In comics, you have the superhero (just the American version/bastardization of all the world's hero myths), drama, spooky/suspense/horror, kids' and humor.
Your review, except for this misstatement of yours, is exceptional. Thank you for taking the time to write a careful review without giving anything away.
to read all your stupid trolls in this thread... good god! I haven't seen this behavior for a long time.
Yay! Trolls at +2. Your wretched mother must be proud.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Batman didn't have any powers... only a bunch of hi-tech gadgets and a snooty butler.
Big fucking deal.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Bruce in the train station bumping into random people, "seeing" the evil deeds they have done.
Lame.
.. a fucking movie that's not about geek culture, comic books, columbine, or some other shit.
imagine that..
Oh, I bet you thought I was going to say BEOWULF CLUSTER... hahahaha.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm not a comic book reader and saw this movie because it had been hailed as being as good as "The Sixth Sense". While I can say that I thought the storyline concept was quite interesting (and I figured it would be especially interesting to comic book readers), the pacing of the movie left a lot to be desired. My wife fell asleep during the movie. I can't say I thought the movie was bad - far from it, but I think it could have been done a lot better. Steve
POOP!!!
HAHAHAHA!!! SLASHDOT SUCKS THE BALLS OF BILL GATES!!!
The movie had twists and turns, and you can never be sure exactly what's going on and what's going to happen next. And it was a great ride.
I also like the fact that there are multiple interpretations open to what happened. My favorite alternate interpretation is that that nothing supernatural happens in the entire movie. "Mr. Glass" is just a loonie who reads too many comics (a tragic, character, but a loonie nonetheless). David Dunn is a troubled soul who gets caught up in Elijah's tail. Dunn's very lucky in the car and train accidents, but there's nothing supernatural about that luck. His great strength under duress, is simple adrenaline buzz. His seeing bad things that people have done, is intuition that his mind expands on to fill in the details.
Do I think that this really what happened in the movie? No, probably not. But I love the fact the possibility is there, like there is for Bladerunner.
--
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
... and post-columbine review.
Now that's a good column for regular trolling.. do you try hard to write nothing but trollbait?? Because that makes you the UBERTROLL! (sort of like the antichrist, but lamer.)
jonkatz@slashdot.org
But he's not the villain because he does those things for good reasons...
You really need to read more comic books, read more fiction, and watch more movies in general.
In real life, no one hardly ever thinks that they're the bad guy. The Unabomber thought he was doing what was right (stopping the evils of modern society). The guy who shot all those abortion doctors thought he was doing what was right (bring justice to baby assassins). People who embed nails in trees which result in fatal or crippling logging accidents think they're doing what is right (saving the forest from greedy rapists of the earth). Heck, that guy last week who was working with his mom to try to sell off his nephew on the Russian black market to be broken down into organs said he was "pursuing his dream."
I'm getting side tracked though. In fiction there are three major kinds of villians:
1) Those who are evil for the sake of being evil.
2) Those who are merely selfish and ruthless.
3) Those who are willing to commit evil for the greater good.
The first one is simply lame. "Ooo, I am darkness incarnate. Fear me!" The only time it even remotely works is when supernatural forces of Evil are involved. Even then, it has become cliche. The best villians all fall into the latter categories. Even the insane and evil Hannibal Lecter is a case of the second category. He's not doing it to be evil, he's just willing to go to any extreme to satisfy his darker desires. However, this is still not a villian doing things for the greater good.
In the realm of superheroes and comic books, the best example of a villian doing something for the greater good is Magneto. Magneto has seen what happens when a minority is oppressed in the extreme when growing up in WWII Germany. He is fighting back so that mutants will come out on top. In his eyes, he is completely justified for anything he does. He is trying to be a savior to his people. So, don't discount Mr. Glass as a villian just because he thinks he's justified. The justified villian is a fictional archetype reaching back as far as literature has been being written. It's very much a cornerstone of the pulp genre which led to the development of modern comics.
Viable theory, or have I overlooked something in the screenplay?
You also might want to consider that every superhero has more than one villian. Mr. Glass would just be the first that David Dunn faces.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The only trailer I saw (which I saw 2 or 3 times) didn't give away anything. It makes the point that the Bruce Willis character miraculously lives through a train crash and there is possible something weird about him. The Samuel L. Jackson character is also introduced. But nowhere is it obvious that comics are going to play a role in this movie. Also, no information is given about either of the characters background. Going in to the movie I was expecting the Bruce Willis character to be more of a messiah type - maybe even an alien - than an actual super hero. Also, all of the stuff you say about his son is spoilers - its not even clear that he has a son from the trailer.
Anyway, the whole spolier thing touched a nerve with me because Unbreakable's trailer did the right thing, while trailers I saw last night wrecked two movies for me - Castaway and Family Man. In each case I was interested in seeing the movie before the trailer, at least partly due to seeing other trailers about a month ago that didn't give much of the plot away. Now, I'd be very shocked if there were any surprises left in each of these movies. Oh well, maybe I'll just have to go see Unbreakable again.
--
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Golly, I hope someone doesn't try to patent the superhero myth, as I think gilgamesh can claim prior art. Or Hercules (not the one on TV, damnit...), or the Yellow Emperor, or...
Granted, the U.S. does have a fixation with superheroes, it's just not original nor unique. Kinda like the pizza, invented elsewhere and honed to a fine art.
I went to see this as a great fan of both M. Night Shmalayan and comic books. Unfortunately, neither rapacious fan-desire was satisfied. Here's why:
1) Shmalayan, who gave us one of the best surprise endings in the last 25 years in The Sixth Sense, tried to do the same thing here but all it is, is a cornball cliche and a let-down. There are a bazillion tricks in 6th that give you a tantalizing clue about what the ending is going to be. Here in Unbreakable the ending comes as a surprise of the corny species, totally separated from the narrative cast of the film. It only works if, as mentioned above, we are being cliff-hung towards a trilogy.
2) The only really comic-booky scenes in the movie are when Elijah tracks the gun-toting football fan down and when Daniel stalks down the Maintenance Man. Here there is not a bringing down of the supernatural to the real, simply a banalization of it.
3) Jon, what do you consider Hitchcockian here? I am thinking of perhaps the scene where Elijah navigates the stairs. But we are being led on, not howling at the screen for Elijah to stop as we would in a Hitchcock film. Elijah himself knows, furthermore, that he's gonna be busted up here.
4) Oh my word, what lousy dialogue. The dialogue in 6th was realistic, especially the patient/psychiatrist sessions.
5) all in all a case of Second Film by Brilliant Writer-Director syndrome.
6) p.s. the drug dealer in the football stadium is M. Night Shmalayan, FYI
Goat sex free since 2001
Unbreakable was a great idea that got lost in the process. Whether its the predictable plot, shallow character development, or lack of excitement, Shyamalan really fudged this one up.
Katz called this movie homage to Superhero comic books, to which it is unwaveringly faithful. Yes, it was unwaveringly faithful, but so much so that I could have bought a comic book or watched a rerun of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and gotten the same result. Just because a movie is about something you love does not mean that the movie is a breathtaking piece of filmmaking. I love comic books, and I loved the Sixth Sense, but Unbreakable was nothing more than dumb.
