[quote]roybot wrote:
[quote]Big Kahuna wrote:
[quote]roybot wrote:
[quote]Big Kahuna wrote:
[quote]roybot wrote:
[quote]Big Kahuna wrote:
[quote]Waittz wrote:
[quote]Big Kahuna wrote:
[quote]Waittz wrote:
Worst villains:
Mr Glass
The aliens that die for no reason in war of the worlds
The grass in the Happening
Fucking Mothra
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Haha, The Happening deserves all the shit it gets.
Sadly I have to agree with Mr Glass, however under better guidance I feel that film premise could have really been made into something very well made. I enjoy the idea of a superhuman that doesn’t know he’s superhuman, or rather a superhero growing up with the personality and thoughts of a broken man. I actually tend to like Unbreakable more than a lot of people do, though I do recognise it’s flaws and feel it needed a hell of a lot more work.[/quote]
I loved the movie and think S Jackson played the character wonderfully. Just as a villain a wheelchair bound fragile pseudo terrorist was weak sauce. [/quote]
Oh he plays every character wonderfully, it’s in his nature as a god damn master human.
Yeah that’s definitely a major part, I think with more of a tragic and vindictive back story it might have been made to work, as opposed to purely intrigue and wonder-driven in his intentions. If he were far more of a logical mastermind with a more emotional manifestation of hate in his personality, I would have liked him far more.[/quote]
Unbreakable is one of my favorite movies. Mr.Glass is a far more complex antagonist than he is given credit for. He’s been committing acts of mass murder in the hope that he’ll find an unbreakable man -with no guarantee that such a person exists - and it’s only relatively late in the movie that we find out that David Dunn really IS superhuman (the near drowning, car accident and even the bench press scene all red herrings, to imply that Elijah is a kook).
In the world that these characters inhabit, the concept of a super human actually existing is just as far-fetched as in ours. Elijah Price is just as much a reluctant villain as David Dunn is a reluctant hero.
Price only accepts his role when Dunn accepts his. Elijah has been killing innocent people for an unspecified length of time, not through curiousity or pleasure but to find his purpose in the world . We only find out he’s responsible for the train wreck, among other disasters at the end. While that seems obvious, Price never had any assurance that his theories were true: he could just as easily turned out to be a madman killing innocent people because he read it in a comic book - that possibility is there right up until David tackles the Orange Man.
M. Night originally conceived Unbreakable as a trilogy. This is the origin story that places Dunn as the hero and Price as the villain (one who “fights the hero with his mind”). They never come into direct conflict, as Price serves as a mentor/guide until his true nature is revealed and, apart from that one montage, all of Mr. Glass’s villainy is committed off-screen. The revelation that he is a villain is enough. Presumably the plan was to allow Elijah to ease into more a conventionally villainous role in later movies.
Hokey name? OK. Easy to beat up? Guilty as charged. Still managed to kill hundreds of people. Not bad for a crazy haired cripple.
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Perhaps you’re right, normally I would argue certain parts of that, (albeit reluctantly, I love Unbreakable too, perhaps even more than The Sixth Sense.) however the revelation that it was made to be a trilogy may answer some particular flaws, most notably the abruptness and unexplored nature of the ending. Unless of course Shyamalan decided against a trilogy before his finalities were set in, and resorted back to that ending knowing he would probably not make another, in which case it retains some of my dissatisfaction.
I will give the benefit of the doubt that I have unfairly judged Price as a villain. While I think his potential as a villain was not quite reached, and his insanity was not explored enough to justify the final revelation of his character coming so close to the ending, there may indeed just be something I’m missing hidden in the film, or some kind of bad light I have painted on him because of the superficial aspect of how he’s been shown to us.
I do still feel that the film could have been better under the wing of someone other than Shyamalan, who couldn’t quite bring it to the level it deserved to be at, but as it is I will not go out of my way to denounce it’s ridges and bumps so rudely. I will think this one through for tonight, to see if I was being silly in retrospect.[/quote]
He wasn’t insane. Shyamalan makes us question his sanity up until the end, but Price is driven to murder by a need to make sense of his condition. The brittle bones and constant debilitating pain are what sets him on the road to find his opposite. His arc is pretty well established in the movie.
Here’s a deleted scene where he tries to confide in Audrey. This is the only time that Elijah hints at what he’s done until the final reveal:
His necessary acts of evil are justified by his being right about David. He says he’ll only regret what he’s done if he’s wrong. In the end, he isn’t wrong and that where his villainy lies. All of those deaths were worth it just to find out that he was born into a life of pain for a specific reason.
Finding a hero who will combat (greater) evil mitigates his own crimes because Dunn cannot fulfil his destiny until Elijah completes his.
Don’t forget that the movie is primarily a dissection of comic book lore. The scenes involving comic books hold clues to character and outcome, and shots are composed like comic book art (there is very little movement and no quick edits).
