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What Makes Mr. Glass One Of The Most Chilling Villains In Film History
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Mar 31, 2025
When Unbreakable first hit screens, it was clear that Samuel L. Jackson's portrayal of Mr. Glass would be one of the best villains ever put to film. Well before the boom of superhero and comic book movies, Unbreakable treated Mr. Glass as a Super Villain. Giving us a unique perspective of the mind set behind Mr. Glass well before Super Villains were a mainstream idea.
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What do we call you, sir
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First name, Mr. Last name, Glass. We live in an era of supervillains
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With new Marvel and DC projects popping up what seems like monthly, we have no shortage of world-destroying threats
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But over 20 years ago, we were introduced to one of film's most terrifying villains
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Physically fragile and unassuming, Mr. Glass was an operatic villain ripped straight from the comics pages who showed us the danger of faith in ideas
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And bear in mind, there will be spoilers for Unbreakable, Split, and Glass
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Released in 2000, Unbreakable, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, told the story of the sole survivor of a train wreck who escaped completely unharmed
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He's then approached by an art dealer who believes the man has superpowers. Back then, that was a unique proposition
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Released just five months after Bryan Singer's X-Men and a few years post-Blade
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Unbreakable featured a brooding hero and an original villain with all the pageantry of Magneto or Deacon Frost's monologues
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How you doing, chief? And this was a time when muttering the words comic book
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was not the selling point it is now. Shyamalan has said marketing told him
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we can't mention the word comic books or superheroes because it's too fringe
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It's those people who go to the conventions. In their eyes, the supervillain trope was a detriment to the film
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something to be hidden. But Shyamalan knew he had something special in Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass, played by Samuel
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Jackson. When we meet Glass, he's a respectable art gallery owner who specializes in original
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comic book pages. He even refuses to sell a page to someone he believes won't appreciate the work
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This is an art gallery, my friend. And this is a piece of art
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Which is our first indicator the man is fanatical about his beliefs. Part of what makes Glass's
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obsessive nature so terrifying is Jackson's performance. His gaze smolders through everyone he looks at
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almost never blinking. There's an idea that holding eye contact is a sign of dominance
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Even his initial contact with Bruce Willis' David Dunn is a statement that this story is about what this man wants
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During a memorial of the victims who died on the train Glass leaves a note for Dunn on his windshield which already shows this is about his plan With complete disregard for the emotional weight an event like this has or the impact it bears on the community he genuinely thinks this is the
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opportune moment to reach out to Dunn. I got a card from this store. Congratulations, you have a
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mailbox. The exhibition isn't for two weeks. This one was under the windshield wiper of my car
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As the movie carries on, Glass presents himself as a mentor, not unlike Stick to Daredevil
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but every move he makes leads to what, for better or worse, would become a Shyamalan staple, the reveal
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In the film's last act, Glass is shown to be the mastermind behind the film's entire plot
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It's shown that he was responsible not just for the train crash and the deaths of hundreds
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but many other terrorist attacks, all in an attempt to find another super-powered human
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What's most horrifying here is the justification. He genuinely sees the acts of terrorism he's committed as a victory
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Because in his eyes, it worked. It's a cold reasoning that hits especially hard for comic readers who have seen this behavior before
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Back in 1986, Alan Moore and David Gibbons released the limited series Watchmen under DC Comics
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In that story, another hyper-intelligent man, Ozymandias, did a cold calculation of his own
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He decided that the deaths of innocents were worth what he saw was the greater good
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The idea of a greater good is a common trope for villains, but Glass's sense of joy, jubilation, and accomplishment is harrowing, simply because a greater good is subjective
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None of the friends, orphans, or widows would argue the loss of their loved ones is worth someone not being mugged thanks to a man in a poncho
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But for him, it's not about saving the world. It's about proving he's right
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And being right is not new to Glass. He isn't just looking for a super-powered human
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He's looking for his counterpoint. The power he argues he possesses is a super intellect
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He manipulates circumstances into a Rube Goldberg puzzle, each piece interacting with the next and always managing to stay one step ahead
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Just the idea that whatever you do, wherever you go, this man has a contingency plan
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And that's terrifying. As people, we often think our adaptability is our greatest strength