Unbreakable started out being about comic books, was about comic books in the middle, and ended in comic book style. What is wrong with this? NO SURPRISE ENDING.
What made Sixth Sense different from other ghost movies? (see Bill Cosby's Ghost Dad) The plot twist at the end. Without the surprise ending, sitting through an hour of "I see dead people." would have been pointless, slow, and boring.
For those who would claim Unbreakable as a validation for a life spent reading tons of comics, and believing they were an 'Art' form, I congratulate you. You have finally found a friendly soul in Shyamalan. However, do not expect me to extoll the beauty and fantastic virtues of a movie that was slow, dull, predictable, and a waste of $6.50.
I invite all flames, counter-arguments, and irate moderators to bash this posting. I know you love your comic books, but that does not make a movie great.
Roberjo
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack! - Dr. Strangelove
We never get real proof the guy's "unbreakable".
Although the "ESP" experience is totally internal, I suppose we can't put it down to amazing luck or ability to read people's body language or faces: he really does have some "super" ability to detect evil-doers. (Though they showed him wrong on the purported drug dealer just to raise a question.)
But much of the movie is about his slow acceptance of his special nature, and we never get a real smoking-gun proof on-screen.
- Didn't see what happened in the train or car crashes;
- He never just pokes himself with a penknife to see what happens (my first thought...);
- He talks the kid out of shooting him;
- Elijah "explains away" the drowning incident with comic-book 'logic' about everybody having a weak spot - a dramatic but not physical requirement;
- He doesn't take enough of a beating in the big rescue for his victory to be surprising.
- Probably a lot of people can bench-press more than they think if they really try.
That last point is crucial for me. Suppose the real message here is that anybody who was just three std. deviations to the right on the bell curve for strength, immune system, and constitution (and reaction time, etc.) could be a hero if somebody just convinced him to believe in himself.PS: I'm calling this one a movie (or two) ahead. The drowning incident is going to prove to be the start of it. He "died". And is special now because on some level, he's already dead.
Fuck you mod. That post wasn't "flamebait." The shot of the orange juice carton in the movie really stuck out and was annoying. It took my concentration away from the story. It was the only thing I didn't like about the movie.
A friend of mine got ejected from a theatre for having to go to the bathroom too many times. The poor bastard had a couple of beers before the show. The first time he had to go, no complaints. The second time he went, he got a warning. The third time... well, he never came back.
Later on he told that the guy at the theatre door had said: "You again! I warned you!" and practically threw him out of the theatre.
Have you seen Jacob's Ladder?
You might like it. I've always been fascinated by the concept of "waking up dead" as in some sense told by the Sixth Sense and Jacob's Ladder.
A post from Estanislao Martínez on kuro5hin pretty much sums up the attitude of some on Slashdot to rally against John Katz as if he was trying to infiltrate this geek paradice without claiming any sort of technical merit as his pulpit.
/. arrogance-- the belief that programming is the hardest human endeavour in existence, and thus, programmers are the smartest people, and if you know how to program, you can do anything any other professional can as well as they do, or even better.
/. or here in k5 about "g**k political organizing"-- the typical "if anybody is able to hack the political system, we g**ks are". The g**k's premise *is* self-superiority.
Self-described g**ks *are* elitist bastards (4.09) (#82)
by Estanislao Martínez (emartinez*NOSPAM@quebecemail.com)
This goes to something I've talked about plenty already-- what somebody on that other site called once
Like, i.e., give legal advice ("IANAL, but B.S.]"), lecture experts about their own areas of expertise (e.g., go up to a linguist, condescendingly start explaining to them the most idiotic and trivial ideas from, say, Pinker's books, *and* then get them backwards). Or the numerous stories in
The attitude is basically, Katz, as a serious journalist who does not have [or claim to have, or see in advantage of having] wide technical skills, should be denied a voice. Surely `geeks' are entirely capable of evaluating and investigating their own culture? Surely someone without technical skills couldn't possibly understand?
Wrong. The third party view from Katz is the most eloquent and nonpartisan view in any story. And the reactions to the Hellmouth series are a testament to that.
Keep in mind I'm responding to a broad claim, and have provided a broad answer. Yes, the discussion of `geeks' as a single group is a generalization. but in order to draw a picture of scoiety, or any group within it, one must paint broad brush strokes.
Sure some movies are great without a surprise ending: Star Wars, or Saving Private Ryan for example. These movies are not surprising, in that the good guys win. However, the exact how and why is unknown.
Take a look at some of the best movies to come out recently tho: Seven, Fight Club, the Sixth Sense. These movies were great not only for their surprise ending, but because the ending added to the enjoyment of the film. Unbreakable's ending only detracted from my enjoyment of the movie.
Unbreakable didn't even have an ending event that gives the movie purpose. No Death Star explosion, or P-51's zooming in to save the day. Something that lets me know I sat through an hour and half of film for a reason, or makes me want to come back for more.
Personally, I have no reason to consider seeing any trilogy created along this movie. I just hope Shyamalan's next film will fare a little better in the plot department.
Roberjo
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack! - Dr. Strangelove
Good call, Josh.
I agree with your interpretation of the powers being irrelevant.
To place emphasis on the powers is to ignore the premise of the movie.
Roberjo
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack! - Dr. Strangelove
It makes the story that much better because the reader doesn't have to ask himself, "Doesn't Lex need our love to?" Then Superman would show Lex what he was doing and Lex would see his true self. He'd have therapy and be reformed and join Greenpeace and the ACLU and be a really great guy.
Yeah, like that's what every comic reader wants. We want the baddies to get bitchslapped for fucking with what is good in this world.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I disagree with you. Jackson is the super-villian. He has the name, Mr Glass, He is intelligent and insane, all good qualities in a super-villian. The reason why he goes out of his way to find Willis' character is because he to is trying to find his place in the world, he suspects that he may be a super-villian, but until he discovers the super-hero he is just another person. You can't have one without the other.
Jackson even says that at the end
I saw Unbreakable last night, with a friend. We're both in theatre at the moment; she writes plays, and I act. So naturally we watch for things like symbolism and good writing, et cetera.
Let me describe my scale of SciFi movies to you all. 1-10 inclusive, where 10 is the Matrix, and a 0 would be Lost in Space. When it came to plot, Unbreakable was an 8. At the beginning of the movie I expected to see something about a man who couldn't be hurt. I've read it before in books, and I'm not a comic book fan; I've always had a fascination for telekinesis and ESP type stuff, such as that found in Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series (To Ride Pegasus is the first book of that, I believe). When Elijah was introduced as a character whose bones did break, and quite often, I began to wonder if they were supposed to be like mirrors of eachother (especially since whenever Young Elijah was shown it was in a reflection)--that is, for every time Dunn would've had a bone broken, instead Elijah got the punishment. Turns out I was wrong--it was even better. It was something I'd never seen before. They related it to comic books, and mythology, and mythology's basis in history.