I’m not a fan of Shyamalan’s subsequent movies, but they don’t diminish my enjoyment of his early movies. [/quote]
But doesn’t the act of him taking countless lives in an effort to search for something so incredible define his insanity? That he were to disregard his morals and willingly cast himself as a murderer and doer of evil on his ambition for the world around him to play out like a comic book? Dunn summarily rejected his plan and relegated him to a mental asylum because he could realise the horrors that Price had caused in his search for him, and wanted no part in his twisted scheme. That villains by definition revel in the insane and only a madman would take himself to these kinds of brinks of destruction? I should declare that I am not categorising him as insane in the sense of a villain like The Joker, but psychopathic on more of a John Doe/Annie Wilkes level, that is cunning and meticulous, but is willing to disregard his humanity for the semi-divine goal he holds for himself.
Is it not his twisted obsession with this that would cement him with the mentality of a psychopath? The assurance that all his evil is watered down and becomes necessary and excusable at the onset of his logic and reason being affirmed?
I guess the justification of his doings depend on the perspective, as from Dunn’s perspective he is the embodiment of all of the grand circumstances’ evil, and Dunn is unwilling to rise to his ideal of their magnificent moral wars because he comes to realise the horror in the scenario that would follow that. His mistake was in assuming that Dunn would be willing to comply for that predisposed destiny, that mirrors his comics and their outlandish “hypotheticals”, but he is content with leading a normal life, knowing that the marvel Price sees in his comics would be worse than the reality he has found himself leading.
Of course, the comic book universe is at the centre of the movie’s themes and plot, it only stands to reason that the audience would be reminded of that by having the movie filmed in such a way, with all it’s frequent references and nods.
I think after Unbreakable he began his descent into mediocrity, or even further than mediocrity, but I do enjoy everything up to Signs.[/quote]
I don’t think he is morally bankrupt or a psychopath. He is driven by an urge to make sense of the hand life has dealt him and he is the perfect opposite of David( Dunn is thrown into a similar quest for purpose by his survival of the train wreck, which brings him into contact with Elijah).
In the deleted scene I posted, Elijah shows regret for what he’s done, so he’s killing for a greater purpose; that purpose being to find David and through him rid the world of greater forms of evil than Elijah.
Elijah doesn’t consider himself evil, though. His sole aim throughout has been to find David. Elijah acknowledges the price (“so many sacrifices”) to be payed. Like it says in the movie, he has a slightly skewed way of looking at the world. He reasons that Dunn’s heroism will offset his crimes as they are both on earth by design and guided by the same hand (whether it’s god, fate, etc).
Dunn doesn’t have to buy into Elijah’s morality. He won’t b/c he’s the hero. Elijah however, readily accepts his role as villain knowing that he was right and so his actions aren’t entirely his own choice.
If David turned out to be an ordinary man, it would mean Elijah’s actions were his own responsibility and you could label him insane. Dunn’s abilities are proof of his sanity. [/quote]
It’s not so much his wake of death and destruction in order to find his opposite that I feel paints him as insane, but more his choice to go through with that death and destruction at all. I feel his logic was reasonable at the time, but I’m reluctant to say his actions were the same. Maybe your point about him viewing the world in a twisted and askew manner transcends him somewhat beyond the insane, and maybe his relentless pursuit of purpose is justified by the extraordinary circumstance he finds himself in with Dunn, but I retain my notion that his acts being villainous, are rooted in the psychotic, by virtue of his choice to fill the villain’s role, with the divine push or not.
Your last post in particular (the one I’m replying to now) has afforded me a slightly better view of Elijah on the whole. I’m beginning to understand Price on the notion that his acts are not so much entirely “insane” as they are inherently villainous, and that the justification of his actions may depend somewhat on the turn of events that follow what is shown in the film. I guess I could argue however, that his choice to follow through with his actions to such a destructive degree were unnecessary in his search for David, but of course that is entirely hypothetical and dependent on numerous other plans of action.
I think I would label Price as psychotic on the notion that he would want to bring together his and David’s conditions to suit his obsessive comic ideal rather than use his logic and planning power to help and mentor David, that he willingly decides to become the arch-villain because of people having transformed those created in such a manner as them into this overwhelming painting of them as good and evil fighting to keep the world in balance. Instead of shedding the rigid boundaries set by comic book creators, he embraces them as something to be looked up to and cherished, while disregarding the effect the actions of the generic villain would have in the reality of the world he inhabits as necessary for such a “glorious” pursuit.
But there are points I believe I had been misguided in making, I won’t get into all of them as this has dragged on for too long and other people need their chance to stay relevant to the thread at hand here, however I’m sure you can tell where I’ve resigned my previous views by now, having been the one to argue them.
Over time this kind of transformed itself into more of a character analysis of “Mr. Glass” more than anything else, although I am pleased we got into this debate, it’s led me to recall some of my contempt for Price’s character and admit that his actions and thoughts justify him as a very capable villain.