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The idea that we are all on a level playing field and left to skill alone is like a comforting blanket But with Glass the blanket has probably been laced with some sort of poison that only someone as smart as he
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could pronounce. Since he was a child, Elijah Price was bullied for his fragile body
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earning the nickname Mr. Glass. But the young kid found solace in the comic books his mother
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would give him. Often just a means to pull the boy out of his depression and fear of a world that
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would literally break him, the comic books he read became a roadmap. Comics resonate with
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outliers and the fringe because there's a reflection of themselves in the four color
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funny pages. Mutants and aliens whose greatest weaknesses become their greatest strengths
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After a childhood of bullying and a staggering intelligence, Glass sees things from an angle
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completely different than our own. To him, that angle showed a path that gave reason to his
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disease. It gave him purpose. And purpose, above all else, is what he wants. His intelligence means
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nothing if nobody sees it. It's the reason characters like Sherlock Holmes even bother
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with the occasional pesky mystery. Glass wants to prove his powers because it proves himself
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It justifies his faith. When we see him as a child, his mother tells him
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You might fall between this chair and that television. If that's what God has planned for
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you, that's what's gonna happen. This small moment shows us that his mother also found purpose and
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meaning in her faith. And that idea, that feeling, cannot be swayed for the devout. No matter what
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arguments or bits of logic are put forward, Glass knows. And that knowing is maybe his most horrific
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trait, simply because it defies all of our own preconceptions of winning. No matter the outcome
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his being proven right, or his death, it's all circular. For him, he's already evaluated every
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possibility and come to a conclusion etched in stone and cheap pulp paper. The murders he's
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committed, the lives, and the damage done is all a means to an end, so much so that he takes the
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moniker of Mr. Glass. While it was initially intended as an insult, Mr. Glass now represents
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who he was supposed to be, and there is something genuinely beautiful in that idea. Often the words
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cast at us as kids become a badge of pride. For him, the name means so much more than the fragility
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of his body It the clear pain he looks at the world through the dirt hardened by life into to something so much more powerful And once that name becomes set Mr Glass fully wraps himself in the idea of a supervillain Appearing again in the titular Glass 20 years after Unbreakable release
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he has dropped his simple purple suit and turtleneck, now adorned with a white shirt and neck kerchief, monogrammed with his initials
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While the first movie released in a pre-9-11 world, both Split and Glass's later dates gave a new context to the villain's actions
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Put simply, the world had changed. The United States didn't have the same rosy-hued goggles it had once held with privilege
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As the years moved on, pop culture wanted heroes. They wanted to feel powerful and comfortable in a world that said, assuredly, you aren't
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The consequences of the terrorist attack on the East Rail 177 ripple throughout Shyamalan's trilogy
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In the stealth sequel to Unbreakable, we learn Glass created a supervillain in The Beast in 2016's split
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This time, we meet Kevin Wendell Crumb, played by James McAvoy, a man with Disassociative Identity
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Disorder whose condition worsened after the loss of his father. One aspect of Kevin was the Beast
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an uncontrollable id with super strength, speed, and a less than tasteful obligatory
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violence streak. It's another affirmation that he's succeeding, and the terrifying thing is
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he's right. The movie goes out of its way to shout, yes, these are super-powered humans
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and Mr. Glass knew all along. The reward for his faith is, in the end, martyrdom
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He wants the world to know what he did, to awaken more super-powered humans
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by showing Dunn and the Beast to the world via the very cameras that were meant to restrain him
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again outwitting his captors and using their own weapons against them. As Glass lies dying
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his creations having served their purpose just before they die, there's the knowing look of Jackson again
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It's framed by Shyamalan like a victory. The music swells, his mother weeps, and Jackson sells the scene so well
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We almost forget that this is a death of a terrorist. Right or wrong, this was a villain that killed again
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and again for his idea of the greater good. And that is something truly terrifying
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Humanity is a big twisting amalgamation of ideas and beliefs, and one man so desperate to prove himself
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right and validate his own existence at the cost of human life truly makes Glass a villain that
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will stick with us throughout time
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