If this movie got an 8 for plot, it was an 11 for symbolism. Embedded in it were themes such as good vs evil, and the definition of evil. For those of you who've seen the movie, the entire part about weaknesses brings forth the question of "Are all humans superheroes?" And at the very beginning of the movie, when Willis' character began hitting on the young woman in the train it showed that even he was morally fallible--something which wouldn't happen with Neo in the Matrix, who was supposed to symbolise Jesus, among other things.
Cinematography also gets a 10. Some of the shots were incredible, particularly on the train at the beginning.
Here's a comparison.
Matrix Unbreakable Lost in Space
Acting 9 9 5
Plot 10 8 3
Symbolism 9 11 1
Opinion 10 8 0
Sorry for the weird spacing.
If you like scifi, and if when you read you automatically look for themes and symbolism, you'll enjoy Unbreakable. But don't go in looking for something to make fun of, go in with an open mind. Critics go in to make fun of things, so they always rate things badly (except children's movies, which they absolutely love, how ironic).
Enjoy
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
My only problem with "Unbreakable" was its focus on comic book covers as such an unbelievable artform. I think many people who read comics will agree with me that covers are by far the weakest part of the entire package. They're generally misleading and silly.
Some spoilers below...
I liked Sixth Sense a lot but my friend and I just didn't like Unbreakable all that much.
First off, the camera work was quite annoying. I mean, REALLY annoying in the train with the camera going left and right and left and right...I was getting sea sick.
Then throughout almost the ENTIRE movie, Bruce Willis is in a freaking trance. You would think he was on tranquiliziers or maybe he was just a complete IDIOT. I mean, he's whispering throughout the entire movie. His wife says a whole lot of stuff to him, and he can't even reply to her.
The scene with the kid pointing the gun was just plain hilarious...the only problem is I am sure he didn't mean for it to be.
The entire movie was just plain too long and too slow. He should have discovered himself earlier in the movie I think.
The only time he is a hero is near the end, but even then, he only ends up saving 2 of the 4.
His weakness is just plain silly...maybe he needs to take swimming lessons or something.
The ending made no sense unless you consider Elijah to be completely insane. If you're the villan, why would you want to create a hero and then confess all your crimes to him?? I know people have said villans always think they are right...but clearly Mr. Glass indicates he is looking for a hero, that he isn't it, and he even says he is the archnemesis...the one on the other end of the curve.
I do agree with some who have said that a triology is planned and Mr. Glass is NOT the villan. Well obviously he is in jail, but more so, he's too plain stupid to be the villan.
//m
Thank the heavens that someone finally agrees with me! I thought that I was the *only* one who thought saying the words "Unbreakable" and "Super Hero" in the same sentance is spoiling the movie! I spent most of the time between the movie's release and when I saw it visiting with family on a boat, then saw it as soon as I got back, and I'm glad that nobody told me it was a superhero movie before I saw it. Realizing that it *is* a superhero movie, at the same time that Willis' character realizes that he is a hero, is part of the fun.
Would you tell someone the ending of Sixth Sense before they saw it? No? Well, the realization "I am a hero" is very similar to the realization "I am dead". Yet, while nobody would dare tell a moviegoer the second before they saw SS, "superhero" goes at the top of every unbreakable review. People are fucking stupid.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I had already posted this in another, private forum that very few of you may be familiar with, so I'll post it again here for no reason whatsoever, other than the fact that I'd like to share. It's a long post, so if you don't feel like reading it, that's okay. Or if you don't feel like reading it 'cause you figure I should just take off, that's okay, too.
**********
I saw this movie last week, and it reeked. Spoilers may abound, so read this post at your own risk.
The story moves so slowly, so obviously, you kind of have to wonder what the point to it all is. Sure, Willis and Jackson want to find their place in the world. At first, you're more concerned with Willis' place, but eventually Jackson's takes just as much precedence, but it's all so sad and brooding that you can barely give a shit about either of them.
Willis plods along, constantly sad. He's so sad, he can't crack a smile or do anything on screen other than be sad. Willis doesn't exactly pull this off well, and it ends up looking like he's... overly sad, or something. Not just sad, but really fucking sad. Even sadder is the fact that (IMHO) Willis is a proficient actor. Too bad his proficiency is wasted here.
Jackson is fares a bit better, 'cause we can see some of the torment inside of him and we know he's a strong fella trapped inside of a fragile shell. When he freaks on the guy at the store near the beginning, we know he's not fucking around. Unfortunately and sadly, even someone as cool Samuel L. Jackson can't quite make comics as cool as they used to be. Exactly how many bad ass, dead serious comic book collectors are there like this in the world? It's like the whole premise to Duets, with its whole karaoke subculture thing, and it's ridiculous. The fat sarcastic guy comic guy on the Simpsons is more believable.
And then there's Haley Joel Osment II, who's the center of one of the most awkward scenes I've ever seen in a movie. The whole "shoot-dad-to-prove-superpowers" scene is supposed to be serious and somewhat poignant ends up being hilarious. The whole theatre was laughing at the absurdity.
The whole comic book thing sounds cool at first, until you realize that it most certainly isn't. And this is coming from a guy with a sizeable comic collection, who still likes to pick up Spawn and Superman and rumage through comic book stores for those crazy issues of World's Finest and the Justice League where Matter Eater Lad and the gang battle their sons or the Scarecrow gives everyone strange phobias. Somehow, you're supposed to seriously believe that Jackson might be on to something, that comic book superheroes are based on a hint of fact. Well, they aren't, they're based on a character created by a Canadian and his cousin from Chicago, a guy named Superman. Superman didn't have any basis in reality other than a hair's breadth kinship to an early story Joe Siegel did on Nazi supermen, which didn't exist in the first place.
Also packing on the absurdity is that Willis never realized he's never been hurt or sick before, despite the fact that he was completely uninjured in a disasterous car accident. Didn't he find it odd that he's (theoretically) never cut himself shaving? When he trained for football back in high school, did he never realize just how much he could benchpress? Wasn't there any personal contests with his teammates over such trivial things as weight lifting records, simply because it's the kind of thing that guys do? Or illness? Mono? Chicken pox? Anything? How the hell does it take 35 years to figure that out, especially with the help of a guy who collects comic books of all things? Of course, I've taken to a little conjecture here, but it seems pretty reasonable to me.
Absurdity aside, the picture itself is meant to be atmospheric, moody and mystical. Well, that's all fine and dandy, if it didn't come off so poorly. We follow Willis around all day, watching him eat cereal and shit, hoping Lex Luthor or the Joker are about to show up, but instead, we get to watch him read newspapers. Everything is dark for some reason, probably to add to the mood, but I ask you -- what fucking mood are we supposed to be feeling? The sadness of Willis? The mystical feeling of him being unbreakable? It's sad enough that he plays the part as a zombie, isn't that enough? No, apparently it isn't, 'cause everything has to be black and atmospheric to the point of being obvious. Yes, he's fucking sad. Let's make everything dark to make it sadder. We get the point.
The ending itself is probably the most obvious and dull of all time. Since I gave full warning of spoilers, don't blame me if you're still reading and didn't see it yet, 'cause here it is: Willis' direct opposite is his arch nemesis. Christ Almighty, what a fucking surprise. In between the constant deluge of sadness and the eating of cereal, we get some comic book insight, like this gem of wisdom -- comic book superheroes have exact opposites as mortal enemies. No shit. Superman, a man with a million superpowers and incredibly static and perfect hair, had Luthor, a man without any superpowers and no hair. Batman had the Joker, a very serious guy (except in the camporamic 60's) versus a guy who can't stop joking around. Even "modern" superheroes are just as bound to this rule -- Spawn, a lieutenant in Hell's army, has an angel as a predator.
So of course we have to wait through 99% of the movie to find out something we knew from the beginning -- Jackson is Willis' arch enemy. Wow. Blow my fucking mind. Jackson spends his entire life looking for Willis, who he just happens to find in his own backyard out of a global population of 6 billion, just so he can feel at ease with himself in his own insane, comic book loving, arch-nemesis way. And after spending his entire life looking, what do we get? A made-for-TV ending that feels more like an episode of Dragnet than a dramtic ending to a serious comic book superhero movie. (If there is such a thing. X-men and the original Tim Burton Batman probably come closest.)
I mean, I could almost hear the Dragnet theme with the guy reaming out the convictions at the end. I have witnessed some anti-climatic endings in my day, and this one is easily near the top of the list. What's the point of finding an arch-nemesis if you're not going to do some city-destroying battle or something? They shake hands and Willis puts him in jail. At least the Joker went mano-a-mano with Batman for a little while and Luthor fire nuclear missiles at Superman. Jackson just sits there and is sent to jail, with subtitles filling in the details. How exciting.
This movie could have been cool. I wish it had been. Instead, it's a half-hour episode of the Twilight Zone stretched entirely too long and without Rod Sterling.
Maybe this will become something more. It's not much now, but who knows, maybe this is only issue one, sad holographic glitter cover and all. But if it isn't a one-shot and goes further with additional stories, I hope to hell they aren't as boring and sad as this one. I did mention it was sad, right? Good.
For some reason, it feels like the medium for this movie was totally wrong. The medium is the message, you know. If this was an actual comic book, under the wise, wise hands of Neil Gaiman or Frank Miller, this could have really been something. But in the end, it comes off pretty piss poor in this on-screen Festival of Dark Sad Cereal Eating.
But that's just my opinion. I could be totally wrong. And no doubt somebody will tell me so, but that's okay. That's the whole point of opinions.
J
I still think more will come from the wife if any sequels are made, for she was irrationally against having the hero lead even a hint of a hero's life. Perhaps just will just be explained away as a personality quirk of hers, and I just picked up on a red herring.
I will admit that my theory was formed halfway through the movie as I began to notice that the wife was his opposite, so that when it was said that you find a villain by looking for an opposite the wife came to mind. Especially since the Jackson character had said earlier that they were similiar in some ways. I guess I out thought the situation and should have just accepted the obvious ending.
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Private Essayist
It's not how far you go, it's how go you far. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
Secondly, it is fantastic that Unbreakable actually had plot elements that I had previously overlooked. (due to their lack of quality, merit, worthiness to be pointed out) So Unbreakable has complete character arcs, and an ending event. Congratulations. Too bad they were neither surprising, nor fulfilling. (aside: showing the son the newspaper was unnecessary for the plot and stupid in that it slowed the movie down. Why was it important that the boy be reassured that Bruce was a superhero? The audience already knew it, why redundantly state it again?).
After an entire movie about comic books, it is revealed that Bruce's character is a comic book hero and Samuel L. is his nemesis. Surprise! If you didn't see any of that coming, God help you.
If you saw it coming that Tyler Durden was actually Ed Norton, you are a truly gifted film viewer. Fight Club's ending made me reevaluate the ENTIRE movie. It shook up the audience completely. I immediately wanted to see it again and again. I took the movie to heart and applied its message to my life. We are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. THAT is a good movie.
As far as Codas go, Seven's was irrelevant. (I was too busy crying for Gwyneth Paltrow's character)
You said that, "The ending event that gives Sixth Sense purpose was Bruce and the boy exposing the mother as a murderer." You are a bit off here. I could have sworn that the ending event for Sixth Sense was Bruce figuring out that he himself was a ghost. (Talk about a surprise ending with meaning and fulfillment! So tasty, so fresh, so new!) I could be wrong tho.
What do other /.ers have to say?
Roberjo
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack! - Dr. Strangelove
That "comic book" is synonymous with "superhero".
That you have to be an insane freak like Jackson's character to think that comics can be art.
Not that there's anything wrong with a good superhero story, but there are other genres of comics.
Sixth sense had a major syntax error in it.
When Bruce first time meets the boy, he's sitting in their living room when the boy enters, next to his mother. However, if Bruce had spoken to the mother as the sceene clearly states had happend just before the boy entered, He'd surly discovered the fact that he wasen't able to communicate with her, thus being dead.
That sceene is just there to give credibility to a very dumb plot, that any decent intelligent person should easily see through.
-H
It's also a little inconsistent to say that, on the one hand, a movie has great cinematography but no plot, and on the other hand, it's a wait-for-the-video movie. Assuming you're not just a herd animal, the only reason to see a movie in a theater is to enjoy the cinematography. But I do agree, the cinematography was very good.
The one thing I dislike is those idiotic textovers at the beginning and end. I like to think some Stupid Studio Suit looked at his focus polls and said, "Soccer moms find the ending too ambiguous! We need a more moral ending!" and prevailed over Shyamalan's objections. This nonsense did a lot of damage to the everything-is-explained-in-the-last-30-seconds gimick that Shyamalan works so hard to build.
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I should have known this movie would suck when at the very beginning there were those lame facts about comics flashed on the screen. How anyone could like this movie is completely beyond me. In the theatre I saw it in, people were walking out it was so bad. My friend and I, who were brave enough to stay, were actually laughing in certain scenes, so ridiculous it was. All of the emotion was contrived, and utterly bathetic. The scene with the little boy about to shoot the dad!?!? Where did that come from? This director has some sort of fetish for prepubescent whimpering boys. The "twist" at the end, was completely predictable, and did nothing to save this horrible train wreck of a movie. The only people I can imagine liking it are total nerds, whose immature fascination with comic books leads them to attach themselves to anything that might elevate their obsession beyond its truly dorky baseness.
Check out a review from a sane person here
Actualy, Mr Glass had several computers in the back room of his comic shop. There were 3 or 4 of the new g4 power macs.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
As for the near/far focus, yes, I know it is a common technique. The problem I had was that they keep that same shot so long, and the out-of-focus rack is so large and dominating of the screen, that it really started to screw with my head. That is, most directors would keep that shot for a fairly short amount of time, and to your mind, it would approximate fairly well the actual effect of looking down the aisle from the vantage point of the character (in this case Elijah). But when he holds that shot as long as he did, the optical part of my brain, feeling like it is really beholding this scene (because the screen took up my entire field of vision as stated earlier), wanted to temporarily bring the rack in focus and when I couldn't, it bugged me.
Also, it bugged me because for the preceding hour of film, most of the time was spent on very close up shots. The optical part of your brain gets really fed up (at least mine did) with constantly being so close. I just wanted to step back a couple feet and look at things from a normal perspective (which, I know, is the point. The director doesn't want a normal perspective. But after an hour to hour and a half of film, only about three minutes of which is at normal perspective, you get really fatigued.)
To give the director the benefit of the doubt, I suppose he was trying to imitate the comic book form, where close up drawings are very common. However, this works in comic books because that close up drawing is still relatively small, and gives the reader the feeling that they are looking from a normal perspective, just their view is being cut-off, or framed in, by the art cell. Additionally, with a comic book, I can hold the book as close or far away from my head as I want. In the cinema, I don't have that option.
That's why I always close my eyes, cover my ears and sing "Every Sperm is Sacred" until they end.
My favorite quote from this movie would have to be "friends don't shoot friends!" Apparently he's never played Quake, shooting friends is one of life's great pleasures...
A few years back when Titanic was in theaters I went on the first day, so it was packed. And of course I went forty-five minutes early and got a center seat. While I was waiting I went and got a soda... not just any soda, the soda that was the best value. I think it was 70oz or so. I had finished off the monstrosity just before the trailers. Don't forget how long that movie is. I got up the first time to run off to the restroom and people were fine with that(40 minutes in). The second time people were getting errated(120). The third time in the movie the twenty people I had to go by to get to the aisle were really pissed off, how dare they...
120 chars of filth!
Bruce Willis is an excellent actor. Sure, he stars in a lot of mindless action stuff (Die Hard.., although, I do love those movies), he really has talent. 12 Monkeys anyone? He was also very good in "The Story of Us", which was a pretty funny movie. Even in his action films he does an excellent job. Action, comedy, weird shit like Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense. I'd say he's very talented well rounded actor.
JMO though.
And as for Unbreakable, I thought it was great. Sure brings back memories of my comic collecting days. Sometimes(most of the time) I wish I still had some of my old comics. I sold a lot of them, lost the rest in a fire =(
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Was that 15-minutes of no talking where he went into that persons house and got rid of the robber? I think that might be it but I can't remember, and that's really good if the audience didn't even realize the 15 minutes of silence.
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Scott Miga
suprax@linux.com
i was not impressed with this film. maybe it was becuase of high expectations going in as a result of The Sixth Sense, but i dont see why it is getting so may good reviews. what plagues this movie the most? the story. not impressive at all.
:)... althoug my initial thaught was it was one three-head G4.. that would be fun.
:)... althoug my initial thaught was it was one three-head G4.. that would be fun.
Katz describes the story as "simple, improbable, fantastic"... lets add predictable, and uninteresting.
and another thing... not to sound like a katz hater, but 3 G4's are computers in my book.
Why was this made? lets see... Shyamalan has a great success with The Sixth Sense, he has complete control over his next project. So he has this film, an idea probably he's been thinking about for a while, that must take place in his home town. this doesnt make it bad... but it sure smells like a pet project.
So, worth seeing on the big screen, i would say no. good camera effects, good cast, and well made, but the story is a complete dissapointment.
and another thing... not to sound like a katz hater, but 3 G4's are computers in my book.
Lexicon
buy a new 10/100 switch, a wireless networking solution, or reinstall Windows 2000; any of them are a better use of your time than seeing this movie. This movie could have been squished into 10 minutes if the editor was more skilled and/or the director wasn't so full of himself. Heck, this guy makes Wim Wenders look like the poster boy for tight, cohesive movie-making.
I'd rather watch Until the End of the World 10 times than see 15 minutes of this film again...or get really, really high and watch Heat at half-speed, so as to really enjoy the lack of pacing.
Plus, the story is moronic. Maybe it's really intense for comic book fans who, say, stop at the sunday funnies, but for Sandman fans the plot is pretty lame. I mean geez...an antagonist who has to find/create his own protagonist. C'mon!
--- only for the squeamish
Yes, the camera angles are all over the place.
Yes, it is all about the superhero comics.
I enjoyed it, and I might well see it again. This is more of an art film than a mainstream american movie -- much simpler than sixth sense, and not as much of a shocker when it's over.
When I initially left the theatre, I was bummed. I thought, "Well, what an obvious way to end the movie" and "That's a weak Bruce Willis movie, and what a shitty ending".
Now that I've had a few days to think it over, there really is some neat pacing and eerie footage.
After reading some of the other comments, I like the movie even more. It's painfully low tech at times, with a surreal pace. Once over, the plot is astoundingly simple, and the finale obvious.
I'd see it again. It's very artsy, and a great role (IMHO) for Samuel L. Jackson. He's right on target, and a joy to watch.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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I saw the movie, and personally I thought it was crap. The previews made the movie seems as if it had a plot (which it didn't) and the ending, only one thing could describe it "What on earth were they thinking" I was suprised the he didn't push a button on his wheel chair and fill the room with water....
aside: showing the son the newspaper was unnecessary for the plot and stupid in that it slowed the movie down. Why was it important that the boy be reassured that Bruce was a superhero? The audience already knew it, why redundantly state it again?).
I belive they put that scene not just to reassure the son that Bruce was a superhero, but to let the audience know that their family unit would be doing well again... Mom's cookin up breakfast, Father and Son are sharing a secret, etc.
I have never seen a completed character arch advertised for a movie.
You've never seen a three act plot structure advertised for a movie, either, but trust me, they are there. A character arc is something that exists in virtually every story and pretty much ever movie, even dumb comedies(I'm speaking about Western stories hear, suppossedly Eastern ones are structured differently, but I'm no scholar, so I don't know about that), and if it's not there, you will probably find the story unfufilling, even if you don't know why. (You might find it unfufilling anyway, however). Imagine a movie where the characters all end up the same in the end as they were in the beginning. That's all a character arc is... Their progression through the story. The charcter arcs are the story, pretty much.
After an entire movie about comic books, it is revealed that Bruce's character is a comic book hero and Samuel L. is his nemesis. Surprise! If you didn't see any of that coming, God help you.
The fact that Bruce Willis was a hero wasn't intended to be suprise, since Mr. Glass told him that he was about 20 minutes into the movie. That Mr. Glass was the villian, was obvious as well, so I don't think it was really supposed to be a suprise either. The only part that suprised me was Mr. Glass' evil actions... I wasn't expecting that. I think this movie really wasn't meant to hinge on a suprise ending, like the Sixth Sense... Without the Sixth Sense's twist ending, I don't think most people would have liked it (I know I wouldn't have). It was an ending that totally changed the way you looked at the rest of the movie, whereas Unbreakable's ending didn't really change the way you looked at the rest of it, it simply explained a few things.
You said that, "The ending event that gives Sixth Sense purpose was Bruce and the boy exposing the mother as a murderer." You are a bit off here. I could have sworn that the ending event for Sixth Sense was Bruce figuring out that he himself was a ghost. (Talk about a surprise ending with meaning and fulfillment! So tasty, so fresh, so new!) I could be wrong tho.
The very ending of the Sixth Sense is where Bruce discovers and accepts his role. But this is not the scene that gives the film purpose... His character is a Doctor/Psychologist and he wants to help the boy. Once he believes in the boy, they expose the Mother who has been killing her children, putting the ghosts who threaten the boy to rest (and I think also saving the murderers other child? no sure about that). This does a few things. It brings the boy and his mother back together, it shows Bruce he can save the boy (which was in doubt since the last boy with this problem shot him). It also leads to Bruce's discovery of himself, and his fate. This is the "heart" of the film, in my opinion because teh characters are actually doing something... They are saving the child and revealing the murderer. All of the boy's sufferring at the hands of the ghost through out the whole film was intended to bring him here, to this action. Likewise for Bruce, the whole movie he is striving to help the boy stop believing in ghosts and help him. This is the first time in the movie where Bruce believes in ghosts and in the boy, finally proving that he can help someone, be useful. This then leads to his realizations about himself.
(Talk about a surprise ending with meaning and fulfillment! So tasty, so fresh, so new!)
It is a good ending (though the main character being dead reminded me a bit of -spoiler alert- Jacob's Ladder or Angel Heart), but where would the meaning be if we had simply watched a movie where Bruce Willis is dead, wandering around, then at the end he realizes he's not dead and POOFS into nothingness? It's the actions the characters take that build the story and give it meaning. A twist ending, just for twists sake, is not meaningful.
As far as Codas go, Seven's was irrelevant. (I was too busy crying for Gwyneth Paltrow's character)
That's a shame, because it's the heart and soul of teh movie. Go back and watch it again... The movie starts with Morgan giving up hope, and it ends with him regaining his hope. John Doe intended his "Performance" (or whatever you'd call it) to show people that his way was the way... But he failed, and instead caused Morgan to keep going.
If you saw it coming that Tyler Durden was actually Ed Norton, you are a truly gifted film viewer. Fight Club's ending made me reevaluate the ENTIRE movie. It shook up the audience completely. I immediately wanted to see it again and again. I took the movie to heart and applied its message to my life. We are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. THAT is a good movie.
Agreed, excellent movie. I know a few people who guessed (one of whom turned to me in the first half of the movie and said "Hey, I just figured it out!" to which I replied "Great, shut up and keep it to yourself!").
Josh Sisk
And why the hell would Hollywood fall in love with trilogies? Because the consumer has always been in love with them. Don't try to pin the responsibility on "Hollywood" when the consumer is the one calling the shots.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
Thank you for all the lively discussion, by the way, Robertjo... Sorry if I came off as a little aggressive in any of my responses. I just love talking about movies.
Josh Sisk
Actually, the plot twist in Fight Club really detracted from the movie. The movie gives a wonderful exposition of the virtues and vices of capitalism and anarchism on a societal scale, then suddenly zooms down to the scale of a human being to give a bullshit twist that confuses the entire message of the movie. Fight Club would have been a much better movie if the main character was one person throughout. But I guess the writers felt more was needed, so they had the main character be two people rather than one.
I thought Unbreakable was a great movie, but that was probably because everyone else thought it was shitty. People remember the experience of the Sixth Sense. They went in expecting standard ghost story fair, and were blown away by the quality of the movie. Then they expect to be blown away by Unbreakable, yet their expectations are already high to start. They expect to be overwhelmed despite high expectations. Of course they're going to be disappointed!
People are saying, "You call that a plot twist?!? How lame!" Why does the ending even have to be a twist? A good story both surprises and fulfills. The audience's expectations must be fulfilled, or else they will disbelieve what they see. And there is no reason to see what you've already seen, so there must be some surprises. I, for one, thought the movie played well against my expectations. Were I to see someone in the same situation as Bruce in real life, I would expect him to act as he did in the movie. This is the part where my expectations are fulfilled. But, being as I knew I was watching a movie, I half expected Bruce to tear off his shirt and start flying around. The surprise is in how real the directory kept the movie.
As for Jackson, we see the journey of a man who isn't sure what his life is about, but in the search, he finds out, and finds out that he's been living it all along. He needs Bruce, or there is no reason for him to exist. The great thing about movies is that you can change the world. But the people still have to be believable, even if they have spaceships or superpowers. The fact that the people were believable is what made me enjoy this movie.
Uh, no, I'm just using Occam's Razor. We don't see the boy, or have any indication he exists (I listened to the dialog carefully a few times when I got the DVD) until after the shooting. Occam's Razor tells me it's simpler to believe the entire middle of the movie was the doctor hallucinating on his deathbed than to even postulate that there's a boy who sees dead people. There was no boy! You were snookered in, face it. This was just a remake of Jacob's Ladder, or the Dallas Dream Season.
Am I the only one who didn't see any previews or trailers that indicated that this was a comic book superhero movie? I was expecting some kind of serious psychological drama. Had I know it was going to be this type of movie, I would have skipped it.
On second thought, I would have just stayed in the lobby and played Konami's Simpsons Bowling for two more hours. I have to say, showing up early and playing that game for 45 minutes was the best thing about going to this movie.
This is not a Fugazi
If the screenplay was crafted, then the contradiction that a dead person helps the psychic kid overcome his fear of dead people would simply not be there. That alone undoes the whole film.
It's sad really, I liked the rest of the film and then a "surprise ending" jumps out and ruins everything.
One thing that Unbreakable has going for it is that the commerical doesn't reveal the most important parts of the plot, like that Harrison Ford film earlier this year (forget the name).
I wish I was on that train at the beginning. Then i wouldn't have had to sit through the rest of this piece of crap. It started out slow, but vaguely interesting, then got silly, then ridiculous, then just plain stupid. Mr. Shayamalan should never be let behind a camera again, because his direction is slow and pretentious (shooting from behind a curtain, or from the seats in front of the character? come on! its not innovation if it sucks.).
I'm a little shocked to see anyone give this thing a good review, let alone half of the slashdot community. ugh.
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
Bruce Willis's next movie will be where everyone except him is dead but he thinks he is dead but doesn't know that he isn't dead yet. After that his next movie will be where everyone in the audience is dead but doesn't know it yet.
Maybe for a Clint Eastwood western you can get away with 350 words of dialog in the whole movie but isn't this getting tedious for these afterlife-spiritual-metaphor flicks? Ok so Bruce plays characters who are clinically depressed. I get it.
And what's with the everything is sickly green film technique? Why does his wife look all strung out and why does his kid wake up the next day just like normal after pulling a gun on his dad and screaming that he has to shoot him to prove to the world that he's a superhero. How fucked up is that?
I get it - it's a comic book and this is the evolution of his self awareness. Ok then why not make more like a comic book and less like the slow motion parts of a car commercial (flying raindrops etc.)
"This movie doesn't have a cellphone, computer, or explosion in it."
i beg to differ.. at the very end, when you see the interior of elijah 'mr. glass'' office, you see that he has not one, not two, but three Apple G4s with matching 15'' LCD screens running... wait for it.. screen savers.
woohoo apple product placement! i nominate this ten second scene for best gratuitous use of technology for eye candy, without making any substantive contribution to the scenery. oy.
and oh yeah, i dig comics, and i dig movies, and this one sucked rocks.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
i am completely baffled by the response movie, i love movies & comic books, and my personal take on this movie was that it was what would happen if you sucked all the life & excitement out of a story that was already riddled w/ cliches. the writing was just horrendous, i loved the sixth sense, but this movie was unforgiving it driving home every obvious point to whatever the scene was trying to get across. the supposed 'twist' ending was nothing of the sort, but an easily predictable outcome. i won't give it away, but really who did you _think_ price was? i went in expecting to love this movie, but the languid pace, flat characters, and cookie-cutter story couldn't save what might have been an interesting movie. Samuel Jackson's performance was the only redeeming thing in this movie, but this is still one to rent if you want to see it, imho.
i am completely baffled by the response movie, i love movies & comic books, and my personal take on this movie was that it was what would happen if you sucked all the life & excitement out of a story that was already riddled w/ cliches. the writing was just horrendous, i loved the sixth sense, but this movie was unforgiving it driving home every obvious point to whatever the scene was trying to get across. the supposed 'twist' ending was nothing of the sort, but an easily predictable outcome. i won't give it away, but really who did you _think_ price was? i went in expecting to love this movie, but the languid pace, flat characters, and cookie-cutter story couldn't save what might have been an interesting movie. Samuel Jackson's performance was the only redeeming thing in this movie, but this is still one to rent if you want to see it, imho
The Filthy Critic only gave it 2 fingers:
http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/
I hope Slashdot doesn't think "nostalgic geeky comic book movie" == "unreproachably Good".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Executive summary: nice movie, but the glacial pacing was a major mistake. 3.5 stars out of 5.
In my opinion, here is where the movie failed.
Samuel Jackson's speeches
Serious parts that were comical
Cheesy comic book stereo-types
Deceptive trailer = Misled audience
Don't get me wrong, there were parts of the movie that were interesting but unfortunately it failed. Comic book fans should stick with X-Men (the movie), as it knew when to be serious and when to be funny. Unbreakable, was like Gore trying to become a stand-up comic.
-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
Alan Moore's various deconstructions of the Superhero genre (Watchmen, Miracleman, Swamp Thing) would be better written and more of an homage to the genre. Anyone care to guess when (if ever) Moore will get his chance to do movies?
When I heard comic books I knew it was going to suck. Man did I hate this movie. What a waste of $9.50.
Okay, I'll admit it -- I'm a Katz fan. On top of that, I loved Sixth Sense, and was profoundly disturbed by Fight Club -- I wouldn't dream of giving away the surprise plot twists to either of them. But I'm shocked that Katz didn't hit on the raw bigotry of this movie's "surprise".
And it is a surprise. I didn't see it coming (okay, with me that's no big feat), there were clues throughout the movie that pointed to it (especially if you're an old comic book fan) -- this followed the Sixth Sense formula perfectly. Except that you're left with a "that's the surprise?" letdown. The real problem could easily slip right by you.
*~*~* Last Chance Spoiler Alert! *~*~*
Elijah Price becomes a classic villain in a classic style: he's an intelligent child with an uncommon handicap and, because of this (?), is harassed & shunned by his peers. Rather than accept his rightful place as bottom-of-the-pecking-order outcast, he takes comfort and inspiration from a disreputable source (in this case, comic books). Of course, since he's not following the socially-approved "This is How We Do Things" script, he has to do "bad" things to accomplish his goal (in this case, he kills several-hundred people in staged disasters in order to find the proto-superhero he's sure must exist).
Is everybody seeing the "Beware! Different = = Dangerous!" subtext here? Taken to its logical conclusion, this movie justifies the behavior of all the oppressors in the Hellmouth -- if you're obviously different from the mainstream (Goth, Geek, whatever), you're likely to do something nasty eventually (spray your school with bullets, hack bank computers, whatever): of course this is good reason to bring the full forces of social condemnation and authoritarian might to bear, slowly crushing you like the loathsome toxic insect you (probably) are. It's the American Way!
Yes, they are following the Golden Age of Comics how-to-make-a-villain recipe, and it does fit in with their comic-books-really-do-imitate-life theme. But there are plenty off things that were considered perfectly fine fifty years ago that today most people know are wrong. Why? Because a just a few people stood up and said "No, this is wrong. It may be a too-subtle bigotry that practically no one would notice, it may be "how we've always done it", it may be necessary to the plot -- but it's still wrong, and we're not letting this slip by one more time!"
Quotes from A Man for All Seasons
Look, I like actions flicks as much as the rest of you. And, no, Unbreakable is *not* an action flick.
.. maybe a 10 minute attention span on a good day -- and I found myself looking at my watch exactly once -- and that was just after David beat up the guy in the orange jumpsuit -- Not because I was bored, but, because I wanted to see how much more movie was left -- to see if this was the end, or if we were getting more story.
Anyone who paid ATTENTION to the trailers and previews and website could have guessed that. HELL-O. DUH. Same director as Sixth Sense.
What it was, was a intelligent movie.
I've been reading comics for... well, as long as I've been reading, on and off. Read all the old Superman, Captain MArvel, Shadow, etc, etc comics of my dad's.
This movie wasn't just about David, or Elijah. It was about the myth of the superhero.
I've got
Did none of you notice the use of color? Green/orange/purple? (David/guy in jumpsuit/Elijah)
David not realizing that he has special isn't so hard to accept -- How many of you THINK About how much you are sick? -- And how many of you push yourself beyond the limits you believe you have?
No, this wasn't a blowing-stuff-up, car chase, glactic ka-blooey movie. --
I saw Unbreakable 2 weeks ago, the night it opened. -- And I've been discussing it on and off with friends who also saw it since.
Frito
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
I don't think you understood the ending of 6th Sense at all. The whole point was that Willis' character was a ghost who hadn't moved on, which the boy helped him do. You forget that the movie ended with the mother and boy scene, after Willis' character had already come to terms with his death. The scene with him dying on the bed at the END of the movie was a flashback to when he was alive...at the beginning. -Thang
Did you think The Sixth Sense needed a textover telling us that Bruce went to heaven, his wife re-married, and the boy grew up to follow in his footsteps (except with dead clients, of course)?
Jackson is an instance of a small, elite group I call Presence of God actors. Seeing his name on the credits is your guarantee that you'll get some good moments, no matter how bad the rest of the movie is. Friend of mine nearly got violent when somebody started a cell phone conversation at just the wrong place in The Insider. But your solution is better! Anything you can do to raise the general civility level is a Good Thing.__________________
Myself, I loved it. Like many of its supporters, I thought this was the best actual superhero movie in a long time. Yes, it was slow. Yes, Bruce Willis was flat (performance-wise), but as Katz pointed out it was appropriate to the role.
I'm on a private message board with some friends across the country, and the love/hate split has also been there.
Myself, I can't wait for the followup films and eagerly wait for the DVD release. And I fully expect most of my friends to hate it, but I'm proud of my eclectic taste in films.
And his son actually shooting him would have ruined the film: it would have confirmed everything that was being hinted at. Far too obvious. It also would have ruined the wonderful build-up of emotional tension and release in that scene.
I'm also glad that he didn't take the gun with him when he went on his first "patrol." He's trying to be a "thinking" hero and there ain't enough of them.
--
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
VBT has the dubious distinction of being the only film that I have walked out on. Started as a potentially delicious black comedy with the death of the hooker and the frantic insanity of what to do with the body, but the cold-blooded murder of the security officer just made the film plain sick and evil.
There was one other film whose title I (thankfully) refuse to remember, but it was so bad and left such a horrid taste in my mouth and brain that I taped over the tape in 2, then 4, then 6 hour mode before throwing it away. I felt its evil was counter-balanced by the taping: I only used programs like Oprah and Jerry Springer.
And which Travolta movie are you talking about, Battlefield Earth?
I have a story for you about that movie. This year I was fortunate to attend DragonCon in Atlanta (very major SF con). There was a table for BFE, in fact, it was 2 or 3 booths wide. It was avoided like the plague. You could actually watch people moving to the other side of the aisle to avoid contamination from it.
Same thing happened at San Diego ComicCon: smaller booth, no one going near it.
--
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Alan Moore's various deconstructions of the Superhero genre (Watchmen, Miracleman, Swamp Thing) would be better written and more of an homage to the genre. Anyone care to guess when (if ever) Moore will get his chance to do movies?
Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell is currently in the late stages of production of a film version. It's not a superhero book -- it's a graphic novel adaptation of Jack the Ripper -- but it should be interesting seeing Moore's work adapted to the silver screen (though I have my doubts how well it can capture the dark mood and earnest, detailed depiction of Victorian life that made the graphic novel so absorbing).
I've heard that Terry Gilliam has been approached about doing a Watchmen movie on several occassions, but has half-jokingly said he would only take the project if it could be twelve hours long.
In terms of comics/movies adaptations, I'm also very much looking forward to the film adaptation of Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World", starring Thora Birch in the lead role, which is supposed to come out in January.
It seems that some hooligan, and I do know who, used my computer and my login to post that ill thought out comment. I would like to apologize to Jon Katz for the remarks, they are not my own.
I am, however, rather amazed that he responded to it. I can't imagine why you'd bother to read the filth that rightfully gets moderated to -1 (this post included... damned housemates).
Very well, that is all.
--
RumorsDaily
OK, I see your point, but in the big picture I think this guy did the right thing. This girl was being an asshole. Had the manager of the theatre thrown her out (the mature thing to do about the situation), I'd guess that she probably would've just said, wow, that manager was a dick.
But when other people in the audience are throwing things at your head to try to get you to shut up, I have to think that that makes some kind of impression. Instead of the manager being a dick, perhaps it's, wow, people get pissed if you talk in a theatre.
I think, in general, people are too polite in these situations. I think more people should feel free to chuck small hard objects at people who talk in theatres - as long as they have solid aim.
I went to see "Bringing Out the Dead" one day, and some young loser couple had brought their entire screaming little baby horde with them. That's right, they brought a pack of babies to Bringing Out the Fucking Dead. You know, a Disney flick I can see, but no one has any business bringing their toddlers to a very adult picture like this. And sure enough, the babies would not stay quiet. I quietly stewed for about half an hour. All the other audience members in their entire side of the theatre had already gotten up and moved away from them. It should've been a no-brainer - take your kid outside. In the old days, theatres had "cry rooms" where people with kids could watch a flick and not ruin it for everyone else... it'd be nice if they still had those, but that's what we get for supporting the multiplexes. Anyway... I went and asked for a manager, the mature thing to do, but the manager wasn't in and they weren't sure when he'd return and no one wanted to deal with it. Lovely. So I went back and sat on the back of the seat in front of the couple, staring at them and blocking their view of the screen. There were some very polite and reasonable words exchanged, but their attitude towards the situation was basically, hey, it's a baby, whaddaya gonna do. With no authority to arbitrate, it came down to either them or me leaving, and they weren't budging. So I left. I got a refund, but it was still a drag, and disconcerting to leave a movie half-watched.
What would've been great, though, is if people had gotten up and joined me to confront them. One person you could blow off, but if half the theatre suddenly gathered around and demanded you leave, you'd probably freakin' leave, and you wouldn't make trouble again. But, especially out here in the Northwest, people just don't tend to be confrontational like this.
So anyway... same theory with this. One guy chucking a Starburst might just be a little immature, but half a theatre of people stoning a talker with Starbursts would sure make a proper impression. I'm not saying it'd be the RIGHT thing to do, I'm just suggesting that it might be the most effective thing to do - direct action against public nuisances.
On the other hand, I have been watching "Fight Club" a little too much lately, so maybe I'm just in that kinda mood.
"Unbreakable" takes it's time. If you want "smash" "bOoM" "Bang", I'd suggest the Batman TV series.
an enigma wrapped around a paradox driven by a paradigm shift
Vader = Red (Evil)
Luke = Green (Fertility of mind)
Obi-Wan = Blue (Purity/the light side)
What the hell does Bruce Willis' yellow and green mean? How about purple, was SLJ's character royalty? In order to have meaning, you have to have meaning, not some random colors you decided to have everyone wear in every scene.
When I see this I'm either gonna agree with the lovers totally about it, or just chalk it up to another failed attempt by pop culture to try and have some measure of deep philosophic thought. Now Fight Club on the other hand was a beautiful bit of pop-psychology mixed with cinematography to create mythology and philosophy.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
The major defining scenes for all of the above would be scorn, looking for a scam, telling Price to shove off and stay away from his family.
Humor when he is with his son while working out and they keep stacking weights onto the barbell. The humor is both portrayed in his mannerisms and in the general shooting of this scene.
disbelief is the slowest level, and is very elegently portrayed by building slowly into the final scene we are discussing, where doubt turns into realization. He walks into the crowded terminal. The pictures start coming like he's always seen them, except now he is learning to trust what he sees.
Notice his facial reactions as this happens. He is obviously coming to a double realization. One that he can see these things through some miracle, and two, these people have actually DONE the stuff he sees. As he gets more and more images he obviously grows more and more disturbed, each crime building up as he gets over his numb state of mind.
Then, when he sees the murder it is the final straw, there is no more disassociation with reality. This person has actually murdered and almost without thinking he is triggered into action.
This rather well done theatrical sequence is not meant to be a selection process or Shyamalan's list of ethics. Instead it is a climax of emotion and understanding. Notice how each crime that is viewed becomes progressively worse. You go from shop lifting, to violence, to rape, and finally murder. This brings the audience with Dunn on his journey of growing horror and realization.
Hope that makes sense.
V
I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. The whole movie sucked. It was slow and dragged on and on and on to an even shittier ending. The could have made a great movie out of the story, too bad they screwed it up.
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That sounds ummm, comfortable. And fun to clean out.
120 chars of filth!